Morgan's Mercenaries: Heart Of The Warrior by Lindsay McKenna

for a moment, panting heavily. Dropping to her knees, she took out her knifeand quickly slit open his pant leg to reveal the extent of his wound.
    “H-how bad is it?” Roan gasped. He quelled the urge to sit up and grip the wounded leg. He felt Inca’s hands moving quickly across his lower extremity, checking it out.
    “Bad…” she murmured.
    Roan forced himself to sit up. The bullet had torn through the fleshy, muscled part of his lower leg. Fortunately, it had missed the bones. Unfortunately, the wound was still spurting blood.
    “An artery’s been cut. Put pressure on it,” he muttered. Dizzy, he fell back, and felt blackness encroaching on his vision. His gaze was pinned on Inca. Her hair was wet and stuck to the sides of her face. Her expression was intense, her eyes narrowed as she reached out and placed her hand across the jagged wound.
    “Close your eyes,” she snapped. “Do nothing but rest. Clear you mind. I will help you.”
    He didn’t have much choice in the matter. Her hand, the moment it touched his feverish leg, was hot. Hot like a branding iron. Her fingers closed across his leg, strong and calming. Groaning, he stopped struggling and lay beneath the shade of the overhanging trees, breathing hard. His heart was pounding violently in his chest. Sounds meshed and collided. He was dumping. His blood pressure was going through the floor and he knew it. Damn. He was going to die. Darkness closed over his opened eyes. Yes, he would die.
    Just as he drifted off into unconsciousness, Roan saw something startling. He saw Inca kneeling over him, her hand gripping his leg, and the blood spurting violentlybetween her fingers. He saw the tight concentration on her face, her eyes gleaming as she focused all her attention on his wound. Roan saw darkness begin to form above her head. It appeared to be a jaguar materializing. Was he seeing things? Was he out of his mind? Was the loss of blood pressure making him delirious? Roan gasped repeatedly and fought to remain conscious. The head and shoulders of a jaguar appeared above Inca. And then it slid, much like a glove onto a hand, down across her head and shoulders. Blinking rapidly, Roan saw a jaguar where Inca had once been. Sweat ran into his eyes. Then he saw Inca, and not the jaguar.
    Simultaneously, he felt raw, radiating heat in his lower leg. He cried out, the burning sensation so intense that it made the pain he’d felt before feel minor in comparison. Automatically, his hand shot out, but he was weak and he fell back. In the next instant, he spiraled into a darkness so deep that he knew he was dying and whirling toward the rainbow bridge where a spirit went after death.

Chapter 5
    R oan awoke slowly. The howl of monkeys impinged on his consciousness first. Secondly, he heard the raucous screech of parrots as they shrieked at one another in a nearby rubber tree. And then—he was fatigued and it was an effort to sense much of anything—he felt warmth against his back. At first he thought it was Sarah snuggled up beside him, because she would always lay with her back against his in the chill of the early morning hours. The sensation in his heart expanded. No, he wasn’t imagining this; it was real. Very real.
    As he pried his eyes open, the events of the night before came tumbling back to him in bits and pieces until he put it all together. He’d been shot…he’d been bleeding heavily and he distinctly remembered dumping and preparing himself to die.
    Wait…Inca…
    His eyes opened fully. Roan pushed himself up on hiselbow and twisted to look over his shoulder. In the gray dawn light, a vague yellowish-white glow illuminating to the cottony clouds suspended over the rain forest, he saw Inca. She was curled up on her side, one arm beneath her head, the other hand wrapped protectively around the barrel of the rifle that paralleled her body.
    He’d been dying. Inca had leaned over him and placed her strong, firm hand over the spurting, bloody wound on