Chapter 106: The Oscar Goes To…

Ren gathered a bundle of dry sticks, leaning them precariously against her chest. Her stomach gave a loud, angry growl, demanding restitution for the calories she had burned trekking through the woods and wrestling with her emotions. She hadn’t eaten all day.

But as hungry as she was, the sheer, unadulterated terror of her situation stole her appetite completely.

The forest was dimming. The vibrant greens were turning into ominous shadows as twilight crept in. The cheerful bird songs were being replaced by the unsettling chitter-chatter of nocturnal insects that sounded far too large for comfort.

Ren stood there, biting her lip, her mind racing.

’What do I do? What do I do?’

She had two massive problems. One: Her Tiger was currently being kidnapped (consensually, sort of) by a sleazy fox shaman. Two: She smelled like a walking aphrodisiac.

Vex’s words echoed in her mind like a cursed mantra: ’You smell like a female in heat.’

She squeezed her thighs together nervously, feeling the heat radiate from her core.

’Do snakes smell that?’ she asked herself frantically. ’Of course they do. Syris flicks his tongue every five seconds. That’s not a tick; that’s him tasting the air in 4K resolution. If I walk in there smelling like Eau de Lust, he’s going to know instantly. He’ll think I was doing… things.’

The thought of the possessive Snake King catching a whiff of another male on her—or worse, just smelling her arousal and assuming it was for him—sent a shiver down her spine that had nothing to do with the dropping temperature.

She looked toward the darker, denser part of the woods where the river flowed downstream. The water glinted black under the fading light.

’I should go wash,’

she thought desperately. ’I could run down there, scrub off, and come back wet. I’ll tell them I fell in chasing a… a squirrel. Or I slipped on a rock.’

She took one step toward the dark trees.

Snap.

A twig broke nearby. A shadow seemed to elongate and reach toward her.

Ren froze, her foot hovering in mid-air.

’Nope. Absolutely not.’

The forest was terrifying. There were giant bears. There were poisonous frogs that melted bones. And what if she ran into Shadow Beasts? If she wandered off alone in the dark to take a bath, she wouldn’t need to worry about explaining anything to Syris because she’d be dead.

A headline in the Beast World newspaper: Human Woman Eaten While Trying to Wash Away Shame.

She pivoted back to the clearing. ’Okay, washing is out. What about masking it?’

She looked frantically at the plants around her. There was a bush with fragrant, sweet-smelling white flowers.

’Maybe I can use nature’s perfume?’

She reached for a flower, considering rubbing the petals against her inner thighs to mask the scent. Then she paused, her hand inches from the bloom.

’Ren, stop. You are in an alien world where innocent-looking fruit gives you explosive diarrhea and tree frogs cause baldness. Rubbing a mystery flower on your delicate lady parts is not a strategy; it’s a gynaecological nightmare waiting to happen. You do not want “Poison Ivy Crotch” added to your list of problems.’

She sighed.

She was out of time. The sun was almost gone. The sky was bleeding from orange to a bruised purple. If she didn’t get back now, Syris would come looking for her. And if he found her lurking in the bushes, guilty and smelling like sex, it would look infinitely worse.

Ren took a deep breath. She scooped up the bundle of firewood, hugging it like a shield.

’Okay. Plan B. Distraction. I need to overwhelm them with so much drama, so much noise, and so much tragedy that their brains short-circuit and they forget to smell me.’

She started marching back toward the riverbank, her mind rehearsing the script.

’You need tears. Real ones. You need snot. You need hyperventilation.’

As the trees thinned, she spotted them. Syris and Viper were leaning back against large rocks near the water. Thankfully, they had put their clothes back on. Syris was looking at the sky, his expression bored but tinged with impatience, likely wondering why his wife and her other husband were taking so long to find kindling.

Ren stopped just out of sight behind a large fern. She closed her eyes.

She summoned the spirit of Anne Hathaway in Les Misérables.

She thought of the scene where Fantine sings “I Dreamed a Dream” with her hair chopped off and her teeth pulled out. She thought about the time Mufasa died in The Lion King. She thought about the time she dropped a fresh, hot pizza face-down on the floor after a long shift.

Her chin wobbled. Her throat constricted. A single, hot tear leaked out. Then another.

’Yes. Keep it coming. Use the hunger. Use the fear.’

She let out a small, practice whimper. ’Good. Now, louder.’

’Showtime.’

Ren burst into the clearing.

“SYRIS!” she wailed, her voice cracking with manufactured devastation.

She ran toward them, stumbling slightly for effect, her legs wobbling as if she could barely hold herself up under the weight of her grief. When she got close enough, she let go of the firewood.

Crash.

The sticks clattered loudly onto the stones, scattering everywhere. Ren collapsed onto her knees in the dirt, burying her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking with violent, heaving sobs.

Syris and Viper scrambled to their feet, alarm written all over their faces.

“Ren?” Syris rushed to her, kneeling beside. “What happened? Are you hurt? Where is the Tiger?”

He reached out to touch her, but Ren flung herself at him. She gripped his snakeskin robes with desperate, clawing fingers. She buried her face in his chest—strategically blocking his nose from smelling anything below her neck—and howled like a banshee.

“He’s gone!” she screamed into his lapels, soaking the fabric with tears and snot. “Oh god, Syris, he’s gone!”

“Who is gone?” Syris asked, his voice tight with confusion. “Kael? Did the madness take him?”

Ren pulled back slightly, tears streaming down her face, her eyes red and puffy. She looked like a wreck. It was perfect.

“It was horrible!” Ren choked out, gasping for air between sobs. “We were just walking… I was looking for mushrooms… I found a really nice stick… and then…”

She let out a loud, shuddering sob that sounded like a dying seal.

“Then what?!” Viper demanded, stepping closer.

“A butterfly!” Ren yelled, throwing her hands up. “A giant, blue, glowing butterfly! But it wasn’t just a butterfly… I think it was a demon! It had eyes on its wings!”

Syris blinked, completely baffled. “A… butterfly?”

“Kael saw it!” Ren continued, waving her hands wildly to paint the picture. “He just… he snapped! The madness took over instantly! His eyes went completely red! He roared at the sky like he was challenging the gods themselves! I tried to grab him! I tried to hold him back! I held onto his tail!”

She showed them her hands, which were dirty from the firewood (but to them, they looked like struggle marks from dragging across the forest floor).

“But he was too strong!” Ren wept, throwing her head back dramatically, channeling every ounce of tragic heroine energy she possessed. “He pushed me away! He looked at me with eyes full of sorrow, as if to say ’Goodbye, my love, I must chase the shiny thing!’ and then he just… he ran!”

She pointed vaguely toward the darkest, deepest part of the forest.

“He ran into the darkness!” Ren sobbed, clutching her chest as if her heart were physically breaking. “He chose the wilderness! He abandoned me! My husband! My poor, feral kitty! He’s gone, Syris! He’s gone forever!”

She collapsed back against Syris, wailing loudly enough to scare the birds out of the trees and, hopefully, loud enough to distract the Snake King from the fact that she smelled like she had just been thoroughly seduced against an oak tree.

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