"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.

"You think that's all?" he asked her, "Just like in every other beastman family, it's impossible for us to have a female to ourselves. In the impossible situation that a female did care for one of us, even if that scorpion was one of the strongest in our entire race, she could not be his alone. Once a female is in Scorpion territory, every scorpion who is able to mark her will do so. We kill each other to steal and mark even our own brothers' or father's females. Family means nothing to a scorpion," he paused, swallowing a lump in his throat, "it means nothing. From the moment we are born until the moment we die, we are alone. Even if we travel in groups, each of us knows this in his heart. Even if scorpions agree to share a female, there is no way to enforce such an arrangement. On the rare occasions that a female gives birth to a litter of scorplings, there is no way to prevent other males from coming in and cannibalizing most, if not all of them. So more often than not, before other males get the chance to do this, the scorplings' own father will eat his young. He will eat the weakest of them and send the strongest out on their own so that they have a chance to escape, a chance to live.

"And then, if he feels like it, he will eat their mother. She will be too weak for him to defend her if she has recently given birth, and she will either die being fought over by other scorpions or she will die being eaten by one. So even though her mate cares for her in whatever twisted way he is able, there is nothing he can do for her aside from keeping her from this fate by consuming her himself," St. Benjamin snarled, finally finishing his lecture. "Is that dangerous enough for you, Samantha? Is that enough information for you about what it's like to live here? Now you know why the other tribes hide themselves away in their cities, away from us ferals; the snakes, the scorpions, and any other tribes who are unable to play by their rules. Ferals are outcasts because of our cruel behavior toward other beastmen, but if we weren't outcasts, would we still be cruel? There's no way for anybody to find out, because cruelty is in our blood now, and there is no way to remove it. I watched my father eat my mother and my brothers alive," he growled, "and I will be the one to eat you."

His anger dissipated as quickly as it had brought itself into being, and St. Benjamin released Samantha's wet face, panting both from the effort of telling his painful, private story and from the relief brought by an emotion he was experiencing for the first time: catharsis. Although Samantha had been freed, she was now speechless, and St. Benjamin froze when the weight of his own words hit him, not to mention the fact that he had confessed them to the same female he had admired so deeply just hours before. He had never told a soul the things he had just told Samantha, though that was mostly because nobody would either listen to it or care even if they heard it. He hadn't given much thought to the bond he had formed with this alien female, but he was pretty sure he had just broken whatever it was.

Hesitantly, he reached back to Samantha, who was still in his arms and shaking with each breath she took. He took her hand, which was an intensely intimate action for a scorpion. He cleared his throat and asked her, "Are you hungry, Samantha? You slept for a long time, and you should probably eat to keep your strength up, unless you want to fall on top of me again." Samantha's head was spinning. He wanted to eat her and feed her? It was hard enough to keep her wits about her now that her withdrawal was in full swing, but the touch of his hand on hers was impossible to ignore. She was still trying to absorb the information St. Benjamin had divulged in his outburst, and there was an insane amount of it that she was simply afraid now to ask him to explain. "No, thank you," she said, trying not to let her emotions come through; she wanted to deescalate this situation, lest she find out firsthand about the danger St. Benjamin claimed he posed.

Either Samantha wasn't at the top of her game due to her withdrawal symptoms or St. Benjamin was more astute than most of the men Samantha had met in her life, because her changed demeanor was plain as day to them both. "Do you think," he said sinisterly, "that just because I've been honest with you, that that fox is better than me? Where is he now? Why wasn't he the one to tell you about our world and answer all of your precocious questions? You didn't even know he was a beastman, you're such an idiot that you thought he was a regular fox beast! What kind of fox digs a burrow this size? Fox beasts can't skin animals; fox beastmen do that - where do you think these furs you've been sleeping in came from? And instead of staying to protect a rare and valuable female, a friend, as you call yourself, he ran off at the first sign of trouble. He's long gone now, and you're stuck with me. So go ahead and cry while you think about that, because I don't care."

Tears were, in fact, rapidly falling from Samantha's face, her trembling body aiding them in their descent. She thought of Ao-ao and wondered why he didn't let her know what or who he was. He brought her here and pretended to be a regular fox, and now she would never know why. She felt her control over herself slipping, but in the few moments before she lost it, she wanted to choose a few words to say to St. Benjamin, just in case they were her last. She moved out of his lap, but kept her hand in his while cupping her other hand around the large hand holding hers. "I am sorry," she began carefully, "for everything that happened to you. I didn't know anything about the people here or the way they live, and I thank you for teaching me what you have even though it came at such a great personal cost to you. I can't say that I understand everything that you've told me, but in whatever time I have left here, I will endeavor to do so."

Samantha sat across from him, finding that she had no choice but to sit cross-legged before him. She cringed at the fact that he would be able to smell the blood between her legs, but between her bed and his large body, there was not enough room for her to stretch her legs out straight. It was getting hard for her to sit still anyway, so at least he wouldn't be able to smell it for long. She continued with her apology, saying, "I'm sorry that I didn't ask you first if you would be willing to help me. I assumed that you would, and I assumed wrongly. That is my fault, and I will do my best not to make any more assumptions about you from now on, and go only on what you have told me yourself. Also, you told me before that you wanted to eat me; you included it in the terms of the agreement we made with one another. I agreed then, and I agree now. When I am dead, you may eat my corpse or do whatever else you want with it. I honestly don't care.

"But please, let me make this one request - do not hurt Ao-ao, or whatever my fox friend is named. I made him a promise like the one I'm making you now. Not that he could eat me -," she paused, realizing she was beginning to ramble. She focused the last of her mental energy once more, and continued speaking to St. Benjamin. "What I mean to say is this - if you want to consume me, possess me, eat me, however you want to put it, I agree. But you can't do anything to hurt Ao-ao. He's coming back, I know he is. I don't know when and I don't know how, but you are not to hurt him. If you do, I take back my consent for you to take my corpse after my passing. Do you understand?" St. Benjamin looked at her blankly, and said only, "I understand."