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Leave her be. Let her fight her own battles. The humans are not our problem unless the forest is harmed.
I watched as she weaved her way through the trees. She looked over her shoulder, and her cheeks were flushed with exertion.
In the pale light, her skin was milky smooth. She was an apparition. Despite the fear, the purple bruises and the angry red scrapes on her skin, she was beautiful. An Aphrodite.
Branches snapped as her pursuers crashed through the forest behind her. The menacing darkness that came with them filled the forest and clawed at my bark. They wanted her, badly.
The menace that hung in the air told me she wasn’t going to be in a good space if they caught up to her.
There was only one of her and four of them, and two had split off to circle around.
They knew the forest better than she did. They would trap her against the lake if she kept going in that direction, and then she was done.
If they let her live, she had a very harsh, ugly future ahead of her.
Leave her be. Let her fight her own battles. The humans are not our problem unless the forest is harmed.
They weren’t here to harm the forest, but they were here to harm her.
Getting involved with mortals had nearly lost me my immortality before. It had crushed my heart and drained me of the will to live. For an immortal, not wanting to live was a bad, bad deal.
I wouldn’t get involved with one again. I knew what they did. Humans maimed and destroyed. They killed, inflicted pain.
I’d had more than enough of that. I wasn’t going to get involved.
When the two men waited for her at the edge of the lake, I groaned. The tree I lived in creaked in the wind.
I couldn’t just let her die. These men wanted to hurt her in ways she didn’t deserve.
I shot out my branched hand, and when she ran right by me, I wrapped my fingers around her delicate ankle.
She fell, screaming when she did.
I stepped out of the tree, still in my drus form. There was no time to shift, no time to get her on her feet and tell her everything was okay, that I didn’t want to harm her. The men following behind were on us.
I dragged her through the forest. She clawed the mulch and squirmed to escape, but I had her in a firm grip, and I was much, much stronger than she was.
The cabin wasn’t too far away. I hadn’t been to it in three hundred years. Not since I’d put Ava up there, making sure she was safe.
I stepped through the magic that veiled this part of the forest and finally let go of her. She yelped and scrambled to her feet, making a break for it.
I quickly slipped into my human form. “You’ll run right back into their arms if you go that way,” I said.
She stopped in her tracks and spun around. She breathed hard, lips parted, her bright eyes wide.
“You’re not one of them,” she finally said.
I shook my head. “They won’t find us here. I veiled this part of the forest. You’re safe.”
“What does that mean?” she asked. Her eyes darted around at the trees surrounding us. She was looking for a way out, an escape. She looked like a trapped animal, fear causing her eyes to roll in their sockets.
And yet her beauty shone through it. She was the most exquisite creature I’d ever seen, and I’d been around awhile.
I sighed. She knew nothing of magic, and she wouldn’t be able to figure it out when she was worked up with terror.
“They won’t find us here,” I said. “This part of the forest is… undiscovered. If you keep your mouth shut, we’ll be okay.”
She started to calm down, and I felt the immense fear pull back.
