All three of the men nodded.
“If it helps get us out of here, we’ll tell you anything,” Harry said. “What do you want to know?”
Everything. But she’d start with something simple. “How did you end up down here in Costa Rica, and where did your hybrid formula come from?”
Harry shook his head. “None of us signed up for this, I can tell you that. We thought we were coming down here to conduct genetic research for the U.S. military. In the beginning, everything went fine. It was only a few weeks ago that it all went to hell. But before I get too deep into that, I think it’d be better if I started at the beginning.”
Chapter 12
Declan woke up feeling like he’d been hit by a train. But that was the way he always felt after coming out of hibernation. However, he was awake and his wounds had closed up; he could tell. That was the important part. But as he lay there getting his bearings, a lingering taste on his lips brought a smile to his face. He licked them and groaned at the delicious flavor that touched his tongue. Kendra had kissed him. Damn, that was something a man—or shifter—could seriously get used to. He closed his eyes and reveled in the sensation of what having her taste on his mouth meant to him.
Five seconds later, his eyes snapped open. If she’d just kissed him, why couldn’t he smell her? He jerked upright, looking around wildly. She wasn’t in the shelter. Worse, what little scent he could pick up told him she hadn’t been in the shelter for a while—three or four hours at least. If he wasn’t so freaked out by that, he’d marvel at how her taste had lingered so long after her kiss.
He closed his eyes and concentrated on what his ears could pick up. Had Kendra moved outside the shelter so she could watch over him? That was definitely something he could imagine her doing. But after thirty seconds of intense focus, he heard nothing to indicate that she was anywhere nearby.
Declan ripped off the bandages she’d so tenderly applied to his chest that morning and grabbed his M4, then shoved his way out of the shelter, ignoring the snap and pop of branches as he pushed them out of his way.
Once outside the shelter¸ he spun around, forcing his eyes to sharpen as much as he could, trying to pierce the darkness around him and find the woman he loved. But he didn’t see her anywhere. He tried using his ears again, slowing his breathing and kneeling on the ground so that he could pour everything he had into his only real shifter sense.
But while he heard the stream gurgling nearby, tree limbs and leaves brushing up against each other all around, and animals by the thousands, he didn’t hear anything that would tell him where Kendra was. Or what had happened to her.
He fell forward onto his hands and knees with a growl. This couldn’t be happening. He’d wasted years waiting for Kendra to finally see him. And now that she had, he’d lost her? The very thought that she might be gone left a dark, twisting hole inside that had him gasping for air and wanting to crawl back into the shelter and die.
Declan shook his head and pushed back on his heels, refusing to give in to his fear. All he knew at this point was that Kendra wasn’t here. That didn’t mean she was dead. He needed to figure out what the hell had happened before he gave up. Especially when there was a chance she was still alive.
He ducked inside the shelter long enough to grab his pack. There wasn’t much in there of practical worth besides a few half-empty ammo magazines and the remains of the first-aid kit. But Kendra’s extra clothes were in there, and he refused to leave them behind. When he found her, she’d want her stuff.
Back outside, he slowly circuited around the shelter, looking for any trace of Kendra’s trail. Why the hell had she left the shelter in the first place? Obviously, the hybrids hadn’t found them. If they had, they would have taken him, too—or killed him. That left only one logical explanation. Kendra had heard or seen the hybrids getting close to their hiding place and had slipped out to lure them away. It tore at his gut to know he’d put Kendra in a position of having to do something like that, but he knew she would without a moment’s hesitation. If he had any doubt that she truly cared for him, he didn’t after this.
Now that he was calmer, it didn’t take him long to pick up Kendra’s scent. It ran a route almost parallel to the stream. But even down on his knees, the scent was so faint he could barely smell it. And within twenty feet he lost it.
Declan growled in frustration as he retraced his steps back to the shelter and started again. But the end result was the same. He lost the trail before he’d gone more than thirty feet. His nose simply wasn’t good enough to keep the trail, not with the constant breeze scattering her scent and the thousands of other animal and jungle smells distracting him. Worse, Kendra’s boots had still been coated in stinking hybrid blood. Getting past that to find her beautiful smell was beyond his meager shifter ability.
He dropped to the ground again and roared. Anger consuming him, he pounded the ground with his fists and slashed at the nearby tree trunks with his nearly worthless claws. For the first time in his life, he needed his damn nose to work like any other shifter’s nose, and it wouldn’t. Why? Because he’d spent his whole life refusing to accept that he was a shifter, refusing to learn how to use the talents that would find the woman he loved. Now Kendra would pay for his stubbornness.
He backhanded the tree trunk to his right, foregoing the use of his claws and instead smashing it with his fist. The crunch of breaking wood was satisfying, but not nearly as much as finding Kendra’s scent would have been. She was gone because he hadn’t been strong enough to be the shifter she’d needed him to be. Not even twenty-four hours ago, Kendra had warned him that his inability to let go and accept his shifter talents would someday bring harm to someone he cared about. She’d been right.
Snarling, he lunged to his feet to tear into the trees to the left and right of him. It was stupid, foolish, and childish, but he couldn’t stop himself. For the first time since he’d exposed his shifter side to Marissa, he gave into his fear and let the animal inside him out.
The fury exploded from him, blurring his vision and tearing one long continuous roar out of his throat. He lashed out at anything within reach, aching to destroy something,anythinghe could. He had no idea how long he raged like that, but when he let the bear inside him go, he was gasping for air in the sudden silence of the jungle.
He looked around, turning in a slow circle. Every tree within a fifteen-foot radius had been smashed to the ground and ripped to kindling. The uncontrolled violence of his tirade almost shocked him, especially when he looked down and saw that his claws were still extended.
No, his claws weren’t just extended. They had shot out more than three inches beyond his fingertips. All he could do was slowly flex his fingers and stare in amazement as the curved claws moved back and forth.
Declan was so distracted by the sight, he almost missed that the jungle around him was no longer dark. He looked up in surprise. It was still at least an hour until sunrise, and yet he could literally see for a mile through what should have been pitch-black jungle.
Then, an even bigger realization hit him. He could smelleverything.
There was something dead upwind of him, near the stream about three hundred yards away. A fish of some kind. The odor was unmistakable.
Farther away—maybe a mile—a jungle cat was eating a small rodent. Declan could close his eyes and almost point to exactly where the creature—a jaguar or ocelot—was munching its late-night sack.
The more he tried, the more scents he was able to detect. His mind categorized them without much thought, but then one scent reached his nose and immediately pushed every other one out.Kendra. He looked down at the ground, and it was like he could see every step she’d taken as she moved across the slope the shelter was on. He was able to separate the stench of the hybrid’s blood from the perfume that was her own special mix of pheromones so easily he almost started laughing.
And he knew for a fact that she’d been moving on her own. There weren’t any hybrid tracks overlapping hers.
Declan stood there, unable to believe it. He had shifted further and more completely than he ever had in his life. And the answer to how he’d done it was simple. The one thing he had never let happen had happened because he’d been more terrified of losing Kendra than losing himself.
