Chapter 260: Guess Which Tribe

Tera held the portal open while Xavi stepped through first, Ermin right behind him.

She was about to follow when she stopped, turned around, and walked straight back to Calis.

He blinked at her. "Did you forget something?"

"Yes."

She grabbed his face and kissed him.

When she pulled back, Calis had the expression of a wolf who had been struck by lightning and was already planning to stand in the same spot during the next storm.

[Calis’ Favourability: 98% → 99%]

Behind him, the pack lost it, along with her clan members who were staying behind.

Every male in range found something urgent to look at. One of them had crouched down to examine a bamboo pole with the intensity of a beast who had never before encountered bamboo and needed to understand it immediately.

An older male clapped a hand over the eyes of the wolf standing next to him.

"You’re too young."

"I’m twenty-two."

"You’re too young."

Tera looked around, momentarily stunned.

"What’s wrong with you all?"

Then she realised that she hadn’t actually kissed Calis in front of them like this before.

Calis’ tail whipped, and he instantly restrained himself when he realised he was doing this in front of everyone. He shot a sharp look around, and everyone turned away again, but the females smiled mischievously.

’Oh, dear.’

Calis smiled gently at Tera.

She returned the smile. "I’ll see you—"

Calis wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her flush against him, the rest of her sentence dying in her throat as he kissed her.

His mouth came down on hers hard enough that her head tipped back under it. His tongue slid past her lips and into her mouth like he had been thinking about it all morning and had finally run out of patience. Tera’s whole body jolted as his other hand crept up to cradle the back of her neck.

{BeastWorldAddict blushes}

{PervyGoddess fans herself aggressively}

The wolves’ eyes bulged out of their sockets, and a lot of them, especially the females felt like they were interrupting something.

Tera heard herself make a noise in his mouth and felt it hit him.

Her hands were in his hair as Calis licked deeper into her mouth.

Tera soon found that she couldn’t breathe. Everything had narrowed down to his mouth and his tongue and tingles building low in her stomach.

That tingling was turning into something with a direction, and if she let it get there, she was never getting through that portal.

Calis broke the kiss and planted a brief one on her cheek.

’Oh... wow...’

Tera felt a little winded. She was just leaving for a few hours. Was he going to miss her that much?

Calis set her down like it cost him something, his hand lingering at her waist as he stared down at her with a shy smile.

Tera was trying hard to remember what she had been about to say.

"Soon." He nodded.

Her lips were still buzzing when she turned around and stepped through the portal.

[Visual representation of what just happened]

[(?? ? 3?)?(? ε???)]

’Hey!’

[???(?>?<?)???]

Tera pouted, finding herself missing Calis as the portal closed behind her.

She, two of her mates, and a few of her clan members had returned to their territory to check in with the rest of the clan, while the others had chosen to stay behind and mingle with the wolves.

Tera’s thoughts about the sultry kiss evaporated as she walked straight into chaos.

Her remaining clan members had Xavi and Ermin surrounded.

Not in a welcome-back way. In a way that suggested both of her mates had been standing there a while and had privately given up on leaving.

Everyone was talking all at the same time.

"—came out of the sky—"

"—that is where birds come from—"

"—I know where birds come from, I am SAYING—"

"—he landed on the farm—"

"No, he did not!"

"—he landed on the farm first and THEN the roof—"

"Does it matter where he landed?!"

"It matters where he landed!"

"—he smelled wrong. Tell them he smelled wrong—"

"THAT IS NOT IMPORTANT!"

Xavi stood in the middle of it with his arms crossed and a muscle jumping in his jaw. One beast was speaking into his left ear. Another was speaking into his right ear. A third, unable to get near either ear, had settled for addressing his chest.

Ermin had it worse. One of the females had both hands clamped around his forearm and was shaking it for emphasis with every word. Ermin was looking down at those hands with the flat, patient attention of a snake deciding where to begin.

Every few seconds he tried to slide sideways out of the circle. Every few seconds someone shifted and closed the gap without noticing he was there.

The clan members who had come through the portal with Tera stopped dead beside her.

"What is happening?" one of them whispered.

"I don’t know."

’Truly, what the fuck is happening?!’

It had been a long time since she had seen her clan members this activated. Tera paused when she noticed one of the females flapping her arms, and another pointed at the sky, then the ground, and back at the sky again.

Tera then felt a slow thrill of excitement, and understood why they were behaving that way.

Were they saying they had seen birds?

The old Tera hadn’t seen birds in her entire life, and those nearly extinct creatures likely coming back meant the ecosystem was healing further.

[Would you like this system to translate?]

[(?_?;)]

’Can you?’

[No]

[╮(╯_╰)╭]

’Alright. That is enough!’

Tera shook her head and stepped forward, about to alert everyone when she heard a word through the noise.

"—Jackdaw—"

She went still.

’Hold on a second...’

Tera had a bad feeling about this.

"HEY!"

Everyone stopped and turned towards her.

"Why are you all so agitated?" She rushed towards them. "Only one of you should talk. What happened?"

They looked at each other.

Then every single one of them started talking again.

"ONE. AT. A. TIME."

Silence.

Yara stepped forward and told Tera and her mates what had happened.

Tera stood there, stunned.

The Jackdaw tribe were coming here.

Of all the places in this entire beast world, of all the territories and mountains and forests and rivers, they had to come HERE?

She was awestruck, and underneath that was a creeping wave of embarrassment as their descriptions now made sense. They had been trying to describe Tervo, and she most definitely didn’t want to see his face.

If she had the old Tera in front of her, she would slap her back and forth forty times.

Tervo was a handsome male who Tera had been genuinely interested in when she was a teenager. And she had begged him to be her mate.

On her knees.out

The memory of it sat in Tera’s head like something she had stepped in and couldn’t scrape off her shoe.

She was beyond irritated.

[Hehehehe]

[This system had to pull up a memory backlog on this character due to Host’s reaction]

[And this system must say...]

[???(??????)?]

[Would Host like this system to replay the memory?]

[This system now has it archived!]

[( ?? ? ?? )]

Tera’s head whipped towards the system. ’NO. THE FUCK?!’

[You were on both knees—]

’THAT WAS NOT ME!’

[(???)]

{BeastWorldAddict tells system to stop bullying Tera}

{PervyGoddess tells BeastWorldAddict that system deserves to be bullied instead}

[( ’’?°ヮ°? )]

’Thank you, o sweet Pervy Goddess!’

Tera’s mind raced.

What could possibly have brought them here? She could already feel her head starting to ache. More hands to carry out her work would be fine, but she’d be damned before she had those people around.

And from the way Tervo had even reacted, they were still the same.

[The last storm must have decimated them so badly that they had to change locations]

[(⊙_⊙)]

’Holy shit.’

That was true.

With how intense it must have been here, it would have been far worse in that region.

Then again, even without the storm, they might have still had to move eventually. Their land had been getting harder to live on. Finding anything in that barren wasteland was difficult, and their resources had slowly been dwindling the last time she was there.

But still.

You don’t just fly into someone else’s territory, insult them to their faces, and then tell them you’re moving in. That’s not how asking for help works. That was not how anything worked!

She looked at her mates.

Xavi’s jaw was tight. He was angry, and he wasn’t trying very hard to hide it. Every time someone repeated what Tervo had said, his eyes got a little darker.

Ermin was worse, in a quieter way. He looked uncomfortable with a mix of annoyance, especially when Tervo’s name had come up.

"They insulted us," Ermin hissed. "They need somewhere to go, and they insulted the clan they’re coming to."

He did not know how to feel when he heard they were coming, but he grew increasingly heated when he remembered how they had cast him out for something that had been beyond his control.

But another part of him hoped to see his uncle.

Tera was still getting her thoughts in order when Xavi’s head snapped up, alert.

His eyes went to the distance and stayed there.

"Is that them?"

THEY’RE HERE ALREADY?!