Chapter Ten
The world returned, slowly but surely. Pip saw the trees and felt the forest floor. The world must’ve always been there. A pine needle poked his hip, and he shifted around to evade it until the Hunter’s arms wrapped around him and held him firmly in place. They were still joined, the Hunter’s cock wedged between Pip’s thighs, neither of them wanting to move. Pip longed for a time they might be bound together even more intimately.
He’d gone ahead and had sex with a man who he barely knew, but who he longed for on the atomic level. Pip didn’t feel guilt, or fear, or shame. Only satisfaction. The Hunter was his, and his alone, and he never wanted it any other way.
The Hunter ran a hand through Pip’s hair like he was a precious thing to be coddled. Pip closed his eyes and relaxed, sleepy following his orgasm. With the Hunter there to protect him, he didn’t need to worry about anything.
The cub nosed Pip’s face, and Pip opened his eyes and smiled. The pup play-nipped at Pip’s hair until the Hunter’s arm parted from around Pip to grab it by the scruff and set it a short distance away. The pup got the message and curled up against the tree stump again.
Pip choked back a laugh.
“He’s from you, right?” Pip asked. “All of it has been. The fish, the pouch, and the dog?”
“Gifts for the one I am sworn to,” the Hunter said. “He will be loyal to you as no other.”
All this time, he’d been right. Pip beamed, and he shifted his hips as the Hunter softened. “Sworn to?”
“There are old customs.” The Hunter spoke quietly, but his words weren't drowned out by the sound of the woods. It seemed as if nature itself respected him. “Old tales. Old flames.”
“What about something new?” Pip asked. He wasn’t old—just old enough to be an adult, really—but he couldn’t imagine life going back to the way it had been. “I mean, if you want that…”
The Hunter chuckled, a heartwarming sound that rolled against the back of Pip’s neck. Pip closed his eyes and relaxed. “There is no need for the new.”
“Why not?”
The Hunter tightened his arms around him. “Once upon a time,” the Hunter said, rolling them over so Pip rested on top, chest to chest, his body keeping Pip protected from the forest floor, “Man feared and revered the forest and the things that lived in it. Once upon a time, Man knew He was not alone and that greater beings than He lived with him in harmony. Beings of tremendous power. Gods. Myths. Legends.”
The Hunter had never spoken so much to Pip. He cherished every word and wondered whether he’d ever hear the Hunter say as much again.
“Man feared these beings as much as he respected them, and he sought to gain their favor and blessing by offering gifts.”
“Like you offered me,” Pip murmured. The corners of his lips turned upward, and he let his finger trail across the Hunter’s strong chest. “Gifts.”
“Yes,” the Hunter said. “To earn your favor.”
Pip blushed. It burned across his cheeks and sank down his neck, and he buried his embarrassment by laying his head on the Hunter’s chest to listen to his heartbeat.
The Hunter looked human, but Pip knew it was nothing more than a thin façade. Vaguely, it became apparent Alex’s grandma hadn’t been far off the mark—if the woods weren’t a weak point between dimensions, they were magical in other ways Pip couldn’t understand.
“There came a time when Man grew fearful, toward the end of His harmonious existence. The gifts he offered became larger, extreme in a way that pleased some, but worried others. Where the veil between worlds was weakest, Man made his sacrifices. Harvests. Animals. Currency. And then, Man himself.”
Pip blinked. “Like, human sacrifices?”
“Yes.” The Hunter ran his fingers through Pip’s hair. “Sometimes their hearts. Sometimes their minds. Sometimes their empty bodies, split open and blood ruby red, like gems.”
A bird sang in the distance, cheerful. The pup yawned and stretched, crinkling the leaves he laid on.
“Like the Aztecs? Or… I don’t know, other indigenous races?” Pip hoped they were talking about something happening a very long time ago. He didn’t want to imagine his neighbors doing something like this. Also, he wasn’t sure how their conversation had taken such a dark turn.
“Yes.” The Hunter spoke slowly, each word chosen with the same amount of care he extended toward Pip’s body. “Lives lost. Destroyed. Man purged himself in order to gain favor, but only succeeded in attracting the wrong attention. Evil. Corruption. Disease. Despair. They called to me, and others like me, with words—then, through their actions, they attracted those greater beings who brought them down the path of destruction.”
Pip didn’t know what to say. He closed his eyes and listened to the Hunter’s story, at peace. No matter the evils summoned in history, he felt safe now, in the Hunter’s arms.
“For years, we watched. Waited. Hoped. The change did not come. Man slew himself, both with his knife and with his actions. There was nothing to be done.”
The pup got up and crept closer to them, but the Hunter waved a hand at him, and he jumped back and circled around the stump, peeping out to plot his next move.
“Then, one day, I watched a young man being bound in preparation for the sacrifice. Lean and boyish, with wide eyes and a laugh that had once stirred the hearts of any who heard it. The laugh was stolen from him on that day. Shackled, he was carried as he wept to the spot where his life would be stolen. As I watched, he was cut open. As he screamed and wept and begged, and in the last seconds of his life, his eyes turned to me and bore into mine, through the worlds, only to soften and grow dull as he died.”
Horrified by such a story, Pip lifted his head, which swam with confusion. What was the point of the Hunter’s story? He’d been asking why the new wasn’t necessary, and it had been meant as idle chatter. This sad tale had jumped way off the mark.
“As the boy’s soul passed between worlds, seeking out its final resting place, I reached out for it. I took it. I made it mine. Marked it. And when Man left his body to the destructive forces, I arrived there first and pieced him back together. His heart. His mind. The red-ruby blood that spilled from his torso completed with his soul. And when he was done, his eyes bore my mark, and his body belonged to me. I guided him back with me to the space in-between, and through the centuries we were lovers. I adored him as no other, and he adored me with equal passion. We were one.”
Now it started to make sense. Pip’s chest tightened, and he fought back the tears. The Hunter didn’t want something new, nor someone new. Why did the Hunter tell him about his timeless lover after what they’d just shared? If he so loved another, why did he court Pip’s favor? Pip didn’t want to be the other man, and he certainly didn’t want to share. His heart felt too fragile.
“We watched as the world changed. But he was of Man, and his wishes and needs were mortal. There were times when he would leave our shared space in-between to venture among those who’d betrayed him. His heart was so full for them. Even after they’d stolen his life, he wished to be around them, if only from time to time. For hundreds of years, he’d wander from my side to venture out. Eventually, he’d come back more full of love and light and happiness. Until one day, he never came home.” The sadness in his voice and on his face as the Hunter told this sorrowful story touched Pip profoundly. The strength of his love and the power of his loss were both palpable.
Pip slid off the Hunter’s body and dressed in silence, his clothes piled in a heap at their side. His heart ached for the Hunter, but at the same time, it twisted with bitter jealousy. The thought of the Hunter so in love with another man was more than Pip could take. As only a teenager, Pip may have been inexperienced in these matters; nevertheless, he couldn’t be the hollow substitute for the Hunter’s one true love. And yet, once dressed, he sat on the floor beside the Hunter, ready to hear more.
“Man, ruthless and terrified of what it couldn’t understand, took him. Man took him from me. By the time I found him, his skin was sallow, and his eyes were lifeless and dull. No longer did he see, or feel, or breathe. No longer was the soul I rescued and marked as mine still in his body. It had gone. To where, I couldn’t tell. I searched without finding. It had gone and left me alone.”
The hairs on the back of Pip’s neck stood on end as he despaired in reaction to the Hunter’s explanation of his long-lost love. Anger tightened his shoulders and pinched along his spine. Just as he felt sorrow and compassion in response to the tale, he also felt words he didn’t want to apply to himself. Not just angry, but used and cheapened and soiled. Was that what this was, then? Was that what he amounted to? The Hunter mourned a lover by finding and seducing easy replacements.
“So now, I come to you,” the Hunter said. “There is no need for the new.”
“No, there isn’t.” Pip climbed to his feet. He expected more to this story, and couldn't believe it ended there. He looked down at the handsome, otherworldly man who still lay on the pine needles. “There really isn’t.” Not if Pip was a disposable fuck to him, someone who resembled somebody he used to know who could temporarily plug the hole in his heart.
The pup made a howling, snapping noise as it bound after Pip. Pip stormed from the area. Clinging to his anger was the only way he could keep himself from bursting into tears. Pain pierced his chest and wrenched in his gut. The Hunter had used him, strung him along, and toyed with his emotions, all for the sake of sex. A quick, easy lay. Pip felt sick, physically nauseous.
What they’d shared might not have meant much to the Hunter, but it had meant the world to Pip, and he knew his life would never be the same. There was no coming back from something like that.
The Hunter hadn’t claimed he was a god, but Pip didn’t doubt it for a second. He’d partnered with divinity, and now no other man would compare.
He was Pip’s first lover, first kiss. Everything.
Pip didn’t think he could ever be happy again.
“Pip!” the Hunter called, but Pip didn’t look back.
He should’ve known better than to believe he could be special enough to attract anything more than the momentary attention of a man like the Hunter, let alone a magical God of the Forest.
Why would he want Pip as anything other than a plaything?
The tug at his soul returned as he fled, desperate, but he ignored it as best he could.
He’d lived with it all his life, after all.