Page 32 of Crew

“Yeah, a pitfall trap. It’s something a few of the hunters in my former herd used to injure large animals. They’d dig a large, but shallow hole and cover it with leaves and branches, and then drive whatever they were hunting toward it.”

“Your ankle?” he asked.

“I can’t even get off the ground,” she said, her eyes widening for a moment as she tried to sit up more, and pain clearly made her freeze in place.

“I’ve got you,” he said. “I told Ford to call the doctor at the safari park to come help.”

Footsteps raced toward them and he looked up to see Ford and Grey. “Avi’s at the house with Khyle,” Grey said when they reached them. “He’s going to wait for Doc Paula.”

“She’ll be here in about twenty minutes,” Ford said.

“What the hell happened?” Grey asked, putting his hands on his hips and looking around.

When Zara couldn’t speak because the pain was swamping her again, Tris filled them in on what had happened.

“You didn’t see anyone?” Crew asked.

“No,” Tris said. “I was scared to leave her, but I couldn’t carry her myself.”

“You did the right thing,” Crew said. He was both worried about her injury and furious someone had clearly set a trap.

“Shit, look,” Grey said, pointing down the fence line.

Crew rose to his feet and looked, seeing odd, low piles of leaves and sticks in a line, one after the other. “Damn it,” he said. “If we weren’t looking for something, we wouldn’t even see them.”

“I’m going to count them,” Grey said. He hustled off down the fence.

Crew scooped Zara into his arms as gently as he could without jostling her leg and stood. “I’m going to wait at the house for the park doctor and reach out to Dexter and Khyle for a meeting as soon as possible.”

“What about the traps?” Ford asked.

“We’ll come back and scout after the meeting, but I want males at the house with our female herd members and we need all hands on deck.” He grumbled a sigh. “We know it was Colton. The question is whether he did anything else besides dig holes.”

“And it also means we need even more security in place,” Ford pointed out. “We focused on the house and buildings on the cleared property, not the whole damn territory.”

Crew nodded and walked to the farmhouse to wait for the pack doctor.

“How are you holding up, sweetheart?” he asked.

“Aside from feeling like an idiot?”

“Why would you feel like an idiot? There’s no way you could have seen those pitfall traps unless you were scanning the ground as you walked. And I’ll point out that there was no reason for you to be watching where you were walking because when Colton messed with us before, he went after the storage barn.”

“I know,” she said. “I just feel like he was watching us.”

Crew looked down at her for a moment before turning his attention back to the walk ahead. He didn’t trust that there weren’t more traps, even though they appeared to only be at the point she’d gotten hurt and farther down the territory.

It seemed to Crew that they were being watched too, but specificallyher. Why else would there be traps where she’d been foraging with Nancy the day before? Colton must have assumed she’d continue her exploration of the area, so he was purposely targeting her. And that also meant that he hadn’t really left the area.

Neither of those things were good, but his stallion was furious that she’d been harmed when he’d assumed their territory was safe.

He would never forgive himself for her getting hurt.

* * *

By the time Doc Paula had come to the farmhouse, examined Zara, and declared the ankle badly sprained but not broken, the entire herd had gathered, including Nancy and Tris. Dani and Neo were there as well, having driven Doc Paula to the farm.

Doc Paula wrapped Zara’s ankle and gave her something for the pain while her natural healing abilities did their job. After the three left to return to the park, the herd males all met in the kitchen to make a plan of action.

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