?"Fine, have it," I kicked it towards him, and he immediately wrapped himself around it, using it as a pillow, making sure I wouldn’t be able to get it back without a fight.
I glanced at the jungle. The dangers it held could wait until I recovered my strength. Kurus’ territory was one of the safest areas at the moment. Keeping him alive was an excuse to use him as my meatshield and get some more rest. He didn’t have to know that, though.
The carcasses of the beasts we had killed were still laid on the sand, untouched. It would be a waste not to skin them for their hides.
’Injured and still thinking about hunting,’ I berated myself. The thought refused to leave my head, though: ’Maybe I could trade something with him for some more cores.’
Tomorrow.
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"Mate."
My brows twitched as I opened my eyes to Noodle’s face hovering over mine. His unnaturally red eyes were mere inches from mine, his pupils contracting to vertical slits.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
His gaze traced the lines across my cheek where the windshield had shattered against my skin. "The cuts will leave scars on your face."
"So?" I tried to push myself up but found his thick tail coiled around my midsection, pressing me into the sand, the scales’ ridges digging into my ribs.
His forked tongue flicked out between his lips. "They will make you look ugly."
"And?" I squirmed against his hold, testing its strength. His tail tightened in response.
"You want that?" He tilted his head, his long hair falling across his shoulder, the ends damp.
"Does it matter what I want?" My fingers twitched toward the machete still tucked in my waistband.
"...no." His eyes narrowed slightly, as if considering something.
"Then why are you asking?"
"Do you not feel pain? Did you hit your head as a cub?"
Oh, this red noodle had the audacity to assume I was the one with brain damage.
Whatever was going through his primitive brain made him lean closer, his breath ghosting over my cheek. "I can heal them for you. You won’t have scars."
I parted my lips, watching his gaze flick downward. My tongue darted out and flicked against his forked tongue.
His body tensed up immediately, his pupils expanding.
Before I could dwell too much on the slick sensation, I sank my teeth into his tongue, hard.
He let out a pained hiss, and hurled me against a nearby palm tree. The force of the throw sent me crashing against the trunk, bark scraping against my back through the fabric of my shirt.
My head snapped back, a cough leaving my lips as blood trickled down my chin.
I looked up to find Kurus clutching his mouth, blood seeping through his fingers.
"You bit me," he said slowly, disbelief etched across his features as he spit out a thick clog of blood. He pulled a core out of thin air, and it glowed briefly between his fingers before he swallowed it.
"Yeah, I did," I admitted, spitting out the piece of his tongue that I had bitten off. It landed on the sand with a soft thud, glistening wetly in the moon light.
"You _bit_ me," he repeated, as if trying to convince himself this had actually happened. A thin line of blood trickled from the corner of his mouth, contrasting sharply with his pale skin.
I tilted my head, studying him as one might an insect pinned to a board. "I was trying to protect myself."
But instead of the furious attack I anticipated, Kurus just stared at me with those unnerving red eyes. "I was not going to harm you."
"I didn’t know that," I scoffed, not letting his lack of violence disturb me. "How was I supposed to know what you were trying to do when you had a huge, thick tail wrapped around me?"
I gestured to his appendage, still partially coiled near my feet, my fingers jabbing the air in its direction.
’How do some snakes kill their prey? Bingo! They choke them to death!’
And he was coiling his around my legs as we spoke. So I bit him. In self-defense.
"I was making sure you wouldn’t run from me," Kurus mumbled, his brow furrowed in confusion. He was repeating himself with the ’running away’ nonsense. "Ancestors had to do that with their disobedient mates."
"Who?" I pushed myself up against the tree, gritting my teeth against the sharp pain in my ribs, my knuckles turning white as I gripped the rough bark for support.
"Ancestors," he repeated the word, as if it would suddenly make sense to me.
Did memories get passed down in his species? Like some genetic information about their previous generations’ experiences? That would explain his bizarre behavior.
"Well, I was trying to make sure you wouldn’t try to eat me," I retorted. I needed his focus on me as a threat, not this. He was getting weird, too ambitious, and the last thing I wanted to do was flirt with my best friend’s book husband in her absence.
"If I wanted to eat you, you’d already be eaten," he spewed in anger.
"So what? For all I know, you could be fattening me up to eat later."
"But it’s you, who wanted to eat me...first." Kurus pointed at the piece of his tongue on the ground, as if that would prove his point. Then his ear. Then my mouth, his finger tracing a line in the air between us.
I wiped my chin with the back of my hand, my gaze flicking over his form. He had some magic cores on him. The forked tongue had grown back, good as new. His ear, not so much. Still chewed off. It stopped bleeding, but it didn’t grow back.
"Where the hell am I?" Nivi’s voice interrupted our exchange. Her head popped out of the tent, her gaze lifting to meet both of us.
We must have looked a sight, squared off against each other, blood marking both our mouths.
She blinked rapidly, and her eyes widened. "Oh. My. God."
"Don’t panic," I said, raising my hands in a placating gesture.
"You are bleeding, and your face is swollen. How can I not panic?!" she screeched, her hands flying to her mouth in horror.
"It was an accident," I mumbled, my eyes darting away from hers, a slight flush creeping up my neck, "sort of."
"What kind of accident leads to your mouth being bleeding?!"
"Kuru’s tongue, and the fact that he tried to kill me earlier," I explained, pointing at Kurus. I threw all the blame on him, all of it.
He narrowed his eyes and hissed, a low, guttural sound that vibrated through the air. He didn’t deny it, though. I was pleasantly surprised, not expecting that he had it in him to be this honest.
"I think I’ll go back to sleep," Nivi said, her eyes darting between Kurus and me, and then she promptly lay down on the soft fur, her eyes squeezed shut.