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Seeing as that damage was directed at me, I didn’t really want to see that happen. I was not on board for any plan that had me playing up close and personal with Mr. A Million Legs over here.

“Can you stop it?” Porter asked, and for a moment I thought he meant me, until Blake answered him.

“No. I can’t sense its mind. It’s too different, or maybe it doesn’t really have a mind.” The frustration in Blake’s tone made me think he cared a little. Or maybe he cared about his paycheck. If he let me die, I suspected Harrison might not tip.

“We don’t have a lot of options here,” I called out. “It doesn’t seem to like when I move around much. What if we try to just run for it? Like, overwhelm it?”

“It has venom,” Porter said. “Look at the fangs near its mouth. They’re dripping something, and I would suspect you do not want to see what that might do to you.”

At his words, I focused in on the fangs that I hadn’t even noticed before, so distracted by the clicking mandibles as I’d been. I immediately wish I hadn’t looked. Yep, they were dripping something at a steady pace, as though almost salivating, and I was pretty sure Porter was right.

Nothing had fangs that dripped anything good.

Well, Kelvin…

I shook the thought away, because it was so not the time for that nonsense. Nope, I needed to find a way out of this situation, because if I didn’t, I wasn’t going to get to feel thegoodvenom ever again.

However, I felt like we’d hit that bad spot in a plan, where nothing sounded good, and the idea of doing anything felt overwhelming. People over thought because they had no idea what else to do, because they didn’t want to risk making things worse.

Lucky for them, I was an expert at making things worse, so I didn’t much mind being the one to do this.

“Okay, we go on three.”

“Wait, go?” Porter asked.

“What does go mean?” Kelvin added.

“One,” I counted.

“We have a plan?” Blake asked, a bit of panic in his voice.

“No, but she’s always like this,” Ruben explained.

“Two.”

“Just figure it out,” Kelvin snapped.

“Three!” I called as I dove toward the sleeping bag, pulling it in front of me just as the creature lunged. I got the fabric in front of me in time to see those dripping fangs tear through the bag as though it were as thick as tissue paper. Worse, it drenched it in whatever dripped from those teeth.

A roar echoed through the cave loud enough to hurt my ears.

And I fucking recognized that as Galen. It was the unhinged Galen I’d seen more and more of, the one didn’t seem to know what the fuck he was doing or what was going on beyond his anger, his rage. I didn’t love that sound before, but right now I didn’t mind it.

The creature moved away from me, and I scurried backward to put distance between us. With the sleeping bag out of the way, I could see Galen—fully shifted—with his jaws around the midsection of the creature.

That really had no right being as hot as he made it out to be, right? Like, how unfair was it that he could look sexy as a fucking monster attacking a bug?

Completely ridiculous.

He twisted around it, but the creature was bigger. It wrapped part of its body around him like an anaconda, tightening and using the grip to gain the upper hand as it snapped with those fangs.

Kelvin and Ruben rushed in as well, quickly trying to help. Ruben grabbed the thing near the head, from behind, while Kevlin wrestled to get Galen free of the tail. It took all three of them before they got it somewhat restrained.

It thrashed still, managing to move them despite how strong the men were. It went to show the amount of power inside that thing. There wasn’t much that could stand against just one of these guys, let alone three of them, but this thing made a pretty good effort.

A hand thrust into my line of vision. Porter waited for me to take it, and when I did, when he pulled to help me up, I hissed.

What?