This chapter contains graphic violence, gore, body horror, sexual assault references, forced breeding themes, animalistic brutality, threat toward female characters, and extreme survival violence.
Reader discretion is strongly advised.
…
Odette did not move.
The baboon beastman was still facing the tree roots, his bloody mouth slightly open as he sniffed the air again and again.
Thick ropes of bloody drool hung from his jagged yellow fangs, dripping onto the mud in sticky strings.
He was huge even in the dark, with long arms rippling with muscle, thick shoulders hunched like a killer ready to spring, and a body built for climbing, grabbing, and crushing anything smaller than him.
Odette was much smaller than him.
If he caught her properly, there would be no fight.
One hand around her throat would be enough to crush her windpipe until her eyes burst red.
One blow from his arm could shatter her ribs into jagged pieces that would stab her lungs from inside.
One bite could tear through her shoulder, ripping out chunks of meat and spraying hot blood across the leaves.
That was why she could not let him catch her properly.
She pressed her back against the tree and forced her breathing to slow.
The mud on her skin was cold now, and the blood she had smeared over herself had started to dry in sticky patches.
It had hidden her enough to confuse him, but it had not erased her completely.
Female scent was stubborn.
Fear made it worse.
Her own body was betraying her, sending out the truth that she was alive, frightened, and close.
The baboon’s nostrils flared wider, sucking in the air with wet, hungry snorts.
“Ghrrr-uh” The baboon made a low barking sound in his throat, a deep vibrating growl mixed with the wet click of his teeth as fresh blood from his last kill bubbled between them.
Odette’s fingers dug into the mud until her nails cracked and bled.
She knew baboons were not stupid.
They were strong, violent, and clever, especially when they hunted in groups.
This one was alone, and that was the only reason she still had even a small chance.
He was also wounded.
She could see the dark cuts on his side where the dead guard must have managed to strike him before dying, ragged gashes that oozed thick blood down his matted fur, exposing glimpses of raw pink muscle twitching underneath.
The wounds were not enough to stop him, but pain could make a beast impatient, and impatience could make even a clever beast careless and vicious.
Her eyes moved slowly across the clearing.
Near the dead guard’s body, half buried under mud and grass, she saw a broken snare.
A snare was a trap made from vine, rope, or twisted fiber.
Males used them to catch small beasts when they did not want to waste strength chasing them.
Once a leg, throat, or body entered the loop and pulled against it, the knot tightened.
If the snare was tied to something strong, the trapped beast could only struggle until it tore itself open or tired itself to death.
The snare near the guard was broken, but not useless.
Odette’s mind moved faster than her body.
She could not kill the baboon with strength.
She could not outrun him for long.
Her legs were fast, but he had power, and the forest was full of roots that could trip her.
If she ran straight, she would die.
If she stayed still, he would find her.
So she had to make him chase her exactly where she wanted him to go.
The baboon walked past the tree.
Odette did not breathe.
His heavy feet sank into the mud, and his knuckles brushed the ground as he moved past the tree.
He did not stop.
He did not turn.
He only sniffed once more, low and irritated, before moving deeper into the trees as if he had lost the scent.
Then Odette’s body finally softened with relief.
He had missed her.
The mud had worked.
Then suddenly the forest behind her became too quiet, and Odette’s skin tightened before her mind understood why.
Her ears shifted and listened.
He had not missed her.
He had gone too far on purpose.
The forest had gone too quiet behind him.
Even the hyenas had stopped laughing.
Odette understood at once.
He knew something was near the tree.
He just did not know exactly where.
He was circling, waiting for her fear to make the first mistake.
The baboon turned his head.
His teeth showed.
He had found her.
Odette ran.
She did not run far, because running far would be stupid.
She ran just enough to make him believe panic had taken her mind.
The baboon roared and charged after her, his arms striking the ground with heavy, wet thuds.
Odette’s injured knee screamed with pain, but she forced herself forward, letting her feet slip and scramble as if she had no plan at all.
His hand caught her hair.
Pain tore across her scalp so sharply that white light flashed before her eyes.
He yanked her backward, and her body hit the ground hard.
Mud filled her mouth.
Her shoulder struck a root, and for a moment she could not feel her arm properly.
The baboon dragged her closer by the hair, and Odette clawed at the ground like a dying thing, not because she thought she could pull free, but because her fingers were searching for the vine.
She found it.
Her shaking hand closed around the snare loop.
The baboon bent over her, breathing hot and rotten against the back of her neck.
Odette twisted with all the strength in her body and kicked mud into his face.
It did not blind him completely, but it made him jerk back and snarl.
That one breath was enough.
She hooked the vine around the thick root beside her and rolled away as hard as she could.
The baboon lunged.
His foot drove into the hidden loop.
The snare tightened.
The vine snapped upward around his leg and pulled tight against the root.
The baboon’s charge became his own trap.
His body slammed forward, and the ground shook when he fell.
Odette did not wait.
If she waited, he would rise.
If he rose, she would die.
She grabbed the dead guard’s bone knife from the mud.
Her hand was so slick with blood that she almost dropped it, but she held on and threw herself at the baboon’s head before fear could stop her.
He turned toward her with a roar, and Odette stabbed into his eye with both hands.
The blade sank deep with a wet, squelching pop, bursting the eyeball and sending thick jelly mixed with blood running down his cheek.
The scream that came from him shook the trees — a raw, gurgling bellow as blood bubbled from his ruined socket.
He struck her across the side, and pain burst through her ribs.
Odette fell, rolled, and nearly blacked out, but she crawled back because the knife was still in his face and he was still alive.
He thrashed against the snare, tearing skin and muscle from his own leg in long ragged strips, exposing more glistening bone and spraying blood in wide arcs as he tried to reach her.
Odette picked up a sharp stone.
Her hands were shaking so badly she could barely hold it.
But she thought of her mother.
She thought of having no father, no den, no one coming to save her.
She thought of the female in the clearing, of Thorn Hollow, of every hand that had ever tried to decide what her body was for.
Then she brought the stone down.
Again.
Again.
Again, until the baboon’s skull cracked with a sickening wet crunch, brains and blood oozing out in gray-pink chunks, until his massive body finally stopped twitching and lay in a spreading pool of gore.
For a long time, Odette stayed on her knees in the mud, staring at the dead beastman in front of her.
Her breath came in small broken pulls.
Her hands were covered in blood, bits of bone, and clumps of matted fur.
The forest smelled of hot copper and ripped meat.
She had done it.
She had killed him.