Page 289 of Pucking Feral: Part Two

I overshoot. My boots skid on the leaves as I pull up short, momentum carrying me past her for two strides before I plant and spin.

She sprays me point blank in the fucking mask.

I rip it off, snarling and clawing at my eyes, and I can't fucking see her or smell her now. All I smell is fucking capsicum.

But I can hear her.

Boots on leaves, crashing through undergrowth to my right, that breathless crazy fucking laugh carrying back to me like a bell in the dark.

I drag my sleeve across my watering eyes and follow the sound, stuffing the mask in my waistband.

The little rabbit shot me in the goddamn face with pepper spray and is now fleeing through the woods laughing about it.

I'm so turned on I can barely fucking think.

The forest blurs as I close the distance again. My left eye is streaming and half-useless but my right is acceptable, and my hearing has never led me astray.

If I let her get away again, I won't be able to follow her scent. Not with the pepper spray searing every last cavity in my damn head.

She's heading downhill. Toward the river.

The sound of the water swells as the terrain drops sharply and the trees thin, the ground turning from soft earth to loose shale that slides under my boots. She stumbles but catches herself on a half-broken sapling, using it to slingshot left.

I catch the same sapling and tear it the rest of the way out of the ground trying to do the same. Spinning on my heels and flinging the sapling aside, I lunge back up the slope after her.

She fires the pepper spray again.

The canister hisses dry air.

"Fuck!" she yelps, and throws the canister at me.

Just like old times.

I throw my arm up to block it and lunge forward, my other hand reaching for her.

It closes on air.

I skid to a stop, panting.

She's gone.

I crouch and examine the shale through my burning eyes, my chest heaving, every breath stinking of pepper spray instead of filled with sweet honeysuckle. Slide marks lead left, toward a cluster of pines growing at the edge of a drop-off.

The marks stop at the base of the first pine.

I look up, circling the base of the pine, blinking away the hot tears in my eyes and squinting to peer into the shadows.

Nothing.

Impressive.

I move to the next tree. It's massive, growing right at the edge of the slope that drops toward the rushing river. I'm reaching for the lowest branch to haul myself up for a better vantage point when a feral omega drops onto my back from directly above.

"GOTCHA!"

Her legs clamp around my waist, her arms lock around my neck, and her momentum carries us both sideways off the edge of the drop.

We're airborne for one horrible, glorious second.