The Hunter

Moral Dilemmas

The pale light from the moon cast shadows across the dead body near the mouth of the cave. It didn’t really bother Collin to have the corpse with them, but that obviously wasn’t the case for Mira. He leaned his head back against the cave wall and closed his eyes. Dawn would be there soon, and he hadn’t gone back to sleep. That wouldn’t be an issue since his body was still wired from the fight earlier.

A part of him was furious with Mira for not telling him she’d smelled mountain lions, which wasn’t fair. In reality, he carried almost as much blame as she did since he could tell she was holding out on something and he hadn’t pushed her to tell him the truth.

Whether or not he would have been able to take out the lion with a knife was debatable. Sure, he could take out mountain lion shifters with a gun, longbow or crossbow easily, but a knife was a different situation. There was a good probability he would have died in the process—he wasn’t as fast or strong as some shifters.

Heck, he didn’t even understand how Mira made it out of that alive. He grimaced at the memory of her shredded back. The smell of her blood still lingered in the cave and he disliked it more than he should have.

He shook his head to try and get some reason back into it, but he couldn’t shake those thoughts completely. The entire situation had spiraled out of control. Of all the shifters he could have gotten for his plan, he had to pick her. His eyes fell on the small blond in his sleeping bag and he sighed. With dawn fast approaching, he needed to decide whether or not he was going to carry her.

The one thing he couldn’t do was break his promise to her. He needed her to trust and like him for his plan to work. It wasn’t a lie when he said he needed her to guide him to town, since he hadn’t planned on her throwing out his GPS. He’d stretched the truth a bit with the protection part. His eyes fell back on the carcass at the front of the cave. Maybe he did need her protection more than he’d first thought.

Absentmindedly, his hand reached out and started stroking her hair again. When he realized what he was doing, he pulled his hand back as though it had burned him. She at least had an excuse for getting so comfortable with him—it was in her nature. Wolves would adopt almost anything they traveled with into their pack. What was his excuse?

He didn’t have one, and that’s what bothered him. Right now he was in her debt due to the lion situation. Once she healed, he’d ask her to drop him off in a human town. Hopefully that was sooner rather than later. As it stood, the small pang at the thought of parting with her grew with each moment he spent with her. How had he let this happen?

His demeanor normally was cool, calm and calculating. The men in his platoon called him fearless as well as cautious. Each of them knew he would sacrifice himself to save his men any day. Now everything he had worked so hard for slipped farther away the longer he stayed here. Damn!

After jumping to his feet, he paced silently back and forth in front of her. He wanted to beat his head against the wall and scream, but that would definitely wake her. It would also ruin all of his work with her. Not that he had lied to her about himself per se—he just hadn’t completely told her the truth. The bad part of that was if he did stay with her, what would she think of him when she found out everything?

There went that side of him again. He wasn’t going to stay with her long enough for her to find out. His growing frustrations were getting the better of him. Everything had gotten so much worse after that blasted, albeit fun, game of tag the other day; not to mention bandaging her back that night. At the thought of her back, he wished the mountain lion would come back to life just so he could kill him this time. Wouldn’t be the first or the last time he killed a shifter.

The sky lightened and he had run out of time. She lay curled up in his sleeping bag. Since he had moved, she managed to curl herself into a kind of ball. Quite frankly, it was adorable and very wolf-like. He sighed and silently berated himself for those thoughts. These weren’t helping him gain any peace of mind.

He had to decide what to do, and either way, a part of him would hate himself for it. One side said to wake her and make her walk. She wouldn’t think less of him for it and he would feel better about not helping a shifter too much. The other part of him wanted to carry her and let her sleep. She definitely needed the rest and walking would probably open some of the wounds on her back.

It was like one of those cartoons where an angel sat on one shoulder and a demon on the other. In this case, neither option had horns or a halo to tell him which to pick. All he had to go on was his gut and the two sides of him. The question was: which thought bothered him the least?