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I nodded, my fingers pushing through the fur on his neck as I tried to calm his heavy panting. I swallowed, and swallowed again, unable to croak out a coherent sentence.
“He attacked a lion tonight,” Jesse said, his quiet voice floating from the doorway. “We left him in the Allegheny Mountains over three weeks ago.” His eyes, stark and bloodshot, found mine. “He must’ve followed us.”
Shea’s head shot up, her neck craning to look over her shoulder at Jesse. “That’s…”
“Four-hundred and thirty-six miles away.” He glanced outside and rubbed a thumb over his eyebrow, his other hand tightly gripping the bow. “This dog…” He looked back at Shea, his voice thick and raspy. “We cannot lose him.”
My stomach caved in, and a sharp burn lit behind my eyes. So much death. Too much goddamned death… A fierce spasm gripped my muscles and squeezed my lungs. Oh God, he couldn’t die.
“Okay.” Shea turned back to Darwin and injected him with a shot of something. His whining quieted, and his eyelids grew heavy and closed.
A jolt of panic crashed through me, and I hugged his slackened neck. “What did you do?”
She touched my shoulder. “A heavy duty painkiller. He’s just dreaming.” She went back to work, cleaning the wounds and setting up a makeshift IV drip. “We only had one lion on the reserve. Goliath was his name.” She smiled, sadly. “I’m surprised he lived this long. He was a big baby.”
My chest clenched, and I breathed through it. Big baby or not, Goliath wanted to eat us.
The sound of Jesse’s pacing steps saturated the silence. I knew what he was thinking. We had been on the lookout for wild animals, but after losing Tallis and Georges today, our perimeter was down, our defenses gone.
I looked back at the door, and my muscles locked up. Roark was out there, alone. “What other predators were on the reserve?”
“A cheetah.” Shea dug through another cabinet. “She was old. Pretty harmless. I doubt she survived a week. A few alligators. Snakes. That’s it.”
I shivered, thinking about the waterhole I’d been bathing in.
Thirty minutes later, Roark returned with an armload of boxes and bags. Darwin slept through Shea’s prodding, pricking, and stitching. I sensed my hovering annoyed her, and she refused to give me a definitive answer on his chance of survival.
My body buzzed with worry and dread, and my hands twitched with restlessness. I reached out and gripped Shea’s fingers, where they softly stroked the fur on Darwin’s hindquarters. “Thank you. For everything.”
She smiled. “He’s a fighter.” Her eyes flashed. “And so am I. Now give me some space.”
Space? I wanted to be right here, breathing down her neck and putting the pressure on. I pulled a shuddery breath through my nostrils, which only made me feel more jittery and amped up.
Fuck, I was unraveling, fucking eyes burning and throat swelling. If I stood here another second, watching Darwin heave through his pain, I might blow a gasket.
Shea was right. She needed space, away from me and my impending breakdown. And I needed space, away from Darwin to pull my shit back together.
I turned away, thanking my lucky stars for Shea’s veterinary skills, and zeroed in on Jesse. There’s my distraction.
The rims of his eyelids glowed pink with exhaustion, the skin around them sagging and bruised. I suspected the wall was the only thing holding him up.
Planting myself before him, I stared up into his eyes. “You need to sleep.”
He harrumphed and leaned away from the door frame. “Not gonna happen.”
I grabbed the carbine and a bedroll and pushed past him to step outside, confident he would follow. Heaven forbid I step out of his sight.
The soles of my feet ached as I spread the bedroll on the porch and collapsed onto it, settling on my back, emotionally drained and mentally wired.
The rain had stopped, leaving a cloud of moisture hanging beneath the black sky. The aphids wouldn’t venture out until the ground dried. We had a few hours to sleep.
The door opened and shut as Jesse slipped out. He set his bow beside me then did something I would’ve never expected.
Lowering to his knees, he crawled between my legs and slumped against me. His chest lay heavy on my stomach, and his cheek rested between my breasts.
My hands went to his hair, pushing the strands away from his face. I adjusted my hips, relaxing into a comfortable position beneath his weight. He felt so good against me I could almost forget about the struggle Darwin was enduring inside. Almost.
Jesse lifted a finger and pointed at the darkness. “Look.”
I followed his gaze, my eyesight adapting to the shadows. Flickering over the landscape were hundreds of fireflies. Their glowing yellow beacons danced over the field, a synchronicity of nature, pulsing to a song I couldn’t hear.
I’d never seen so many in one place, and I felt like I was witnessing a magic trick, Mother Earth’s serendipitous balance in such a violent world.
