It feels like my heart has stopped, but it jolts when we hear something. It comes from somewhere deep amongst the strange, alien jungle shrubs - and it’s… it’s my own voice echoed back to us. “What is it?” the jungle whispers in a voice so uncannily like mine, it causes an eruption of goosebumps to prick along my arms.
Aloryk’s body stealthily drops a little lower, like a panther about to leap. “Mimyckah,” he snarls in a low, rumbling voice, and the strange word sounds like a threat itself, like a curse, like a deathly promise.
“Aloryk,” I reach out and put my hand on his back, feeling the muscles beneath coiled and ready, brimming full of violent energy despite his injury. It kind of makes me want to cling to him. Even in this state; with his wings all mangled up like that, and dealing with the awful amount of pain he’s enduring - even with all that, he’s a predator, a protector. It’s clear in the way his tail flicks and the way he can hold the rest of himself so incredibly still, waiting for the most opportune moment to pounce.
And I’m just here, so, so grateful that this predator is on my side.
“Aloryk.” It wasn’t me that spoke, but it wasmyvoice - the same, small, afraid, cracked voice mimicked back to me.
Aloryk growls - likeactuallygrowls like an animal.
“I thought they didn’t like the smell of us?” I ask, the question quivering in the charged air of this little corner of the jungle.
Something begins to step out from behind a giant, black tropical leaf with bright neon pink spots. It barely gets a foot out before Aloryk has launched his spear at the thing, propelling it backward with the force of his throw, and causing a pained-sounding yelp. Then Aloryk is gone - moving lightning quick, pouncing forward to leap on top of the injured creature before I even have the chance to take a breath.
The next thing I hear is a sickening crunch.
Somehow, the jungle is even more silent than it had been before, like all the noise had been sucked out and we’re now in a vacuum, void of all sound. And yet, it’s deafening in its own, strange way.
My eyes stay on Aloryk’s back as he remains hunched over the now dead monster. His shoulders and lame, oddly angled wings rise and fall with each of his breaths. When he stands to face me, his chest and stomach are sprayed with blood. I don’t notice that he’d thrown something aside until that weird silencegets dulled by a thud of that same something hitting the forest floor and rolling a little way after.
It had sounded like-
I blink at him before the words come flying from my open mouth. “Was that a head?”
He grunts in the affirmative and jerks a single nod to confirm.
A head.
He just ripped a monster’s head clean from its body… with his bare hands.
I stare at those hands now - dirty and bloodied. They flex at his sides as if he can feel my scrutiny, my… awe? I don’t really know what I’m feeling to be honest, I’m just glad -once again- that he’s on my side.
I stare at his dirty chest as it expands and falls with each breath. His skin-stars are frantic with energy. And, even with the lop-sided wings, he is rather magnificent to look at. Magnificent, and deadly.
“Polly,” he murmurs, those pretty purple eyes fixed on me. He opens his mouth as if to say more, but shuts it again without another word.
We’re quiet for the rest of the way to the river - and somehow it feels appropriate. I mean, can you really just launch into chit-chat when one of you has just ripped the head off an animal and the other stood there and watched?
Once we reach the river bank, I somehow feel like I can breathe a sigh of relief. We may still be surrounded by the alien jungle and alien creatures, but there’s just something about the trickling sound of a river as it lazily meanders through the forest that goes some way to calm me.
While I watch the waters, Aloryk stands beside me. I can feel the weight of his gaze, the feeling making me a little twitchy. “Can we wash this stinky stuff off now?” I ask, turning to him,only to catch his eyes flying up to meet mine when he was so obviously observing something south of my face. Was he checking me out?Don’t be stupid, Polly.“You know, since it doesn’t seem to work anymore with that-” My words dry up, and I gesture lamely in the direction we came from, my gaze then dropping to where the mimyckah’s blood has now dried in an artful splatter across Aloryk’s taut stomach and chest.
He nods. “If the frightberry no longer serves its purpose, it will be good to get clean.”
Relieved, I survey the river. It looks to be around waist deep, maybe a little deeper in places. I will need to take my pajamas off to really get clean, and the prospect of doing that in front of this supercharged, Greek God of a man is not an appealing one. Taking my clothes off in front ofanybodyhas never been a comfortable experience, but it’s all somehow amplified when that person has a body like Aloryk’s.
“You can’t watch me,” I tell him outright.
He grunts, a small wave of skin-stars rippling with the slight jolt of a movement. “I will need to watch over you, my Polly. There may be dentixxi in these waters. They have shown interest in the human females. They dare not approach when a Trixikka is near.”
Ok. While I don’t know what a dentixxi is, if Aloryk is concerned about it, it can’t be good. I look over the water longingly again. I really,reallywant to bathe. I want to wash away the last couple of days, maybe reset to when I was getting all cozy in my bed before I got taken and shoved in a pod - however long ago that was.
I eye Aloryk again. He stands there in nothing but a loincloth, all hard muscle and chiseled hip bones. I bet he doesn’t see nudity the same way I do; a state I’, not wholly comfortable in. I’m all pasty, lumpy, dumpy doughiness, decorated with stretch marks. Andno onewants to see that. But Aloryk - well him andTryk have been half-naked since I met them, so I guess it’s not such a big deal to them.
“Just…” I take a breath. “Just don’t peek on me like a pervert, ok?”
Chapter 10 - Aloryk
