Beauties and Beasts

Chapter 93: brought to you by good-byes and BABY SNEKS

Ugh. I published a book (Me, LoweFantasy, writer of Shay) with a publishing company, you know, like hard core, but now I have to work on publicity and I don't want to, because I'm anti-social to the point I am not on social media. So...here is my publicity...I have a book called "The Opal and The Genie." You can read it on Readict. There's a sample of the first 4 chapters here on Wattpad if you wanna taste. I can write thousands of words a day, but ask me to market or sell myself and it's like convincing a fish to practice evolving on land. I'm drying up as I type this. Guess I'm gonna fail as an author...

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The mountain trembled for a long time. The tunnel they ran out of spat them out far above the plains, and it was only by virtue of Vincent's nimble, overly-muscled legs and large feet that the two of them didn't tumble the thousands of feet down into a pile of 'dead' at the bottom.

Harvey only stopped falling when he burst into a leopard and clawed himself onto an outcrop of stone, his flimsy squirrel-made loin-cloth fluttering away.

Vincent landed beside him and proceeded to wrap himself over Shay, soon joined by a fuzzy leopard till she had a bunker of flesh.

Asher just screamed like a puppy and clung so hard his little claws punctured into her shoulders.

Finally, the shakes settled to mere shivers, each proceeded by a distant pound of thunder.

"Neara," she choked out. "We've got to find Neara."

"Captain took her," said a breathless Vincent.

"Then we need to go back!"

"We can't. The tunnel collapsed. The mountain..."

She poked her hands wherever they would slide through, fighting to pry apart the males about her. They both fell back in awkward half-sprawls, half trying to keep their arms around her.

All she could feel was fury fueled by fear.

"Swear to me she is okay or I'm marching back up that mountain and saving her myself!"

Vincent opened and closed his mouth lamely, like a fish.

When she swiveled about and made as though to claw up the rocky mountain-side, still lined with shivering streams of falling gravel and pebbles, Harvey stretched back into his human form and grabbed for her.

"Stop!"

"Let me go!"

"Shay--"

"I WILL bite you!"

"Then bite me, you're out of your mind anyway! Vincent! Get her off the mountain!"

The next hands to replace Harvey's weren't bony and thin, but broad and rough with muscle. She couldn't even begin to fight back against the sheer strength which lifted her off her feet and slung her around his shoulders like a sheep. She kicked, but soon stopped, taken back to the last time she had been like this about Vincent's shoulders, before she'd known who it was, and the result of that time still clearly visible from where she hung.

The beastmarks that had begun to burn on her body cooled. Her broken hand, which had healed enough to not hurt constantly but still had yet to work right, gave a useless twitch. It's fingers couldn't grasp things fully, crooked and with its nails still nubs in their torn beds.

It took far too long. She hadn't the cushion on her body as she did last time, nor the muscle strength, so his shoulders, head, and neck bruised her stomach and punched out her breaths. Asher, alarmed by the bouncing and her pain, had woven itself over Vincent's head to hiss at his face only to be torn off and flung towards Harvey, who caught the terrified dragon in his leopard's mouth.