Shifter Planet (17 page)

Chapter Twenty-Four

A
manda froze, not understanding for a single terrified moment where she was, why she couldn’t move, why there was no light. Memory returned and she stifled a groan, having hoped it was all just a horrible dream, a nightmare brought on by exhaustion.

Unfortunately, while the exhaustion was real, the nightmare was too. She was stuck inside a sleeping bag in the middle of freezing nowhere with a badly injured shifter who, when he wasn’t kissing her crazy, pretty much hated her and everything she stood for. If that wasn’t a nightmare, she clearly didn’t know what the word meant.

She’d pulled the zipper nearly closed earlier to conserve heat, and now she fumbled blindly for the double pull, thinking her plan had worked a little too well. If she didn’t get some fresh air soon, she was going to start screaming, probably not the best wake-up call for her current bedmate. Her fingers found the sturdy tab just in time and she yanked it down, taking a deep breath of the cold air that rushed in. She rolled out of the bag in a hurry and re-zipped it halfway, tucking it around the injured shifter, but leaving his face uncovered. If she’d been stifling, he probably was too.

Although not quite warm in their hideaway beneath the tree trunks, it wasn’t really cold either. The scruffy thicket had been mostly bare when she’d pushed inside before, but it was now almost completely encased in a layer of snow and ice. Perhaps the wind had shifted or some critical mass had been met on the hillside above. Whatever it was, the compressed snow made a very effective insulator against the freezing temperatures. A little bit of light filtered through, enough to let her know it was still daylight, and the muffled quality of sound made her think the heavy snow continued outside. But they were warm and dry, and fairly well hidden in here. What Rhodry needed most, what they
both
needed most, was a place to hunker down and rest for a day or more. And while the storm trapped them in place, it also prevented anyone from coming to look for them. In most cases, that would be a bad thing, but when the people looking for you were your enemies, the very ones responsible for your predicament, that changed the calculus somewhat.

She studied Rhodry thoughtfully. Whoever had attacked him wanted him dead. There could be no question of that. As for her own situation, she didn’t
want
to believe Nando had intended her to die out there on the glacier, but he certainly hadn’t wished her well. It would have been a very close thing if she’d been as helpless as they seemed to have assumed she was.

She pulled her backpack over and began taking inventory of her few supplies. He was breathing steadily which was a good sign. If he’d had a serious concussion, chances were he’d be showing it by now, so she had to assume either his thick head had protected him, or his accelerated metabolism was working overtime to heal whatever injury there was. She remained puzzled that he hadn’t already gone kitty on her to accelerate the healing. But at the same time, she was relieved to have woken up next to a man rather than a big, angry cat.

Not that she had anything against shifters. In fact, she rather preferred them. They were just so damn…masculine. It was hard for a regular human male to compete. She still marveled at the idea of an entire species of alpha males. There was some disagreement in Harp’s scientific circles about which of the two forms was a shifter’s natural state, but if you asked a shifter that question, he’d just give you a pitying look and walk away. In her experience, they were just as comfortable in one shape as the other. Fionn, for example, had lounged in front of her fireplace more than once, licking his paws like a big tabby.

But regardless of her comfort level with shifters in general, she barely knew Rhodry. No matter that they’d once danced all night and, okay, had kissed more than once, or that they’d slept together very intimately for the last several hours. Or that every time she saw him, she wanted to tackle him to the ground and force him to admit that he felt the same tugging chemistry between them that she did. If she ignored all of that, she had to admit that their few real conversations hadn’t exactly been personal.

Sighing, she gathered a few handy sticks and branches and lit a tiny fire, then grabbed the thickest stick she could find and jabbed it up through a corner of their snow cave until she felt the brush of cold air on her face. Their shelter wasn’t airtight—if it had been, they’d have suffocated by now—but she wanted to be sure the smoke had an outlet between cracks in the overlapping tree trunks. She spent a few minutes watching the smoke wind its way up and over the uneven ceiling to her makeshift vent, then packed her empty canteen with snow, and leaving the cap off, set it in the fire. This was why she always carried a metal canteen. It might get too hot to handle, but it wouldn’t melt.

While waiting for the water to heat, she pulled the sleeping bag back to expose Rhodry’s torso and studied her handiwork from the night before. She clucked unhappily at what she found, and knew she was going to lose another shirt—those bandages would all have to be replaced.

Good thing I wore three.
She stripped off her two remaining tops until she wore nothing but her usual sports bra. As soon as Rhodry could travel, they’d have to head straight for the Green and warmer temperatures, because she was running out of clothes.

She eyed the two shirts critically. It was a toss-up as to which was less dirty—neither was clean—but at least the one she’d worn next to her skin wasn’t streaked with blood and dirt. Her skin was already prickled with goose bumps by the time she yanked her remaining top and jacket back on, and she rubbed her arms vigorously before using her knife to cut the shirt into bandages.

She smiled, thinking someday she could tell Rhodry that she’d literally given him the shirt off her back. She hoped he had a sense of humor about it. Hell, she hoped he had a sense of humor, period.

When steam was puffing from the wide mouth of her canteen, she started removing his bandages. “Oh, baby,” she whispered in shock. “Who did this to you?” It had been too dark last night, and the timing too urgent, for her to get a really good look at his wounds. But this morning, even in the dim light inside the thicket, she could see how incredibly vicious the attack must have been. Whoever had done this had definitely wanted him dead, but not right away. They’d wanted him to suffer, to lie out there in the snow, dying slowly, aware of the hycats circling and the horrible death awaiting him when he became too weak to keep them away. Someone out there truly hated him.

Several of the wounds began bleeding almost immediately, and she winced, troubled by how little healing had taken place. She was hardly an expert in shifter physiology, but this wasn’t normal. Some of the deepest lacerations hadn’t even begun to close yet. On a human, the solution would be a few simple stitches to help the body along, but on a shifter? She had no idea.

She blotted away blood, trying to see better, and frowned. Shifter healing abilities being what they were, very few of them were trained in anything beyond basic first aid. Norms rarely traveled the Green, and if one happened to be injured, he or she was transported to one of the clinics in the city, which were now fully equipped, thanks to her mother. Amanda routinely included a small dispenser of surgical glue in her first aid kit, which had, of course, disappeared along with Nando and all the rest of her supplies.

Fortunately, her mother had always insisted that she learn how to make do with what was available. If she was set on venturing down repeatedly to uncivilized planets, her mother had said more than once, she needed to know how to put herself back together if she was injured.

Drawing a deep breath and letting it out, she considered her options. She was pretty sure a few stitches wouldn’t hurt Rhodry, and she didn’t see how his wounds could get any worse than they already were, anyway. She dug into the backpack’s side pocket, and retrieved her needle and thread, then poured some of the hot water into the canteen’s cup, set the cup in the fire, and dropped the sewing implements into the water to sterilize. Regardless of a shifter’s normal resistance to infection, it went against everything she’d been taught not to take minimal precautions. Besides, if Rhodry had been reacting normally, she wouldn’t be sewing him back together at all.

To her surprise, her fingers were perfectly steady when she threaded the still-warm needle. It was a regular sewing needle, not the sickle shape she’d learned with, and the thread was much thicker and coarser. The principle should be the same. Or so she told herself.

She leaned forward to stroke his forehead and cheeks, making sure he remained unconscious. The last thing she wanted was a pissed off shifter waking up because some idiot norm was sticking a needle in his chest.

“Are you in there, kitty?” she said softly. “This might hurt a little. Compared to everything else, though…” Her voice trailed off as her gaze ran over the horrific wounds. Shifter or not, he had to be in terrible pain. Her eyes filled with sympathetic tears and she dashed them away impatiently. “Okay,” she said, swallowing hard. “Be tough.” She didn’t know if that last was meant for her or for him.

She started on the worst of the injuries, a deep gash across his left pectoral muscle. He had a nice chest. She knew that already. She’d admired his hard, smoothly-muscled body more than once, although this was the first time she’d seen that sprinkling of dark hair running in a diminishing line down past his ridged abdomen and over his perfectly flat belly, like an arrow pointing… She sighed.

“I finally get you half naked, de Mendoza, and you’re bleeding all over my sleeping bag.” She flushed guiltily then, once more feeling as if she were ogling an unconscious man. Rhodry apparently brought out the voyeur in her.

Bending to her work, she first cleaned away the blood and grit she’d missed last night, then chose the place she thought stitches would do the most good and started sewing.

She talked to him in a low voice as she worked, still going on the theory that somewhere inside his head, he was aware of her and what she was doing to him.

“I’m sorry about the needle,” she said. “I know you’re not used to this kind of thing, being a shifter and all. I’ve had my share of injuries, though. The first really bad one was when I was twelve. One of the planetary department guys I worked for, doing gofer stuff, gave me a knife for my birthday. I’d had a puny little pocketknife forever, but this was my first real blade. Anyway, it was a sweet little four-inch beauty with a steel inlaid handle, and I thought it was the most wonderful thing I’d ever seen. My mother almost had a heart attack. I ran next door to show it to Meredith before my mother could take it away—Meredith was my best friend at the time. Her parents left the fleet and went back to Earth that same year.”

She snipped the thread on a stitch, cleaned the wound one last time and moved on to the next injury, which was a set of nearly perfect claw marks. The four bloody slices ran in parallel lines, following the curve of his ribs almost perfectly, as if it had been planned that way. All four gashes were nasty, and one had gone dangerously deep, exposing a flash of white rib.

Desperate to distract herself from the raw truth of what she was doing, she started talking again. “Where was I?” she muttered. “Right, new knife. Anyway, I ran over to show it to Meredith, tripped over my own feet and ended up slicing open my arm.” She lifted her left arm and tugged her sleeve up with her teeth to show him a thin line of smooth white scar tissue marring the tanned skin. “See? My mom left the scar, so I wouldn’t forget. The whole thing was pretty embarrassing, let me tell you. I didn’t see that knife again for nearly a year, and even then I had to sneak into my mom’s bedroom and dig it out of her drawer.”

Remembering her mother’s reaction, she shook her head as she tied off another stitch and moved on to the next. She kept doing that, talking about nothing, moving from stitch to stitch until she was nearly finished.

“Okay. Almost done. One more and I’ll tuck you in and let you sleep in peace.” She huffed a soft breath. “Lucky you. No rest for me. We need food, and I need to find out what’s going on outside. I have a feeling I’m going to be digging some snow. Too bad you’re not in better shape, because those claws of yours would really come in handy. As it is, I’m going to have to use my knives and fingers, because you guys wouldn’t let me bring my camp shovel. Bet if you were awake, you’d be wishing I had it right about now,” she added wistfully.

By then, she was sewing up the final wound low on his belly. She had to untie his pants and pull them down low over his hips. She stopped there, leaving him his modesty. Not that she thought he’d mind since she was…that’s right, saving his life. She smiled and kept working.

When the sewing was complete, she washed his arms and torso again, using the remnants of her shirt and boiled water. Since he wasn’t healing like a shifter, she decided he might not be fighting infections like one either. So she dabbed the wounds with careful amounts of her precious antibiotic ointment before applying fresh bandages—or at least fresher ones. She also carefully washed his head wound and cleaned the blood from his ear. She thought the swelling might be down a bit and the bruise was already starting to discolor. Maybe it wasn’t as bad as she’d feared. If only he would wake up, even for a short while.

“Please wake up soon, Rhodi,” she whispered into his good ear.

She’d already decided to stay put for a couple of days—they both needed rest, and, with any luck, Rhodry would regain consciousness before then. Food wouldn’t be a problem. She still had her snare wire, and small game would be plentiful, especially once the storm had passed. And if the storm lingered? Well, there were always other things to eat. She wasn’t exactly sure how far they’d traveled, nor how much of that distance had been toward the Green. Judging by the number and size of the trees she’d seen earlier, there should be plants around for eating, and for medicinals as well—for pain and fever and to help the body start rebuilding lost blood. Of course, after a big storm like that, everything would be buried beneath the snow. The herbs should still be viable, though, and she had used her time well these last several months. She knew where to look.