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“Thirty minutes,” he said at last.

“What?”

“I stay downwind for thirty minutes. Far enough away that nobody following me gets led to you. If you’re still walking straight after that, I leave.”

“That’s still helping me. Oda said—”

“Only if anyone sees.” His jaw tightened. “You get to decide whether you finish. I get to decide whether I walk away from a woman whose lips were blue five minutes ago.”

I should probably have argued harder, but I was exhausted and his compromise was reasonable.

“Thirty minutes,” I said.

“And no more river.”

“I promise.”

He became very still.

Then a grin slowly spread across his face.

“Mi reina,” he said softly, as though I had just confirmed something he already suspected.

He wound the red cord back around his wrist and stood. All six feet of him were naked in the moonlight, and he appeared completely unconcerned by that fact.

At the edge of the clearing, he turned.

“I didn’t see anything,” he said. “Not a thing. You can trust me.” His grin returned. “And reina? Next time I catch you somehow, we do as I say.”

Then he dropped forward onto his hands. His back arched, and before his palms reached the ground they had already become paws.

The jaguar disappeared into the trees.

I remained in the bracken for another minute with my hands resting against my thighs, where the denim still held some of his warmth. When the first chill began creeping back into me, I forced myself to stand.

I kept my promise and stayed away from the river.

Instead, I headed uphill, moving slowly through the shadows and placing each foot carefully. The warmth Jax had given me lasted longer than I expected.

I told myself that was simply body heat and physics.

For the next half hour, I caught the faint warmth of cinnamon somewhere far downslope whenever the wind shifted, but Jax never came close enough for me to see him. Eventually, even the scent disappeared, and I was alone again.

The moon had sunk low behind the trees, and the eastern sky was beginning to pale when my foot, still clumsy and half-numb from the river, came down on what I thought was a patch of bracken.

There was nothing solid beneath it.

The ground vanished under me, and I went sliding down a steep muddy slope in a rush of loose stones and dead leaves, with one startled cry tearing out of me before I could stop it. I hit the bottom of a narrow ravine hard, my left foot trapped beneath me at an angle that told me immediately something was wrong.

The pain arrived a second later, sharp enough to turn my stomach.

I bit down on my sleeve to keep from screaming and stayed there until I could breathe normally again. Once my head had cleared, I ran my hands over my ankle the way I would have examined a dog's leg on the treatment table. It was already swelling, the skin hot and tight beneath my fingers, but I couldn't feel anything that suggested a break. The bones seemed intact.

The sprain, however, was bad.

I braced one hand against the ground and tried to stand. The instant I put weight on my left foot, the ankle folded beneath me, and I dropped back into the mud with tears running down my face.

For several seconds, I stayed where I was and stared at the opposite wall of the ravine.