Odette opened her eyes to a soft female crouching beside her.
For one moment, she thought she was still dreaming, because the female looked too gentle to belong inside Thorn Hollow after a night like that.
She was a duiker female in human form, small and light-boned, with warm brown skin, large dark eyes, and short soft brown hair that curled around her face like young leaves after rain.
Two tiny dark horns rose from her head, and her ears were narrow and alert, twitching at every sound outside the root-lock cave.
Her body was slim, quick, and delicate, the kind of body made to run at the first crack of a branch, and even though her face was pretty in a soft way, there was fear sitting under her sweetness.
Odette stared at her in confusion because she did not know this female at all.
Before Odette could move, the duiker female lifted a hollowed gourd to her lips.
The water inside smelled of roots and stone, but Odette did not refuse it because her throat felt like dried bark.
She grabbed the gourd with both hands and drank greedily, water spilling down her chin and over the mud dried on her chest.
Her body hurt everywhere, but the water was so good that for a few breaths she forgot how badly her ribs burned.
“Thank you,” Odette said hoarsely.
“It is nothing,” the female whispered, looking back toward the thornwood mouth of the cave as if she expected claws to reach through it at any moment.
“My name is Pearl.”
Odette swallowed and watched her with tired, suspicious eyes.
“Why are you risking it by helping me?”
Pearl’s lips trembled, but she still tried to smile.
“I smelled my sister’s blood on you.”
Odette’s fingers tightened around the gourd.
Pearl lowered her voice even more.
“Her name was Alina.
She was the female the baboon killed.
I smelled her blood on your skin, and I smelled his blood too, so I knew the baboon you killed was the one who killed my sister.”
Odette was not shocked.
In this world, scent could tell more truth than words.
Blood, fear, heat, sickness, lies, and death all left traces, and beasts who knew how to read the air could learn what happened before anyone opened their mouth.
“I did not save her,” Odette said.
“I know.” Pearl’s eyes filled with tears, but she blinked fast because crying too loudly inside Thorn Hollow could draw attention.
“Alina was trying to escape an arranged mating.
She chose that night because the guards were distracted, but it was a crazy thing to do, and she knew it.”
Odette frowned because she did not understand why Pearl was telling her this, but she stayed quiet.
“Several females vanished after refusing arrangements,” Pearl continued, her small hands twisting together.
“The elders say they were mated safely, but I do not believe it anymore.
They say everything is safe when they want females to stop asking questions.”
Odette looked at her properly then.
Pearl sounded sweet and young, but there was something awake in her eyes now, something frightened but no longer blind.
“The only reason I am not mated yet is because I have not fully come of age,” Pearl whispered, and her small fingers tightened around the empty gourd as if even saying it made the waiting males outside feel closer.
“But they are already watching.
They pretend they are being patient, but I can smell it whenever they look at me.
They are only waiting for the elders to say I am ready.”
Odette did not answer.
She knew that kind of waiting.
Every female in Thorn Hollow knew it, even if some of them lowered their eyes and pretended not to.
The males called it protection when they brought food, guarded the tunnels, and kept females hidden behind thorn walls, but the truth was not so clean.
Protection always came with hands.
It came with choices made by elders, with mates chosen for bloodlines, strength, and young, and with females being told that their fear was less important than the hollow’s need to survive.
Odette had escaped the worst of it for longer than most.
After her mother died, no one had known what to do with her.
Her mother had taken only one mate, and that alone had made the females whisper and the males look at her family with suspicion.
No one knew much about that male’s bloodline either.
They only knew he must have carried secretary bird blood because Odette had been born with the clear shape of a secretary bird female, and in this world children usually took the father’s beast form.
Because of that, whenever Odette acted strangely, the elders blamed the unknown male whose scent had disappeared with her mother’s death.
It was easier for them to believe a nameless father had left something wrong in her blood than to wonder why her mother had died so suddenly after living quietly with only one mate.
She was too pretty to be ignored, but too strange to be easily chosen.
Her silver-white hair, black-tipped feather crests, long legs, and sharp amber eyes made males look once, then hesitate.
Some said her scent was too proud.
Some said her gaze was too direct.
Some said a female who watched exits before faces would bring bad luck into a den.
Odette had never corrected them, because being called strange had protected her better than any guard ever had.
She did not lower her eyes fast enough.
She did not smile when males brought meat.
She did not soften when elders spoke of mates.
She watched everything as if she was counting ways out, because she was.
Pearl looked at her with wet eyes.
“Alina refused too.
She said she would rather run into the forest than let them give her to a male she did not want.”
Odette’s face went cold, because now she understood why Pearl had come.
Pearl was not only mourning her sister.
She was looking at Odette like a path.
Pearl leaned closer.
“I want to help you escape because I want to escape too.”
Odette frowned at her words but before Odette could answer, noise rose outside the cave.
Pearl froze.
Then she sneezed once, small and sharp, and her whole face changed.
“Baboon beastman.”
Odette’s body tightened so fast pain shot through her ribs.
Pearl scrambled backward and hid behind a thick root just as the thornwood gate was ripped open.
Two males came in and dragged Odette out before she could stand properly.
This time she did not struggle because her body was too weak, and because she needed to see what was happening before she wasted strength.
At the thorn gate of Thorn Hollow, a baboon envoy stood with three males behind him.
He was in human form, but nothing about him felt gentle.
He wore only a rough hide skirt, and his long arms hung heavy at his sides.
His teeth were large, his chest was scarred, and his nostrils kept flaring as he tasted the fear in the hollow.
The Thorn Hollow elders stood before him, growling low as if they were insulted, but Odette saw the truth before anyone said it.
They were afraid.
“The female killed one of ours,” the baboon envoy said.
His voice was thick and rough, and every word sounded like it had been dragged through blood.
“Give her to us as payment.”
The mandrill elder snarled.
“Thorn Hollow does not surrender its females.”
The words sounded strong, but Odette saw the hesitation in his eyes.
She saw the elders look at her, then at the broken thorn walls, then at the wounded males who could barely stand.
They were calculating whether one difficult female was worth another fight.
The baboon envoy smiled slowly.
“If you hide her, our troop will return at night.”
Odette’s breath caught.
Fear rose through her body before she could stop it, hot and sharp, changing her scent in the open air.
Every male at the gate noticed.