Aalyan
Overlooking the harvest, making sure all the plants were growing healthily and no insects were feasting on them and weakening their ability to produce food was both a great responsibility... and quite a tedious one.
At least Aalyan could well believe it was so for the Jaguars who normally did it. For him, who’d gone from lying in wait of prey for hours in his native forest to lying in wait of his mate in the cave all day... Walking up and down between the trees where they hid the plants from the bigger plant-eaters was a definite improvement.
It was during one of these walks that he first found his hand drifting to his belly. He’d frozen in place, like he himself had grown roots, eyes not seeing the perimeter, hand trembling over his own body. It’d taken every ounce of strength t
