Before he realized what she was doing, Kendra went up on her toes and kissed him on the cheek. She stepped back and smiled at him. “I’m sure.”
Then she was walking ahead of him, leaving him unsure about what the hell had just happened. He wasn’t unsure about the effect the little kiss had on him, though. His cheek tingled from the touch of her lips, his heart was thudding, and from the way his vision had tightened all of a sudden, he knew his eyes had shifted. Damn, how was it possible for one little kiss to completely discombobulate him? It wasn’t fair. His head was frigging spinning as he followed her.
Why the hell had he spilled his whole life story to Kendra? He’d never told a soul about what had happened between him and Marissa.
Kendra glanced over her shoulder at him. “This is probably a silly question, but do you still love Marissa?”
“She was a big part of my life…first love and all that,” he admitted. “But no, I’m not in love with her anymore.”
That was the first time he’d said those words out loud—it felt good. He was still thinking about that when the sounds of crunching leaves and branches pulled him back to the present.Shit.He grabbed Kendra and held his finger to his lips, then urged her away from the approaching hybrids, pulling her behind a pile of boulders that weren’t much taller than he was. He breathed a sigh of relief as the sound of boots crossing rock and soil receded steadily, then finally disappeared in the distance.
“Dammit, I wish we could come up with a better way of dealing with these things than hiding every thirty minutes,” he growled.
Kendra leaned against one of the rocks, a smile curving her all-too-kissable lips.
“What’s so funny?” he asked.
“Nothing. I just had this crazy image of Clayne hiding behind this pile of rocks while two hybrids walked by. Something tells me he’d opt for shooting them—or something equally violent.”
She laughed, as if the picture in her head was the funniest damn thing she’d ever imagined.
Declan didn’t laugh. He sure as hell didn’t find the comparison funny. It might be juvenile as hell, but he hated when she compared him to Clayne. He was nothing like the other shifter. Which explained why Kendra had never been attracted to him.
He clenched his jaw so tight, he thought his teeth were going to shatter. He’d been looking for something to get Kendra out of his head, and bringing up Clayne had done the trick.
Declan fought the urge to stand up and start moving again, anything to get his mind on another subject. But he couldn’t do that with the hybrids so close. Instead, he had to sit there and stew in the knowledge that Kendra was obsessed with the damn wolf shifter. Unbidden, his mind went to the one place he’d always refused to let it go: wondering how many times Kendra had slept with Clayne. God, he hated thinking about the two of them together. It literally made him see red to picture her with Clayne—or any man.
But as they hid behind the rocks, that’s the only thing he could think about.
***
Kendra was never going to understand Declan’s mood swings. After spending a good part of last night and this morning connecting with each other, he’d suddenly shut down on her, as if someone had hit a switch and changed his channel on her. And she had absolutely no idea why. She’d retraced their conversation and her actions over the last few hours but couldn’t identify anything she’d said or done that might have provoked him to pull away from her and drop that damn wall of his back into place.
And theyhadbeen getting closer; she’d felt the wall coming down. Nothing else explained the willingness Declan had shown in opening up about that bitch who’d dumped him. She’d almost cried more than once during his story. It was either that or shoot something. She’d never met Marissa, and she hated her. What sort of idiot walked away from someone as special as Declan just because he’d flashed some fangs and claws while in the process of saving her life? The woman must be the dumbest twit on the planet.
Then again, she could say the same thing about herself. She might not have dumped Declan, but she’d ignored him for years, which was just as bad. Maybe worse.
But while she might not get his mood swings, Kendra now completely understood one very important thing about Declan. His ex-fiancée was the reason he kept a wall up around himself. He wasn’t going to let anyone get close enough to hurt him like that again. She only wished there was some way to make him see she was different from Marissa.
She glanced at him as they weaved through the trees covering the mountainous slope. “You know, I’ve been thinking about something—”
Declan held up his hand, cocking his head to the side in a posture she was growing to really dislike. “Hold on.”
Notagain.
“Hybrids heading this way,” he said. “And they’re coming in fast.”
Kendra raced up the hillside as quickly as she could while at the same time picking her path carefully, so she wouldn’t kick loose any rocks. This was a big ridge to get over with nowhere to hide. If the hybrids caught them out here, it was over.
By the time they crested the ridge, she was gasping for air. Thank God she wasn’t still wearing her pack or she would’ve been in even more trouble. The cumulative effect of little food, hardly any sleep, and days spent running for her life were finally catching up to her. But there was no rest just because they’d gotten to the top. Declan hurried her right down the other side, urging her to go even faster as they approached the thick jungle growth covering the ravine at the bottom.
Kendra groaned when she saw there was another ridge waiting for them. This one was even steeper and more thickly overgrown than the one they’d just traversed. There was no way she could make it up that at anything approaching a full run.
“We have to keep moving,” Declan said, grabbing her hand and pulling her after him. “They’re just on the other side of the ridge we crossed. I think they have our scent.”
Crap. She was in no condition to get into a footrace with a pack of hybrids.
“How many of them are there?” she asked, working fast to catch her breath. “Can we fight them?”
