Page 214 of Blood of Hercules
Oh yay, frostbite.
It was official: I was not living a good life.
God, is this because of that one M-rated Carl Gauss fanfic I wrote? Please forgive me. I knew it was wrong when I was writing it, but I couldn’t stop myself.
There was a loud hacking noise.
Understood, God, I will be better.
The noise repeated, and I turned. The cheetah creature from before crept over to where my blood covered the snow and sniffed it.
It lifted its head up with its pupils blown out. All the hair on its body stood on edge, then it yowled as it sprinted away.
“Rude—I bet I taste delicious,” I called after it. “You’re missing out.”
A hiss echoed from the trees.
“That’s just unnecessary,” I grumbled under my breath.
Apparently, I wasn’t good enough to befriend or to eat. It shouldn’t have hurt so badly, but it did.
It was the principle of things.
I poked miserably at the patch of frozen skin on my hand.
Fluffy Jr. suddenly sprinted out from behind dead grasses toward me, wagging his tail (if that was what you could call the white thing that trailed behind him).
He turned his head. A stick was halfway down his throat, jutting out of his muzzle like a point.
He was so beautiful.
“Hey, little guy.” Tears poured down my cheeks. “I really—missed you. Are you okay? How have you been? You’re so beautiful.”
It was so great to see a friendly face.
I needed this.
“Things have been really—hard for me lately, especially since Nyx is always asleep,” I confessed with a sniffle as I wiped my blurry eyes. “You being here right now means a lot. I can’t even tell you.”
Fluffy Jr. wiggled his body, then tipped his head down and stabbed the end of the stick deeper.
He choked and fell over.
Stressful minutes of CPR later, I was on my hands and knees gasping from exertion, clutching a saliva-covered stick.
Fluffy Jr. celebrated surviving his near-death experience by running in a circle and chasing his misshapen butt.
I debated crossing the menagerie and begging the monstrous creature to end me.Lord knows the cheetah’s too cowardly to do it.
But it was a long walk.
Would it kill the beast to be a little more conveniently located?
“Time’s up!” Augustus roared from the doorway. “Everyone out in five minutes or you’re running the crucible. Alexis—where the fuck did you go? I told you not to move!” His rage echoed through the cavernous menagerie.
Oh, that can’t be good.
Fluffy Jr. used my momentary distraction to run up and grab the half-digested stick back out of my hand.
