“You deal with her,” he tossed back to Braden. “Apparently she’s not afraid of you.”
“Bullshit,” Katie refuted.
Braden raised an eyebrow. “What the hell did I do?”
“So what’s your little trick?” she demanded. “Lion? Wolf? Hyena?”
“Very funny,” he growled.
“I wasn’t joking,” she said, her voice deadly quiet. “What the fuck are you? All that bullshit about a seizure disorder. Is that a codeword for turning into wild animals?”
Again his eyebrow went up and his eyes twinkled with amusement. “Seizures?” He turned in the direction Ian had walked. “You know anything about seizures, Ian?”
Ian muttered something unintelligible.
“Can I get up?” she asked. “I don’t like lying down where I can’t see. I want to be able to defend myself if the need arises.”
Braden’s gaze narrowed. “Defend yourself from who?”
“You,” she said evenly.
He shrugged and bent down to help her up. “We can eat you sitting up just as well as lying down.”
She went to slug him, but he caught her fist in his firm grip. He stared levelly at her. “You’re starting to get predictable.”
He picked her up, and even though he was extremely gentle, she let out a low moan.
“Sorry,” he muttered as he set her in one of the larger chairs independent of the couch.
She sucked in several breaths and waited for the fire to subside in her gut. She glanced down to see that all the blood was gone, she was wearing a fresh T-shirt way too large for her, and she was still barefooted. For some reason that amused her.
When she let out a shaky laugh, Braden shot her a concerned look.
“What’s so funny?”
“My feet.”
“Your feet?”
“Yeah. No shoes. I’ve run across God knows how many states with no shoes.”
She said it almost mournfully which was stupid. To be hung up on shoes when she was damn lucky to be alive at this point was absurd.
“We’ll get you shoes when we land,” Braden said gruffly. “You need to rest.”
“I’m starving,” she said. “And thirsty. I’d kill for about a gallon of water.”
He froze for a moment, and then he let out a rush of scorching expletives. Then he turned. “Hey Ian, do we have anything to eat on this damn thing? Katie still hasn’t eaten. Hell, I haven’t eaten.”
Ian reappeared a few moments later with a handful of snacks and some bottled water. “Sorry,” he said as he thrust them at her. “It’s all we’ve got.”
She latched onto them gratefully. First she ripped off the top to one of the water bottles and slugged the liquid down like an alcoholic falling off the wagon.
“Slow down. You’re going to make yourself sick,” Braden said gently.
She managed to slow herself just as she drained the last of the first bottle. Then she turned her attention to the array of food she’d dropped on her lap. There was a box of crackers, a bag of chips, a couple of cereal bars and some sort of fruit shit.
She opened the chips and the crackers then ripped open a cereal bar.
“And she calls us wild animals,” Braden said with an amused snort.
Both Katie and Ian glared at Braden who simply shrugged with a distinct I-don’t-give-a-fuck air.
As she devoured a cereal bar, she glanced up at Ian who hadn’t yet retreated. She tried to see a glimpse of the jaguar, and then she wondered at the sheer idiocy of her thoughts. People couldn’t change into animals. They just couldn’t.
“Eat first, Katie,” Ian said in a low, stiff voice. “We’ll talk afterward.”
She stopped chewing, frozen as she stared back at him. Finally she nodded and resumed eating.
She polished off the cereal bar, scarfed the bag of chips and ate half the crackers before she even considered slowing down. The other cereal bar she held was tempting even though she felt the urge to puke.
Only the idea of having to barf and the agony it would cause her because of her injury made her put it away with regret. She contented herself with another full bottle of water and finally leaned back with a sigh. She couldn’t even remember the last time she’d eaten. Ricardo hadn’t concerned himself with making sure she was fed and those days were a big blur anyway.
Through it all, she watched Braden and Ian suspiciously, looking for any of the erratic behavior they’d displayed before. Ian’s lips were tight, but Braden stood in a defiant posture, clearly inviting her to fuck off.
“What are you?” she demanded.
Ian’s lips curled in irritation while Braden continued to stare her down, his eyes as unfriendly as his posture.
“Don’t look at me like I’m some kind of pond scum,” she burst out. “I’m not the problem here.”
Braden snorted, and she glared heatedly at him.
“You came after me,” she pointed out. “Things have been bizarre since the day you kidnapped and drugged me. You act strange, like you’re hanging on to control by a thread. The next thing I know, Ian turns into some kind of damn big-ass cat and tears Ricardo’s throat out. And then you want to get snotty when I run like hell and act worried about the fact that I’m trapped thirty thousand feet in the air with two wild animals?”
Ian lost some of his surliness. He dragged a hand through his hair and walked over to flop into the chair across from Katie.
Braden remained standing, but he turned to include Ian in his view. The two brothers exchanged what could only be described as looks of resignation. There was more there. A deep sorrow. Katie’s chest tightened even as she damned herself for feeling anything for these two men.
“Did Gabe ever tell you anything about our mission to Adharji?” Ian asked.
Her brow puckered, and her eyes narrowed in confusion.
“I’ll take that as a no,” he said dryly.
She shook her head.
“We were on a hostage recovery mission when we got gassed. We were captured behind enemy lines and were prisoners until we escaped several days later.”
“Gassed? What kind of gas?”
“That’s just it. We don’t know. But whatever it was turned us into a bunch of shifters. In my case a jaguar, as you’ve seen.” He gestured toward Braden. “He turns into a panther. Eli is more elemental. He can turn into shit like vapor, or smoke, steam, funky shit.”
“And Gabe? Was he affected?” she asked hesitantly.
Ian nodded.
“Wow, he never said—I mean he never told me.” She twisted her hands nervously in her lap. She’d always thought she and Gabe were close, but now she wondered how much of his interaction with her was solely based on obligation. “What was wrong with him?” she asked as she looked back up at Ian. “I don’t understand how this happened. It’s like something out of science fiction.”
“Gabe could become invisible,” Braden said.
“Invisible? Why something so different? That doesn’t make sense. The rest of you change physical forms, become something else entirely and he merely became invisible?”
“None of it makes sense,” Ian said tersely. “We were some scientific experiment gone wrong. Or at least Braden and I were. There was one other guy, our guide, and apparently he fared the worst. While Eli and Gabe were stable, the rest of us have no control over when and how we shift, and we retain no human cognizance when we’re in animal form.”
“Shit,” she breathed.
“Yeah, tell me about it,” Braden muttered.
“So Gabe could become invisible at will? And you and Ian have no control?”
She couldn’t hold back the surge of fear at being at the mercy of unstable shifters. She’d seen what Ian could do in jaguar form. He’d gone for the kill with no hesitation, and it hadn’t been pretty.