Guarding the Princess(59)

It edged a little closer. Too curious. Brandt saw scars on side of its face, across the top of an eye. It was an older male, with no pride. Exiled. Hunting alone. This was trouble.

Brandt’s gaze flicked to the fires inside. He eyed a glowing log. Should the lion leap and his first shot not hit true, he’d grab that log as a next resort. Finger curling around trigger, he hissed softly.

“Yaaa.”

The lion moved its head, flicking its tail.

“Yaaa!” Brandt yelled louder, waving his arm. Then he released a huge imitation roar.

The lion’s tail swished as the beast licked its jowls. Then it broke its gaze with Brandt, and like a ghost, slid back into the night, ceding territory.

Goose bumps chased over his skin as Brandt tried to swallow. His heart was hammering, mouth bone-dry.

The bush night sounds filtered back into his consciousness but he continued to glare into the blackness where the lion had vanished.

Had he even seen it? A solitary old male lion, doomed to prowl the veldt alone. Never mate again. Never be part of a pride. Never watch over a territory for his own family of felines. Destined to live out the rest of his life around the fringes of others’ existence.

Tautona.

The hair on the nape of his neck prickled. The animal had chased him back inside where he should’ve been all along, close to his principal. The weird feeling down his neck intensified and Brandt’s gaze slid over to the dying embers in the fire. He became conscious of how bitter the cold weighing down from the night sky had become. His attention flicked to Dalilah.

She was curled in the sleeping bag, hair a thick soft fall over her cheek. Brandt inched over to look at her face.

Her skin was bloodless. Lips the wrong color. She was shivering. He dropped quickly to his knees, setting the gun beside him.

“Dalilah!” He shook her shoulder.

She was unresponsive.

Brandt felt her skin with the back of his fingers. She was ice-cold, and her pulse was weak. Hypothermia. Brought on by the sudden freezing temperatures. Compounded by injury, shock, dehydration, exhaustion—it had all been creeping up on her, a perfect storm of triggers that he’d missed. His fault.

“Dalilah!” Brandt slapped her face lightly.

Nothing.

Panic licked through his gut.

Hypothermia could kill in a situation like this. He shouldn’t have left her! He hadn’t noticed how cold it had become—he’d allowed the fires to burn too low, been too absorbed in the resurfacing of his own nightmares.

For an instant he was paralyzed, hurtling down, down, down, back into the black tunnel of his Carla nightmare...caring for his principal so much that he’d been blind to the danger signals that had led to the loss of her life. Then in his mind’s eye, suddenly, the green eyes of Tautona gleamed back. Predatory. Powerful.

Yes. Power. Focus. Do this.

Brandt’s mind turned razor-sharp. Just because something terrible had happened once before, it didn’t mean he was doomed to repeat it. He could not allow the past to stop him from securing this woman a future.

“Dalilah!” Brandt slapped her face again and he began urgently rubbing her arms. “Come on, girl, stay with me. I am not going to let you do this! I will not let you die!”





Chapter 12

Her thick lashes fluttered and her eyes opened slowly.

“Brandt?” she murmured, confused. “Where...are we?” Her words were slurred. But she was lucid—that was the main thing. Brandt’s heart almost bottomed out of his chest with relief.

But she was not in the clear, not by far. Even moderate hypothermia could kill if left untreated. He needed to warm her core temperature stat.

Quickly he built up the fire, but the crackling flames weren’t radiating as much warmth through the building as earlier—the heat was being sucked up into the clear sky.

He pulled the hot bricks and small rocks away from the edge of the fire. Allowing them to cool partially, he filled the kettle with water. While he waited for the water to boil, Brandt rubbed her arms gently. Rough handling in this situation, he knew, could spark deadly heart rhythms.

“I’m making you some hot, sweet tea, okay? You want some tea, Dalilah?”

She murmured something, turned her head away.

“Dalilah, look at me, talk to me!”

“Cold,” she murmured. “So cold.”

The water was starting to boil. There was slightly more warmth in the room as flames continued to grow and steam rose. Brandt tossed more logs onto the fire. Moving as fast as he could, he ripped off his shirt. Bracing against the chill, he quickly wrapped one of the warm bricks in the fabric. Unlacing his boots, he removed them and took off his socks. Into each sock he stuffed a heated rock, then he emptied his pockets and unhooked his knife, GPS and other paraphernalia from his belt. Undoing his belt, he dropped his pants, cursing his habit of not wearing underwear. It wasn’t unusual—many safari guides went commando, a practice born of convenience, and comfort. It kept one cool and dry in often-terrible humid heat. But there was no time to even think about that. He wrapped another warm brick in his shorts. Needing more insulation, Brandt scanned their supplies. The sarong! The kettle started to boil as he removed the sarong from under her head and rolled it around the other warm brick.