Page 10 of Snared
“It is,” he confirmed, completely serious. “The jungle does not tolerate most outsiders. That it has accepted you so quickly is...significant.”
I pondered that as we continued our trek through the dense foliage. Everything about this situation was significant, apparently. My arrival through a supposedly dormant portal. The jungle’s interest in me. The Unity dream that had connected me to Lor before we ever physically met.
And underneath it all, a nagging sense of rightness that I couldn’t explain or justify. Like some part of me had been waiting for this. For him.
Which was ridiculous. I was a rational person. A skeptical journalist who investigated weird phenomena but always looked for the logical explanation. The scientific answer. The truth beneath the myth.
But as Lor guided me deeper into the alien jungle, his hand warm and sure around mine, I had to admit: some truths might be stranger than any myth I’d ever chased.
And some fates, perhaps, were written in the stars after all.
4 /LOR
She didn’t realizewe were being hunted. I meant to keep it that way. The jungle had gone quiet in places, just enough to make the fur on my nape lift. Not full danger silence—but a pause. A breath. A shift of something *not right*. The fugitive I’d tracked for days had circled back. I could scent it. But she couldn’t. Miri—my kassari—was smiling, talking to a vine she’d nicknamed “Phil,” and humming some melody I didn’t recognize. The jungle vines pulsed happily around her, reacting to her emotions. They liked her. Chose her. So had fate.
I walked ahead, ears tuned for movement, every stride deliberate. Each scan I made of the canopy and roots was subtle, practiced. I didn’t want her to notice. Fear was unnecessary. Not when I was between her and every threat this world could offer.
Behind me, she sighed. “Do you ever smile, catman?” she asked, fingers brushing the glowing moss as we walked. “You’re all broody muscle and don’t-touch-my-weapons vibes.”
I didn’t smile. Not with danger this close. But her voice made something ease inside my chest.
“I’m focused,” I answered.
She tilted her head. “Yeah, well, focus is good. Just...maybe blink once in a while?”
The jungle vines stirred at her words, brushing her arms, her waist, her legs. She didn’t flinch. She welcomed them. Neural resonance was deepening—she was reading more from tone, body language, *intention*. A gift granted only by the wild. I didn’t fully understand it, and I didn’t need to. She did. That was enough.
She paused beside a flowering creeper. “Phil says you’re tense.”
“I am.”
“Danger tense or you’re-around-a-pretty-girl tense?”
Both. The answer curled inside me like a growl I couldn’t release. I scanned the high branches again. Nothing overt. Nothing yet. But the fugitive was near. I could smell him—oily and sharp, his trail winding close to our path from the night before. His route had changed. He was testing the perimeter, watching.
She didn’t need to know that. She needed to feel safe.
“Come,” I said, gently nudging her forward. “You’ll like the next spot.”
“Unless it involves more weird vines touching my ass, I doubt it.”
I glanced back. “They like you.”
She grinned. “Phil’s a perv.”
I turned my attention back to our surroundings, nostrils flaring to catch any change in the air currents. The Cydarian smuggler’s scent was distinctive—a chemical tang overlaid with sweat and fear. It had grown stronger in the last hour, which meant he had doubled back toward us. The stolen Legion tech gave off faint energy signatures that the jungle reacted to, creating small dead zones where the flora retreated from the corruption.
Such a dead zone lay ahead and to our left. I steered Miri to the right, keeping myself between her and the potential threat.
“So,” she said, breaking the silence, “not that I don’t appreciate the strong, silent, jungle guide thing you’ve got going on, but maybe fill me in on what’s actually happening? Like why you’re really here on jungle planet?” She gestured around us. “This doesn’t exactly seem like vacation real estate.”
I hesitated. How much to tell her? The mission was classified. But she was my kassari. My fate mate. Legion protocols didn’t account for that.
“I hunt,” I said simply.
“Yeah, I figured that part out. The question is who—or what—are you hunting?” She stepped over a twisting root formation, her movements growing more confident with each hour in the jungle. “And don’t say ‘prey’ because that’s just evasive and annoying.”
My lips twitched despite the tension coiling within me. She was perceptive. “A fugitive. A Cydarian weapons smuggler who crashed on this planet two weeks ago. He carries stolen technology that could destroy worlds.”
