Page 10

Chapter

Ten

Syros

H er spirit breaks as her posture sags and the corners of her mouth dip down. She wraps her arms around herself, slumping forward.

This should be a triumphant moment, knowing she’s lost her will to fight back. She’s completely and utterly mine with nowhere left to run. She is my toy, my plaything, broken to my whims.

But instead of the swell of pride I expect, I feel… nothing .

No happiness or regret. No sadness or empathy.

And I don’t understand.

The hollow feeling in my chest where there’s normally an instinctive pull one way or the other is foreign. Alarming.

Rutting her hadn’t been enough to cause her to withdraw. If anything, her scent and her body assured me of her pleasure in the act, although pleasure hadn’t exactly been my intention from the start. Domination, yes, and showing her it was futile to try and escape me. Now that she is covered in my seed and reeking of our combined scents, something has changed.

In me.

I turn to look away from her, heading back toward my home, and my hearing perks up when I hear her light footfalls behind me, trailing along in my wake.

Good little human , I think. She may understand obedience yet . But again, instead of any kind of pride, there’s a vacancy left inside me that I can’t explain.

I scrub a hand over my chest and the dull ache there.

Did this mortal put some kind of spell on me? Is she really some kind of witch with undetectable power? Nothing about her screams magic, but something doesn’t quite add up. I shouldn’t be feeling this way—I shouldn’t have even kept her alive.

The smarter course of action would have been to end her the moment we stepped through the portal. To devour her in one bite and be done with her.

Something about the girl intrigues me, and I refuse to destroy her completely until I figure out what it is. There is more to discover here.

I ponder in silence as we move along through the trees, hyper aware of her movements behind me.

I’ve left her with little choice in the matter. It is either come back with me or be left to the wilds of this decaying world. There are worse beasts out here than the one she thinks I am—she’s not wrong there.

I am a beast. Her judgment is true.

The forest is quiet. There aren’t any other Grim in the area right now—if there were, it might turn into a bloodbath, attempting to protect the human. She might be disposable but she’s mine to dispose of, and no Grim is going to rob me of what I fought to find and keep.

No one will take her from me, and I’ll cut down anyone who gets too close.

My spent cock throbs at the thought before falling still.

Something rustles behind me and I whirl around, chest puffed and claws outstretched, ready to destroy whatever dares to approach me and my human, but I see her catching her footing.

She sways on the spot and looks up at me shamefully with wide eyes.

“Sorry,” she mumbles, righting herself, but I can tell she’s exhausted. She didn’t sleep for long after I brought her through the portal, and she hasn’t eaten anything. Not to mention the exertion of being thoroughly rutted.

We’re nowhere near my hovel—she made it much farther than she should have before I realized she was gone—and there’s a good chance she won’t make it all the way there in her current state.

Weak, pathetic humans .

The thought fills me with disgust. It’s amazing that they manage to survive at all considering how delicate they are. So easy to end their lives in a blink of an eye, yet they thrive on earth. They are a parasitic race, corrupting everything they touch, but it’s somehow possible for them to conquer.

Tempting as it is to avoid the hassle altogether, I can’t just leave her behind. Not anymore.

Even if I don’t plan to keep her forever, I have to eat her eventually. She’s the only source of food that will keep me sustained until the next solstice when I can hunt for more . The rest of our realm has died off, leaving foraging for sustenance almost impossible.

There are no other choices left for Grim.

I need her, if not for the strange feelings she causes that I need to decipher, to keep myself alive.

It is the age old conflict of her versus me.

I choose me. As I have always chosen.

After a moment of hesitation, I approach the human and she winces, squeezing her eyes closed. Does she think I’m going to spear her with my cock again? Does she think I’m going to do as she asked and kill her now, after I came all this way to hunt her down?

I don’t have long to wonder before she sways on the spot again, her eyelids fluttering. I lunge forward, throwing an arm around her to keep her from hitting the ground, and sweep her up into my arms.

Cradled against my chest, she looks even more delicate than before, like she’s made of glass. If I squeeze her too hard, she’ll shatter. Her hair is a bright spot in an otherwise dull landscape and her skin, pale as moonlight, seems to shimmer.

She’s small for her kind.

Before, I have hunted and tracked grown men of their species, those who come up to my chest, although none of them dared lift their chin at me in such brazen disregard.

Not like her.

She forces her eyes open and stares up at me, her gaze becoming more unfocused by the second, before she reaches a hand toward my face. It’s my turn to flinch, uncertain whether I should let her touch my face or if I should bite a few of her fingers off as a snack, but before I decide, her fingertips graze my jaw. It’s soft and brief, a warmth sparking to life inside me at the contact, but then her eyes close and her hand drops to her chest.

She’s still, unconscious again, and her uneasy breaths settle after a moment.

No, I am the one unsettled now.

Anything else I might have done or said slips away, and I shake conflicting thoughts from my head as I turn again to head home. I’m not carrying her as a courtesy or as a favor—it’s merely the only way I’m going to get her back home. The easier course of action in this case.

But still, that touch… it carried more weight than I’d expected, stirring up even more foreign feelings inside me, and I hate them.

I think.

At least, I’m fairly certain I hate them.

It’s difficult to fully comprehend the weight of the emotions, having never felt them before, but I do know one thing for sure: I’m even more inclined to protect this human than I was moments ago. My human .

It is just as easy to call her that as it is to carry her. Her weight is negligible.

My feet dig grooves in the soft mossy ground, my posture hunched as though to protect her from airborne threats.

I march through the forest and steer clear of the sinking pit where she nearly got herself stuck earlier. I wasn’t close enough to see her struggle, but I could smell the whisper of her floral perfume and her perspiration in the air. It was a close call—she’s lucky she made it out alive—and I’m not sure how I would have felt if she’d died there.

Disappointed, I’m sure. Robbed of an opportunity.

Dying by my hand is the only way I plan to let this mortal go, but the twinge of something stronger, something fiery, ignites at the thought of losing her to the woods.

I don’t like it. Not one bit. Of that I am entirely sure.

With a growl, I tamp down those thoughts too, annoyed by how much this woman seems to consume my thoughts, but I can’t help it. I’ve never wanted to know so much about my prey before, and the questions come before I can stop them.

I cradle her closer to my chest and feel her heartbeat through my fur.

How did she know where to find the portal?

She was completely unconscious when we came through, and slept until she was tied up in my nest. Does the portal call to her the same way it calls to me every solstice? Can she somehow sense her way home? Or was it a coincidence that she ended up near the only way back to her world?

My instinct says the latter, but my instinct also tells me to protect this woman and keep her alive, so I’m not sure how much I should trust anything at the moment.

It’s clearly trying to mess up the order of things.

The entire certainty of my existence in this world has turned on its head and all because of this slight thing in my arms.

I don’t even know her name. Humans all have them, just as Grim do.

I keep my eyes open and ears peeled for any sign of life as we move through the trees in near silence, but luckily, there’s nothing. I would have thought our commotion earlier would have attracted prying eyes, but it appears they’re all preoccupied tonight. Probably indulging in their captures from the solstice. They should at least be content for a few more nights before they come snooping.

That means I have until then to come up with a plan to keep her hidden.

But why do I want to keep her hidden instead of just eating her and being done?

I grunt, annoyed at the resilience of the thoughts I don’t need clouding my judgment. No matter how desperately I force them aside, they return with renewed vengeance, attacking my brain and forcing me to face these things.

Things I’d rather not face.

I try to think of anything else as I make the trek through the woods. However, there’s nothing pressing enough that can break through the sweaty, gamey, floral-hinted scent of the creature in my arms that’s assaulting my senses so relentlessly.

I should throw her in the bushes and leave her there.

Then I wouldn’t have this problem at all.

There are a handful of other options, and the majority of them are better than claiming her as my own.

But I can’t leave her. I won’t.

I’m not letting her go until I absolutely must, until the hunger becomes intolerable. Until the desperate, primal urge to hunt takes over and I lose myself. Then, I’ll kill her. Savor every bite of her body until there’s absolutely nothing left.

The thought makes my mouth water, and I look down again to see her peacefully tucked against me, lost to unconsciousness.

The curious melting sensation in my chest takes me aback.

Holding her this way shouldn’t feel so natural. Touching a human, tasting her, rutting her in the forest. It’s the opposite of natural—it’s bizarre. Unheard of. This sort of thing does not happen.

Yet here I am, going against everything that’s been embedded in my core for hundreds of years, doing just that. Here we are.

What is wrong with me?

Try as I might to understand, I simply can’t. I don’t know what’s making me feel this way, but I think it has everything to do with the woman in my arms. She is not the same as any of the other humans I’ve hunted over the years.

What makes her different?

My foot lands hard and I stop, growling under my breath. The sound rolls through my chest as my head drops. My next inhalation brings her scent with it. I’m not sure what else I can do, but I wish there was something—anything—to make this all make sense.

There is danger in the confusion.

Danger to me and my entire existence.

My home comes into view, the bulbous and crude shape emerging from the darkness, along with the soft trickling of stream water nearby. It isn’t much, but it’s more than many Grim abodes I’ve seen through the years.

Most don’t care enough to add a covering over their door. Some don’t even bother with walls.

We’re creatures of this world and a part of nature itself.

I’ve always been different from the rest of them, constantly thirsty for knowledge, things better left unknown. I want more than what any other Grim has had before, and not just in terms of my living quarters.

There, I want something to protect me and my things—the items I’ve collected on my trips through the portal—from the elements. I want to be a sliver more sophisticated than the other feral Grims who sleep outside amongst the trees and have nothing but the fur on their backs to call their own.

It might not compare to the small buildings I’ve observed from the tree line of the human forest, but it’s something, and it counts.

I carry my human inside, nearly knocking her head against the edge of the door, and gently lay her in the nest. I don’t know why, but I do so gently, carefully. I don’t want to disturb her. She seems so at peace after nearly fainting in the forest. It would be a shame to wake her.

And then I’m back to wondering why I feel the need to take care of her at all. Why does this human call to me in a way that none other ever has? What could possibly be so special about her?

Eat her. Get it over with .

That way there won’t be time to second guess or wonder what might happen. It’ll be over and done with, and that’ll be that.

I move closer, trying to force myself to succumb to the bloodlust, but I can’t. No matter how vehemently I force myself to consider it, I hesitate.

Something invisible, a weight pressed against my chest, keeps me hovering above her. It roots me in place, staring down at her strange, delicate features, not letting me advance.

A little human…who would have thought I’d pause over one of them?

My stomach growls, the dull pain catching my attention, and I know I need to eat something soon. Grims aren’t meant to go so long without feeding. We might be able to survive on next to nothing for months at a time, but hunting during the solstices is normally enough to hold us over.

This time, my prey is still breathing, and my stomach is empty.

Even though I know how impossible it is, I have to find something to eat besides the human. Something to hold me over until I cave and devour her. Tree roots? Mushrooms? I’ll take anything at this point, even though none of them are easy to find, but that’s not the only thing fueling my determination.

She needs to eat too.

I’m not an expert on the human diet, considering I don’t keep any alive long enough to worry about feeding them, but surely she can consume the same things I can without them killing her.

There’s only one way to find out.

I reach for more rope that’s tucked beneath a corner of the nest, and carefully tie her wrists and ankles again. This time I double check the knots to ensure there is no chance of her slipping through them.

I should be back before she wakes up, but I’m not risking her taking off again. If she does, she won’t make it very far. She’s too weak.

Hopefully, I can find something to replenish her energy and mine. If not, I’m not sure what I’m going to do. I can only go so long without feeding, and if she’s the only food source around, I won’t be able to withstand it very long. Not as long as I want to keep her around at least.

Once she’s firmly secured and I check the knots by pulling as hard as I can, I leave her there, heading toward the door. I’ll hunt close enough to the house that I can sense if there’s danger nearby and I’ll be quick.

And when she wakes up, I can try to understand what makes this human so special.

I’m just not sure I want to know the answer.