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8
“You’re bleeding.” Ellie had jumped out of the tree and shifted back into human form, not caring that she now stood nude in front of Brett.
He’d saved her!
And now he was hurt.
Blood blossomed in a line down his arm where the hawk had torn at his flesh. He seemed to take no notice as it beaded before running down in a slow streak toward his fingers. Brett continued to stare at the sky where the bird had vanished as if it would appear out of thin air. Ellie gathered that could be a possibility, as she had the ability to vanish and reappear in her human form. But from what she heard at the hospital section of WANC, it seemed to be an ability not many had—if anyone else possessed it at all.
Brett glanced at his arm. “It doesn’t feel that deep.” He shrugged before squinting back at the bruised sky. The sun was a red ball, dipping behind the mountains in the distance. A pastel rainbow of sunset ripped across the horizon, escorting in the inky indigo that would soon blacken to night. The wind picked up, whipping the clouds across the sky. No avian creatures could be seen.
“Let me clean you up inside the tent,” Ellie proposed, reaching for her clothes, which still hung in the tree. She threw them on quickly, pleased that they were mainly dry. Her boots waited for her near the entrance of the tent. She threw them inside the door, wanting to protect them from the incoming storm—she hoped to have dry feet tomorrow.
Brett nodded before finally tearing his eyes from the sky. He gritted his teeth as he followed Ellie into the tent. “Why do you think it’s after you?” he asked, referring to the hawk.
“Who knows?” Ellie snapped, sounding much harsher than she meant to. “Maybe someone farms for women off the river for their human trafficking ring.”
“I’d have to assume you were one of the first victims,” Brett retorted, sounding more impudent than she would have expected and once again showing her that he wasn’t a pushover. “Otherwise, there would have been reports about something like that, and I’m pretty sure Grayson would have given us some kind of warning.”
Ellie sighed. She supposed Brett needed to know the truth. Again, she thought about when Grayson first assigned them together, and she’d assumed Brett would be the team’s dead weight. Turns out, when he admitted his handicap—that he’d never been camping before—she should have revealed hers: that she was an escaped experiment, and who knew if there were people out there looking to kidnap her back? It was right to let a partner know exactly what risks they were possibly facing.
“You’re right. This area probably doesn’t have an issue with hawks kidnapping random people. So, in that case, my best guess is that someone from the lab I escaped from wants me back,” she explained with a shudder. She didn’t like talking about the labs. It made her feel so low on the food chain. She rifled through her bag for medical supplies, pulling out the small zippered pack filled with bandages and ointment.
“I’m sorry.” Brett stared at her, his expression soft with what was probably sympathy or compassion, but Ellie could only see pity.
Exactly what she hated. It didn’t matter if it was from the FUC scientists or the FUCN’A staff or this quiet, sweet, undeniably appealing sloth. That look meant they were seeing her as something fragile, something less-than, something broken. But she wasn’t broken, and she needed people to know that.
“I prefer to not talk about it,” she snarled, automatically taking out her anxiety on Brett, though she knew she shouldn’t be upset with him for just showing kindness. “Besides, who cares why I’m being targeted? It could be a hypothetical human trafficker who is a stranger to me, or it could be some unhinged scientist who is looking for me specifically. Does it matter?”
“I guess it really doesn’t,” Brett said, his voice soft while he looked away from her. “But I do care.”
His words hit her in a strange way. She couldn’t explain why knowing that Brett cared made her feel good. She ignored the sensation, focusing on the work that needed to be done.
She unzipped her little first aid kit, the buzzing of the zipper breaking the silence that had grown between them. Ellie flipped through the small single-serve packets of burn cream until she found the antiseptic salve.
“I have no idea if this will sting,” she admitted after tearing off a corner of the pouch.
“It’s okay. It needs to get cleaned.” Brett looked back at her as she dabbed at the gash with some loose gauze from the medical pack. His eyes closed in a wince as she pressed the white cloth, soaking up the pooled blood. With caution, she squeezed some of the ointment out of the antiseptic pouch and into the wound. Brett smiled. “Doesn’t hurt at all.”
She felt the tension release from her body. Ellie didn’t realize how nervous she was. She was so afraid to hurt Brett more than he already was. And it was all her fault. That bird was after her, not Brett.
“Are you okay?” he asked after a moment.
“I feel bad that you’re injured because of me.” Ellie started wrapping a bandage around the gash on his arm, careful not to make it too tight or too loose. Guilt and anxiety took turns gnawing at her stomach. “And that’s on top of the fact that you’re risking failing this course because of me. We’re without our preferred method of transportation, so it’s going to be longer to get to the extraction point, and who knows what will happen if we don’t get there in time.”
“I really don’t think that they’ll fail us.” Brett put a reassuring hand on hers before he took the wrappings from her and started to pack up her kit. “They definitely won’t abandon us out here forever. My guess would be that they send some agents out here to find us. That’s what they’re good at, you know.”
He was right, at least about the last part.
“What happens if the hawk comes back before we’re extracted?” she asked. “Who’s to say it won’t tear through our tent in the dead of night and rip you up, then snatch me up once more? You’re in danger because you were assigned to be my partner. You didn’t choose to be put in this position, and I don’t want anything else to happen to you!”
She could feel the familiar lump of sadness form thick in her throat, threatening to choke her. Brett had donenothingto deserve this. Brett was the kind of guy who wasalwayscheery and easygoing. He was the kind of guy that no one would say a bad thing about, who had done everything in his power to prepare for their mission, who was kind enough to let her dry off in sunbeams while he struggled to put up a fussy tent by himself for the first time.
He. Didn’t. Deserve. This.
Her eyes stung as the saline of tears swelled up under her lids.
“Ellie,” Brett pleaded as he regarded her face. It was apparently the magic word that opened the floodgates of emotion.
