Page 66 of A Rebel's Shot

The next one did the same, and her vision blurred with tears.

“Come on.” The third match went in the stove with the other two broken ones. “Please, Lord, help.”

She tucked her hands under her armpits and closed her eyes against the tears leaking relentlessly from them. Who was she kidding?

She wasn’t strong.

Definitely not capable.

She was nothing but a pampered socialite. Sure, she’d gone to troubled areas, but even there she was a fraud. She always had her private tent. Always had supplies and food, little necessities that were nothing more than comforts, while the people suffered around her.

She was a fake.

Changing to what was expected. Not solid in herself. Definitely not having any worthy skills.

She couldn’t even start a freaking fire. Tiikâan would’ve had a better chance at surviving if he would’ve just let her drown.

TWENTY-FIVE

“Find wood. Get warm. Don’t die.” Tickâan’s teeth chattered so hard any minute he’d break a tooth.

He scanned the undergrowth of fallen branches, snapping limbs down along the way. Bending to pick up a branch, it crumbled to rotted pieces. He growled and chucked the useless piece aside. Of course, the river had to spit them out where the trees grew along with the moss.

Stupid river. Stupid Alaskan moss.

A root snagged his boot, tripping him to the ground. The small pile of wood he’d gathered scattered. He smashed his lips and teeth together to keep from bellowing in anger. Merritt would freak even more if he started screaming like a madman.

“Okay. You’re not stupid,” he told the forest as he got to his feet and picked up the twigs he’d gathered. “I love the wilderness. I just could use a little help here.”

He stumbled farther along, his feet heavy as if his boots were caked in clay. The twigs in his arms might aswell have been redwoods with how hard it was to keep his arms around them. He wouldn’t last much longer without heat.

“Find wood. Get warm. Don’t die.” Snapped another twig. Stepped one more step. “Find wood. Get warm. Don’t die.”

Snap. Step. Repeat.

Except the ground beneath his next step disappeared with a crack. He groaned as pain shot through his knee when he jerked to a halt. He leaned against the downed tree covered in moss, his leg was tangled in, and closed his eyes.

His brain was toast. If he didn’t get back to the shelter, he was going to break something.

It’d be a heck of a lot harder to stay alive then. He’d just gather twigs the entire way back. The fire wouldn’t last, but it’d get enough of the chill off for both him and Merritt to sleep a few hours. Plan made, he pushed off the tree and opened his eyes.

When he inspected his leg, he chuckled. “Found wood.”

The branches crisscrossed around his leg were as thick as his wrist. The twigs had been sheared off in the fall, leaving almost perfect four-foot lengths.

He set his pile aside and pushed against a branch. It creaked in protest, then splintered away from the trunk. The next one gave with a pop. He continued breaking off branches until he had all he could carry and his leg was free.

He patted the trunk, then glanced to the gray sky. “Thank you.”

His knee ached as he climbed back to the shelter. But then again, everything ached.

Even his hair.

When he got to the base of the rock slope, he set his pile on the ground. There was no way he could scramble up the rocks with all of it. His gaze snagged on a print in the mud.

The hair on the back of his neck rose, and he scanned the trees before examining the print. The grizzly that left the massive impression hadn’t been through that long ago, not with the way the soft mud collected around the edge of the impression without much water in it.

Tiikâan stood and searched the trees where the bear went to. When he didn’t see anything, he widened his scan. Nothing.

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