Her stomach suddenly cramped again and this time, she couldn’t control the nausea.
Bending forward to throw up, she tasted blood.
• • •
ADEN helped Zaira up after her convulsive retching, shivers wracking her body so uncontrollably that it felt as if she’d shatter. Holding on to her more tightly, he used all his energy to help her move.
“I’m going to lose consciousness soon,” she said against his ear when he bent toward her. “I’ll be dead weight.”
He’d carry her until he couldn’t walk anymore. Because he would never again watch one of his people die without doing everything in his power to stop it. “Do you know how many Arrows I had to let go?” he asked her. “How many I couldn’t assist, couldn’t get out when they began to fracture?”
“They understood, Aden. We all did.” Her fingers clenched in his jacket, her left leg beginning to drag. “You were fighting for our survival and they died in battle.” Harsh breaths. “Don’t take that honor from them by using their deaths as a whip with which to punish yourself.”
His shin hit a rock hidden in the dark, the impact hard enough to bruise bone, but he kept going. “Stop talking. Conserve your strength.”
“And stop winning the argument?”
If Aden had known how to smile, he thought he may have at that instant. Zaira’s razor-sharp words told him she was still fighting. But he didn’t know how to smile, his emotions crushed beneath the heavy weight of Arrow training until he wasn’t sure they existed—but he wanted to find out.
“Thank you,” Zaira said unexpectedly the next time he bent toward her. “For not leaving me alone in the dark.” A breath that didn’t sound right. “For keeping your promise.”
You’ll never be alone again. I will always be there for you.
He’d made that promise to the suspicious, ferocious girl she’d been. Tonight, on this desolate landscape under an unfriendly sky, he made it again to the strong, determined, just as ferocious woman she’d become. “I will never leave you. No matter what.”
No answer.
“Stay awake!” He shook her slightly, only breathed again when she made a protest. “Tell me about your first assignment.”
“I cocked it up.” Her voice was sluggish and almost inaudible in the howling wind, but she was still breathing, still conscious. “I was sent in to retrieve evidence of a serial killer and I got caught in the room with him.”
“Since he ended up dead, I don’t think you erred.”
“Everyone ends up dead around me. You should be careful.”
“You’ve kept those in the Venice compound alive and functional and they’re some of our most fractured.” He squeezed her when she didn’t reply. “Zaira.”
“ ’m awake,” she mumbled as the rain suddenly slowed to a light drizzle then cut off altogether, almost as if they’d passed the line of demarcation of a heavy cloud bank. Aden knew the lull wasn’t going to last, so he took the chance to scan the area, saw a large stand of trees not far in the distance. They appeared much more solid than the ones under which they’d previously taken shelter—and as far as he could see, none was in any danger of collapsing.
If he and Zaira made it there, they could hunker down and he could try to figure out how to fix her injuries. Part of his brain tried to tell him it was too late, that he didn’t have the equipment to fix the damage, but Aden wasn’t about to give up. He would fight for her till the last beat of his heart and hers.
“Aden, my mind wants to reach out.”
“Fight it.” Another burst of pain could incapacitate her. “Think about the next dinner at Ivy and Vasic’s house.”
“Do you think,” she said between gasped breaths, “Ivy expected so many Arrows to take her up on her offer of an open door?”
“Ivy is an empath. She likes people—she even likes Arrows.”
Zaira’s body got heavier, but she continued to drag her feet forward. “I think I’m hallucinating.”
She sounded too lucid to be hallucinating. “What do you see?” He couldn’t see anything of interest.
“Giant paw prints in the mud.”
Stilling, he glanced toward the ground. He hadn’t focused on it except to make sure they didn’t run into anything, but Zaira’s head had been hanging down. He lowered her into a seated position against a large rock and, wiping his hand over his face to rid it of the water dripping from the hood, took out the penlight.
“You’re not hallucinating. I can’t be certain, but I think they’re feline.” And very fresh. The prints had to have been made since the rain stopped, and that couldn’t have happened more than two minutes earlier.
“What kind of cat has paws that big?”
Using the penlight to trace the edge of the print, he saw the shape of claws, measured the size of the pad using his gloved hand as a comparison. “A changeling cat. One of the large predators. Tiger, leopard, jaguar.”
Zaira’s body rocked with another wave of shivers, her teeth clattering together as she tried to form words. “A-a-r-re we—” Clenched teeth, clenched fists as she brought the shaking under control with icy strength of will. “Are we in the Sierra Nevada?”
While the Sierra was SnowDancer wolf territory, the SnowDancers had some kind of a treaty with the DarkRiver leopards, so Zaira’s question was a valid one. “We might be, but probability is low—the chopper would’ve never escaped SnowDancer notice.”