mean the words to come out as accusing as they did, but Declan didn’t even seem to notice. That scared her as badly as his stumbling steps did.
“They’re smarter than we gave them credit for,” he said softly. “They must have dug those holes by hand so I wouldn’t hear them, then lined them with the same orchids we’ve been using to hide our scent. I couldn’t smell them even when I was right on top of them.”
“Hybrids aren’t supposed to be that smart,” she insisted. “The ones we fought out in Washington weren’t much more than guns with feet and claws.”
“Well, they’ve clearly gotten smarter.”
She tightened her hold around his waist. “What was the deal with putting hybrid blood on our boots?”
“It was the best idea I could come up with on short notice,” he rasped. “The orchids sure as hell won’t work anymore. I’m hoping they’ll overlook the smell of an injured hybrid.”
There were about a dozen holes in that idea—especially if the hybrids were smarter than they thought—but she and Declan didn’t have a lot of choices.
Kendra looked quickly at his chest. His torn clothing was dripping with blood now. She had to do some serious first aid—quick.
“I think we’ve gone far enough, haven’t we?” she asked.
He shook his head. “We’ve barely gone a mile and a half. We need to keep going.”
She didn’t mention that at the slow pace they were moving, they weren’t likely to get much farther before he passed out. Instead, she wrapped her arm around him even tighter and tried to take up more of his weight.
Twenty long minutes later, Declan motioned her up the slope to the left of the stream. “Up there,” he mumbled. “There’s a place to hide up there.”
As she led him up the steep hill, she’d never been so glad for his innate bear-shifter ability to find a hidey-hole. Unfortunately, this particular hidey-hole turned out to be a pile of dead trees that had fallen over some boulders instead of a secluded cave. While Declan leaned against a tree, she pushed the branches out of the way. Underneath them, close to the rocks, was a nice lean-to shelter. She took that part back about the cave. This would do just fine.
“Rub your bloody shirt around the outside,” he said. “That will help hide our scent. Make them think one of their own dragged itself in here to die.”
Kendra helped him inside the shelter, then did as he told her, praying that dying wasn’t exactly what Declan was doing at the moment. When she was done, she left the uniform top shoved under a rock near the entrance of the lean-to. It was just too nasty and bloody to put back on.
She crawled in through the tangle of dead branches and found Declan lying flat on his back, his eyes closed. Her heart jumped into her throat. She scrambled across the rocks and dead leaves covering the floor of the shelter, almost whacking her head on a low-hanging branch in her race to get to his side. “Declan! Oh God, wake up!”
His eyes immediately popped open. “How can I rest with you shouting like that?”
Her breath exploded out in rush. “Dammit, don’t scare me like that.”
“Sorry.”
She grabbed his pack from the corner where he’d pushed it and dug out the first-aid kit. Then she turned and started the horrifying task of getting his uniform top and T-shirt off. But the blood was drying, making everything one big, crusty mess.
“You don’t have to do that,” he said softly.
Tears stung her eyes as she cut open his T-shirt with the small scissors from the kit, then gently pulled the black material away from the gashes on his chest and abdomen. Taking off his shirt made the wounds bleed again, but at least she had them all exposed. They were deep, no doubt about that. But they didn’t look as bad as she’d thought. She didn’t see any white ribs, which she thought she’d seen before. She must have imagined them. Thank God.
Nevertheless, she got out some of the bigger bandages in the kit and tore them open. She could use them to put pressure on the worst of the wounds and stop the bleeding. She didn’t have a clue what to do after that, but it was a start.
“This is probably going to hurt,” she told him.
But when she pressed the four-inch square of white gauze down on the worst-looking gash, Declan only smiled at her. “You don’t have to