Grabbing the shears, I returned to Nessy's discarded vest lying on the floor. I positioned the shears over the eye that seemed to follow my movements. I didn't hesitate. I brought the blades down, shearing right through the center of the eye.

A high-pitched screech, like a malfunctioning photocopier mixed with a dying fax machine, erupted from the vest fabric as the eye was severed. The sound echoed unnervingly in the vast shed before fading, leaving only the bisected, now lifeless vest. I wasn't done. I attacked the badge next, snipping the plastic card into two pieces. It emitted a similar, though less intense, electronic shriek as it snapped in half.

Satisfied that Nessy's connection to the store's influence was broken, I turned to the shopping cart. Krysanthea watched me approach, tracking the sharp shears in my hand. I offered her what I hoped was a reassuring look before carefully inserting the tip of the shears into the metal loop of her handcuffs. With a grunt of effort, I squeezed the handles. The metal groaned, then snapped, freeing her wrists.

She immediately tried to pull the gag off, but the zip ties held firm and her hands were shaking from stress, unable to get under the ties.

"Just hold on," I said. "Let me take the uniform off you. Wouldn't want that shit to influence you like it did Ness."

She nodded.

I grabbed her vest and badge, pulled them off her torso and sliced them apart with the shears. They screamed, just like Nessy's had, but far less loudly as Kristi wasn't a manager yet.

Finally, I positioned the shear blades carefully around the thick bundle of zip ties securing the chew toy gag. "Hold still," I murmured.

With precise snips, mindful of her scales and feathers, I cut through the plastic restraints one by one.

The last tie snapped. Krysanthea violently spat the saliva-soaked bone chew toy onto the floor, gasping for air, her sharp teeth bared in relief and lingering fury.

"Slayer-damn it," she hissed out, spitting, opening and closing her mouth trying to get sensation back into her jaw.

"How are we getting them out?" I looked at the shopping cart packed with raptors.

"Very carefully," Kristi blanched. "I don't know how the fuck she even got them in there."

"Right," I sighed. "I'll cut the ties first, then cut the metal. How are you feeling?"

"Blah," the raptor-girl let out. She sat down on the floor massaging her wrists and jaw. "Give me a moment. Start cutting them out... Katerina's probably about to have an aneurysm in there by the looks of things."

I nodded and moved to the cart, where indeed Katerina's golden eyes blazed with murderous intent. As I approached with the shears, she flinched slightly.

"Relax," I assured her. "I'm just cutting the zip ties."

Carefully, I began snipping the intricate web of plastic restraints that held the three sisters in their cramped confines. The task was painstaking—Nessy had been thorough in her madness, securing them with hundreds of interlocking ties. Krysanthea joined me in a few minutes, using her talons to snip ties.

It took Kristi and me a while to demolish the entire shopping cart frame, but eventually we succeeded, prying the bars apart. Kirra was the first to be pulled out from the raptor-cube.

"Watch the tail," She mumbled as soon as her gag was removed. I carefully snipped her tail from where it was bound to Kat's ankle.

"Thank you, Alec," Kaledoniya let out next as she was freed. "You're the best." She wrapped herself around me in a tight hug. "Best human in the universe. Thought I was going to die in that cart. How'd you do that flame thing? Are you a wizard?"

"I… accelerated without moving," I said. "It set the air on fire."

"Dang," Kale whistled.

Katerina was the last to be freed by Kristi as Kaledoniya relentlessly clung onto me.

The moment her gag was out, Katerina spat onto the floor with violence that matched her expression. "I'm going to kill her," she snarled, eyes fixed on Nessy's unconscious form. "I'm actually going to fucking kill her this time!"

"No, you're not," I said firmly, positioning myself between her and the sleeping husky while still holding onto the trembling teenage raptor. "She wasn't fully herself. The store was controlling her through the artifacts and that... eye thing."

"Convenient excuse," Katerina growled, stretching her cramped limbs. "She kidnaps us, humiliates us, keeps us prisoner, and it's the store's fault? She's always been unstable!"

"Kat," Krysanthea interjected. "Enough. It wasn't just Nessy."

"How can you defend her after what she did to us?" Kat demanded.

"I'm not defending her actions," Krysanthea sighed. "I… I just…" She glanced at me for help.

"Those artifacts amplified your worst instincts, used your desires and your darkest thoughts," I said. "All of you pushed Nessy to a breaking point long before the store got its hooks into her, pushed her away from Alec, tormented her in high school and then for four years after."

"Why are you talking about yourself in third person?" Katerina squinted at me.

"Because I'm not your Alec," I said. "Your Alec died. I'm Alec from another dimension."

"WHAT?!" the raptor sisters sputtered.

"A week ago I didn't even know that pradavarians existed," I said.

"Wait…" Katerina stared at me, mouth open wide. "So then… then you're not Kristi's boyfriend?"

"Never was," I said.

"Can you be my boyfriend then?" Kaledoniya asked.

"No," I said. "You're sixteen and I'm twenty three."

"Boo," she let out, still clinging to me.

"Kale," Katerina growled. "Let go of him."

"No, I do what I want," Kaledoniya shook her head, digging harder into me. "I don't give a fuck if he's not our Alec. He's nice. He rescued me. Rescued all of us! He's cool and if you harass him again, I will chew your throat off while you sleep."

"You do realise that all of this is his fault and the fault of that damned husky?" Katerina asked, completely ignoring the throat-chewing comment. "That we wouldn't need to be rescued from a fucking shopping cart if we never allowed the insane husky to come with us? She was the one who wanted us to work here to begin with!"

"I said, enough, Kat!" Krysanthea snapped, moving over to Nessy's unconscious form. She bent down and carefully gathered the sleeping husky into her arms. Nessy instinctively wrapped her arms around Kristi in her sleep, nuzzling against the raptor's neck.

Katerina stared in disbelief. "What are you doing? After everything she did to us, you're carrying her?"

"She's my pack mate," Kristi said simply, adjusting her hold on Nessy. "And as such, she's my property."

"You're still on about that?" Katerina's voice rose an octave.

"Yes," Krysanthea replied, her amber eyes hard like steel. "Nessy is mine. Do we understand each other, Kat?"

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

"You…" Katerina sputtered. "She zip-tied us to a shopping cart! She gagged us with dog toys! She…"

"She was being mentally fucked with by artifacts YOU brought back from this place," I pointed out once again. "If anyone's to blame for this mess, it's the three of you for stealing cursed shit from here."

"Alec's right," Kirra admitted reluctantly, rubbing her sore wrists with wince. "We did take the artifacts. That compass absolutely messed with my head, now that I think about it. We're the ones who got ourselves into debt with this damned place. Nessy was just trying to help in her own... overly enthusiastic way."

"Overly enthusiastic?" Katerina echoed incredulously. "She imprisoned and taunted us! Just as I warned you all!"

"Eh," Kaledoniya shrugged, finally releasing me from her hug. "I imprisoned her a bunch of times back in school, used super-glue to lock her in a bathroom and then a storage closet. If anything I'm impressed how she finally got us back for all the shit we put her though. That's very raptor of her, if anything!"

"She's a dog, not a raptor!" Kat snarled.

"A-pa-pa-pa," Kaledoniya put her arms on her waist, shaking her head. "She kicked your ass and somehow pried that watch from you and shoved you into a cart. She kicked all of our butts! This makes her Alpha. Only Alec was able to stop her. This makes him Alpha."

Kat opened and closed her mouth.

"I concur," Kirra nodded. "Alec's our Alpha now." She looked at Kristi.

"Sure, whatever, he is Alpha," Kristi commented.

"The new local pecking order is thus set!" Kaledoniya clapped. "Alec>Nessy>Kristi>Kat>Kirra>me!"

"Seconded," Kirra nodded.

"Thirded," Kristi said, eyeing the endless shed warily.

"Slayer," Katerina rubbed her face in frustration. "He… he's just human!"

"Correction," Kaledoniya shook her violet-blue-green feathery mane. "He smells human, but he is totally some kind of wizard. Humans don't spontaneously combust, nor vaporise magic artifacts. If you want to challenge the pecking order you'll need to beat up Kristi first, then Nessy and only then challenge Alec's authority. Them's the rules."

"Urghhh fine, whatever," Kat threw up her arms. "How the shit are we even getting out of this place?"

The quartet of raptors looked at me, expecting their violence-elected Alpha to have an answer.

I looked back at them. I had no idea what to do next. I didn't expect to be elected pack leader simply because I defeated the Supercenter-controlled Nessy.

Still, it was nice to have all of them finally fully on board.

Perhaps this was Nessy's plan all along? Was she playing some kind of 5-dimensional Scrutiosmia chess? Did she allow herself to be dominated by the infinite store just so that I could kick her ass and become top raptor?

I looked at the passed out husky in Kristi's arms.

Could she sniff out people's moves that far into the future? Did she actually know that the artifacts could not be returned, that they had to be destroyed by me and me alone, since my soul was a tree, capable of multiplying endlessly?

I bent to the melted floor and picked up a single remaining blue eye bead. It was cracked but 80% intact. I put it into my gardening overalls pocket.

Then I picked up the warped infinite coffee thermos and slid it into Nessy's backpack.

Kaledoniya deduced what I was doing. She grabbed what remained of the crushed and melted spider watch and handed it to me with a smile, feathery tail wagging.

Then the teenage raptor dug out what remained of the compass arrow from the floor and gave it to me.

"Do you think that your magic tree will be able to grow us new artifacts from these bits and pieces, Alpha?" She asked me.

I noted that she now kept her eyes downcast when addressing me.

"Maybe," I shrugged.

Kirra glanced at my bare feet and ran down the aisles. She returned in a few minutes with a pair of sturdy gardening boots.

"Got you footwear, since yours melted, Alpha!" she offered them to me with a bow, coming down on one knee to slip the boots onto my feet. "Human feet require footwear to move swiftly!"

"Thanks," I said and then pointedly looked at Kat.

Unlike her younger sisters, Katerina met my eyes head on. Thankfully, I finally started to understand how raptors operated so I stared at her challengingly, taking a single step forward.

She twitched, but still glared back at me.

You have chosen violence then, Katerina.

"Deal with her impudence," I said to Kristi, channeling my inner xianxia villain.

Krysanthea quickly passed the sleeping husky to Kirra and delivered a swift thunderclap slap across her sister's face, sending Katerina flying sideways into a shelf.

I walked over to where she was sprawled, not letting my eyes off hers. She still didn't give up, didn't lower her gaze.

"I know why you hate dogs," I said into the silence as she rubbed her darkening cheek.

Looking at Katerina's expression, I could see the shock in her eyes. The "WHAT? How could you know THAT?!" was written all over her face.

I bent down, keeping her pinned with my gaze. "I was wearing a watch that could rewind time before I destroyed it with my mind," I said softly, for her ears only. "I've seen far more than anyone should, timelines that you forgot. I know exactly what happened to you, Kat. Your fears. Why you hate dogs. Why you've been driving your younger sisters to harass Nessy since high school."

The knowledge—Nessy's revelation about the male dog attacking Katerina when she was a teen—was a knife I now held to her throat, sharp and unspoken, and I wielded it not by revealing it publicly but by letting her know I knew. That was enough to unsettle her, to throw her off balance in this raptor-style existence of constant dominance where every glance, every gesture, every action was a battle to be won.

Katerina scrambled to her knees, her claws flexing, her feathers bristling as she glared up at me. She was a predator, a raptor born to dominate, to claw her way to the top of any hierarchy. But I wasn't just Alec anymore—not just a human, not just linear. I was a tree of Alec-ness, an immovable mental fortress, my consciousness branching infinitely, impossible for her to map or predict. And in that moment, I leaned into it once again, letting the weight of my presence stretch across an imaginary sky like a storm she couldn't outrun.

"You think you can challenge me, Kat?" I said, my voice low, steady, unyielding, my presence… liminal.

I didn't blink, didn't look away, holding her gaze with an intensity that felt like it came from a thousand versions of myself, each one staring through her, seeing every crack in her armor. "You think you can keep fighting this entire pack, keep pushing Nessy away, keep pretending your hatred doesn't come from a place of pain and fear? You don't hate the husky because she's a dog, you're afraid of her!"

Her lips curled back, revealing sharp teeth, but her eyes flickered with uncertainty. She was trying to read me, to find a weakness, a way to reassert her dominance. Raptors fought with precision, with calculated strikes, mapping their opponent's reactions to exploit them. But I wasn't giving her a map. My mind was a labyrinth of endless branches, each thought a new path, each intention a shifting root. She couldn't pin me down, couldn't predict what I'd do next, and that unreliability unnerved her more than any physical blow.

Krysanthea stood to the side, ready to smack her sister again if need be. Kirra and Kaledoniya flanked her, their postures submissive, their gazes darting between me and Katerina. They'd already accepted the new pecking order, had bowed to me as their Alpha after I'd burned through the artifacts and stopped Nessy's rampage. But Katerina? She was the holdout, the one who refused to yield, her pride and pain a wall she'd built too high to climb over.

I took another step forward, closing the distance between us. Just a human in gardening overalls, shorter by a head than her. But the memory of liminality still lingered in me, a quiet hum of potential, a reminder that I wasn't bound by the same rules as everyone else. I was vastness itself, a bridge between life and death, human and something more. And I used that now, letting my presence loom like a tree whose roots stretched into the infinite, who's branches cast an invisible shadow over the raptor girl.

"Why don't you focus on someone far worse to be afraid of—me," I said sharply. "Someone who crushed your magic watch spider underfoot, ended your power over time. Done what you could not, what you were too weak to do. You let it suck your blood and soul like an annoying mosquito instead of swatting at it like a true leader would."

Her orange-gold eyes widened, pupils contracting. Her body tensed, feathers bristling in defensive posture. I didn't show weakness, didn't project fear, letting my true emotions drown in the invisible ocean of Alec-ness hidden below my finite, physical shell.

With a flash, her talons slashed across my chest close to my neck. I didn't back down, didn't wince, simply letting Reconstitution heal the shallow cuts.

"You can't hurt me with those pointy claws," I said. "I can't die."

And with these words, I finally saw something break, snap inside her.

The weight of her secret, known by another combined with the fact that the watch was draining her life for its rewinds and my apparent invincibility was too much to bear. She finally lowered her gaze, looking at the floor instead of challenging me.

"I'm not going to tell anyone anything," I assured her. "That's your story to share if you ever choose to. But know this: Nessy isn't your enemy. She never was. She is my pack mate and I will destroy you if you dare to fuck with her again. No more hating on MY husky for what someone else has done. Is that understood?"

"Yes… Alpha," Kat breathed out.

"Good," I offered her my hand. "Rise then, my raptor knight."

She accepted my fingers with cautious grace, the big tough raptor with a shark pattern on her face finally looking skittish, terrified of the impossible power I wielded.

Had she been human, then hitting and threatening her would have been wrong—but she was a pradavarian raptor created by fucked up evolution or the wish of the man who called himself the Slayer. All raptors operated on entirely different rules, mentally bound to a rigid framework where everyone was either property, prey, competition or… a leader who was to be respected, served and obeyed. Unlike Nessy's soft power of a shield that constantly protected me, they were a sharp blade to be wielded, easy to cut yourself on if you had no idea what you were doing.

"Yay!" Kaledoniya clapped behind me. "Finally! The Kat submits!"

"Oh shut up," Kat let out.

"Just admit it—this Alec is awesome!" the teenage raptor said. "Way better than our old Alec. Much more raptory!"

"I don't have to admit shit to you," Katerina snarled, the bottom part of her face flashing with dark violet and red.

"Mmmhmmm, sure, sure," her younger sister laughed.

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