If Leelo did, she’d be lauded as a hero. Even Aunt Ketty would have to respect her for taking down an outsider all on her own. The man was only a few feet from her. One shot through the throat, and he’d be finished. He was already injured; he might die anyway. She’d be doing him a favor.

Jaren Kask probably wasn’t even his real name.

Leelo glanced at his leg again and saw something pearly white flash beneath the wound. Saints, it was down to the bone. “Can you stand?”

He nodded. “I think so? I might need some help.”

Help. As in, he needed her to provide him more aid than she’d already given. Leelo didn’t know what the consequences for helping an outsider were. Isola was ruined for life just for sheltering an incantu, someone who had been born here. Pieter clearly hadn’t meant Endla harm. But though this man claimed to have been driven here by accident—by the very wolf she’d heard, in fact—how could she trust him? Of course he would try to convince her he meant no harm; she was his only hope for getting off Endla.

Jaren’s hand was out, waiting for Leelo to help him to his feet. If she refused, he might not be able to move, and she needed to get him away from the shore, away from Sage and Hollis. Sage was shrewd; if she found the outsider, she’d put together Leelo’s absence this morning and her question about the boat and know this was her fault. She wouldn’t be a hero. She’d be a traitor.

Confused, frightened, and more unsure of herself than she’d ever been, Leelo reached for him. The sight of her small hand wrapped in a large, male hand was so strange that she couldn’t stop looking at it, even as she pulled him to his feet.

As soon as he was upright, she yanked her hand free of his. “Come on,” she said, plowing into the undergrowth in the opposite direction of home. She wasn’t sure she could find the hut again. It had been an accident the first time, and she had never planned to go back. But she had to hide him until she could cobble together a way out of this mess, and Isola’s secret hideaway was the only place she could think of right now.

For all his bewilderment, Jaren must have sensed she wasn’t trying to kill him, because he followed.

After a few minutes, she glanced over her shoulder. “I’m Leelo.” She added, “You really shouldn’t be here,” in case it wasn’t obvious.

He gave a low, ironic chuckle, doing his best to limp along behind her. “Believe me, I know.”

“You said the wolf chased you here? That doesn’t make sense. Wolves don’t come to Endla.”