Chapter 45 --45 Another trauma.
Kaya had come to realize something troubling: she didn’t recognize most of the fruits or edible plants in this forest. Everything either looked poisonous, too colorful to trust, or had spikes. The kind that whispered eat me and die painfully.
All this walking, searching, and foraging was draining her energy fast. For a moment, she even considered hunting—maybe a rabbit or a squirrel. Something small and fast.
But then her gaze drifted to Cutie.
Specifically, his ears.
Long. Soft. Twitchy.
Rabbit ears.
The image that popped into her head was so vivid it made her freeze—her, skinning a rabbit, setting it over the fire... and suddenly watching it morph mid-roast into a horrified man with half-charred fur and betrayal in his eyes.
She blinked that thought away with a shudder.
Nope. Not doing that.
Sure, in the military, they’d been trained for survival in brutal conditions—eating things most normal humans wouldn’t dare touch. Bugs. Tree bark. Some things that technically moved when bitten. But none of those lessons ever covered, "What to do when your dinner might turn into a man."
And as far as Kaya was concerned, anything that walked on two legs, talked, or looked at her like it had taxes to file... wasn’t going on her menu.