Wild Tiger Chase | Book #2 (Complete)

35: needles or thread

**massive chapter ahead. Enjoy!**

— Léon —

It was colder in the forest now than in the winters he had roamed through New Continent. His fingers were hard and numb, his nose was running, and his teeth were chattering, cutting the puffs of white, condensed breath that escaped his lips.

Nobody had ever told him the forests around Aíbetama could be this frigid.

Léon stretched his hands, but the small fire did nothing to warm them. The few dry branches Léon had thrown on it already looked like coal when Phillip tapped his shoulder. Léon rubbed his eyes and raised his head. Phillip's face was sweaty and pale; his dagger-made, deep cleavage showed black tendrils spreading over his chest.

"Hey," Phillip said. Hoarse voice, cracked lips, sad eyes. He looked like a mess.

"Hey," Léon answered. He probably wasn't looking much better. He let his knees go and held Phillip's arm to help him sit down.

Once on the frigid floor, Phillip let out a long, tired breath followed by a string of coughing. Léon had bandaged the cuts in his arms with shreds of his own shirt; now that he looked at it, perhaps he had exaggerated a little bit.

Or perhaps he was trying to hide and forget the sickness's dark tendrils. He looked at Phillip's cleavage once more, and the darkness seemed to throb.

Well, Léon had failed.

"My face is up here." Phillip smirked. "Don't treat me like a piece of meat, Dickens. I know I'm hot, but show some self-control."

Léon offered him a half-hearted scoff and rested against the tree at his back. If things weren't so deep in shit, maybe he would even have laughed a little.

After a heartbeat, Phillip's voice came back, lower and softer this time.

"You... okay?"

Fidgeting with the hem of his t-shirt, Léon avoided his gaze. He didn't want to answer that question; he didn't want to think about it. More than that, he shouldn't be the one Phillip should ask this to. Léon adored Anhangá, sure, but Rob had lived most of his life with him. Léon couldn't imagine how sharp his pain was.

"Yep. How are you, Phil?" Léon rubbed his hands together, trying to warm them.

"Me?" Phillip sighed and angled around the tree to rest beside Léon. "I'm fucking itchy. I can't wait to take this shit off." Phillip pulled and released the spandex of his scuba suit; it came back with a sharp slap that made him groan. "My balls are being squashed in here."

Léon smiled this time. "You're a dork."

"Yeah." Phillip bit down his lower lip to stop the smile tugging at his lips. "And you're evading my question, Dickens."

"Stop calling me Dickens."

"Then answer me. Are you okay?"

Léon's eyelids fluttered; he looked at his shoes again. His voice was small when he said, "Yeah, of course I am. What do you mean?"

Phillip let out a frustrated huff. "You know what I mean." He raised a hand and gestured around them.

Pipo snored softly at Léon's side, sharing Rafa's jacket with her like a blanket while Rafa slept curled like a cub—her wounds bandaged in a similar way to Phillip's. A couple of meters away from them, under the guise of keeping watch, Rob sat in a darker part of their camp, half-hidden by the forest and clutching at his short hair as if he had more things to worry about than the freezing cold setting around them.