Bonus: What happened with Benedict and Neara. My co-author told me some of you are wondering what happened in the interim between Neara stumbling into Benedict, then stumbling into Winston. So, here's the chapter explaining it. Enjoy! Also Orson destroying the mountain...and Aetius.LoweFantasy has been hired on as a ghostwriter as well as to work on her webnovel that is going to be adopted by some webnovel publishers, so she has to vouch out of the story. Therefore, I, Tyndali, the co-writer, will be finishing it up! Shay will return with the epilogue! Or, wait...she already has? So impatient.

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Wrapped loosely in a fur cape, Benedict pointed the way to Camel Hump Valley. The wind whipped his clothes and hair around, tangling white threads in his beard.

"Bet you think you look pretty cool up there."

"That's right." He continued pointing.

"Well, you look like an idiot."

"Probably. But a cool idiot."

"Get down so we can get going." She didn't have to be charming around this guy and his hour-long rant about the problem with predators clumping together in cities let her know he wasn't interested in charming her either.

"Fine." He leapt down with all the grace of a cat, his extremely long tail balancing him perfectly. "But just so you know, this isn't going to be one of those 'there was only one fire' stories. I'm just showing you where to go, but you're on your own in between. I'm not feeding a female."

"Like I don't know how to feed myself." She wondered how long it would take to make a fishing basket and whether or not the berries she'd eaten were even in season. Oh well.

"I mean, I was assuming so." He looked her up and down. "I could see why other beastmen would think you're pretty, but you're a little scrawny to me. You wouldn't last a day out here without some male protecting you."

"Try it and see." She really hoped he wouldn't but now her pride was at stake.

"Ha, and miss out on your weight in salt because you're too weak to protect yourself? I don't think so." He kicked a stone from the path and it went sailing. "I just wanted to rub it in how much you'll have to depend on me."

"As a map, maybe, but there's nothing you can do that a map can't do."

"Whatever a map is, I bet I could beat it in a fight."

Neara rolled her eyes and tried scanning the horizon. Wherever they were, she couldn't make out anything that looked like camel humps... although her ability to recognize landmarks led to her frequently losing her car in whatever parking lot she was in. Even though he had a point, she'd rather die than admit it.

"Speaking of fights, you probably might here some loud thumps and screams of agony coming from the bushes. Don't worry your self-absorbed head; it's just me being amazing and protecting you."

"Oh, your boyfriend's coming to visit?"

"Better believe it. He can get, ah, pretty loud." He laughed when Neara shoved past him, face aflame.

The walk consisted of a short jog between trees most of the time as Neara pried almost-dead branches from the trees and tried weaving a fishing basket. It definitely wasn't as good as her City of Beasts one... but she didn't think she'd ever see the City again. Especially if this idiotic Snow Leopard was her only chance at survival. She nuzzled her own shoulder, wishing Orson would feel something and come find her. She thought these sort of manga/anime/whatever things had females getting rescued all the time by handsome and daring men with dark pasts with a secret cupcake interior, dying for a feminine touch to crack them open.

A bird's nest exploded on her head and birds shrieked in every direction, feathers and claws gouging at her face. She coughed and flailed her arms, too stunned to scream. They flew away, leaving a few bits of down gently floating in the remaining breeze. She sighed and gathered the branches up again, ignoring the suspicious chortling from behind a bush. Oh well... in this world, her new real world, men took advantage of women and called it love and the only thing men cared about was how hot you were.

Stretch marks covered her lower stomach and thighs from the multiple pregnancies and if she hadn't exactly wasted away from inconsistent food supply, she'd shifted weight to form some kind of weird blob. How could she be 'skinny' but flabby all over?

"Missed one."

She dodged a thick branch tossed at her head and scowled. "For the last time, it's too big! Size of a finger or smaller!"

"Ah, I thought you meant size of... well, something else."

"Stop it with the sex jokes, Benedict, we get it, you like it 'daily, nightly, and ever-so-rightly', she mocked, putting as much sarcasm into her voice as possible.

"And don't forget it about it."

"Ugh, aren't you supposed to be guarding for vicious ferals or something?"

"Turns out an ugly chick does most of the scaring away for you." He cackled and bolted from the bush right as she threw the branch back at him.

"How am I supposed to be depressed and move through the stages of grief when you're such a pain?"

He didn't answer. Good. She didn't have any more comebacks in her. She kept an eye out for bright patches on the long walk, stopping to gather any berries she found into a hollowed out log she'd stopped up with mud. Heavy, but it was all she had for now. The glacial wind nipped at her arms but failed to raise goosebumps; she'd adjusted to being cold forever.

"Tell me a story." He threw a hunk of gristle at her over the fire one night. He usually joined for a bit before going off by himself again, saying he just wanted to make sure she hadn't died of hunger or something.

She picked at the fish bones between her teeth, spitting them to the side. "What's there to tell?"

"Besides the whole rabbit-abduction thing (very boring, by the way). How did you learn to fish and do all that? Not that I care, since I know everything, but I'm interested in how specifically someone like you managed to do it. Did you have a Snow Leopard father or something?"

"They do it all the time in the merpeople tribe." Might as well keep up the lie.

Benedict snorted and curled his long tail completely around his feet. "Rock spit. Merpeople hunt with spears. I've seen them. Or they use a bubble to trap their prey. Not saying your weaker tribe may have thought of something like that, but aquatic merpeople that live in the sea tend to use spears."

"You mean oceanic?"

"Same difference." He jerked his shoulders back, embarrassed, and looked to the side, ears lazily resting on his thick hair. A hand reached up to scratch his beard.

"When did you go to the ocean? I thought Snow Leopards stayed in the mountains."

"That's... uh, a very good question. Such a good and great question in fact that I need time to think it over. By myself. Over there." He stood up and walked away.

"You can just say you don't want to answer," she yelled after him.

"Yeah? Well maybe I just want to get away from you!"

She knew he didn't mean it; he always came back, bored and lonely.