u/maybeprettydumb

[Disclaimer: Contains non-consensual themes, humiliation, misogyny ... the usual parade of terrible ideas. Don't expect deep world-building. It's a generic medieval fantasy world. Think Gummy Bears or your Saturday morning cartoon protagonist doing some time traveling again. Oh, but with kinky stuff, because... you know. Reasons.]

Previously:

> A fox-girl beastkin is thrown into a nobles' hunt, where rich men chase, rape, and "claim" captured women, using them as trophies and training dummies for their egos. The rules are simple: they hunt, fuck, and break her; she runs, tricks, and refuses to stay broken. Between humiliation, ritualized rape, and near-death, our protagonist clings to her wit, her instincts, and her stubborn spite to survive the next round.

>Initially, she throws a stone at a hornet nest to save a rabbit girl from three men but is caught by another hunter. The hunter parades her before the men she wronged. They take their first claims on her mouth, ending with Alaric von Falkenhayn, who nearly strangles her. Quick-healed with a potion, she endures one more claim from a golden-haired nobleman before she is allowed to run. She outsmarts several men until a tracker sees through her bluff and takes his first and his second claim.

> Later she accidentally stumbles into a circle of hunters and watches the same lord who nearly killed her try to break an unbreakable elf. Her own trauma leaves her paralyzed until the strangulation begins – then sheer reflex drives her to humiliate him publicly and run. The elf escapes beside her.

---

The tree didn't look like much from the outside.

Just another old thing in the dark, roots clutching the earth, trunk wide enough to hide three men behind. If you didn't know where to look, your eyes slid off it. If you did know where to look, your brain still tried to slide off it.

"Here," the elf said quietly.

She laid her palm against the bark, fingers spread, whispering something that bent the air in a way I could feel in my teeth. The outline of a knot shimmered, then softened; wood becoming weirdly not-wood, like water remembering how to move. A slit opened, and my gaze kept jumping back and forth between the tree and the elf, like my brain refused to file either of them under "real."

"In," she ordered.

I didn't argue. My throat was raw from screaming. My legs were trembling from the run. Also hard to argue with someone who'd called a duke's heir sewage-fed filth while he had her by the throat.

The inside was bigger than it had any right to be. A hollow carved by something more patient than human hands, lined with roots and smooth wood. The space smelled of sap, damp earth, mushrooms, a dozen different plants crushed together and a faint trace of rabbit: warm fur, old fear, shallow breaths. Glowing fungi clung to the inner bark in a few pale clusters, throwing enough light to turn everything into soft-edged shapes.

Rabbit girl was curled into herself at the narrowest end of the hollow, knees hugged to her chest, ears folded back along her spine like someone had tried to press them into nonexistence. Only her eyes moved, wide and glassy in the dim. Her shift was streaked with dirt and sap but miraculously intact. No new rips. No fresh bruises that I could see in the greenish gloom.

"Hi," I said. "Cozy little girls' club you've got up here." I briefly considered suggesting we hang a "Boys keep out" sign.

She didn't answer. Her nose twitched once, a tiny, frightened tic that made something in my chest hurt in ways I didn't have names for. Then, cautiously, she shifted her bare feet aside so there was more room for me, nudging a small pile of something green and torn further into the shadows before I could make sense of it. A silent invitation. Or just a reflex to avoid being stepped on. Hard to say. My eyes weren't adjusted yet. The fungi threw weird light.

I sank down with my back to the curved wall, legs pulling up automatically, tail curling in around me like a very confused question mark. My body was a catalog of complaints: thighs screaming from the run, throat raw from screaming Alaric's impotence to the forest, ribs bruised from the rock face, and a dozen scrapes that were only now starting to properly sting.

The elf stayed standing for a moment, listening. Ears pricked, eyes narrowed. The outside world narrowed to a hand-width slit of night, then closed. She moved like she'd done this a thousand times. I was suddenly aware of how naked I was. How filthy. How I probably smelled like piss and leaf mold and too many men.

Meanwhile the elf smelled like petrichor, cold spring water and cracked pepper, and she looked like she'd curated her damage. I’d never seen anyone move with that kind of ease while blood dried on her back like she’d painted it there for effect.

The rabbit girl made a small, wounded sound as she saw it. Her hand darted to the pile beside her knee, grabbed a leaf, and shoved it into her mouth. Chewing. Stress nibbling. I got it. Sometimes you needed to bite down on something so you didn't scream.

Finally, the elf dropped into a crouch near the entrance, long limbs folding neat as a bow. For a few breaths, nobody spoke.

You'd think three half-naked hunted girls crammed into a magic tree would make small talk, but oddly, none of us really felt like that. Not even a round of introductions. Almost as if we were all collectively failing the Bechdel test on purpose.

The silence stretched. Outside, somewhere far below, a horn blew three short notes. Shouts answered, muffled by distance and wood and magic. Inside, the air sounded weirdly damp and underwater, and of course, the rhythmic crunch-crunch of the rabbit girl chewing.

She stared at me. Her eyes kept snagging on my arm, my throat, my mouth, my hips, where the mountain had scrubbed my skin. "You look..." She trailed off, then tried again. "Are you... alright?"

A laugh bubbled up, shredded and bitter. "Oh sure. Never better. Beautiful evening stroll. Love what they've done with the forest."

The elf gave me a look that could strip bark. "Keep your voice down."

"Yes, mother," I muttered, but I dropped it to a hoarse whisper, shoulders hunching automatically. The silence stretched again. The outside world thudded and shouted, far away. My tail thrashed nervously. "How safe are we here? Can they open it?"

The rabbit girl straightened a little before she answered. She'd obviously already asked the elf all the human questions you'd expect in a situation like this. Probably more than once. "They can't," she said, eager, almost excited. "Not easily. Even human mages would need time, and if that happens the tree will warn her and she can shift the passage deeper. The concealment works on–"

She launched into something about probability fields and overlapping wards; I lost her somewhere after "human mages." Her words blurred. My brain nodded along at first and then wandered off to count the glowing fungi. One, two, three – that one looks like a sad nipple – four...

Magic was weird, and "we're safe, just chill" would've been perfectly enough for my purposes. I waved a hand, bored. "Okay, okay, clever bunny. Got it."

She looked instantly ashamed, which made guilt pinch in my ribs. I gave her a crooked, apologetic smile and instantly turned to the elf afterwards. "However– thank you," I rasped, because apparently I still had just enough social awareness not to be a total asshole. "For... this." I flicked my eyes around the hollow. "Nice to know one of us brought a panic room to the game."

The elf's jaw tightened. "I didn't bring it," she said. "It was there. I just know how to open it."

Of course. Gods forbid she just accepts gratitude like a normal person.

"Okay, but why don't we just stay here until the hunt ends?" My fingers had started scratching at the inner bark before I even noticed. The texture was weirdly satisfying. Rough, then smooth, then rough again.

The elf snorted, irritated. "As she just explained: my mana isn't strong enough to keep this hidden all night for three people. Especially not for non-mages." Her palm came down sharp on my knuckles. "Especially when they're poking holes in our ally."

I jerked my hand back, cheeks burning. "Sorry," I muttered, suddenly six years old again.

My gaze drifted back to the rabbit girl, desperate to change the topic to something that didn't make me look like an idiot. Her knees were hugged to her chest, arms locked around them. Her jaw worked in small, steady motions, the way someone might chew a tough piece of bread. Poor thing. A little heart pumping all night long that fast probably needs all the calories it can get.

Beside her knee the little pile had grown stranger: narrow lance-shaped ones, fuzzy round ones, a few torn flowers, bits of scraped bark. Pretty, fussy things. Arranged with the seriousness of a child setting out dolls for tea. Some people knitted under stress. Some people organized foliage. I wanted to ask her if she could braid me a daisy crown, but I could already feel the elf's glare without looking. So instead I grabbed for an even worse topic. "I hope you got away sting-free," I said. "After the hornets. You ran so fast I thought..." I immediately regretted it.

Her cheeks flushed, a small, ashamed wash of pink. "I did," she said. "You really saved me there. Thank you." Her big, brown eyes shone with too much sadness and terror in them. Sure, I maybe "saved" her from Bulky one, Bullish one and Lanky Highlyborn von Falkenschiss. But clearly that hadn't saved her from the hunt in general. No one was leaving the forest as a virgin.

Her gratitude made me itch, and the memory of what it had cost me burned under my skin, so I just shrugged. "Eh. Not that big a deal. Don't mention it."

But now she seemed to really, really want to talk about it. "How many times?" she blurted suddenly, then flinched at her own wobbling voice. "I mean... how many times they've... caught you. So far."

My spine tried to curl in on itself. I felt the numbers line up in my head like stones in a pocket. Sure, let's discuss our body count. Fun topic. Ten out of ten. Would socialize again.

The elf looked at me too now. Weighing, measuring. I cleared my throat, buying time I didn't really have. "You first," I muttered. Cowardly, sure. I'd take it.

The elf snorted softly. She didn't flinch. Of course she didn't. Her back rested against the living bark like she belonged there. Her long, moss-green hair was a tangle, her lip split, her shift torn and smeared with dirt, but she still managed to look like someone had carved a warrior out of spite and forgotten to sand down the edges.

"Fine." She tilted her head, like she was checking her own internal tally. "Twice," she said. "Two first claims." She said it like she was reporting kills on a battlefield, not violations.

My eyebrows climbed. "Only twice?"

A flicker of offense sharpened her eyes. "First time, I went for his throat. I almost had him. But then two more came and dragged me off him. I bit him, but it hurt him less than he deserved."

"Wait." My brain shoved the pieces together. "You attacked them? You went looking for them? You hunted them? How? I want details!"

A small, savage smile touched her mouth. "Oh, and the second one won't be lifting a sword for a while either," she said. "Some Edelgard's offspring. He bled so easily. They needed two men to carry him back to the villa." Her bottle-green eyes gleamed. "He'll remember that longer than anything he did to me. And I still have his knife." Her hand twitched toward her thigh by reflex, where the knife wasn't.

My brain helpfully supplied the picture: her, teeth bared, hair in his grip, blood on his face and laughter on hers. That long, elegant body snapping forward, elbow crunching cartilage. His shocked noble meltdown. A hot spark lit under my ribs. I stared at her in shameless awe. What a menace. What a goddess. How could someone be that obscenely, offensively cool?

"And your back?" the rabbit asked quietly. She shifted closer, her gaze moving across the elf's face, then down to the welts rising on her shoulders, the blood drying in dark whorls. "Who did that to you?"

"He wanted to make an example. I declined. I told him–" She paused, then smiled tensely. "Well. A lot of things. He didn't take it well. The rest was simple. He used the whip. I broke free. Brought her with me." She didn't look at me. Not once. Her eyes stayed on the wall, where the slit of night had closed.

"Oh." I remembered her in the clearing then: the whip cracking across her back, the red glob of spit hitting Alaric's boot, his hands closing around her throat while she stared through the blood like the mountain itself. "Yeah. I saw the... live performance."

A flush grew on my cheeks. That had been the first time I'd really seen an elf. I'd expected something ethereal. Graceful. Maybe tragic. I had not been prepared for that level of foul-mouthed fury in something that looked like it had stepped out of some painter's wet dream. Fuck, her anger looked so damn hot.

The rabbit girl spoke up, her voice barely above a whisper. "He's... important, you know that, right? Von Falkenhayn." Her hand twitched toward her pile of leaves.

"I know exactly what he is," the elf said. "And he's very bad at being hit."

I snorted. Couldn't help it.

The elf's voice softened when she turned to the rabbit. "And you?" A shift of her weight, a slight opening of her posture, and a moment later, the rabbit girl was suddenly closer to her, sitting in the elf's lap, the elf now holding the rabbit's face with both hands, looking her in the eyes with a seriousness that made a hot, stupid spark of something flare in my chest and what the fuck are they doing there, so I looked away. "How many times?"

The rabbit girl flinched. Her shoulders drew inward, making herself smaller even in Rumeya's lap. "Once," she said, voice barely audible. Shame wrapped around the word like barbed wire, which was frankly insane.

Once.

I tried to pretend it didn't smash against my ribs like a wave.

"Good for you," I said. It came out acid. "Gold star for the little rabbit who knows how to stay put." Two heads turned. Her face crumpled. The elf's eyes narrowed. I'd never felt so shabby. "Sorry," I mumbled.

The silence stretched. I stared at my knees. The rabbit stared at her leaves. The elf stared at me and the weight of her gaze felt appropriately awful. My leg started bouncing until I pinned it with my own weight, and my tail had tucked itself so far between my ass cheeks it was in danger of becoming a permanent resident.

Then, finally, the rabbit exhaled, a teeny-tiny, shaky sound, and the elf's attention shifted back to her. She nodded slowly. "Once is good."

Rabbit girl's lip trembled. "It doesn't feel good," she muttered, and without looking up she pressed a paste of chewed green leaves against the deepest welt on the elf's shoulder, her hand now no longer shaking.

I swallowed my next bitter quip. It tasted like cum.

The tree shivered faintly around us, a deep creak running through the hollow like an old animal acknowledging the tending. The elf didn't thank her and the rabbit didn't seem to expect it. She just pressed the paste down with careful fingers and chewed the next mouthful like the world could be repaired one ugly little leaf at a time. But it smelled like somebody trying.

Finally, the elf's hand dropped from the rabbit's face. Her gaze found me again, and something in it had frozen. "Now, how many?" And I could feel, under my skin, the phantom weight of hands, ropes, fingers.

My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. "Does it matter?"

"Yes," the elf said. "We need to know how much attention you've drawn."

"Too much," I muttered. "Clearly."

"How. Many." The words were a command, not a question.

"Gods, damn, you heard what I yelled just a few minutes ago? Why not just assume I drew all the attention there? Wouldn't be that wrong."

The rabbit tried to save me. Of course she did. "We don't have to... I mean, if you don't want to–"

I counted in my head. It took longer than it should have. Mouth, mouth, mouth. Twice more after the stump. No, three, with one second claim. Wait. Again. Dietram. Ulrick? No. But the rat. The duke's heir. Golden boy. The bastard with my stupid witch act. And in the crevice. And Gerrick's first, hanging over all of it like a bad title sponsorship.

"Seven," I said finally.

The elf's eyebrows climbed. Rabbit girl's hands flew to her mouth. "Seven," she echoed. Like I'd said seventy.

My skin prickled with a feverish warmth. That filthy, crawling kind that makes your skin too tight. I forced a grin and it felt pathetic, too. "Busy schedule, you know. High demand, limited product. Someone needs to keep the customers happy."

Nobody laughed.

The elf didn't look sorry. She looked... irritated. Then disgust sharpened her features, nostrils flaring as if she'd caught a bad smell. "Seven?" she repeated slowly. "Tonight?"

"Maybe eight. It's hard to count. Do those count when they don't finish?" I added, because lying smaller felt worse than the truth.

"You let them catch you seven or eight times?" she asked, incredulous. "How? What are you doing out there? Just lying down for every man who whistles?"

"No?!" I snapped, stung. "I don't just 'let them'! They hogtied me after the first time. I've spent half this damned hunt folded like a trussed chicken and being 'shared around' for fairness. It wasn't skill a issue, just damn rope!"

The rabbit girl shifted closer, just enough that her shoulder brushed mine. Not quite a hug. Not quite not. Her warmth, thin as it was, seeped through my skin.

"I'm so sorry," she whispered.

I wanted to scream at her. What for? The question? Surviving better? The existence of men? Instead I shifted away a bit, just enough to avoid the touch.

"You're... brave," the rabbit said. "I don't think that's... your fault. I just... I couldn't do what you do. I'd die."

I didn't know what to answer. So I said nothing, just shrugged again and stared at my fingers clawing into my thighs and I hoped the tree could maybe quickly decompose me right now.

"Did you like it that much?"

Fire shot up my spine. "What?!"

The elf shrugged, unbothered. "Some do. I've seen it. Panic turns to something else. They start... leaning into it." She gazed at me shamelessly. "I don't judge. But if you like it that much, you're a liability."

The rabbit made a horrified noise. "Rumeya!" She flinched, surprised by the volume of her own voice. "That's not fair," then she whispered. "She saved me. With the hornets. They were already on me, and she–"

"I don't–" My voice cracked. Heat burned in my throat, behind my eyes. "I don't like it."

"Then why do you keep getting caught?" the elf pressed, not unkindly, just brutally logical. "She's been taken once. I've let them touch me twice, on my terms. You've got more marks on you than some of the whores in the city. That's not bad luck. That's... incompetence. Or appetite."

I laughed. I didn't mean to; it just tore out of me, too high and too loud. "Oh yes," I croaked. "That's it! You've cracked the code!" My eyes stung. I refused to blink. "I just looove it so much I can't stay away. Best night of my life. Every girl's dream."

"Keep joking, fox," she said. She didn't laugh. Her eyes were cold. "As long as it's funny, you don't have to take it seriously. And if it isn't serious, you'll walk into them again and again and act surprised every time."

The words slid under my ribs and lodged there. I wanted to tear her eyes out. I wanted to crawl into her lap and sleep. I wanted to run until my lungs burst and never see any of them again. Instead I pulled my knee tighter, bowed my head, and stared at my own filthy, twitching tail. "Maybe I'm just not as good at this as I thought," I said. The admission tasted worse than any of them. "Happy now?"

The rabbit shuffled closer. Her hand hovered near my arm, shaking, then landed, feather-light. A small, trembling touch. "No," she whispered. "Not happy."

I didn't flinch back.

[Disclaimer: Contains non-consensual themes, humiliation, misogyny ... the usual parade of terrible ideas. Don't expect deep world-building. It's a generic medieval fantasy world. Think Gummy Bears or your Saturday morning cartoon protagonist doing some time traveling again. Oh, but with kinky stuff, because... you know. Reasons.]

Previously:

> A fox-girl beastkin is thrown into a nobles' hunt, where rich men chase, rape, and "claim" captured women, using them as trophies and training dummies for male ego. The rules are simple: they hunt, fuck, and break her; she runs, tricks, and refuses to stay broken. Between humiliation, ritualized rapes, and near-death, our protagonist clings to her wit, her instincts, and her stubborn spite to survive the next round.

> Initially, she threw a stone at a hornet nest to save a rabbit girl from three men but was caught by another hunter. He forced her to confess her action, first verbally, then repeatedly orally to the other men before she was allowed to run again.

> She outsmarted several nobles before a new hunter saw through her final bluff and took his first claim. Before he could use her a second time, she bit him and ran. She tried to escape through a rock crevice, but got stuck and the last hunter found her and took his second claim. He didn't bother with helping her out, but she freed herself with enough spite and body fluids.

---

PART 2 of the chapter.

"Now look at me, beast."

The words went through me like a blade through a wound that had never closed. He wasn't speaking to me. I knew he wasn't speaking to me. But my spine had learned that voice in the clearing, on my knees, in the mud, and it obeyed before my mind could vote. That voice. His voice. That particular frequency of cold command that had once made me apologize for being filthy, for being an animal, for not deserving his seed.

Don't look at his face. Don't. Don't, please, don't–

But my head lifted from the rot because he said so. I looked at him. And looking at him unmade me.

He was the sun. A dark sun. A gravitational weight that bent the world around him. The torchlight didn't illuminate him; he consumed it. He pulled everything into his orbit and incinerated it. I was trapped in that ellipse, a speck of nothing circling a wrathful deity.

My eyes were locked, pinned, speared. His image burned into my retinas, and my brain, my splintered, animal brain, couldn't process him as a man anymore. Every line of him radiated power. Old and terrible. The power of a god who had decided you were nothing and would not be persuaded otherwise. Power that didn't need to shout because the world already knelt.

My body craved surrender. The animal urge to roll over. To show throat. To end the waiting by making the end happen. But he wasn't looking at me. He was looking at her. The elf.

"My house carried this land through famines and wars while your kind ate bark in the dark," Alaric continued, stepping closer. "When you spit on your betters, correction is not cruelty. It is mercy. Discipline." He gestured at her mouth, a small, dismissive flick. Dietram reached up and I heard the cloth come away. It came away wet. Spit and blood. "You will learn gratitude, or you will be unmade, strip by strip, until you crawl to us–"

"Your mother must have nursed you pure shit from her tits."

It landed like a dropped anvil.

The circle jolted. Someone choked. Dietram winced, shoulders tightening, his grip on her wrists tightening with them. The stranger on her other arm shifted his weight, boots scraping dirt.

And Alaric von Falkenhayn just... stopped. His mouth hung open on whatever word he'd been about to say. You could almost hear his brain skidding on the word “shit.”

For half a heartbeat – half a heartbeat – the panic in my chest cracked. Air slipped in. The absurdity punched through the terror like a fist through rotted wood. Not much. Just a breath. But it was the first real breath I'd taken since the air turned heavy, and the absurdity of it – She– his mother– shit from her-

He inhaled slowly through his nose, recalibrating, like a man trying to pretend he hadn’t just tripped on his own stairs. I watched his nostrils flare. I watched his jaw lock. I watched his fingers curl around the whip.

"Say that again."

"I said," the elf spat, "your mother's milk was sewage. You sucked shit as an infant and it rotted your brain. You are walking filth pretending to be a man."

Someone muttered "gods," low. Dietram's mouth flattened, like he wanted to be anywhere else.

Alaric's nostrils flared. The muscle in his jaw ticked. Then he smiled. It was worse than the snarl he’d worn in the clearing.

“Vulgarity,” he said, tasting the word. “The last vocabulary of the powerless. You mistake defiance for strength." The words were quiet, precise, each one polished like a stone. "Creatures like you tend to forget that the blood in your veins is a temporary mercy. Not a right. You were never meant to look your betters in the eye. You were never meant to speak. Whatever wildness your forest vomited you out with, we will peel from you strip by–"

"Spare me," she interrupted, and her voice was stone grinding stone, "first your bowels shall turn liquid in front of your father's portrait and leak down your legs while your servants pretend not to smell your coward's death. And every turd you ever drop shall carry your name back to your mother's wretched cunt."

The circle shifted. One of the perfumed hunters let out a nervous chuckle that died fast. My breath stuttered. I didn't know whether to laugh, cry, or vomit.

But the elf didn't stop. She launched into a string of insults so foul, so creatively anatomical, that I felt a dizzying surge of reality hit me. Alaric stared down at her, looking so stiff I surely would have laughed if I hadn't just pissed myself. A man that rigid could crack walnuts between his ass cheeks. I saw the other men shifting their feet, uncomfortable, their eyes darting to the floor, some hiding their mouths behind their hands.

Then his face contorted. The steel in his voice snapped. The justice was turning into a farce. The god was turning red. He moved.

The whip cracked. The sound was lightning striking flesh. The elf's body bucked against the men holding her, a single violent spasm, but her mouth stayed shut. Alaric waited. He let the silence stretch, let her feel the next stroke coming, let all of us stew in the anticipation. Then the second stroke against her shoulders. The third stroke wrapped across her lower back, and this time I heard her breath catch. Four. A pause. Each stroke separated by just enough silence to make the next one worse. The elf's body arched against the men's grip with each impact, her shoulders curving forward, then snapping back. The next stroke. Another. And another. A spray of blood dotted Dietram's sleeve. He flinched but didn't let go. The pauses were getting shorter now, or maybe I was losing count, losing time, losing everything except the rhythm of leather on flesh and the sound of someone breathing too hard – me, I realized, I was the one breathing too hard.

The last stroke caught her cheek. Her head snapped sideways, hair lashing, and for one terrible moment I thought she would fall.

Alaric lowered the whip. His chest heaved, once, the only sign of exertion. The silence that followed was heavier than the crack of leather. He stepped closer to her.

"Apologize," he said. Softly. The silence pressed against the word. "Apologize and beg for the correction you have earned. Or I will teach you what your forest gods clearly failed to: that you are meat."

She lifted her head. A red glob of saliva and contempt hit his boot with an audible splat. And she stared through the blood with an expression that wasn't human or elven or anything that belonged in a face. It was the mountain itself looking back at him.

"Not until every bird in this forest shits down your throat and you choke on it."

Alaric’s face emptied. The control shattered. He dropped the whip. His bandage creaked as his hands closed into fists, and then he was moving, crossing the space between them in two strides, reaching for her throat with the same hand that had once closed around mine, the fingers spreading to encircle her pale neck, to crush the air and the defiance and the life out of her in front of his audience—

My vision tunneled.

Not again. Not again. The hands. The throat. The graying vision. The iron taste. The memory of his fingers from the clearing — squeezing, squeezing — flooded my mouth with phantom bile. His thumbs pressed into the hollow of the elf’s throat. Her eyes narrowed with defiant rage, her lips peeling back from bloodied teeth. The air left the world. My ribs snapped shut around my lungs.

He’s going to kill her. You can't help her. You can't fight him. You're not a hero. You're nothing. Lower than vermin. You're not permitted thoughts.

My stomach lurched. A sour, burning flood scorched the back of my throat, terror and rage and– my body moved before my mind voted.

“VON FALKENHAYN CAN’T GET HIS DICK HARD!”

The scream tore out of me. A high, cracking shriek of pure self-destruction, dragged up from below my gut, ripping my throat raw. I was standing. I was exposed. The bracken shredded around me as I stumbled up, naked and filthy, arms windmilling, every instinct pleading run while my mouth betrayed me into suicide.

"VON FALKENHAYN CAN'T GET HARD!" I yelled again, because my body had committed to this annihilation and there was no brake, only acceleration. "HE'S IMPOTENT! EVERYONE KNOWS!"

The forest echoed it back. –everyone knows everyone knows everyone knows–

Then: Silence. Absolute. Stunned. A vacuum where sound had been.

Alaric froze. His hands were still around the elf's throat, but his head whipped toward me. In the torchlight, his face was a rictus – eyes wide, pupils blown, the burst blood vessels from the hornet stings standing out like red spiderwebs, the bandage on his bitten hand stained yellow-brown. The vein in his temple pulsed, distended, throbbing with a heartbeat that looked ready to burst through the skin.

He wasn't a god. He was a man whose body failed him. Just like mine. And now the forest knew. Everyone knows.

Then my brain caught up.

Oh gods oh fuck what did you just do what did you just do-

The world snapped back into speed. I turned and ran. Behind me, the scene exploded into perfect, savage chaos.

Branches whipped my face, roots grabbed at my feet. I crashed through the dark like a rabbit with its fur on fire, chest too small, breath sandpaper, waiting for the hand on my neck, the knife in my back—

A grip like iron closed around my arm.

I shrieked, high and raw, whipping around, fist coming up uselessly.

Elven fingers. Long. Iron-strong despite the tremor in them.

"Shut up," the elf hissed.

She didn't look at me. Her face was turned forward, jaw set like granite, blood running down her back, eyes narrowed to killing slits. She hauled me forward, her hand slick with blood and sweat, her legs pumping with impossible speed, dragging me like a dead weight she refused to abandon.

We ran.

[Disclaimer: Contains non-consensual themes, humiliation, misogyny ... the usual parade of terrible ideas. Don't expect deep world-building. It's a generic medieval fantasy world. Think Gummy Bears or your Saturday morning cartoon protagonist doing some time traveling again. Oh, but with kinky stuff, because... you know. Reasons.]

Previously:

> A fox-girl beastkin is thrown into a nobles' hunt, where rich men chase, rape, and "claim" captured women, using them as trophies and training dummies for male ego. The rules are simple: they hunt, fuck, and break her; she runs, tricks, and refuses to stay broken. Between humiliation, ritualized rapes, and near-death, our protagonist clings to her wit, her instincts, and her stubborn spite to survive the next round.

> Initially, she threw a stone at a hornet nest to save a rabbit girl from three men but was caught by another hunter. He forced her to confess her action, first verbally, then repeatedly orally to the other men before she was allowed to run again.

> She outsmarted several nobles before a new hunter saw through her final bluff and took his first claim. Before he could use her a second time, she bit him and ran. She tried to escape through a rock crevice, but got stuck and the last hunter found her and took his second claim. He didn't bother with helping her out, but she freed herself with enough spite and body fluids.

---

By then the potion had finally stopped lying to me. My legs still worked if I kept the demands small and the expectations insulting. One step. Another. Don't look too far ahead. Don't think about how cold you are.

My tail dragged through the undergrowth behind me, too exhausted to curl or bristle or signal anything at all. My body ached in a way that had stopped being information and become background noise. I walked because stopping meant lying down, and lying down meant not getting up.

The forest thinned slightly ahead, moonlight pressing through the canopy in broken columns. I was aiming for nothing in particular, which meant I was probably heading in the wrong direction. Going downhill because downhill was simple. Simple was all I had left. No plan. Only the next step.

You've survived this far. Sure. Spectacular achievement. Gold star. Keep moving.

Then the wind shifted.

I stopped. Woodsmoke. Crushed bracken. Male sweat in quantity.

The horn split the night from somewhere close, close enough that the sound had mass, had weight, had a damn fist attached to it. Then voices, many, converging. Boots on roots.

My body hit the ground before my mind finished processing it. All circus training and thief instinct collapsing into the single imperative of* small, still, invisible*. Leaves burst damp and cold under my palms. Brambles caught my hair. My tail tucked, gone rigid, nowhere. I shoved myself under the nearest tangle of brush and stayed there, flat, face down. Well, great. My left thigh dragged right into a bunch of nettles. Don't move. Don't breathe loud. Don't–

Then voices. Male. Multiple. Not distant.

Three. Four. More than four. They were moving with purpose. I pressed lower into the bracken, trying to become a root, a stone, anything that didn't have a pulse, and waited for them to pass.

They didn't pass. They stopped. They formed a loose ring in a natural clearing where two game trails crossed.

And I was on the wrong side of them.

I realized it in the same moment I realized I couldn't move without being seen. The circle had closed while I was dropping into cover.

Torchlight leaked through the stems above me, throwing wavering gold across root and leaf and one fallen branch that smelled of rot. Okay, said the part of my brain that was still functioning in sentences. I kept my face turned down, looking through the dirt-level gap between the bracken because anything higher felt too exposed. Okay. Don't panic. You're invisible. They're not looking down. Just–

A boot planted near the roots in front of my face. Fancy boot. Ridiculously beautiful embroidery, gold thread on midnight blue. The smell of laurel and sandalwood.

Oh, for fuck’s sake. Of course he’s here too.

My pulse hammered so hard I was sure he could hear it. I waited for Lysander to say something silky and unbearable. To point. To crouch. To make this worse with excellent manners.

He didn’t.

I didn’t dare lift my head until the boot moved on. Through the gap between two roots, I tried to analyze how exactly I was fucked. Men I recognized. More men I didn't. Gerrick's outline at the edge of the torchlight, massive and unreadable. Dietram, solid and blond, gripping someone's arm. Another man on the other side, thick-necked, unfamiliar, gripping just as hard. He looked like– holy fuck.

The elf girl.

Even kneeling, she looked tall. Something carved from moonlight and old battle-songs. Her moss-green hair was snarled with leaves and dried blood, her eyes burning. Proud spine. Head high despite the bruises. Dietram and the stranger were leaning their full weight into her shoulders just to keep her on her knees. A strip of cloth had been tied across her mouth, yanking her lips back against her teeth.

For one second, I forgot to be scared of anything except what they were going to do to her. Ooh shit. They're probably not here to sing together Kumbaya–

Then the air turns heavy.

Recognition without language. An overwhelming sense of dread floods through me. It freezes the breath in my lungs. A scent I can't escape burns into my nose, acrid. Metallic. Sour. Me. My bones know before my mind does. Every drop of blood in my veins suddenly remembers. I can't fill my lungs. You need to get out. I am drowning in the stink of my own terror. RIGHT NOW. The scent is so loud it drowns out the world. I can't. I can't.

He comes from behind me. I feel him before I sense him. The way the pressure changes, the way the other men in the ring straighten almost imperceptibly, realigning toward him the way iron filings align toward a magnet. His stride is unhurried. Inevitable. The footfall of a man who has never needed to hurry because the world rearranges itself to wait.

I'm tasting copper. My mouth goes bone-dry. I can't feel the nettles stinging my skin anymore. I can't feel my pulse. Just him. And every single hair stands up and wants to flee.

Dead. Dead. You are dead. He is here and you are dead.

My throat closes. Every thought I had shatters into noise. The sound of blood rushing in my ears. The phantom taste of mud fills my tongue. A phantom pressure settles around my neck, the ghost of his hands from the clearing before. I wasn't in the grass anymore. I am back on my knees. The world spinning. All air being squeezed out of my life.

Lysander's voice broke through it. "Alaric. A thought."

Lysander's boots pivoted and began moving back the way they'd come. Toward me. So close I could have touched his ankle. He walked past me, intercepting him and falling into step beside Alaric before both passed by me again.

My vision fractures. Black spots. White noise. The world splinters into terrifying details. His nostrils curling in contempt. The particular angle of his jaw visible from below. The white-knuckled grip of his left hand, where it flexed at his side, wearing a bandage and holding a whip, coiled like a snake.

My brain, splintering. Locked onto him. I can't look away. I want to. I want to claw my own eyes out just to stop the image from burning into my brain. I can't. I can't. It's not my choice. It's a biological mandate.

"Entirely optional. But if you execute her on the first night, what's left for the second and third?" Lysander's voice dropped, meant only for Alaric, but I was close enough to hear every word. "The men will talk about nothing else. Every campfire, every wine-soaked reminiscence, they'll be retelling the execution, not the hunt. She'll be the elf who died rather than kneel to a Falkenhayn. The men will remember that. The other prey will hear of it."

I didn't want to hear or see any of this. I tried to stop listening. I tried to push the words away, driving my face into the rot. Soil filled my nostrils, leaf-mold against my teeth, and I became small. Smaller than small. A bug. A worm. Waiting to be crushed under his boots. Lower than vermin.

"Martyrs are tedious," Lysander continued. "They breed. But if you let her run, she's just prey who got caught and punished. Make her apologize. That's a story they'll repeat with laughter, not sympathy. She lives with the humiliation. You win. Much harder to make a legend out of a girl who cried." A pause, lighter, almost offhand. "Besides. An execution now kills the mood entirely. The men didn't come here for a hanging."

Alaric's boots stopped. Maybe seven feet away. Six feet. The torchlight flickered across the leather, and I could see the dried mud caked on the heels, the scuff marks where he had kicked something. Someone. My stomach clenched. My tail wound so tight between my legs it hurt, bone against bone, but I didn't feel that either. I only felt the shadow passing over me. If he even glanced in my direction, my heart would simply stop. My heart would simply stop. My heart–

"Your concern for the hunt's mood is noted." Alaric’s words were flat. Cold. His voice crept down my spine, quiet and absolute, and every other sound faded into nothing. There was only his voice, biting into my brain, chewing up whatever pathetic scraps of me were left. "But this is not a matter of mood. It is a matter of order. When a beast bites, it does not matter whether the correction ruins anyone's evening."

Lysander didn't step back physically. But something in his voice shifted. The silk worn thinner now. The lightness gone almost transparent. "You're angry,” he said. Quieter. Measured. "I understand angry. But the last time you got this angry, you nearly killed that fox girl.”

The words hit my spine like a dropped stone. That fox girl. Me. He's talking about me. Something warm trickled down my inner thigh. I pressed my thighs together, but my muscles were trembling too hard, and the warmth kept spreading. Not much. I hadn't drunk anything in hours. He could probably hear it. He could definitely hear it, the faint patter of piss hitting the leaves beneath me. And my heart, my useless hammering heart, beating itself to death against my ribs, and the blood roaring in my ears, surely he could hear that too. Surely everyone could. I was fighting with myself not to just jump up and surrender immediately.

Lysander's voice, quieter now, almost gentle. "I'm not defending her. I'm defending you. From yourself. From the things they'll say about you in the capital."

The silence that followed made the hair on my arms stand up and my tail curl tighter between my legs.

"Defending me."

I didn't dare look at his face. I didn't dare look higher than his boots. But I felt the shift in the air. The way the cold fury that had been directed at the elf suddenly pivoted, sharpened, finding a new target. A beat. The weight of the words pressed down on everything.

"How generous of you, Marcellan. I was not aware I required defending." A fake smile in his tone. "Nor that you considered yourself qualified to offer it."

Lysander's boots shifted. A fraction. A retreat disguised as a weight adjustment.

Alaric stepped into the circle. His voice rose, loud enough for everyone now.

"I am not in need of defense, Lord Marcellan. I am in need of order. This creature–" his voice shifted, harder now, no longer quiet, "–assaulted a nobleman. Attacked Lord Edelgard's son. Struck him with such violence that he had to be carried back to the mansion. Even now he lies abed while his servants tend wounds inflicted not by a warrior, not by an equal... but by a beast who forgot what she was."

Movement. A murmur rippled through the ring. Someone shifted their weight. Someone else muttered something that might have been an agreement.

Alaric's voice dropped again, quieter, colder. "She also bit me. Drew blood from a Falkenhayn. Marked my flesh with her teeth as if she had the right."

Something moved at the edge of my vision. A shape. Low to the ground. A dog, huge and grey as woodsmoke, materializing out of the shadows behind Lysander as if the night itself had given it form. I hadn't seen it before. I didn't know if it had been there all along. Everything was blurring, running together at the edges, shapes bleeding into shapes, and I couldn't–

"She forgot what she was. And you would have me let her run because the men might talk? Because it could sour the mood? Let them talk. Let the capital hear. Let them see what happens to beasts who forget their place."

A murmur ran through the ring. Someone shifted their weight. Lysander's boots didn't move. The dog pressed its head against Lysander's hand.

"Perhaps," Alaric continued, and now there was something harder beneath the cold, something that pressed down on the space between the words, "you'd like to explain to the assembled company why a beast's life matters more to you than the order we are here to uphold. Or why you, Marcellan, seem so invested in what stories the capital might hear instead of restoring justice for Lord Edelgard’s son."

My heart was a trapped bird beating itself to death against my ribs. I could smell my own fear, acrid, sour, leaking out of my skin, and if I could smell it, they could smell it. Especially a damn dog could smell it. Any second now the hound would turn, would point its grey snout toward the bracken, would whine or growl or simply look, and then–

Lysander spoke, slow, cautious now. "You're right, my lord. She assaulted a nobleman. She did. And no one is arguing she shouldn't be punished. I'm simply suggesting-"

"And I am not interested in your suggestions, Marcellan." Alaric's voice cut like a blade. "Your aesthetic sensibilities are noted and irrelevant. Perhaps you should return to the mansion and compose a poem about it."

A laugh rippled from some of the men. Some nervous, some scornful, all quickly stifled. Lysander's jaw tightened. The dog's ears swiveled toward me. I saw its nostrils flare once, testing the air.

It smells me. It smells me. This is it.

Lysander's response floated out, light enough to drift. "Of course. You're right, Lord Falkenhayn. I overstepped entirely." A pause. His fingers curled into the fur at the dog's neck once, then released. "I am certain whatever you do will be exactly what the hunt requires, and it will be extraordinary. All great art requires a firm hand. Perhaps I really should take notes for my next poem."

The words hung there, unanswered. Not a single man in the circle acknowledged them.

The dog stared at me. Just for a heartbeat. Then it looked away, back toward Lysander, and pressed its head against his thigh.

It saw me, it definitely saw me! Why isn't it–

"Now look at me, beast.”