I'd fought anyway, twisting and kicking as panic overtook me. That had only made them laugh.
"Hold him tighter," the leader had ordered. "Little feral cat needs to learn his place."
The pain had come suddenly—teeth sinking into my shoulder, biting down hard enough to break skin. I'd screamed, the sound echoing off concrete walls as blood welled from the wound. Through my tears, I'd seen the leader wipe my blood from his mouth, grinning.
"Now you're marked. You belong to us now."
I jerked back to the present with a gasp, my hand flying to my shoulder where phantom pain flared. Sweat soaked my shirtdespite the cool night air. I felt nausea rising in my throat, the remembered terror so vivid I could taste the metallic tang of blood in my mouth.
The trees responded immediately to my distress, their energy pulsing through the ground beneath me, up through the roots and into the trunk I leaned against.
Safe-now. Long-past. Not-here.
I focused on their vibrations, letting them ground me in the present. Those boys were years and hundreds of miles away. They couldn't hurt me anymore. No one could hurt me unless I let them close enough.
I hadn't let anyone that close again—until Rooster. The thought of his gentle hands, his patient teaching, made my chest ache with conflicting emotions. When he'd spoken of biting, of claiming, all I could remember was being held down, teeth breaking my skin, the feeling of being owned.
But Rooster wasn't like those boys. He'd given without taking, protected without demanding. The memory of his fingers lightly brushing my face felt nothing like the violent hands that had pinned me down all those years ago.
I exhaled shakily, loosening my death grip on my knees. The forest around me had become my first real sanctuary after that night with the street gang. I'd escaped their "initiation" when they'd all passed out from whatever they'd been drinking and smoking. Terrified and bleeding, I'd fled to the nearest park, hiding among the bushes.
That was the first time I'd truly understood what the plants were trying to tell me.Under-here. Hide-well. They-pass-by.
I'd crawled beneath a dense rhododendron, pressing myself into the dirt as my pursuers searched the park the next morning. The bush had seemed to thicken around me, its leaves creating a perfect screen that hid me from view. The boys had walked within feet of my hiding place, but hadn't spotted me.
After that, I'd learned to listen more carefully to the whispers of the green world. Plants had guided me to safe sleeping spots beneath dense undergrowth where humans rarely ventured. They'd indicated which wild berries were safe to eat and which would make me sick. They'd warned me of approaching dangers—stray dogs, aggressive homeless men, police officers who might send me into the system.
As the years passed, my connection to plants had deepened.
In cities, I'd found unexpected allies in the weeds pushing through sidewalk cracks, the ivy climbing abandoned buildings, the neglected trees in forgotten lots.
In forests like this one, the network was vaster, stronger—thousands of plants communicating through underground mycelia, forming a web of awareness that extended for miles.
The plants never demanded anything in return for their help. They never tried to own me or mark me. They simply recognized something in me that was kindred—a fellow outsider, surviving against the odds.
I ran my fingers over the moss growing on the tree trunk beside me, feeling the subtle vibration of acknowledgment. Around me, the forest floor continued its gentle movement, roots shifting beneath the soil to create a living nest cradling my body. The canopy above had grown denser, branches interlacing to form a protective dome.
Within this cocoon of nature's making, I felt my breathing steady, my heartbeat slow. The panic that had driven me from Rooster's side began to ebb, replaced by exhaustion and the beginnings of clarity.
Maybe Rooster's "bite" wasn't meant as the violation I'd experienced. Maybe there was something about this "claiming" I didn't understand. Maybe...
I leaned my head back against the tree, too drained to complete the thought. The forest held me in its silent embrace asmy eyes drifted shut, this time falling into a deeper, dreamless sleep protected by the only family I'd known for fifteen long years.
I woke with a jolt, my body tense before my eyes even opened. Something was wrong. The protective cocoon of roots and branches around me trembled with urgency, the vibrations different from the soothing rhythm that had lulled me to sleep.
This wasn't comfort—this was warning. I sat up, blinking as pre-dawn light filtered through the canopy above, casting everything in a gray-blue glow. The forest was trying to tell me something important.
The pine tree at my back pulsed with energy, its needles rustling despite the still morning air. I pressed my palm against its trunk, focusing on the sensations flowing through my fingertips.
Danger-coming. Metal-beasts. Bad-men.
The message was fragmented, urgent. I frowned, trying to interpret the impressions flooding my mind. Plants didn't think in human concepts like "motorcycle gang" or "enemies," but in patterns of energy and intent. Whatever they sensed carried malevolence, threat.
I placed my other hand flat against the ground, closing my eyes to better concentrate on the vibrations running through the soil. The forest floor was alive with movement—not physical shifting like during the night, but a current of information passing from root to root, tree to tree, carrying news from miles away.
Red-fur-place. Attack-coming. Blood-intent.
My eyes snapped open as the meaning crystallized. The Soldiers of Fortune clubhouse—Rooster's home—was in danger. Someone was planning to attack them, someone the plants recognized as violent, threatening.
