Chapter 13: Raging River
The twitchy one locks eyes with me and his pupils blow wide instantly.
"Oh," he growls.
Shit.
The twitchy one inhales deeply and his entire body goes rigid.
"No fucking way," he breathes.
The tail starts wagging, actually wagging.
I stare at it in horror, where does he have that inserted?
"Nope," I whisper.
Then louder.
"Nope."
The morning air feels razor sharp against my damp skin as four sets of eyes lock onto me standing frozen on the balcony in nothing but a towel. Water still drips slowly down my legs from the bath. My hair hangs damp around my shoulders.
The stupid towel has loosened at the chest and judging by the way the bald scarred guy’s expression shifts, I’m one strong breeze away from accidental public nudity.
Love this for me.
Corrian sees it.
And God, even from here, that man has presence. He stands in the middle of the clearing like the forest itself rearranged around him.
Dark hair loose this morning, broad shoulders tense beneath a fitted black shirt, jaw sharp enough to cut glass. His expression changes the second his eyes land on me. Something flashes there. Heat. Possession. Hunger. Fast and primal enough that my stomach flips violently before my brain can catch up.
Then he notices where the others are looking.
And everything changes.
The twitchy one with the ears grins up at me slowly, head tilting in a way that makes every instinct in my body recoil. Up close in daylight, there’s no way to rationalise what I’m seeing anymore. The ears, the tail, grey fur not hair. Impossible.
My brain desperately tries to offer alternatives.
Advanced cosplay?
Experimental drugs in the bathwater?
"You didn’t say she smelled this good," he says roughly.
Smelled. Again with the smelling.
The bald one inhales deeply through his nose, eyes darkening as they rake over me.
Corrian fucking roars.
The sound detonates through the clearing so violently my entire body jerks backward. It isn’t shouting or regular human anger. It’s ancient and furious and enough that the windows behind me rattle in their frames.
When he moves I don’t even fully see it happen.
One second he’s standing still, the next he slams into both men hard enough that all three bodies disappear into the tree line in an explosion of snapping branches and flying dirt.
I stare open-mouthed. Because people cannot move like that.
One of the strangers crashes through a fallen log twenty feet away and lands wrong, snarling as he gets back up.
Snarling.
"Oh, absolutely the fuck not."
The words fall out of my mouth as another roar tears through the woods and something massive slams into a tree hard enough to shake leaves loose overhead.
This is what makes my body remember survival exists.
I bolt.
The balcony door bangs shut behind me as I stumble back into the bedroom, heart trying to punch straight through my ribs. My wet feet skid slightly across the floor while adrenaline floods my entire system so hard I feel dizzy.
"Nope. Nope nope nope."
I start dressing at full panic speed. This isn’t cute movie panic either. Real panic. Feral panic.
I drag open drawers searching for clothes with shaking hands, yanking on underwear while nearly falling sideways into the bed. My jeans go on inside out first try. I throw a sweater over my head backwards and get stuck halfway through it for a horrifying three seconds that genuinely feels like death is imminent.
Outside, another deep animal sound echoes through the trees.
I freeze.
Every hair on my arms rises, that was not human. Nothing about this is human.
My chest tightens painfully as reality starts trying to rearrange itself inside my brain. All the weirdness from the last few days crashes together at once like puzzle pieces finally snapping into place.
The growling, the scent thing, the biting kids, the teeth, the fucking ears.
"Oh my God," I whisper hoarsely. "They’re actual furries."
I grab my boots off the floor and spin toward the door, fully prepared to flee this woodland psychosexual nightmare barefoot if necessary.
I stop dead.
Because someone is already inside the room.
River leans silently against the wall beside the doorway, he’s been there the entire time. I don’t know why he scares me more than the others, but stuff like this doesn’t help.
Maybe it’s because Corrian is a perpetual storm and Jax radiates golden retriever energy so aggressively he could probably make friends during a hostage situation. Even Leo, terrifying as he is, feels straightforward. Violent but readable.
River isn’t readable. He’s quiet in the way deep water is quiet. Still, watchful and certainly dangerous.
And right now he’s looking at me with an expression I can’t even begin to untangle.
His dark hair hangs loose around his face today, slightly damp like he’s showered recently, and the fitted black shirt stretched across his chest does absolutely nothing to make this situation less unfair for me hormonally. Tattoos disappear beneath his sleeves, dark ink winding over broad forearms while his gaze drags slowly over my panic-dressed state.
Inside out jeans, one boot on, sweater backwards, dignity deceased.
His mouth twitches slightly.
"You done?" he asks quietly.
I point at him immediately. "Nope. Don’t even start. I just saw your weird furry friends in the woods."
River blinks once.
Then, somehow, the twitch at the corner of his mouth deepens almost imperceptibly.
"You think they’re... furries?"
"I saw a tail, River."
His eyes flick briefly down my body again, checking for something.
"You should fix your jeans."
I look down.
Pause.
Then yank them down furiously while muttering, "I’m under immense stress right now."
River watches the entire thing in silence.
Outside, distant shouting echoes faintly through the trees.
I straighten slowly. "What the hell is happening here?"
He doesn’t answer immediately. Instead, he pushes off the wall and walks toward me with that same eerie silence that always makes him feel less like a person and more like something appearing out of fog. My pulse starts climbing again.
Partially fear, mostly the other thing. The awful, horny thing.
He stops directly in front of me, close enough that I can smell him. And it curls low in my stomach like a hooked finger.
"You’re safe," he says quietly.
The sincerity in his voice almost breaks me a little. Because I realise that despite everything, despite the panic and confusion and deeply upsetting furry revelations, some part of me believes him instantly.
Which is insane, I barely know this man, these men. And yet my body softens automatically, tension easing from my shoulders before my brain approves the decision.
His gaze drops briefly to my mouth.
Then he does something completely unexpected.
River holds out his hand.
"Come here, baby," he murmurs softly. "We’ve got work to do."
