The adrenaline hit my system faster than a lightning strike, raising my heart rate to something close to a hummingbird’s and making everything around me feel like it had taken on HD clarity.

When I was halfway between the gator and Kappa, Conrad and Kappa looked up. They both saw the gator.

The thing was a monster. Only its eyes, its snout, and a few ridges along its back were visible, but that was all you needed to see. If you’d asked me, I’d have told you it was fifty feet long, but it was probably closer to ten. Either way, Kappa wouldn’t even be a meal for it—he’d be a snack.

Kappa whirled around. Faster than I could believe, he blitzed out of the water toward the high ground near the cypress, seamlessly shifting from a swimming stroke, to a four-legged run, to a leap. He hit the trunk of the nearest oak tree already climbing. He scrabbled, jumped—sometimes it looked like he simply ran—up the bark. He was eight feet up and well out of reach by the time I arrived at the place in the water where he’d been.

My brain, lacking the time necessary for a full lecture, still took a moment to call me an idiot.

Kappa didn’t have any problems moving around in a swamp. If I had called out a warning, he would’ve been out of the way in two seconds flat. But no. I decided to lunge between him and the alligator, offering myself up as slow-moving, water-logged bait.

I heard a loud noise—something between the rev of a hellish engine and a hiss. It was coming from the gator, and deep in my hind brain, I knew that I had managed to piss it off.

That was problematic. Especially considering it was less than two feet away from me.

An agonizing terror reached into every cell of my body and clenched. I stood there, not breathing, eyes wide, nearly torn apart by my instinct to flee and my inability to move.

I hope they pretend it was the gator that got me. Not my own stupidity.

Conrad rushed in from the side as the alligator opened its jaws. He scooped both arms under the gator’s head and tossed the monster up and away from him. It thrashed, midair, in a series of explosive jerks. Its tail whipped around with enough power to snap a person in two.

“Run!” Conrad yelled at me.

Thank god, my body knew enough to listen to the wolfman. I turned toward the high ground and ran as fast as I could. My frantic movements caused the mud beneath my feet to shift and give way, costing me inches with each step.

The gator didn’t like Conrad. It came up on my right side to avoid him. I could feel the movement in the water as it approached.

I threw my body forward, trying to make up for the fact half of every step was a slide back. Chest deep in the water, lungs straining for each shallow gasp of air, I felt my heart sink. I would never make it. I was too slow.

Conrad’s arm went over my back and around my waist. He stood up straight, heaving me out of the swamp and pulling me behind him. In his other hand, he had the ghillie suit. He threw it at the alligator’s face, resulting in another round of hissing and thrashing that tore up the water.

Still tucked under Conrad’s arm, like so much dripping baggage, I only had a second to watch the gator struggle before Conrad hauled me up with his other arm so we were nose to nose.

“Emerra.”

My panic-dilated pupils locked on him. I took in my wolfman’s face, his pale-yellow eyes. There was a deadly earnest there I’d never seen before. This was a guardian in full-guardian mode.

When he saw I was looking him in the eyes, he gave me my one-word command: “Catch.”

Oh, I was going to catch. There would be so much catching. All the catch!

Catch what?

Conrad shifted his weight, then he threw me—threw me, over-arm, as if I was a limbed baseball—high into the tree where Kappa was standing, screeching at the gator.

I hit the branch below Kappa across my chest and stomach with an impact that made the tree sway. My arms rag-dolled around it, one on top, the other below, and I clutched at the thing. I managed to hold on, but the momentum caused my legs and hip to swing under the branch. I grunted and clung harder. I couldn’t tell if the blinding ache in my arms was because of the fierce, willful contraction of my muscles or the weight of my body dragging against them, but it was bad enough to make me scream.

My eyes had involuntarily shut when I clenched my body. Tears clung to the outside edges of my lashes.

Two small wet hands grabbed my arm.

I opened my eyes.

Kappa was there, straining to hold onto me. Below me, I could hear the splash of water, and the ominous sound of the gator hissing.

With two people working so hard to keep me alive, I decided it was time for me to do something.

I tried to take a deep breath, but I was clinging too hard to the branch for my lungs to fully expand.

With only a half-lung of air, but full of determination, I let go of the branch with the arm I had wrapped under it. I slapped my free hand up beside my other hand and let my weight drag me down until I was hanging on the branch.

Geez, did my palms hurt.

“Mera!” Kappa squawked.

“It’s okay!” I yelled.

I walked my hands along the branch toward the trunk. There was another thick branch below me. If I could get my feet on it, I could rest.

All I could get was a toe-hold, balanced slightly behind me, but that, combined with a desperate switch from hanging onto the limb to hugging the trunk, and I’d made it.

Kappa jumped down to join me. His weight made the branch shiver. I tried not to whimper.

With lots of forcing myself to release my grip, only to convulsively grip the trunk again a moment later, I sat down on the branch and turned to watch Conrad.

He was beside the alligator. When it jerked its head around to snap at him, Conrad front-kicked the gator on the side of its stomach. Its body swung around as it was pushed back. It landed facing Conrad—its jaws roughly a foot away from him.

If I’d been that gator, I would’ve taken my broken ribs and slunk away without so much as another hiss. But maybe it was a boy gator, and we were in his territory. With it being mating season and all, he couldn’t stand the idea of being shown up in front of the lady gators. Or maybe it was outraged by the idea that there was something in the swamp that was as strong as it was. For whatever reason, it chose to ignore the wise and honorable road of retreat, and it lunged at Conrad again.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Conrad swept his left hand under the gator’s open jaw, pushed it aside, stepped through, and slammed his right fist down on the gator’s eye. There was a hideous crack, and the gator’s head was shoved under the water.

I couldn’t help feeling proud. That was my packmate, punching the attitude out of a ten-foot alligator.

When Conrad lifted his fist, the gator’s head bobbed back up, but it had learned its lesson. It turned around and darted away, leaving a v-pattern of ripples in its humble and urgent escape.

Before I could let out the nerve-ridden whoop of joy that was building in my chest, someone else cheered.

“That was amazing!”

Conrad must have still been on edge. He whipped around—ears forward, lip lifted, nose wrinkled, baring his teeth with a loud snarl—to face whoever was coming up behind him.

It was a thin, pale young man in his early twenties with unkempt brown hair, large ears, a bulbed nose, and large lips. The description might not sound complimenting, but it worked for him. All the roundness and generous features gave him a cute look, like you might imagine on a five-foot-ten, clean-shaven leprechaun. He was wearing a long-sleeved shirt and using electric-banana-yellow suspenders to hold up his waist-high, waterproof waders.

The sight of Conrad towering over him, teeth-bared, made him stop. A tense second passed.

Conrad relaxed with a sigh and put a hand to his face.

The young man sloshed forward another tremulous step. I mentally applauded his bravery.

He said, “Are—are you…b-by any chance, with…Emerra Cole?”

Before Conrad had a chance to answer, I called out from my perch. “Yo! Buddy!”

The man looked around the swamp.

“No! Up here!”

He raised his eyes. From the way they widened, you’d think it was his first time seeing a bald girl sitting in a tree next to a bog-monster.

I pointed at him. “Where can I get a pair of those snazzy pants?”

At first all he did was stare at me. Then, slowly, a bright smile broke over his face.

“Are you Emerra Cole?” he cried.

“That’s me! The cutie beside me, trying to pretend he’s a part of the tree, is Kappa. The gentleman who impressed you with his fighting skills—and rightly so—is Conrad Bauer.”

The guy nodded to Conrad before looking back up at me. “Are you guys all right? We have a first-aid kit back at the base, but depending on how bad you’re hurt, it might be faster to go back to town.”

Some people didn’t have any manners. I blamed a lax upbringing. He probably didn’t have an Igor and Darius around to nag him.

“Can I ask your name?” I yelled down.

“Oh. Sorry. I’m Brodie. Brodie Kohler. I came to find you.”

“Why?” Conrad said.

Brodie flinched back when he heard Conrad speak, but he hid it less than a second later. His gaze moved from Conrad, to me, back to Conrad—which was quite a way to travel.

“You’re here to help us with the lurkers, aren’t you?” he said.

“Are you with Mayor Gladwyn?” Conrad asked.

Brodie’s mouth moved up and down, like a fish in slow motion, without him saying anything. Then he settled on, “I guess?” He added, with less hesitation, “I work for Ayla Davids. She’s the Torr-appointed scholar studying the lurkers.”

I snapped my fingers and pointed at him. “That’s where I’ve heard your name before. You’re the Kohler boy who called and had Vance pick us up.”

Even from a distance, I could see the red seep into Brodie’s cheeks. He looked down. “Uh, yes.”

Conrad said, “Your accent. Are you a local?”

“I am.”

Conrad hummed, then went quiet.

That only meant that either he’d run out of questions or his shyness had caught up to him, but I knew that any silence coming from a six-foot-nine wolfman could seem menacing. Probably more so if you’d just seen him beat the snot out of an alligator.

I didn’t want Brodie to think we were unfriendly, so I spoke up. “If you were coming to get us, does that mean that there’s somewhere we’re supposed to be?”

“If you’d like,” Brodie called. “I-I mean, if you don’t mind, I can take you to Ayla.”

Conrad and I looked at each other.

Brodie saw it and asked, “Is that all right?”

Conrad took mercy on the boy. “That’ll be fine.”

The wolfman turned to the tree that I’d begun to think of as our tree. Mine and Kappa’s. Ownership by occupation.

“Kappa,” he called, “it’s time to go.”

Kappa glanced at me.

“I’ll be fine,” I lied. “You go on.”

Kappa jumped from branch to branch, head-first and losing altitude with each hop. My stomach twisted a smidge more every moment he was airborne. When he was in the lowest branches, he yelled Conrad’s name as he made a superman leap toward the wolfman.

Conrad caught him and hoisted him to his shoulder using one arm. The movement was so smooth, you could tell they’d done it at least a dozen times before.

Ugh. He makes that look easy.

When I looked for a foothold in the branches below me, the distance to the ground telescoped away. In an effort to look anywhere other than down, I turned my eyes to Conrad. He was watching me. So was Kappa. So was Brodie.

Oh, geez.

I looked around to see if someone had left a handy ladder in the middle of a private swamp. No luck.

“Do I have to tell you it’s time to go?” Conrad asked.

“I didn’t expect to be up here, all right!” I yelled. “I have to figure out how to get down.”

“You can’t climb down?”

My stomach tightened again, screwing itself around the knot that appeared there.

Conrad sighed. No doubt he could smell my anxiety from there. “Do you want to jump?”

“You honestly think that’ll be less scary?”

“Mera, Kappa’s already down here, waiting for you. He wasn’t afraid.”

I raised an indignant finger and circled it near my head. “First of all—don’t try to bait me by comparing my courage to Kappa’s. I’m not a toddler, and I’m well aware that I don’t have any. Second, Kappa was made for this place! Did you see him climb this stupid tree? He looked like some kind of super-charged gecko-frog hybrid! Whereas I am a perfectly innocent human that was thrown up here without any preparation!”

“I had to get you out of the way while I was fighting the alligator!”

“And don’t think I’m not grateful! Actually, I like it here. Noticeably fewer alligators.”

“The gator is gone, Mera.”

“That gator probably moved to another state,” Brodie added.

Conrad should’ve known better; there was no point trying to reason with me. I was beyond anything resembling logic. The combined terror of dealing with the alligator and finding myself a million miles up in a tree had tapped into my deeply buried—but extensive—well of contrariness.

I raised my voice: “What if he’s got a vengeful older brother?”

Conrad crossed his arms. “Snakes can climb trees.”

A bird call sounded in the short silence.

“Is that true?” I asked Brodie.

He made a hapless face and nodded.

I grunted and put my fingertips to my forehead. “This state is the worst.”

The climb down was difficult. It included lots of whimpering, moping, supportive comments followed by cynical replies, attempts at bribery followed by sarcastic replies, and more moping.

This was all me, by the way, talking to myself.

Conrad, Brodie, and Kappa merely watched. Since I had my face pressed up against the tree trunk most of the time, I couldn’t see it, but I was pretty sure the wolfman would be hiding an amused smile.

At least Kappa was worried about me. I know because I heard one of his chirrups, and Conrad said, “It’s all right. She’s just a scaredy-cat.”

I yelled down, “If I fall and break every bone in my body, you have to haul my limp corpse out of this swamp, Mr. Bauer!”

“Got it,” he yelled back.

I was still whimpering when I felt Conrad’s huge, welcome hands grab me under the arms, lift me away from the tree, and place me gently on the ground.

When I turned to face him, I discovered I was wrong about the smile. He wasn’t trying to hide it.

“Any broken bones?” he asked.

“No,” I grumbled.

“Did the gator get you at all? Are you hurt?”

My chest, arms, and hands were all aching, but considering everything that could’ve happened, I didn’t think it was worth mentioning.

“No. Thank you, Conrad.”

He put his hand on my head. The last of my fear drifted away when I felt the soft brush of the fur that stuck out from between the pads of his fingers.

“Good,” he said.

Kappa insisted on inspecting me to make sure I didn’t have any gushing wounds that I’d failed to notice. Once he was satisfied that I wasn’t about to die, he agreed to ride on Conrad’s shoulders while Brodie led us through the swamp. I was relieved, but I kept it to myself. I didn’t want Kappa thinking that I didn’t trust him to be on his own in the swamp—it was the gators I didn’t trust.

We only made it a few yards before I remembered the mysterious plastic box.

“Can you guys give me a second?” I called.

The others stopped. I slogged back to the hollow cypress, found the black box floating, almost hidden, in the deepest part of the tree’s shadow, and picked it up. As I did, I glimpsed two small white specks reflecting off twin black bubbles that were hovering on the surface of the water in the shadow of another tree.

I looked behind me.

Kappa was still perched on Conrad’s shoulders, watching me, his huge black eyes brimming with concern. Apparently, he trusted me out in the swamp almost as much as I trusted him.

“You okay?” Conrad asked.

I looked back around. The two black bubbles were gone.

“Yeah,” I said. My eyes lingered on the water for another second, then I went to join my friends. “Yeah. I’m coming!”