Her Wild Hero - Paige Tyler Page 0,91

crawling through the jungle on their hands and knees for the past four hours. They looked like a couple of zombies.

“We’ve lost Declan’s trail again,” Clayne said.

“How the hell is that possible?” Tate frowned. “We’ve been following it the whole night.”

Clayne barely muffled a growl. “We’ve been following Kendra’s, not his. If you’d been paying attention, you would have remembered me saying Declan’s scent got all muddy and disappeared way back at that shelter we searched.”

Angelo could understand why Tate might have missed that detail. The scene they’d found at the shelter had been confusing and scary as hell. First, there was the shredded uniform top covered in Declan’s blood. Kendra’s uniform top had been right beside it, covered in hybrid blood. And then, if those two things hadn’t been bad enough, there was that patch of torn-up trees no one could explain. It looked as if a small bomb had exploded. By the time Ivy had announced they couldn’t find Declan’s trail anymore, hardly anyone had been paying attention.

It hadn’t helped that neither Clayne nor Ivy had been able to explain what they meant when they said that Declan’s scent had gotten muddy.

“Declan’s scent just disappears right here in the middle of this mess,” Ivy’d told them.

“So, now you’ve lost Kendra’s scent, too?” Tate asked. “What happened, did her trail get all muddy, too?”

Clayne’s eyes glowed gold in the early morning light.

Angelo stifled a groan. Shit. If Tate didn’t shut the hell up soon, Clayne was going to clock him.

“No, it didn’t get muddy,” Clayne growled. “She was picked up by a hybrid and carried out of here.”

“Then why the hell don’t you just follow the fucking hybrid?” Tate shouted.

“Which one?” Ivy’s eyes glinted green. She looked like she was angry enough to take a swing at Tate herself. “There’ve been at least half a dozen hybrids stomping through here in the last few hours, all moving in different directions. Which one do you suggest we follow?”

Tate’s eye’s narrowed. “How about the one that captured Kendra? Because I’m pretty sure that wherever she is, Declan won’t be far away.”

Angelo wasn’t sure about that, but he wasn’t going to be the one to point it out. Unfortunately, it looked like Clayne had chosen that particular moment to embrace the concept of tough love. Angelo shoved his M4 into Derek’s hand. On the other side of Ivy, Landon handed his weapon to Tanner. But before he and Landon could get between Tate and the two shifters, Carter interrupted.

“Guys. Hold up. I think I found Kendra.”

Angelo jerked around to see Carter pointing at something in the distance. But instead of Kendra, he caught sight of a petite woman with long, brown hair and the biggest, most expressive eyes he’d ever seen standing about a hundred feet away. All he could do was stare back. She was freaking supermodel material.

“That’s not Kendra,” Ivy said.

“I’m guessing she’s not a hybrid?” Landon whispered to his wife.

As if she heard them, the woman smiled. Angelo heard Carter groan behind him. He couldn’t blame the guy. The woman had one hell of a gorgeous smile. But what was a woman who looked like her doing out here?

“I don’t think so,” Ivy said softly. “But she’s wearing something that mostly masks her scent.”

“Just because she’s not a hybrid doesn’t mean she isn’t dangerous,” Clayne said, not even bothering to keep his voice low.

The woman’s smile broadened and she lifted her hand to make that universal follow me gesture with her finger. Then she turned and gracefully half ran, half leaped a few steps before stopping to look over her shoulder at them with those enormous eyes of hers and crooked her finger again.

“That answers the question about what she is,” Clayne said. “She’s a shifter, for sure. And I think she wants us to follow her.”

Under other circumstances, Angelo would have willingly followed her anywhere. She might be gorgeous, but they were in enemy territory. “What if it’s a trick?”

“We’re only going to find out if we follow her,” Clayne said.

The woman gave them another smile, then bounded off again. This time, she took a half-dozen leaps, traveling a good seventy-five feet in a blink of an eye.

“Follow her? I don’t think we’re going to be able to keep up,” Landon said.

“I can,” Clayne said, and took off at a sprint.

Ivy glanced at Landon. “I’ll keep Clayne in sight. You keep me in sight. I’ll make sure not to lose you.”

Angelo still wasn’t sure chasing the freaking hottest-looking