Page 72 of Shaped to Be Yours

Holy shit. How did I do that?

The other tree people hunkered low to the ground as if about to converge.

“I will kill all of you!” I howled, not thinking, just lashing out again and again with my new vine whips to keep them back. “I will tear the bark and branches off of every one of you if you touch him!”

“Jason.” Ricky clung to me, because with so many of them, we both knew I couldn’t possibly protect him forever. We didn’t know what they were. My efforts to keep them back were enough to convince the Jensens to gather closer to us, however, instead of near the portal.

Hypocrites.

One of the monsters bounded toward us on all fours, partially transforming into something wolf shaped or maybe like a bear.

Again, I launched vines at it, tripping its momentum, and caused it to slide the rest of the way to us. It shifted more humanoid as it caught its breath, but I wound my vine-like tendrils around its throat and lifted it from the ground.

“I mean it!”

“Jason?”

I was so ready to fight that it shocked me to my core how this new voice forced all the breath out of my lungs and all the tension loosened from my shoulders.

Another of the tree monsters was coming forward, with a male voice that had sounded so familiar. This one was shaped and colored almost exactly like me, even more so than the others. He held his hands up as he approached, gesturing for the rest of his kind to stand down too.

I stared at him with wild intensity, slowly lowering the monster I had held aloft and releasing it. As it scrambled back to the others, the one commanding my attention spoke again.

“Jason Bosco?” he asked, and in one swift unwinding of his monster form stood a handsome middle-aged man with blond hair whose voice I hadn’t heard for real in so long, but it was so much like mine, and he looked so much like me too.

“Dad…?”

Chapter 14

RICKY

Ithink Jason was too in shock for the next several minutes to do more than follow his father’s lead. He, Bo, remained human looking, while Jason didn’t seem capable yet and was still in tree form, as we were brought through the monster realm woods to a nearby encampment. A village. Actually, the coolest freaking village I’d ever seen.

The kappa kingdom had been miraculous, all crystal and water, but this was equally beautiful like some high fantasy city for elves. Their homes were built into the trees, builtoutof the trees, as if they had manipulated the trees to grow doors and windows and bridges from one to the next, all the way from the forest floor to the treetops.

There were even more of these monsters to fill the village, of all ages, shapes, and varying colors of tree bark and flowers in their antlers. As scared as I had been to have so many of them converging on us without warning, being among them in a peaceful, homelike setting, put me immediately at ease.

“Don’t let them take you anywhere alone,” Jensen Senior whispered to his son.

At least I didn’t think he was stupid enough to try something.

Hopefully.

“Mr. Jensen? Colt?”

As we neared the seeming center of the village, another human was suddenly running toward us.

“Ellen?” Colt exclaimed.

She raced right up to them, hugging Colt and his father. That must be Ellen Moyer, the most recent to have gone missing. I knew not only from her name, but because the shirt she wore was red and black plaid like the piece of fabric we found that first night, only where it was torn, new fabric had been weaved in to fix it, not plaid but still reddish fibers.

“More?” someone else said, and from where Ellen had appeared came four more humans. Meaningfivein total, the exact number reported missing. And they all looked perfectly safe, clean, and healthy.

“There is usually a different protocol when someone new arrives.” Bo turned to us. “But may I speak with you alone, Jason?”

“Ricky too,” Jason said, keeping his hold on me. He hadn’t let me stray from his side the whole way.

“Of course. You will be taken care of,” Bo said to the Jensens.

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