Page 20 of Rebel
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My night vision was fading with the predawn light, and so was Tide. The guys hadn’t shown up on the horizon. Hell, they wouldn’t know where to look even if they did come back. There was only one option. I had to get to them. Tide was knocked out, but his breathing was even. I needed to wake him, but first I needed to find the compass. It was tucked in his pack. There it was. Okay, got it. In my pocket now. North, he’d said.
Okay. “We can do this. Tide, wake up.”
Wait … He was completely still beneath the thermo-blanket, and there was no sound of him breathing. I ripped the blanket off him. “Tide!” I grabbed him and pulled him down flat onto the ground. “Come on, stay with me.”
CPR classes felt like light years away, but I tilted his head and gave him mouth to mouth in between chest compressions. Please let his heart be in the same place as a human’s.
Please, please, do not die. My eyes pricked and grew hot. Not again. Not another one. Please.
He sucked in a sharp breath.
Oh, God. Oh, thank God. His pulse was weak and fluttery. “Tide!”
He groaned.
I slapped him.
He opened an eye. “Ouch.”
My laugh was part sob. “Fucking hell, you scared the shit out of me.”
“Trying to die quietly here.”
Had he just made a joke? At a time like this? “Help me get you up. We’re leaving.”
“I can’t. My limbs are too weak.”
“Then I’ll carry you.”
“Rogue, you can’t.”
“Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do.”
The blanket would make a sling. Grunting and groaning, I wrapped it around his back and under his butt. “Come on, crouch for me.”
He obliged, moaning in pain as he raised his frame. I braced my back to his chest and then looped the ends of the blanket over my shoulder and under my arms before tying them at my waist.
His weight settled against me. “Hold on, best you can.”
He was a head taller than me, weighed fuck knows how much, and we were going to have to climb down a fucking rock face again. My body ached, my brain felt fuzzy, but there was no other choice.
I backed out of the cave with his weight on my back, swung my legs over the ledge, and began the descent.
* * *
We hit the ground hard. I lost my balance and fell backwards onto Tide. He cushioned me with a grunt.
“Sorry.” Oh, shit, shit, shit.
He groaned softly. He was slipping into unconsciousness again. I rolled onto all fours with him dangling on my back and then used the wall to pull myself up, eyes filling with tears at the strain.
He was heavier now that he was unconscious. A dead weight but not dead. I wouldn’t … Couldn’t let that happen. He was a stickler for protocol, a stick up the butt as we would have called him back home in England, but he played a mean game of chase the lady, and when he relaxed and talked of Athion, there was no denying how attractive he was. He’d been forced to grow up fast and raise his siblings. He’d put his dreams on hold for those he cared about.
He deserved to live.
But how far would I get with him?
