Gentle Beast

Inside the room, the girl’s complexion was pale and her eyes wet. Unable to speak, her pearly white teeth bit her lower lip.

Holden’s body was slanted back into the darkness of night, and behind him flames gathered.

Green eyes unobtrusively cast over the girl, then turned to find the leopard she hid behind her. After a short while, his gaze once more fell to the girl and he casually whistled, “Look. Sure enough, they’re here.”

Animals have a keen sense of smell, especially wolves and leopards.

Although Jǐ Xiǎo Ōu deliberately used spices to disguise the “estrus” scent of her body and the other wolves couldn’t smell it, Holden, as the patriarch, had an even more sensitive sense of smell and naturally she could not escape his nose.

And from the moment he landed, Ryan had also picked up on this scent.

Only now that he was smaller and not yet “adult”, he did not have as large a response to it as Holden.

Watching Holden’s long legs walked towards her, Jǐ Xiǎo Ōu quickly picked up the leopard and retreated toward the wall.

Her eyes wide open and pink lips finally cooperated, throwing out a sentence, “Don’t come!”

However, her final syllable trembled, it had no power to threaten.

Of course, even if she was full of confidence, it was not worth mentioning before Holden.

As mentioned before, the beastmen were generally very tall. Because Holden was able to become the patriarch, he had to be the strongest of his race.

Jǐ Xiǎo Ōu’s height barely touched 160cm. As a human woman, that was not considered short, actually rather medium, but when the man standing before her reached nearly two meters, she was suddenly comparable to a dwarf.

A female dwarf without the strength to truss a chicken.

Holden’s mouth crooked up into a smile, appearing to appreciate the girl’s flinching and wandering gaze.

He maliciously bent down, placing his human-like face close to Jǐ Xiǎo Ōu’s cheeks, and slowly sniffed her neck.

A choking scent hindered his sense of smell and he frowned in dissatisfaction. Opening his eyes, he looked at her waist and stretched out his long arm.

The next second, Jǐ Xiǎo Ōu felt it on her waist and saw him easily pull the homemade little sachet, throwing it out the window.

Thereupon, the sweet fragrance covered by the sachet was again dispersed, uncontrollably her surroundings.

The wolf guarding the door smelled that scent and his eyes suddenly bust into faint green light, watering at the mouth as he stared at the source of that aroma——

A girl trapped in the corner by their patriarch.

The girl had human hair, and the scent of her estrus was different from the wolf females, one that could not be said to be alluring.

Although the usual scent of receptivity was pleasant, it did not not make them lose control. But this one, now, made them desperate to possess her, mark her, imprison her.

This fragrance, even Ryan could not ignore.

It was just that Ryan had a body that was underage, so he was calmer than any of them.

Most of the races only had sex with their own females, but due to fewer and fewer females, there were a few examples of interracial mating.

Although intercrossing with other races would produce offspring, it was with great uncertainty.

They were either born strong and with powerful bodies.

Or they were congenitally deficient and ultimately eliminated by nature.

Other than as a last resort, it was improbable for there to be any race that approved of it.

After all, once born, the child was neither fish nor fowl, neither belonging to the mother nor the father, a “hybrid species”.

Jǐ Xiǎo Ōu was obviously not of the wolf race.

Holden also realized this, but he was not willing to let go of such a sweet female. Pondering for a moment, he told the clansmen behind him, “Put her in the observation room and bring her back to the race.”

Jǐ Xiǎo Ōu’s mind raced with panic, wishing she could melt her entire body into the wall.

She still remembered what Eric had said. There were very few females here, and one female needed to mate with several males. . .

She didn’t want to have children with wolves!

Not to mention. . . there were a lot of them.

Jǐ Xiǎo Ōu held a hand behind her back, looking on helplessly as two beastmen came toward her. Biting her lip, she she prepared to make a counterattack, letting her arm slacken as a shadow flashed out from her front, rushing straight for Holden.

Ryan’s eyes were cold as he floated forward, his front paw raising to claw.

Jǐ Xiǎo Ōu did not see how he did it, but she saw three clear and sharp scars open on Holden’s face.

Holden suffered the pain and reached to clamp a hand around Ryan’s neck, eyes cold and palm tightening around his throat, “Damn, leopard. . .”

Ryan’s claws clung to the back of his hands, his hind leg dangling in mid-air, and he opened his mouth to pierce flesh with his sharp teeth.

The leopard’s teeth were not only sharp but also long, almost penetrating Holden’s palm.

Holden took a deep breath and threw him off.

Ryan’s body hit the wall with a thud and he fell heavily to the ground.

The wounds on his body were not good. The crack in his back leg was open, the bandages were loose, and it exposed the bloody flesh inside.

He lay there motionless, as if he were dead.

Jǐ Xiǎo Ōu’s lips opened and closed in astonishment.

Did he just try to save her?

Counting this, he had saved her twice.

But she had done nothing for it. The first time, they had only just met and she handled his many wounds.

Why would he do that?

Scarcely would anyone realize, but Ryan really was trying to save her.

Only this act had some purpose.

The time he had spent alone on board the wolf boat let him realize that this young body simply could not continue.

Only with her successful journey to the eastern part of the mainland, to finding Pat, could he perhaps restore his original body.

Holden walked toward Ryan step by step, reaching out with sharp claws pointed to his abdomen, ready to empty his chest in one swipe.

He held his hand high, but it did not fall.

“Zzz——zzz, zzz——”

The sharp sound of electricity sounded.

Holden felt his body go half numb after a stab of pain and he stared at Jǐ Xiǎo Ōu with amazement.

The originally trapped between two wolves Jǐ Xiǎo Ōu had them both fallen at her feet, their hands and legs twitching in unconsciousness.

Holden looked down to see a small cylinder pressed against his waist, the front appeared to have two teeth, light blue rays converging between them. That “Zzz” was issued from there.

Further up, a pair of slender fingers, clenched tight enough to turn white.

Jǐ Xiǎo Ōu tightly held the stun baton and saw he was still awake. Clenching her teeth, she turned it to maximum intensity and pressed even harder against his side.

Holden only felt a nip at his waist and the scene before him flashed in a blur, one knee falling to the ground.

*

Jǐ Xiǎo Ōu quickly picked up the small leopard and ruched outside of the room.

The beastmen outside were already stunned by her move. A female in estrus could actually knock down the strongest patriarch of their clan and was unharmed?!

Due to shock, none of them dared to stop her.

The laws in the animal world were both complex and simple. They only obey the strong, and Jǐ Xiǎo Ōu had knocked down their leader. She held a seemingly very powerful weapon, and until Holden woke up, no one dared to act rashly.

Jǐ Xiǎo Ōu made it all the way to the deck unobstructed, but the water underneath was rushing fast and they were floating down the rapid river alongside melting ice shards.

By then, the ship had sailed into the middle of the river and if she jumped, she would have frozen solid before swimming to shore.

Not to mention she was holding the injured cub in her arms. His wounds were too deep and she could not see into the water at all. If he was tossed again, she didn’t know if he would recover.

Jǐ Xiǎo Ōu turned back and looked at the clustered wolves standing on the deck.

They all stared at her, and except for diving, she had no way to escape from under their noses.

She could use the taser, but the electricity was limited, and she could not stun so many people at once.

Jǐ Xiǎo Ōu had no room to advance or retreat, and with the beastman standing opposite her at the same time, her brain rapidly turned over trying to think of ways to escape.

Just then, the hull violently shook a bit and she hugged the side so she did not fall.

Many of the wolves on board were,  to expectation, thrown to the ground.

They all complained into the bow——

“How do you steer, Vlad?”

“Can’t sail a boat?”

“Going to throw you into the water again!”

Vlad was the fist wolf Jǐ Xiǎo Ōu had seen when she got on the boat. But with people complaining at him, his face was filled with grievances, “Fog up ahead. I can’t tell where the reef is in front. If we don’t get out without touching the reef, we’ll die here.”

Though they were both terrestrial animals, leopards could swim well in the water, but the wolf race could not.

Hearing Vlad’s words, most of the wolves on board turned pallid with panic.

Reef hitting the bottom of the ship was not a joke. When the hull splits, everyone on the ship would be buried underwater.

The beastmen rushed to speak at once:

“Is there no other way?”

“When will the fog disappear?”

“You can’t even solve this problem, what good is your helm!?”

No matter what the clansmen said, Vlad was still at a loss.

Usually he relied on the shore to identify direction, but now they were surrounded by water fog and there did not seem to be any difference.

However, he remembered that the ship was heading straight for a rocky reef and the ship was going to strike into it.

Holden had already woken up. The stun baton was strong, but his body was strong and he had the strongest ability to fight in his race, he wasn’t comatose for long.

But, the other two wolves were still not awake.

Holden listened to the report of his clansmen and his brows furrowed, his expression heavy.

He rubbed his temples, trying to ease the effects of the electrical shock, but his mind was still somewhat dull. He walked out of the room and saw the wolf race on the deck were rattled, and for the time being no one was attending to the girl in the corner.

Holden looked sharply at Jǐ Xiǎo Ōu with one eye, then immediately shifted his gaze to his race, “Calm down!”

The wolf clansmen saw that their patriarch had woken up and felt a little more at ease.

However, in the next moment, the ship once again shook violently and the left side tilted to the right, the sound of confusion and chaos growing bigger now.

The beastmen couldn’t calm down this time.

Holden’s headache grew even more severe. He knows the severity of sailing through the reef and he could not think of a solution.

“Hey. . .”

A tiny voice sounded from the side.

Holden looked back and saw the delicate little girl standing just a few steps away from him, blinking her eyes at him.

Holden growled in his throat and asked angrily, “What?”

Jǐ Xiǎo Ōu bit her lip, “If I had a way to get you through the reef, would you send us back to shore?”