The first skirling emerges from the underbrush ten feet away.
It's smaller than I expected—maybe three feet tall, six legs, covered in short fur that shifts colors like oil on water. The head is almost canine but wrong, jaw split into three sections that can unhinge. Eyes that reflect light in ways that shouldn't exist.
It approaches slowly, testing. When I don't move—can't move—it gets bolder.
The nip to my calf is experimental. Testing if I'm alive or carrion. The pain cuts through the sexual haze, gives me enough clarity to grab my knife. But my hands shake so badly I can barely hold it.
The skirling dances back, calls to its pack. The chittering increases. I count voices—seven, maybe eight.
They emerge from all directions. Surrounding me.
“Back off!” I try to shout but it comes out as a whisper. My throat is raw from screaming in my sleep, from the fever.
They circle closer. One darts in, nips my shoulder. I slash with the knife, lucky strike that catches its throat. It drops, purple blood spraying. The others pause, reassessing.
Then they attack simultaneously.
Pain explodes everywhere at once. One latches onto my shoulder, three-section jaw clamping down, tearing through muscle to scrape bone. Another gets my thigh, serrated teeth sawing through flesh. A third goes for my back.
I manage to stab the one on my thigh, but the knife breaks off in its body. It dies but takes my only weapon with it.
Blood. So much blood. Mine is red, theirs is purple, mixing on the phosphorescent moss to create a color that shouldn'texist. The one on my shoulder shakes its head, tearing deeper. I feel tendons snap.
My vision starts going black at the edges. This is how I die—not from breeding, not from portal failure, but torn apart by pack hunters while my pussy still clenches desperately for cock that isn't coming.
Then the world explodes in white-gold violence.
Vhaz hits the pack like a meteor. Thirty-three feet of serpentine rage moving faster than physics should allow. His hood extends fully—wider than I've ever seen it—patterns blazing with bioluminescent threat displays. The sound he makes isn't a hiss or roar but something between, something that makes my bones vibrate.
Three skirlings die in the first second. Venom spray that dissolves fur and flesh. Strikes that shatter spine. One gets flung so hard it leaves a crater in a tree trunk.
The others flee. Instantly. No pack loyalty when faced with an apex predator in full rage.
I'm on my back, blood pooling beneath me, watching him move. Even dying, even in agony, my pussy clenches at the sight. My body recognizing its mate through the haze of blood loss.
“Didn't... need... saving...” I manage to whisper.
He drops beside me, and for the first time since I've known him, I see genuine anger. Not amusement. Not patience. Rage.
“Female is dying. Stop talking.”
His hands—massive, clawed, surprisingly gentle—assess damage. The shoulder is worst. I can see white of bone through the tears. The thigh is deep but missed the artery. Various other bites that hurt but won't kill.
“Stupid female,” he mutters while working. “Twenty days alone? Would die in three.”
He lifts me, and the movement makes me scream. Not from pain—though there's plenty—but because his scent floodsmy nostrils. My pussy clenches with a violence that makes me squirt, a shocking spray of arousal that mixes with the blood on my thighs.
“Please,” I whimper. “Need... need breeding...”
“Female is bleeding out. Breeding comes later.”
“Please...”
But he's already moving, carrying me to the main pool. The aphrodisiac water will make the arousal worse, but it's also clean, free of bacteria.
He washes my wounds with something that burns like acid. I scream, thrash, but he holds me still with his coils. Not restraining—supporting. Keeping me from hurting myself worse.
“Antiseptic,” he explains, though I didn't ask. “From glands in my mouth. Will prevent infection.”
