THE PERFECT TEN (Boxed Set)

eyes swept up and down her, pausing on her face before he looked away.
    I look that gross, huh?
    Like she cared what he thought? But to be honest, the boys usually found her attractive, so on some what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-you level his action did sting.
    When she finally reached him, he said, “Ready?”
    “For what?”
    “To enter the healing hut.”
    He was joking, right?
    “I hate to point out the obvious, you being a medical professional and all,” she said in a perky sarcastic voice she managed to dredge up in spite of the pain. “But it’s a tree and I can’t climb. I know, I’m self-diagnosing, and you doctors hate that, but I’m just saving you from a possible malpractice suit.” In case he needed a demonstration, she raised her sausage fingers and unbendable arms as high as she could, grimacing. The pain had increased as her heart rate picked up from walking, and worrying.
    He shook his head as if she were particularly slow or clueless. “Come on.” He reached for her arm.
    She flinched and stepped back, her voice coming out brisk, to make sure he understood.  “Don’t touch me.”
    “Don’t give me orders,” he warned. “I have enough to do without having to deal with someone like you.”
    “What do you mean ‘someone like me’?”
    “Think I haven’t noticed you’re a Hy’bridt?”
    Did he mean hybrid ? Like a mixed breed? A mongrel. “A what?”
    “Mismatched eyes. Sign of a Hy’bridt.”
    Yeah, right. Everyone saw her different eyes before they saw her and marked her a freak without a single word of getting to know her. That’s why she made a point of being the first one to put some distance between herself and strangers before someone had the opportunity to snub her. “I’ve been slammed by better than you, buster.”
    He jerked at her words. “I didn’t touch you and I harm no one.”
    This whole conversation had gotten weirder than she could deal with until she found relief from this infection.
    A battle of emotions warred through his gaze until he settled on irritated, his default emotion from what she could tell. He ground out his next words. “ You wanted my help. If you don’t go into the hut soon, that infection could reach your brain and, if it does, I won’t be able to stop it from killing you.”
    Could reach her brain?
    Was he telling her the truth or just trying to scare her? Either way, he was doing a damn good job of rattling her.
    In fact, swallowing was becoming more difficult, especially getting past the lump of panic jamming her throat. “What do you want me to do? If your hut is inside this tree, show me the door.”
    “Door?”
    She lifted her eyebrows. Was she speaking another language all of a sudden? “Yes. How else do you get in and out?”
    “You have two different eye colors and claim to not be tek-nah-tee, yet you must be one or the other.”
    “One or the other what?”
    “You waste my time!”
    And you’re making me crazy! She bared her clenched teeth. “I get it. You’re important, but I’m not fluent in idiot and you’re not making any sense. What does any of this one-kind-or-another thing have to do with getting inside this tree?”
    “Tek-nah-tees can’t enter this tree.”  His eyes flickered with a thought, something he battled about within himself until he looked up, whispering something silently that reminded her of her father when his patience ran out. Then he glanced back at her. “You have mixed eyes yet you don’t see the passage?”
    One more snipe about her screwy colored eyes and he was going to end up seeing stars circling his head.
    She took in the bark on the tree trunk, searching for a line or something that would indicate a doorway. Something that would prove she was not a tek-nah-tee. “Give me a hint.”
    “Put both hands up on the tree,” he said, enunciating each word slowly.
    She started to tell him she wasn’t the moron here who thought she could walk through a tree. Giving him a we’ll-play-your-little-game glare, she gritted her teeth and moved right up against the bark so she didn’t have to reach far to touch it. She pushed her aching hands forward, past her hips, and then she paused, anticipating the pain of her over-sensitive palms hitting the striped bark.
    But her hands touched nothing, kept moving as they disappeared into the tree that gave no more resistance than a cloud.
    The unexpected lack of solidity startled her and she fell forward with no chance of getting her arms up to