Chapter 7
Dreams of drowning in murky water kept me from getting any rest. I startled awake for the fourth time and stared at the stars over the trees. There was nothing like a sky untouched by man.
It was a big upgrade from waking up under a bridge.
A prickle across my nerves made me scan the area, only to find a giant shadow with glowing red eyes, looming over me.
My already pounding heart went into over time, and my breath caught. I jerked away, forgetting that I was in a hammock. It flipped me onto the hard ground ass first, but I ignored the pain shooting up my spine.
My eyes adjusted to the darkness and found the creature standing just outside of the sage patch.
The instinct to run made my blood quicken, but I heard my mother’s voice in the back of my mind. Hold steady or the monsters win.
If he wanted to kill me, he could have done it while I was asleep. He could have done it in the moments where I flailed about like a newborn. I let those truths settle, and calmed my racing heart with deep breaths.
I wasn’t in immediate danger.
The light shone on his wet scales, and this time I let myself study him.
He had strong shoulders and biceps that some men never attained, even after decades of body training.
It explained how he’d thrown me around like I weighed nothing.
He wasn’t lean with muscle; it thickened his waist and thighs in a way that said he could probably shred through any obstacle in his path. Even his tail was strong.
Objectively, he was a beautiful specimen. He was a scientific wonder. Was he a reptile or mammal? How could he be so humanoid?
What was he?
“Beautiful,” I whispered to myself.
His hairless eyebrow went up, and he eyed me with an emotion that shook me to my core and locked every muscle in place, as my brain struggled to name the expression.
Not because I couldn’t identify it, but because surely I was imagining things.
Until his snout lifted to bare his teeth at me, confirming my thoughts.
Disgusted recognition.
He understood what I said and felt an emotion in response. My lips quivered as the reality sunk in.
Animals didn’t do that.
Fear filled my heart with sharp ice. The confirmation of what I already suspected made me tremble. Tears tracked down my cheeks as I adjusted onto my knees.
This wasn’t some animal that was following instinct because I threatened his mate’s space. This was someone who was intentionally hunting me.
My eyes flicked over to his naked body again, and this time I saw him in a new light. The huge mossy green appendage with a yellow tip pointed accusingly at me, as if everything was my fault. Which was probably exactly what he thought.
My stomach jumped up to my throat. This was worse than I thought. This wasn’t a huge freak of nature. This wasn’t a unique mutation that would probably never exist again.
He was a human. The most volatile creature to ever exist.
Run!
My eyes scanned the camp behind him, looking for my escape, and realized it was intact. An animal would have tore its way through. I’d been so stupid.
I opened my mouth to alert the others, and he growled in warning, taking a step toward me. When his foot touched the sage, his large webbed claws turned into pink human skin and toes.
My breath caught in my chest to see the clear proof I was right.
He jerked his foot back with a snarl of pain, and I watched it turn back into green leather skin and three claws.
I blinked, trying to make sense of what I saw. The rational part of my brain was hijacked by a numbness that couldn’t interpret the information in front of me.
The air grew still as we stared at each other. He studied me the same way I did to him. When his gaze locked with mine, the moment dragged as if time itself stopped. Every breath grew harder to take in as if a growing weight was perched on my chest.
I could swear he was fighting a mental battle between anger and desire, and even he wasn’t sure which would win.
It made that place inside me tremble with anticipation. Why would I want either of those things? There was only one ending here, no matter which emotion won.
This wasn’t possible. None of it
That was it. This was a dream. Or I must have walked through psychedelic spores while trekking through the swamp, and I was still high. What if the water had a brain-eating bacteria and I was dying? All of those things made more sense than processing what was in front of me.
He gestured with a claw to go to him.
My muscles tensed as if to stand and it took me too long to realize I was walking to him. I halted in my tracks. I should not approach a naked beast man.
I hadn’t even thought about it, like he’d taken control of my mind. The idea that could even be possible made every bone and muscle freeze in place.
A soft rumble went through him, and I felt his disappointment in me at the center of who I was. It made me nauseous.
He paced the edge of the sage patch with a rumble in his chest that reminded me of a purr. Come here, I could almost hear him communicating in the soothing sound.
When I refused to leave the sage patch, his tail twitched with irritation, and he snapped his jaw loud enough to make me flinch.
A growl left him as he stomped back into the water a few feet away and sunk beneath the surface, leaving me standing there on shaking legs that threatened to give out at any moment.
It was like my brain quit processing. No ideas or questions in my mind. Everything stopped and turned to white noise that was impossible to sift through. Tears pricked my eyes but didn’t fall.
There wasn’t even a ripple in the water to prove he had ever been there.
That was it. He wasn’t there. All the logic pointed to me having a medical emergency.
I ran over to where Shannon was asleep, and I shook her harder than I intended too.
“What?” She groaned.
“Something is wrong,” I whispered too loudly, glancing back at the water, expecting glowing red eyes to stare back at me. “I must have…”
What? Where had I gone wrong?
She didn’t need me to finish, she sat up using a pen light on my eyes. “Holy fuck. Your pupils. You’re having a pharmaceutical response.”
“Help me. I’m losing my mind.” Giant ripples moved across the water behind her, so I leaned forward to rest my head on her knees, so I couldn’t see anymore.
She slid out from under me and dug around in her bags.
She grinded something in a mortar and pestle, and the strange familiarity of it anchored me back into a small sense of normalcy.
They called Shannon the herb master, cause she had one for everything.
“I didn’t see any psychedelics in the nest, but you must have walked through something. ”
She seeped and pressed some herbs into a cup. It tasted like the death of the forest, but I listened when she insisted I drink all of it. If I wasn’t in the right mind, Shannon would kick me back to reality. I could always trust that.
“I saw a huge man with a reptile face and skin. And a tail!”
“Shut up.” She guided me gently back to my hammock. As I laid down, her eyes filled with worry, directly conflicting with her irritated words.
My heart rate slowed down
“What did you give me?” I asked too late.
“It will ease your anxiety. I can’t flush the drugs out, especially not hours later. But I can take the edge off the hallucinations. I’m sorry, I should have listened closer earlier and noticed that you weren’t well.”
She started that grumbling thing she does when she’s pissed off at herself. I didn’t know why that made me laugh. “You’re always so hard on yourself. Be kinder. You’re already perfect.”
She blinked at me, caught off guard.
“I hate that about you.” My eyelids grew heavy. “You’re always fucking right, but you work so hard you kinda deserve the audacity.”
I was too tired to be embarrassed that I’d said that out loud. She didn’t even get a chance to respond before everything went black.