Hunter's Heart

Chapter 20

"Quinn."

She only vaguely heard Christian saying her name and she ignored him, focusing instead on trying to mend the damage done to the body of the poor woman who had just shoved her out of the path of an oncoming metal stake.

"Quinn, stop," Christian said patiently, his voice a bit closer now.

"I can help her," she insisted, desperately trying to find the core of power within her that would heal the woman like she had healed Sophia. "I can fix this."

Why wasn't it working? she wondered, her hands beginning to shake. This wasn't like Sophia. She was actually trying to use her abilities for a change. Why wouldn't they obey her?

Quinn wasn't aware of how close her Alpha had got until he was gently grasping her wrists and pulling her back and away from the broken woman.

"It's too late, Little Hunter," he said firmly. "There's nothing more you can do for her now. She's gone."

Denial ripped through Quinn and she struggled hard against Christian's grip in an effort to get back to the woman's side. She didn't want to believe what he was saying. After freeing the prisoners, how could they lose one of them like this? It was just too cruel! No, if she could just figure out the trigger to access her gift like she had the night she had healed Sophia ...

But Christian wouldn't let her go. If anything, his grip on her got tighter.

"Let me go!" she cried desperately, tears streaming from her eyes. "Please, I can fix this! I have to fix this!"

Christian forced her to face him and shook her slightly. "Quinn, that's enough!"

*

"It wasn't your fault."

Christian's voice jarred her out of the unpleasant memory and she came back to what she was doing, which was pressing a wad of cloth torn from her sleeveless shirt to a bullet wound in his abdomen.

The others had already continued on to the cars by the time Christian had pulled Quinn away from the woman who had saved her life. She had been so intent on trying to save the woman's life that she hadn't noticed it had started pouring with rain and she was soaked through to the bone, which had accounted for her shaking hands. She had fought and argued with Christian, begging him to just let her try to help the woman until a shot had run out in the night.

She had watched in horror as Christian dropped to his knees with a strangled cry, clutching the side of his abdomen in agony while blood ran from beneath his fingers.

The Hunter reinforcements had finally caught up with them.

The next half an hour had been a blur. All Quinn could remember clearly was doing her best to support the huge bulk of her Alpha as they ran from the small clearing. When Christian couldn't continue further, they had stumbled into a dip in the forest floor and Quinn had gotten to work on trying to dig the bullet out of him.

Now, Christian was lying in front of her, propped up against a rock, and grimacing in pain every so often. The bullet had been thrown to the side, the small glass poison canister at the top broken, and her hands were covered in his blood.

"You were right," Quinn said softly. "I should have stayed behind. If I hadn't been with you tonight, that woman wouldn't have had to push me out of the way of that stake. She wouldn't have died."

"I saw that panel, Quinn," Christian argued. "Only Hunters with high level security clearance could have opened the cells and I know for a fact that Jonathan never reached that level within the Hunter Order. If you hadn't come with us, we would all have been stuck down there with no way of getting our people out. If we had Jonathan try to hack the system, we would probably have set off alarms and been taken prisoner ourselves."