Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
ELIAS
My brain has officially left the building.
There’s no other explanation I’m willing to entertain for the sight in front of me.
A massive, fur-covered, bleeding… creature crouches in the moss, one hand braced on a fallen log, the other clamped over his side.
His—because yes, somehow I know the creature is male—breath comes in hard, controlled pulls.
The air around him smells like earth, pine sap, and the unmistakable scent of living fur.
His fur is a deep reddish-brown, shot with darker streaks, and up close it glints with an almost metallic sheen where light slips between the trees.
But it’s his eyes that pin me in place.
They’re not animal eyes, though. They’re not empty or glassy or purely instinct. They’re sharp and bright, a molten amber gold, framed by thick dark lashes. They’re wary and in pain and… something else I can’t name yet, intense enough that my knees want to give out.
This is Bigfoot.
A real, very cranky representative of a species I’m about to lose credibility describing.
And I’m walking toward him like this is normal.
“Okay,” I whisper, mostly to myself. “Okay. We’re doing this.”
My heart is pounding so hard that if this were a cartoon, it would be visibly bulging my chest out of my jacket. Strangely, though, the fear that’s making my hands shake has almost nothing to do with him and everything to do with the blood drying along his ribs.
The wound looks ugly. The fur around it is dark and matted. Fresh crimson still seeps in slow, sticky lines.
“You’re hurt,” I say, dropping to a cautious half crouch.
He gives a short, rough huff and turns his face away as if that will somehow make me leave. It’s a very large, very majestic version of “if I can’t see you, you can’t see me.”
“I’m not going to hurt you,” I say. “Just let me look.”
His gaze snaps back to me. That one look feels like a physical touch, cool and probing.
Up close, I can see the precise lines of his features.
His brow is heavy but elegant, his nose broad but defined, his mouth full and expressive, the lower jaw strong and slightly squared.
There’s a fine scattering of shorter fur along his cheeks and under his eyes, almost like stubble.
He looks more like some wild, ancient forest guardian than anything out of a horror movie.
“I need to see the wound,” I say softly. “May I?”
His jaw tenses, then relaxes slightly. He doesn’t nod, but he doesn’t pull away when I shift closer and reach, very slowly, toward his side.
His fur is softer than I expect when my fingers brush it—coarse at the tips but dense and plush beneath. Heat radiates from him, solid and comforting.
I move carefully, parting the blood-matted patch until I can see the broken skin. The entry wound is ragged and swollen around the bullet. Even without medical training beyond basic wilderness first aid, I can tell it shouldn’t stay inside him.
“I’m going to press around it,” I warn. “Just to see how deep it is. This will probably hurt.”
His eyes narrow, as if to say I know that, human, but he doesn’t stop me.
I apply a little pressure, and the reaction is immediate.
“Mother of all mossy cedars—OW.”
I jerk back so violently, I nearly topple onto my ass. “You—” My voice comes out about two octaves higher than usual. “You talk.”
He’s breathing harder now, more with exasperation than pain. “Unfortunately.”
The word hangs in the air between us like a dropped dish.
We stare at each other.
I’m suddenly very aware of my own heartbeat, the way my fingers tremble, the fact that my mouth is hanging slightly open.
He speaks.
He speaks English.
He understands me.
He just swore at me about mossy cedars.
I am not okay.
“You speak English,” I say, which is, objectively, the dumbest possible response, but it’s the only one that gets past the logjam of shock in my throat.
He rolls his eyes.
Actually rolls. His. Eyes.
My dignity exits the building as my face goes nuclear. “I… I’m aware that was stupid,” I blurt, words tumbling over themselves. “It’s just that the part of my brain that would normally filter what I say fell off a cliff about ten seconds ago.”
The sharpness in his gaze doesn’t fade, but it softens slightly around the edges, as though I’d said more than I meant to.
He watches me. Really watches me. The weight of that attention makes my stomach flutter in a way that is wildly inappropriate for the current situation.
I scramble for rational thought. This is adrenaline. This is shock. This is the human brain trying to latch onto anything familiar when confronted with the impossible. It’s absolutely not because the enormous creature who just swore about mossy cedars is also, somehow, unfairly beautiful.
He groans quietly and presses his hand back to his side, reminding me that he’s still injured and I’m still kneeling here like an overwhelmed idiot.
“Right,” I say, dragging myself back to the emergency in front of me. “Let’s focus. You’ve been shot. The bullet is still in there, yes?”
He hesitates, then dips his chin a fraction.
“It slows my healing,” he says. His voice is low, rough, almost gravelly, but there’s a resonance to it, a depth that reminds me of waterfalls in the distance and thunder rolling over mountains. The cadence is measured and careful, as if he’s used to choosing each word.
“You heal fast?” I ask, because apparently I like pushing the boundaries of “how much weird I can handle in one day.”
“Yes,” he says simply.
“Well, that’s good,” I reply. “But you’re right. If the bullet stays in, it will keep irritating the tissue. Infection is a risk. Slower healing, higher pain, all that fun stuff.”
“That… matches my experience,” he says dryly.
Of course this isn’t his first time being shot.
Anger flares hot and quick in my chest at the thought of hunters treating him like a target. Like something to conquer instead of someone to protect.
“I can help,” I say, pushing that fury into determination. “But I need to remove the bullet, and I need proper supplies to do that. I don’t have what I need in my backpack.”
Again, that internal debate plays across his features. The muscles in his jaw flex. His eyes shutter briefly, then open again.
“My cave,” he says.
The words send a warm shiver racing down my spine.
“Your… cave,” I repeat.
“It’s closer than your station,” he explains. “There are tools. Clean cloth. Some herbs.”
My mind races. A cave. A home. He has a home. Of course he does—why wouldn’t he? He’s not some roaming phantom passing through. He lives here. Has lived here probably longer than I can imagine. He has herbs and tools and supplies.
He has a routine.
He has a life.
And he invited me in.
“Okay,” I say, swallowing. “Let’s get you there, then.”
He frowns. “You’re not afraid.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” I say with a shaky laugh. “I’m very afraid. I’m just… not afraid of you.”
His eyes flicker at that. Thought. Surprise. Then an emotion I can’t quite name twists through my chest.
“Come,” he says quietly.
He pushes slowly to his feet. Watching him stand at full height from this close is… a lot. He unfolds upward like some great tree rising from the earth, massive and imposing even while favoring his injured side.
I rise as well, feeling very small and very human and suddenly, deeply aware of how fragile my bones are.
We start walking.
I keep expecting him to stride ahead, to move with some wide, ground-eating lope I could never match.
Instead, he moves at my pace, step for step, his long legs shortening their gait so that I don’t lag behind.
Every so often his arm or shoulder brushes mine.
Each accidental contact is warm, solid, startlingly gentle for someone whose hand could probably cover my entire chest.
Twice, I stumble on uneven ground. Twice, his hand darts out reflexively, hovering near my elbow without quite touching, as if he’s done that before. As if he’s already spent too many hours watching me trip over roots from a distance.
“Do you… live far from my station?” I ask after we’ve walked in silence for a few minutes. My voice feels small in the vastness of the forest.
“Not far,” he answers. “Half an hour if you walk. Much less if I run.”
“And if you do that blur thing? Does that make you faster?” The words are out before I can stop them.
“No.” His head turns sharply. “You saw?”
“Not clearly,” I say quickly. “More like… I felt something not fitting the rest of the picture when I looked back sometimes. And I have camera footage that makes no sense at all. Just… fuzz where something should be. Was that you?”
He’s quiet for a beat.
“Yes,” he says finally.
I want to ask a dozen follow-up questions. How does it work? Is it magic? Biology? Learned? Instinct? Is it specific to humans, or does it confuse animals too? Can he switch it off?
Clearly he can. He did when we looked at each other.
But right now, I bite the questions back. He’s hurt and bleeding. His steps are steady, but every so often a small hitch in his breathing betrays a spike of pain.
Instead, I ask, “Have you been the one helping me? With the railing, the solar mount, the camera near the ridge?”
He huffs what might be a reluctant laugh. “You humans are very bad at securing things,” he says. “Storms don’t care how many bolts you forgot to tighten.”
“That’s a yes,” I say, unable to keep the warmth out of my voice.
He doesn’t deny it.
We walk in companionable, stunned silence—the kind that feels full rather than empty—until the ground begins to slope upward and the trees crowd closer.
He guides us along a faint, almost invisible path between two ancient cedars.
Roots rise and twist, forming a natural archway.
Beyond it, the hillside folds inward, creating a broad, shadowed opening.
His cave.
It’s not what I expect. There aren’t any bones littering the entrance, and I can’t see any ominous scratch marks scarring the rock. No smell of rot or old kills hangs heavy in the air. Instead, the scent is earth, clean stone and crushed pine needles.