Page 28 of Primal Hunger
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’smineto 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 thriveon 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 formore. 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.
