How Did I Go To the Beast World in My Pajamas?

Chapter 14: I Will Be the One to Eat You

"St. Benjamin!" Samantha exclaimed into his shoulder, "It's awful, they're awful, I'm so glad you're here, I'm so afraid, I don't know what to do, I don't have my medicine to take, the feelings are just too much..." Her breathing was shallow and quick, and she couldn't catch her breath. St. Benjamin froze, entirely at a loss. He had never seen a female, or anyone else, for that matter, behave like this. Not since his youth, when he still lived amongst the others in the Scorpion Tribe. "What are you afraid of?" he asked her, though his voice sounded as if it came from somewhere else entirely. Samantha sniffed, wiping her tears on St. Benjamin's shoulder as she turned her face inward to respond. "These nightmares, I have them sometimes and I can't control when, but they have things from my past in them that get replayed or rewritten to be even worse than they were before, and I can't get rid of them no matter what I do or how hard I try, even though I got away from the people who hurt me it's like they'll follow me everywhere in these dreams," she said quickly, her breathing still wild against St. Benjamin's skin.

"I have them too," he confessed to her slowly. "You do?" she asked quickly, "Why do you have them? I'm so sorry, they're so horrible, I hate that you suffer from them too, nobody should have to go through this-" No matter what St. Benjamin said, it seemed that Samantha could not be calmed. Conflicting feelings of annoyance and pity rose within him; annoyance that he'd had to deal with his own emotions alone and here she was unloading hers all over him. He rarely felt pity, but he did sympathize with what she was going through; her words fit his own feelings almost exactly. So instead of listening to her continue whatever it was she was going to say, he interrupted her, covering her mouth and muttering in her ear, "You want to know about my world? You were right earlier when you said you have no idea what it's like here. Even the others who live here don't know. Let me tell you about the dangers of this world that you so impertinently asked me, of all the beastmen in this world, to warn you about."

Samantha inhaled brokenly through her nose and nodded, her mouth still blocked by St. Benjamin's large hand. Her tears poured onto it, and it caused something inside him to snap, letting the anger he held at all times finally pour out. He wouldn't repress these feelings for the sake of this female for a moment longer. "You obviously have never heard of feral beasts, or you would never get so close to a scorpion in this world. We are by far the most feared of all beastmen, and I'll be happy to tell you why. The love and affection that other males have a chance to feel with their mates? It's not even something we dare to dream about. If we want to reproduce, we are forced to capture females from other tribes because none would dare live with us otherwise. There are no females in the scorpion tribe; because females are born so rarely and are only born one at a time, because they aren't born in their beastman shape like males are, there aren't enough of them. The immense amount of care that the ones who are born require is more than their fathers and brothers will provide. So, the vast majority of them die shortly after their birth, if they even make it that far."

He paused briefly, noticing that Samantha had stopped crying and her breathing had become deeper, though she was obviously still disturbed. 'Is she actually listening to me?,' he thought quickly. She wasn't struggling like he had seen other females do when they were captured by his tribe, but he wasn't willing to dwell on this subject any longer. "Because we have no females of our own," he continued, his voice low and filling with rage, "and we have a well-earned reputation for abducting lone females or even females with mates, no female has ever willingly mated with us. Some of us go mad with longing for the love of a female, but there is nothing we can ever do to earn it; the other races keep their females protected from us, so the only females we encounter are the ones we procure for ourselves. We cannot give them a life in a comfortable home, village, or city; they are brought either to the City of Fire or to a Scorpion Tribe's tunnels. The conditions there are barely livable for us, much less for a weak, delicate female." Samantha was looking up toward St. Benjamin's face now, her eyes wide and her heart beating so quickly and so loudly that it was audible to him just as if she were hitting a drum.