Chapter 202: She was the Hunter
High above the world, in a space overlooking the valley like a predator’s perch, the Jackal’s Nest was silent. Wanderer staggered; his double-jump with a Level 100 passenger drained his spatial reserves. Pale and sweating, sandy hair clung to his forehead.
Felicity watched, wide-eyed and trembling. She looked like a broken doll in white silk, but inside, her mind clicked coldly.
"You’re so tired," she whispered, her voice a soft, melodic caress that made Wanderer’s heart stutter. "Please, Wanderer... you did so much for me. You saved me. You need to rest, or the monsters will find us because you’re too weak to hide the fold."
Wanderer slumped against the stone wall, breathing shallow. "I have to... keep the distortion active..."
"I’ll watch the horizon," Felicity promised, crawling closer. She placed a cool hand on his forehead. Healing light seeped in, making him feel heavy and safe, like a child lulled to sleep. "Lie down. Just for a moment. If you collapse, I’ll be all alone again."
That was it. The thought of her being "alone", of losing his prize, made Wanderer’s knees give. He sighed and slumped onto looted furs, exhaustion swallowing him as his eyes shut and sleep took him.
The second Wanderer’s breathing evened out, Felicity’s expression turned stone-cold.
She stood, white dress rustling as she crossed the den. She reached into her pocket dimension, fingers searching until they closed around her dirty tunic and leggings from the coast trek. She wrinkled her nose at the salty, musky fox-form scent.
But to her husbands, this was a lighthouse.
She crept to the cave’s mouth, careful not to disturb the sleeping Wanderer. The spatial fold’s violet shimmer rippled the air at the entrance. Leaning over the sheer drop, beyond jagged rock and mist, she flicked the bundle out of the den with a calculated, swift throw.
The tunic caught the mountain updraft, tumoring through the air like a white flag. It snagged on a twisted, blackened gum tree jutting out from the cliff face directly below the Nest.
Find it, she willed, blue eyes narrowing toward the horizon. Two golden specks already grew larger. Find the scent and come for your wife.
She turned to the sleeping Jackal, hand on her cracked marble necklace. Fifteen minutes until the flyers arrived. Twenty until the rest tore up the mountain. She sat beside Wanderer, resuming her pose, terrified, huddling.
She was the bait, she was the hunter, and the trap was officially set. The high-altitude silence of the Jackal’s Nest was about to be shattered by the roar of a pack that had finally caught the scent of home.
Every second Felicity was missing felt like an acid bath to the pack’s collective psyche.
Sarge led the ground charge, his massive rhino-kin frame cracking the very stone as he climbed. Blue sparks danced across his horns, his eyes bloodshot and fixed upward. "If a single hair on her head is out of place," he grunted, his voice a low, vibrating growl of thunder, "I’m levelling this entire mountain range. We were supposed to protect her. We failed."
Marx was a streak of black-and-gold lightning, his youthful face twisted into a mask of pure, unadulterated rage. He didn’t even use his claws on the zombies that stumbled into his path; he simply vaporised them with a flick of his tail. "Training," he hissed, his breath coming in jagged gasps. "After this, we train until our bones break. We got soft, we let a rat take her."
Shadow moved like a literal ghost, his Grizzly-beastman bulk surprisingly silent as he tore through a group of Level 65 lurkers without slowing down. "She’s the only reason I’m not a monster anymore," he muttered, his mind a dark storm. "If they take her, there’s nothing left to hold back."
Pope and the rest of the Ground-team were breathing heavy, their earth-manipulation skills pulling them up the cliffs at impossible speeds. "We’re going to have to take it all out on something," Pope rumbled, his lynx-ears pinned back. "The Convoy was just the warm-up. I want blood for this."
Up in the sky, Thane pushed his wings until the golden feathers began to smoke from the friction of the wind. His Future Sight was a chaotic, flickering nightmare. "I see her," he shrieked to Victor through the mental link. "She’s sitting there... she looks like a broken doll, but her heart is like a diamond. She’s terrified, Victor, but she’s playing him. She’s so resilient, it’s making my head scream."
Dawn, his heavy bull-shark features set in a grimace of pure focus, utilised his Territorial Saturation to keep the air around the flyers dense enough to provide extra lift. He was a man of few words, but the way he gripped his weapon told the story. "No more mistakes," he rumbled. "We reach her, or we die on this rock."
The "horde" of zombies occupying the mountain passes didn’t even register as a threat. Hundreds of Level 50 and 60 undead were turned into red mist as the Level 90 and 95 elites tore through them like a hot knife through butter. There was no strategy, only a relentless, forward momentum.
"Honestly," she huffed, her voice still shaky as she adjusted her ears. "Those Feral Convoy goons were so mean. ’Scruffy’? ’Not as pretty’? I am a beautiful, elegant Ragdoll. My coat is literally silk! I see Felicity is beautiful too, in a fox-ish sort of way, but I’m a high-tier breed!"
Her other husband nodded frantically, desperate to please her. "Of course, Alice. You’re the most elegant thing in this wasteland."
Alice sighed, looking out the window at the distant, smoking mountain where the husbands were currently unleashing hell. "She’s a good friend to have, just in case... but gods, that pack is terrifying. We should move now that the valley is cleared. Everyone ran off ahead toward Bowral while the big guys were busy being scary. I hope Bowral is nice. Or maybe we should head down to Berry first? I heard the settlements there are more established."
She paused, her gaze drifting back to the spot where Victor had stood. The memory of that raw, world-ending possessiveness made her heart skip a beat, half in terror, half in something she couldn’t quite name.
"What do you guys think?" she asked her prey husbands, her voice dropping to a thoughtful whisper. "Maybe... maybe I should take a predator as a fourth husband. Don’t look at me like that! They scare the life out of me, but did you see them? If someone wanted me the way they wanted her... if someone would burn a whole valley just because I went missing..."