Page 70 of Graevale

“Can you hear anything, Alex?” Hunter asked.

Knowing he wasn’t referring to the normal jungle noises, she listened intently, but she couldn’t hear any approaching Jarnocks. “Nothing.”

“We’ve made good ground. I don’t know if we’ve lost them completely, but I think we’re safe for the moment,” Hunter said. “Let’s rest up for a few minutes, strap this leg and decide our next move.”

Alex nodded her agreement, placing a comforting hand on Bear’s chest.

“You’re doing great,” she told him when Hunter tore a strip off his own clothing and bandaged Bear’s leg between two sturdy branches in a makeshift splint.

“I’m sorry,” Bear hissed between his teeth, his voice filled with agony so acute that Alex could almost taste his pain. “I’m slowing us down.”

“Don’t be silly,” Alex said, wishing she had some water or something she could offer him. “We all needed a break. You just gave us a good excuse.”

Somehow he managed a huff of laughter. “Maybe my lucky jeans aren’t as lucky as I thought.”

She was able to muster a smile, but it disappeared when Hunter tightened the splint and Bear released an anguished moan. Stomach roiling, Alex watched as his eyes rolled to the back of his head and he blacked out from the pain.

With a shuddering exhale, she turned her accusing gaze to Hunter. “Was it necessary to make it that tight?”

“You’ve had enough first aid experience to know the answer to that.”

What he said was true, but Alex hated seeing her friend suffer. Because of that, she lashed out at the only person currently close enough to receive her wrath. Releasing the last few hours of fear, frustration, tension, stress, pain and absolute terror onto his shoulders, Alex didn’t hold back—she just launched straight into a verbal attack.

“They’re freakingcannibals, Hunter! Did no one think to mention that to us before we left?”

“Alex—”

“Was it too much to ask for a little warning? For one of you to offer a quick, ‘Hey, by the way, they might want to cook you into a stew or sacrifice you to their underwater dinosaur, but don’t worry—we’re sure you’ll be fine’?”

“We—”

“You all claimed to be worried about our safety—what a load of rubbish!” Alex cried, interrupting him again. “If you were really worried, you would have said something!”

“Would you have listened?”

“And even then—What?”

Fully into her rant, Hunter’s words only processed for Alex when he repeated them.

“Would you have listened to us? If we’d told you about the Jarnocks, would you have decided not to come?”

Alex opened her mouth to say of course she would have listened, but then she snapped it shut again, realising he was right. She’d been so determined to carry out her plan that nothing would have stopped her from at leasttryingto make them see reason. And that was exactly what she’d done—just without the heads-up first.

“You still could have warned us,” she said, deflating slightly but not quite ready to acknowledge his point aloud.

“We could have,” Hunter agreed, wrapping a second strip of torn cloth around Bear’s splint for extra support. “But you were so resolute with your course of action that we figured it best to let you do what you needed to do without interference and just keep an eye on you in case you needed help.”

“I’m guessing that explains your presence here?”

Ripping one final strip from his shirt, Hunter said, “I chartered a vessel from the mainland and picked up your trail when I arrived.” He knotted the material around Bear’s leg and added, “I didn’t anticipate you finding the Jarnocks and getting into trouble so quickly, or I would have left much earlier.”

“To be fair, they found us,” Alex replied. “It all went downhill from there. Even if you’d been around, you wouldn’t have been able to do anything except get trussed up beside us as part of Kaku’s dinner.”

The volatile surge of emotion left her in a rush until all that was left was the memory of being dragged along the bottom of the creek bed by the monstrous creature. She began trembling as delayed shock set in, and she lifted her eyes through the darkness until she met Hunter’s. “You saved my life.”

“To be fair,” he said, repeating her words with a hint of a smile, “you were managing all right on your own.”

Alex shook her head firmly, knowing that if Hunter hadn’t intervened when he had, she would currently be in a state of digestion somewhere deep within Kaku’s small intestine.

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