Chapter 8
I woke up well-rested with a heat nestled along my side. My mind immediately went to the monster from my dreams, and my eyes snapped open to find Shannon beside me.
“What the fuck are you doing in my bed?” I asked slowly.
She grinned without opening her eyes. “Oh good, you made it through the night without being violated by a monster.”
I scoffed at myself. “I made you sleep here.”
She opened her eyes, and they sparkled with amusement. “That way if he came back, I was the closest to the water, and he’d kidnap me first.”
I snorted at the logic and fought to keep the smirk off my face. She rolled out of the hammock and walked barefoot back over to her side of the camp.
“Thank you.”
She could have told me to go fuck myself. She could have let me suffer all night. Instead, she took care of me. I wasn’t so blinded by ego that I didn’t see that.
“Don’t mention it.” She didn’t glance back, but I could hear the lilt in her voice. “Like ever.”
I gathered supplies and found that the makeshift changing areas were full. So, I went several feet away from the general camp.
I pulled my shirt over my head when the sudden feeling of being watched made the hair on my arms stick up.
I scanned the trees for any boys who might have followed me, just to find two red glowing eyes beneath the water.
I rubbed my eyes, and once I opened them again they were gone. I let out a breath of relief, but dressed as quickly as possible so I could rejoin the camp.
As I walked up, I found the group huddled around the professors in a wide arc. I came to stand beside Shannon as Professor Gale’s voice carried over the group.
“Our conservation team wants to remind you that this is not the city. This is home for dangerous creatures and plantlife. Even our wildlife experts have unknowingly wandered into situations without realizing it.
I pressed my lips together and forced the urge to defend myself down into the depths of my ego where they belonged. I made a mistake. It was only fair to warn others.
Even Shannon shrugged as if to say it could happen to anyone. It meant a lot coming from her, considering she didn’t simply forgive stupidity.
I mostly ignored the safety meeting. I knew the safety rulebook by heart. It hadn’t saved me.
“Okay.” Professor Carter clapped her hands. “Let’s go.”
“Stick together this time.” Shannon eyed me, implying I’d been the one to meander off.
“Bitch,” I grumbled, going to my area to get all my gear on.
Professor Gale leaned on one of the trees holding up my hammock. I didn’t miss how he angled his body so no one could see me from the other side. “Shannon told me you had a rough night.”
“Yeah.” I would strangle her pretty little throat.
“I’m sorry I lost my temper with you last night.” He grabbed a piece of my hair that had fallen from my bun, playing with the strand like it was a normal thing for him to do. Tension pulled my shoulders painfully tight. “I hadn’t realized you were indisposed.”
Right. Because that made his behavior perfectly acceptable. He could fuck all the way off.
Instead of saying that, I bit my tongue hard enough to taste blood. He was just another motherfucker who thought he could take what he wanted.
“Let’s go! The other team is leaving,” Shannon complained, but I didn’t miss how she pushed Gale out of the way to stand between us. “Why did I get stuck with the slowpoke?”
“Karma, probably.” I turned to lead our trek away from the camp, taking as much land as possible this time.
We trekked in silence. The environment was perfect for me to destress and let the world go in.
Instead, I searched the water every few seconds for red eyes, as the dreams from last night played in my mind.
Followed by Gale being a creep. An unhinged part of me considered cutting the strand of hair he’d touch, but I settled for tying it into a messy bun, where I couldn’t feel it touching me.
Shannon’s boots halted behind me, and I whirled around to make sure she hadn’t fallen in a pit or something. She was fine, chewing on her lower lip with guilt in her eyes.
“What’s wrong?” I asked after a solid minute of her staring at me. I wasn’t sure she’d ever stayed silent that long in her life.
“I don’t think we can do this until we clear the air.”
“If I touched your butt in my sleep, I’m sorry. I think you have a nice ass.”
That flustered her, and I laughed at the flush coloring her cheeks. Her eyebrow scrunched sternly, ready to scold me no doubt. “I mean it, Talia.”
I laughed at her embarrassment, but forced, what I hoped was, a serious expression on my face. “What is it?”
She opened her mouth to speak before snapping her jaw shut loud enough to hear her teeth clink. I watched her struggle to find the words until she blurted out. “I sucked Gale’s cock to get accepted on the trip.”
My audible gasp silenced the sounds of bugs cricking in the air, like she’d shocked them too. “What?!”
Her bottom lip trembled, and it was the first time I’d ever seen her vulnerable. I could see how much it was eating at her. Her cheeks turned tomato red, and she practically curled into herself.
“So, when you asked what crawled up my ass, that’s what.” She lifted her chin, trying to be the strong woman she always was, but the fire was missing in her eyes.
“You’re the best in your class. You have opportunities to really go places. Don’t ever let him do that to you again.”
That explained why he was being so ballsy in front of her last night.
Anger filled her eyes. “Why is it okay for you and not me?”
I sputtered at her question. What kind of stupid question was that. “Because that’s how the world works.”
A frown tugged onto her face. “What does that mean?”
“You’re too smart for this stupid line of questioning.” Why was my heart banging so hard? The blood in my veins raced like I was under attack, and the need to run itched so badly I wanted to go and never look back.
“Well, pretend I’m a two-year-old and dumb it down for me.” Her face turned a darker shade of red.
“Because you’ve got a family and money,” I snapped at her. “And a safe place to sleep at night. I’m just trying to survive. You have choices.”
It pissed me off so much. That this girl was so narrow focused in her competition with me, that she lowered herself in a misguided attempt to get higher.
Couldn’t she see? She already won.
Her lips trembled and her eyes grew glassy as she chewed over my words. She didn’t move an inch. It was like I slapped her and she didn’t know what to do with herself.
It took more time for her to recover than I thought possible. “You’re one of the best. Smarter and prettier than me. There are real opportunities out there. Ones that don’t have strings attached.”
My face heated up. Prettier? She needed therapy.
“I haven’t found those, Shannon.” I’d made contacts over the years, but it was Gale’s friends. He’d besmirch my professional name before I even got started. “I can’t ruin what I’ve got.”
“So you sleep with him.”
I wasn’t sure which was the harder slap in the face. Her accusation or the tear rolling down her face.
“Not yet,” I whispered. “But when it’s time to pay up, I’m sure it will come up.”
She scoffed and shook her head in disgust. “He’s waiting until the last year so you have too much to lose to fight him, and dangle your doctorate in front of your face like a carrot.”
“Yeah.” There it was. The truth I’d worked so hard to pretend wasn’t real.
Rage filled those fiery hazel eyes. “That’s bullshit.”
Tears pricked at my eyes, and I turned away from her, not wanting to see how badly it stung. How perfectly aware I was that I might do eight years of work, just for someone else to claim my efforts and maybe even rip it away from me right as I could taste it.
“Why would you tolerate that?”
“Because it was my only escape,” I whispered, continuing on our narrow path to the other side of two sloughs.
“Explain yourself.” She followed close behind me.
No, I’d said enough. More than I ever should have. If Shannon confronted him on one of her humanity kicks, I’d be the one to pay the price.
“Talia, What is that?” The fear in her voice made my blood run cold.
My eyes immediately went to the water and found the glowing red eyes an arm’s reach away.
“Stay calm. Easy steps. We have to finish crossing.”
“What is it?” Talia’s hands grabbed onto me, and the creature snarled with a veracity that turned my stomach into a pit.
Somehow I knew, that was the only warning we’d get.
His eyes moved upwards, and the water level rose with him, giving a terrifying outline of what was fixing to be after us.
Could we even out run him?
His snout burst though the water first, pointing at exactly who his target was.
I used Shannon’s death grip on my arm to yank her the last few inches onto the bigger piece of land. His mouth snapped closed with a bone crushing crunch that made me nauseous.
His nose brushed the back of her neck, showing how close he’d really been to taking her head off. That wasn’t a warning or bluff. He meant business.
He twisted in mid air, smoothly landing into the other slough with a dive that was worthy of the Olympics.
She landed on the ground with a whimper. Her hand touched the back of her neck, and came away with fresh blood on her hands. I was right. Those scales sticking out of his nose and head in a straight line were as good as razors.
He stepped onto land with a growl on his snout and menacing eyes piercing Shannon. He tilted his head side to side, as if he was popping his neck and panic filled me. I stepped between them, putting my hand up. “Stop!”
He froze and glared at me. Probably wondering where I got the audacity to tell a swamp monster to stop from.
I didn’t have a good answer for that either.
He shoved me out of his way as easily as swatting a fly, and I fell into the nearby brush with a grunt.
The branches tangled with my limbs as if to keep me from intervening, as he stalked toward Shannon.
“Help!” Shannon screamed, crawling backwards, desperate to put space between the two of them.
I ripped the branches away, so I could get loose, rolled to my feet, and blindly ran to him. I wasn’t even sure what made me think I could do it, but I shoved him as hard as I could in the back.
He didn’t so much as stumble.
Instead it was me who almost toppled over from my own force, but I hissed at him, “Leave her alone.”
His growling deepened in a way that reminded me of a man irritated with a puppy who just didn’t understand potty training.
“I know you understand me, asshole.”
He turned slowly on his heel, his tail coiled against my calf as his eyes glared holes into my soul, exposing everything I was to him.
His snout raised, showing his teeth, and growled like I personally ruined his day. His tail tightened on my ankle to bruising levels, before it yanked me closer.
There was no doubt this was a threat, but I didn’t understand what he wanted from me.
All I could think of was how he yanked me around, like everyone else. Like every other man.
I spit in his face before I could even think about it.
He blinked, like I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t believe what I’d just done and his nostrils flared. He took a slow deep breath that made dread turn the saliva in my throat to heavy sludge.
His mouth opened wide enough to stick my head and roared loud enough in my face to make my ears ring and my life to flash before my eyes.
He leapt to the side into the water, but the bubbling roar still filled the air, muffled under the water, until he was out of our sight.
My knees turned to jelly, and I flopped gracelessly on the ground. My breathing hitched loudly in my ears as I tried to regain some sense of my surroundings. But it was hard to do with my body trembling hard enough to make my entire field of vision shake.
I should have died for doing that.
“Did you see him that time?” The broken wheeze that I didn’t recognize as my own voice sliced through the silence.
Why did he let his prey go? Nothing made sense.
Shannon stared at me with a wide-eyed mixture of fear and confusion that would be comical if the situation wasn’t so serious. “Yes.”
“Okay.” My voice trembled, betraying how shaken I really was.
I wasn’t losing grip. I didn’t fuck up yesterday.
He was real.
That was when the harmony of male screams echoed off the trees.