He bit back a growl. For a brilliant scientist, Zarina did some frigging stupid stuff. Like hiking out here in the middle of the night looking for him. She could have gotten herself killed, and probably would have if he hadn’t jerked awake from the middle of a deep sleep, one hundred percent sure he was picking up a trace scent that was impossible for his nose to miss—or ignore. He’d almost convinced himself he’d been dreaming. God knew he’d been thinking enough about her over the past two months for that to be possible. His hybrid sense of smell had been jerking him around a lot lately.
It kind of sucked when you couldn’t even trust the stuff your head was telling you was right there in front of you. Then again, that was why he was alone in the forest in the first place. He couldn’t trust himself anymore. Not his hybrid side or his human side.
Even so, he’d dragged himself out of his tent just to be sure. It was a good thing he had, because he’d picked up the grizzly’s scent at the exact same moment he’d figured out Zarina’s scent wasn’t an illusion. He had no idea what she was doing in the woods, but he had no doubt it was her. No one on the planet had a scent quite like hers.
He’d slowed only long enough to pull on his boots and T-shirt, then sprinted across the mountainous terrain like his life depended on it. He’d smelled that bear a few times over the past several weeks. The grizzly had been getting bold when it came to following campers around looking for food. The animal probably had no desire to hurt Zarina, but a grizzly could do strange things if it thought its territory was being poached. Tanner thanked God he’d found her in time.
Now he was taking her back to his campsite. But just for the night. First thing in the morning, he was dragging her cute ass back to town and sitting it down in the first bus or cab heading for the airport.
As angry as he was with her for coming after him, he’d be lying if he said it wasn’t good seeing her. He hated his traitorous heart for going there, but the beautiful Russian doctor had stirred something inside him from the moment he’d opened his eyes and seen her leaning over his bed in that damn place where those assholes had turned him into a monster. She’d saved his life in that hellhole—and saved his soul several times since then. But as beautiful and mesmerizing as she might be, she was also the most stubborn woman he’d ever met. That damn grizzly would have killed her if he hadn’t found her in time, and she barely seemed to care. He’d told her she needed to go home, and she’d firmly refused. When he’d threatened to leave her out there on her own, she’d called his bluff.
Damn, she could be irritating as hell when she wanted to be. That made it damn hard to protect her from the most dangerous thing in all these woods—him.
Tanner did his best to ignore Zarina as they headed northwest along the top of the ridgeline that led to his campsite. Of course, that was useless. It wasn’t like he had to even look over at her stomping through the darkness beside him to know exactly what she looked like. Her perfect skin; plump, kissable pink lips; and long, wavy blond hair were permanently etched into his mind. He’d never forget a single part of her as long as he lived.
“I can’t believe John Loughlin let you come out here on your own,” he grumbled, needing something to distract him from thoughts of how insanely gorgeous she was and how much he’d missed seeing her since sending himself into exile, even if it was for the best. “Didn’t he have anyone available to send with you? Declan, or Landon, maybe?”
There were plenty of other operatives and shifters at the Department of Covert Operations, people who could have tracked him down easily enough. But Declan MacBride was the big natural-born bear shifter who had found him when he’d been wandering these woods after being turned into a hybrid, and Landon Donovan, a former Army Special Forces A-Team Commander, was the best operative in the DCO. Sending either of those guys with Zarina would have made perfect sense. Sending her out here alone had been crazy. What the hell had John been thinking?
“Well, Landon couldn’t come because he’s busy running the DCO now,” Zarina said, waving her flashlight from side to side in an effort to keep from falling over the rocks along their route. “And Declan is spending most of his time close to home. Those twins of his are a handful. Neither he nor Kendra are getting a lot of sleep.”
Tanner completely got the part about Declan needing to stay near his wife and kids, but the stuff about Landon having a new job caught him off guard.
“What do you mean, Landon is running the DCO now?” He frowned. “What happened to John? He’s okay, right?”
Two months ago, he and everyone else at the DCO had thought John had been killed by a bomb. Thankfully, the director of the DCO—former director now, Tanner guessed—had a guardian angel out there in the form of a shifter named Adam who’d gotten him out of the building just in time. Tanner had been relieved to see John alive and would hate to think something had happened to the guy after he’d left.
“Yeah, he’s fine,” Zarina said. “But all the stuff he and his family went through convinced him he needed to reprioritize his life.
