Chapter 62: The Furless One Who Would Not Bear a Cub
After a focused two-hour pad-making session, Nuan raised her arms over her head, letting out a long, dramatic stretch.
She checked on the sleeping Selka, scanned the tree lines, and looked up at the vast blue sky.
"All clear," she whispered to herself.
Moving quickly, she washed herself down one more time using the cool water from her wooden mug.
She slipped off her current leather panties, which were already a bit blood-stained, and thoroughly rinsed them out in the rushing river current.
Reaching into her inventory, she pulled out a fresh, dry pair of leather underwear, carefully wedged one of her newly crafted leaf-pads into the gusset, and stepped into them.
She took a few tentative test steps on her good leg, wiggling her hips to check the function.
Uhm... it’s definitely not sticking in one place like an adhesive strip, but I guess it’s fine since the pad is actually a bit bigger than the underwear size anyway. It’s wedged tight. I’ll just have to make sure I don’t move around too aggressively.
Satisfied, Nuan quickly tied her loincloth skirt back on. She limped over to the nearby sun-baked boulder where they had left her elephant blanket and her first pair of panties to dry.
Touching the fabric, she swept the perfectly dry items back into her system inventory.
Between the blood loss from yesterday’s knife cut and today’s menstrual cramps, a wave of sudden dizziness hit her, and her stomach let out an angry, hollow rumble.
She leaned back against the boulder, feeling incredibly weak, wanting nothing more than to curl up and sleep for the next twenty-four hours.
Selka, whose ears had twitched at the sound of Nuan’s stomach, slowly blinked her eyes open and stretched her arms. "Something is wrong, furless?"
"I’m starving... and feeling a little dizzy," Nuan admitted honestly, resting her head against the stone.
Selka stared at Nuan’s exhausted pale face and let out a knowing smirk. She stood up, raising her arms halfway as her long, razor-sharp hunting claws slid gracefully out from her fingertips, catching the midday light.
"Make your stone pit for a fire, furless. Let us eat some fresh fish before we make the trek back to camp," Selka ordered, her sharp gaze instantly locking onto the shadows moving beneath the river’s surface.
"Ohh!" Nuan’s eyes lit up with instant joy.
Forget the fatigue—hunger was an excellent motivator.
She scrambled to gather large river rocks, quickly assembling a small, secure fire pit on the gravel. She hobbled over to the brush to collect a handful of dry twigs and dead branches, piling them neatly in the center.
Reaching into her inoventory, she pulled out her trusty ferro rod and struck it with the back of her knife, showering the tinder in hot sparks until a bright, crackling flame came to life.
By the time Nuan had the fire roaring, a sharp splash echoed from the water. Selka marched out of the river, proudly holding two massive, thrashing salmon in her clawed hands.
Nuan didn’t waste a second. She used her sharp hunting knife to expertly gut and clean the internal organs of both fish. She handed the scraps and one raw portion back to Selka, who happily tore into it with her fangs.
For her own portion, Nuan found a long, sturdy green branch, skewered the salmon from mouth to tail, and propped it carefully over the hot stones to roast.
Selka wiped her bloody, sticky mouth with the back of her wrist, sitting down comfortably across the fire pit to watch the fish skin blister and sizzle over the flames.
"Thanks for catching the fish for us, Miss Selka. I was seriously about to pass out from hunger," Nuan said, inhaling the rich, savory aroma of roasting salmon.
"Do not thank me... you are currently part of our pack," Selka said smoothly, her silver eyes reflecting the firelight. "I can easily do that much for a pack member."
Nuan let out a soft giggle, carefully rotating the wooden skewer. "Hehe, even though you know I’m not planning to stay with the pack forever?"
Selka let out a philosophical sigh, looking up at the sky. "Well, we never truly stay anywhere forever, do we? When the time comes, every strong beast must leave to find or build their own territory. Once you all eventually leave, I will simply become a lone wolf again—enjoying my final days in absolute peace without the constant worry of babysitting."
"Haha, I can only imagine how exhausting it must be to raise so many generations of kids," Nuan chuckled, flipping the fish over to roast the other side evenly. "And then there’s always someone like Koda or Kael born in every single generation who are just a bit too much to handle!"
"Yes..." Selka laughed, a warm, nostalgic look softening her sharp features. "But it is not a bad life. You always find amusement when you are surrounded by so many different, rowdy kiddos... Don’t you ever plan to become a mother yourself, furless?"
Nuan’s hands instantly froze over the fire. Her head snapped back in absolute terror, and she frantically shook her head, waving her uninjured hand in a wild, defensive ’no’ gesture. "Me?! No, no, no, no way! I absolutely do not ever want to be a mother!"
At least definitely not by an animal! Nuan screamed inside her own head.
Selka tilted her head, looking genuinely puzzled by the visceral reaction. "Why? You are a female. Do you not wish to reproduce and pass on your bloodline by making babies?"
Ugh... welp, Nuan thought, her mind racing. Where I come from, humans definitely don’t need any more reproducing—they need severe population reduction!
How do I even begin to explain the concept of global overpopulation to a wolf beastman?
Besides i absolutely refuse to carry some giant, furry, clawed apex predator inside my stomach! That thought alone is a certified nightmare.
How is that thing even supposed to come out of a human body? What if a tiny, unformed baby wolf claw accidentally tears my internal organs from the inside?!
Leave all of that logic aside, who in their right mind wants a literal wild animal’s Weiner inside them?!
I am not my web-novel-obsessed niece to be crazy over the idea of half-animal shifters knocking me up!
Nuan let out a long, thoroughly exhausted, and deeply stressed sigh.
"What happened?" Selka asked, noticing her dramatic silence. "Is it truly that terrible of a thought to reproduce?"
Nuan carefully checked both sides of the fish, ensuring the meat was perfectly flaky and white.
She carefully slid one half onto a clean leaf, handing it across the fire to Selka, before taking a big, comforting bite of her own piping-hot salmon.
"Well... I don’t think my specific kind is anywhere in this jungle, so I can’t technically reproduce my own kind here," Nuan answered carefully, chewing the warm meat as she formulated her excuse. "And I have absolutely no desire to carry another species’ cubs inside me."
Selka looked into the fire, realizing that Nuan’s kind did not work the same way as hers.
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