perfume.
“At first I thought they were just planning to rob us,” he murmured. “I was already reaching for my wallet to give it to them.”
“But?” Kendra prompted when he stopped.
“They were looking for more than money. I heard them saying what they were going to do to Marissa after they killed me.”
“Oh no,” Kendra whispered. “Did you shift?”
Declan lifted a low-hanging branch for Kendra, then stepped underneath it himself. “What choice did I have? I hadn’t shifted more than once or twice since that first time. I’d completely boxed up that part of me and put it away in the closet, never intending to bring it out again. But when they came at us, one with a knife, the other with a gun, all I could think about was what they were going to do to Marissa.”
Declan took a deep breath. He couldn’t believe that after this long, the memory was getting to him. Maybe saying it was harder than thinking about it.
“I tried to keep my claws and fangs in, but I didn’t have enough experience with controlling my shift because I’d refused to ever let it happen. So when it happened, it was pretty bad.”
“But you said one of them had a gun,” Kendra said. “How did you…?”
He shook his head. “I don’t even remember exactly what I did. I just shifted and charged the one with the gun. The guy with the knife slashed me, but I didn’t pay any attention. I hit the first one so hard I think he was out cold before he landed on the ground. I turned on the other one, roaring at him so loud he almost crapped himself, but he came at me anyway. I broke his arm and threw him through a car window.”
“What about Marissa? How did she react?”
Stopping right there in the middle of the jungle even for a few minutes was dangerous, but Declan needed a moment to get himself together. “She didn’t handle it well. While she knew the two men were violent, she hadn’t heard them whispering about what they were going to do to her. She didn’t even know there was a gun until it was all over. She just saw her fiancé turn into a snarling monster and beat two guys to bloody pulps. When I turned to check on her, she screamed and ran.”
Kendra’s hand came up to cover her mouth, her eyes full of pain.
“I tried to go after her, but she only screamed louder and ran faster, so I stopped.” He swallowed hard. “Someone heard the screams and called the cops. They found me there waiting beside the two unconscious men. It took another fifteen minutes to find Marissa. She was hiding behind a Dumpster nearly a quarter mile away. She was so freaked out they couldn’t even get a statement from her.”
“How did you keep the cops from figuring out what happened?”
He shrugged. “I really didn’t have to do anything special. The pair had hit several other people over the last few days. Exact same MO, including one sexual assault. The cops took one look at my size and assumed I’d kicked their asses the old-fashioned way. When the punks finally woke up and started talking, everyone thought they were on drugs. Who’d believe a story about an MIT engineering student turning into a monster?”
Kendra shook her head. “And Marissa?”
“The cops assumed I told her to run when the attack started and she never told them differently. Actually, she never gave a statement at all. Claimed she couldn’t remember any of it—total PTSD blackout.”
“What did you tell her?” Kendra asked. “Didn’t she have a million questions?”
“She didn’t have any questions.” He snorted. “I never saw her again after that night. Her father came over to my apartment the next morning, thanked me for saving his daughter’s life, then gave me Marissa’s engagement ring back and told me she no longer wanted to marry me.”
Kendra’s jaw dropped. “You’re kidding right? You save her life and she dumped you over something as stupid as you being a shifter?”
Declan tried not to let the words hurt, but they did, because that was exactly why Marissa had left him. “You didn’t see her face when she looked at me…when she saw the real me. The monster she saw terrified her more than the idea of anything those men might have done to her.”
“That’s crap.” Kendra didn’t even bother hiding her anger. “Did you try to talk some sense into her, remind her