'Shit, they are everywhere!' Kaya despaired. But she knew she only had herself to blame.
The gifts that the ancestors of her tribe left her kind with made it near impossible for any of those despicable humans to catch up to her in the thick vegetation of the ancient forest.
This was even more of the case for the idiots that came into the woods while burdened with all the armor they wore on their backs.
A normal human would never be able to catch any of her kind in this forest, unless…
Unless she made a mistake like standing down and staring at absolutely nothing for a good while, giving her pursuers the chance to surround her and close all the possible escape routes she could take!
"Don't struggle," one of the men ordered, only to then continue with some sort of gibberish talk that Kaya couldn't care less about.
The intensity behind their gazes, the wilderness faintly visible in their moves, even the heat that she could feel coming from their groins…
'I can't let them catch me,' Kaya told herself. 'And if I can't avoid capture…'
A sense of dread filled her feeble body.
She could picture what would happen if those despicable bastards would pin her down.
She was fast, super fast. But the second she would lose the advantage of her mobility, she would be faced with strength that only a selected few of the beast-folk clans could match.
After all, if there was anything humans were good at, it was the finesse of a brutal force!
Kaya lowered her chest even further down, resting both of her hands on the ground, slightly ahead of the top of her head. She squinted her eyes, limiting the amount of information she could get in order to raise the intensity at which she could perceive it.
Her cheeks started to burn with extreme heat. Her entire body warmed up way above its normal state. Her tail ruffled up, ready to act as the counterweight for the movements that would be simply impossible for the humans surrounding her.
Crack.
One of the humans moved.
Kaya remained motionless, focusing her entire attention on reading his moves.
He moved his right hand up, clearly feinting an attack, only to then switch to his left in an attempt to throw the weighted net at her.
Another one of the slavers moved up. This one didn't bother with the feints, putting all his thrust in a quick throw of his own net.
'From the sides, huh?' Kaya thought, her lips involuntarily curving up.
Her body reached the optimal combat temperature. All her muscles were now warmed up.
The sense of excitement filled her to the brim all the way to the point she could feel her crotch turning wet.
'If you want to attack from the sides…' Kaya's thoughts dulled down as the time appeared to slow down around her, 'then I will attack…'
Kaya released all the tension she stored in her legs and hands, leaping forward without even a hint of hesitation. While mid-air, she reached with her right to the side, ready to slash with her fangs at the man blocking her path…
Only to see his face.
And that bastard… was actually smiling!
The man that blocked Kaya's path ahead didn't bother trying to attack her first. Instead, he simply raised his net-bearing hand, getting ready for when she would try to break out of the encirclement.
Still in the air, Kaya desperately sent her gaze around, hoping to find some tree trunk, a branch, or maybe even a bird that she could kick at to change her trajectory…
But the humans planned their trap well. There was nothing for Kaya to grab at or push herself off from. And so, when the man that she hoped to slash with her fangs raised his hand and threw his net right at her face, the girl finally realized it was all over.
The net struck her face, and the thin strands of the rope dug into her delicate skin.
The weights attached to the ends of each specific strand instantly altered her trajectory, pulling her down toward the ground.
Thump.
Kaya heavily struck the ground. The fall pushed all the air out of her lungs, making her gasp to recover it… only for two more nets to instantly fall down on her, robbing her of every last ounce of mobility she hoped to retain.
And as if that wasn't enough, one of those damn bastards instantly threw himself at her stomach, pinning her to the ground with an addition of his own damned weight!
"DIE!" Kaya screamed out, trying to somehow reach the man with her fangs.
But those damned slavers were clearly not new to this kind of job. They didn't give the girl even the hint of a chance.
"I WILL KILL YOU ALL!" Kaya screamed while still gasping for air, struggling to properly breathe with all that weight pinning her down. And while she tried to trash around, to make herself as hard to subdue as possible, her oppressors quickly took control of both of her hands before binding them behind her back.
"AAAGH!" Kaya screamed out in agony when her joints cracked, threatening to give up at any moment or upon even the slightest movement on her end.
Those men were either really good at their job or simply extremely mean!
"Leader, I can have a go, right?" a younger-sounding voice reached Kaya's ears from the back, from the only direction that she didn't bother to check out while she still hoped to fight her way out.
'No…' Kaya thought, perfectly aware of what was going to happen now.
"That's how we commemorate the first hunt of every accepted member," the man at the front who could claim the lion's share of responsibility for taking Kaya down replied.
The man then squatted down right in front of Kaya's face before reaching out and grabbing her by her chin.
"I told you not to struggle," he said in a soft voice, showing no signs of hostility at all as if he was just a guard at the city subduing some relatively innocent troublemakers rather than a damn slaver who made a living by stealing beast-folk freedom. "Was it all necessary?" he then asked with a clear grief in his voice.
"Hold her down for me!" the guy behind Kaya shouted with excitement. Then, Kaya felt fingers press against her lower back only to move down, towards the edge of her short pants…
'No…' she protested in her thoughts.
Tears appeared in Kaya's eyes.
"No… please…" she mumbled through her tears, feeling how this huge hand grabbed her pants and applied downward force, clearly intending to tear them off her ass.
"Hold your horses, fucker," the leader of the group said in a suddenly grim voice.
A momentary noise of steel rubbing against some sort of skin later, the hand grabbing at Kaya's pants moved away after letting go of her the cloth.
"The right to consummate the slave belongs to the members on their first hunt," the leader said again, this time with no one daring to speak while he did. "And as for now, you have yet to become a member."
There was no anger in the man's voice. Being a beastfolk, Kaya could hear it. But what his voice was full of, something that humans couldn't apparently hear, was hostility.
"Thank you…" Kaya muttered, realizing that she, at the very least, wouldn't be violated on the spot. "Thank you…" she whispered, struggling to exert enough energy to use a voice any louder.
"This right belongs to the first-time hunting members of our clan," the leader then said. "And you are not a member yet," he then repeated himself.
Kaya's eyes twitched.
Somehow, she could sense that the situation wasn't as simple as she already started to hope for.
"Briar!" the leader of the clan then called.
Tears streamed down Kaya's eyes like rivers.
"You called, leader?" a new, calm voice entered the scene from an angle Kaya couldn't see.
"Today is your first hunt," the man said before taking a step away from the bound girl. "Do with her as you will."