When they stopped for the night, Samantha began the process of making good on her promise to Bub. In the world she came from, it would take so much less time to complete her project, but if she could find a way to get started on crafting in the Beast World, well, that was something too. Before St. Benjamin could set off to hunt, she made a couple of requests from him that caused him to crinkle his nose in disgust before reluctantly agreeing. Knowing only the supplies that Samantha had requested from him, he became much more curious as to what 'they' were going to give the bear cub. Spencer, who stayed to watch over Samantha and the exhausted Bub, had gotten fire building down to an exact science, and was free to help her search through the pelts they had gathered so far. As soon as she noticed his presence, however, she sent him to the stream they had camped by, instructing him to wash their collected chicken feathers in Samantha's doubled-up pajama top. This, Spencer considered while working, was much less fun than the activity Samantha had left for herself, which was continuing to lay out the rabbit pelts they had collected and muse over them in much the same way that she had looked at her deer pelt before making her current clothing from it.

Before long, the chicken feathers were drying by the fire and St. Benjamin returned with a couple of fresh kills. Not wanting to spoil the rabbit furs Samantha was studying, St. Benjamin called her over to inspect the additional materials he had collected from the deer he had slaughtered. Samantha was too lost in her own thoughts to wonder how many times in a row she had eaten unseasoned venison, and she happily took the stinking, bloody coils of entrails from St. Benjamin. "Thank you so much, he's going to love this," she whispered excitedly, though the look of disbelief on the scorpion's face did not change at all. "Could you gather up the furs I chose and stack them in order by the fire, with the one closest to the forest on the bottom of the pile? Please?" she wheedled. "You do know that I have to cook this, don't you?" Benjamin responded, his deep voice flat. He shrugged his shoulders to indicate the raw, unprocessed deer meat that was to be the primary component of that evening's meal. "Ah, right, sorry," Samantha began, coming back briefly into the world where necessities were things that had to be considered. St. Benjamin had stalked off, intending to get to work, but turned around to say, "I'll do it after I start roasting the meat." Samantha squealed out another thank you and took her smelly loot to the stream, beginning the long process of washing the partially digested food from the surprising amount of intestines the deer carcass yielded. She found a rhythm for removing both the dirt and fat before submerging the stripped segment of gut into the cold water.

The end of the intestines was finally in sight, and Samantha whispered a small apology to anyone downriver suffering from thirst. Now that there was much less danger of her throwing up, Samantha had grown bolder in her undertakings; there was no chance she would have been able to begin this process for Bub before Spencer had healed her body with his spar. In spite of the smell, Samantha was extremely gratified to see the results of her work. The fox appeared behind her, his tail waving behind him out of curiosity, as though her thoughts had summoned him. "It's time to eat," he murmured in her ear as his arms surrounded the gorgeous female, relieving her frozen hands of their burden. She had been messing around with these intestines for hours, not paying one bit of attention to anything he or Benjamin had been saying. Bub, as if he was in tune with Samantha, had remained asleep after the males had set up camp, and it was up to the scorpion and fox beastmen to reunite the two. "Wait, those need to dry!" Samantha exclaimed, trying to grab the offal back from Spencer. "I'll take care of it," he replied in a tired voice; he was the one who had been running all day, after all. "Let's do it together?" Samantha asked him, trying to compromise. Between the two of them, they made short work of the process of tying the leftover animal parts high in the trees, where they would hopefully remain untouched until morning.

The rest of the evening passed uneventfully, the males stuffing Samantha full of food while she attempted to do the same to both of them and the ever-hungrier bear cub that sat on her lap. Tonight, St. Benjamin had captured the pair on his lap, and Bub was endlessly amused by the extra limbs Benji extended, his pincers full of meat for the small bear to grab. "Be careful," Samantha whispered to him, trying to sound less concerned than she was about the potential revelation of her guardian's identity. "Don't worry so much," he murmured back, his mouth so close to Samantha's ear that she got chills from the vibrations of his voice. She was instantly speechless, the location of the place that the shivers ended being an extremely sensitive one; Samantha had to try her best not to move, lest she be unable to maintain the zoned-out expression that was already giving her difficulty. Spencer lost no time in holding a set of pinched fingers out to her, dangling a dripping slice of meat in front of Samantha's hungry face. She opened her mouth automatically, and he folded the meat into it, touching her sensitive lips under the pretense of wiping away grease and ensuring the food wouldn't be lost to the dirt if Samantha was unable to close her mouth when he was done with it.

The two males could only play with their short-circuited female for so long before Bub started to whine; Samantha was so out of it that she hadn't fed him or anybody else since the males began their teasing. Sensing that Samantha wasn't going to be much help in finishing off their food or cleaning up after dinner, St. Benjamin sent her with Spencer to lie down to sleep. The fox was tired too, no doubt, and there was still a lot to do before Benjamin, who technically outranked him in this makeshift family, could get some much-needed rest as well. He couldn't help looking around at the odds and ends Samantha was assembling and wondering what in the world she planned to do with it all. What any of this had to do with a gift for a cub was beyond him, so he set his pondering aside as he boiled the animal bones to make broth for the morning and approached the pile of sleeping bodies. They were already tangled together, so he did his best to weave himself into the empty spaces between them, ensuring that Samantha and Bub wouldn't suffer from the chill that night or in the morning.

Their travels went on blessedly uninterrupted, save for Samantha's unusual requests in making Bub's surprise gift. The young bear, who was visibly growing every day now that he was being fed enough, was also entranced by her undertaking. In the morning, Samantha ran the intestines through Spencer's claws, slicing them into stringy, horizontal ribbons while St. Benjamin readied the group for traveling again. He himself had been tasked with delicately crushing and removing pieces of the smelly things while Samantha prepared a light breakfast for everyone after reinforcing the much larger bear's wrapping so that she could still wear him on her front. The males were becoming of the opinion that the cub could run alongside Spencer, but Samantha reminded them that he had already been lost once before, and that his speed and stamina wouldn't be able to match that of the tetra-marked fox, anyway. "Well, if he doesn't get any exercise, that's not going to change," St. Benjamin muttered under his breath. Samantha, cranky from not having slept in the same place in days, removed the bear from his wrap and handed him to St. Benjamin, her arms trembling. "You're right," she said curtly, "You two should run together; he needs more positive male interaction in his life, and my shoulder could use a break anyhow. I'm sure Spencer would benefit from the break, too," she finished, not giving the fox a chance to answer for himself.

While it was true that their travel speed was slower, Spencer found himself grateful for the pair's unintended intervention in the weight he'd been carrying. With Samantha as his only passenger, he was able to focus solely and blissfully on the places their bodies made contact. Once he'd hit a steady speed, Samantha would often run one of her hands through his fur, doing her best to make sure that the softest parts of her body were the ones that would collide with his fox form if things got bumpy. The more time he spent with Samantha, the more he understood about the jealous males of his world. If he were the only one to carry this special female on his back for the rest of their lives, he could die happy. Sometimes it felt as if they were one entity, leaping through the woods with one mind and one body, her figure melded seamlessly into his own. He felt her face nuzzle him next to his ear, her voice a few octaves lower than usual letting him know that they had long outrun the others, and that their time alone would likely come to an end once the scorpion and bear males caught up to them. Spencer exhaled loudly through his nose while Samantha slid down from his back, taking one of her shovels to dig a latrine while they waited. He changed back into his beastman form to weave the ribbons that he had sliced back together. While this request from the female initially didn't make much sense to him, he found that as he wound the ribbons, a thin, much stronger string was created from the unwanted deer pieces that he usually left for scavengers.

Benjamin and Bub caught up well after Samantha had returned, and shortly after Spencer completed the task whose results had pleased Samantha in the extreme. The string was added to the pelts, which Bub sniffed with immense curiosity. He was bundled up against Samantha's chest once again while she reassured him that his gift was almost done and that he had done well during his run earlier. "He's such a good, strong baby, isn't he, Benji?" she asked the male behind her, looking for more encouragement to boost the young bear's self-esteem. "He did very well," Benjamin said smoothly, his voice resonating low enough that Bub was able to hear him clearly as well. Now bashful, the cub buried his face in Samantha's chest, and she leaned back into St. Benjamin's embrace radiating contentment. As usual, the party traveled well into the evening, stopping only to make camp, eat, and rest. Samantha, rather than asking favors from the two males, merely took stock of the supplies she had gathered and helped prepare before. Completely lost in her thoughts, she contemplated and rearranged the meaningless items while stroking the sleeping cub's head and giving it the occasional kiss. As was becoming their habit, one of the adult males came to retrieve her for dinner, and they ate together, sharing happily and quickly falling asleep afterwards.

The next morning, after serving breakfast, Samantha took as good a piece of burnt wood as she could find from the pile of ash left over from their fire and began to mark the rabbit pelts with it, drawing shapes and making strange symbols in the middle of each one before discarding her poor man's pencil and rinsing her hands, returning to borrow Spencer's claws once more to cut along the lines she had made earlier while St. Benjamin packed their belongings again, getting them ready to set out for another day's travel. Samantha set an even larger Bub to run alongside Benji for the morning, realizing that the exercise had indeed been good for the young cub. From her perspective on Spencer's back, she was unsure how she would bundle this growing male so that she could continue to carry him as promised. He was still very much a child except for in size, and Samantha was grateful for that if it meant that her companions would keep their jealous thoughts away from the poor, lost bear.

When they stopped for a break, Spencer and St. Benjamin pointed out the blurry outline of the Ten Thousand Beast City to the two newcomers, estimating that they would have only one more night to spend in the wilderness. Samantha, already getting nervous about arriving to yet another totally foreign locale, held one of Benji's large pincers to use as a hole puncher through the various rabbit hide pieces Spencer had cut out earlier. Bub was especially riled up, sniffing everywhere he could stick his nose and barking for attention. "His family is close by," Spencer translated, not from bear speak, but from the cub's obvious body language, "They're probably somewhere in the city, unless they had another destination when they left the bear tribe." Bub's tear-filled eyes looked up in Spencer's direction, and he amended his statement. "They must be in the city," he said reassuringly, "otherwise I'm sure they'd have taken a different route to get wherever else they might have wanted to go." Although Samantha's face lit up when she heard the reason for her little Bub's excitement, it was that much more difficult to wrap him up and carry him back onto Spencer's back. "We'll get there sooner if you cooperate," she practically grunted as she hefted the cub onto her stomach. St. Benjamin rolled his eyes at her efforts to lift the cub he could have tossed with a single finger had she asked him, and he picked the pair up, climbing onto the fox's back while holding them both.

Evening fell quickly for once, and the group dismounted from their exhausted fox steed to get ready for their last night alone. Samantha took off at once like a woman possessed, taking out her bag of supplies and attempting to work around the large, snoring bear cub in her lap. St. Benjamin delivered one last requested tool after he returned from his hunt: a large needle made of fresh bone. Samantha looked up at him gratefully, and he nodded at her, returning to the campfire to prepare what she hoped would be their last venison repast for the near future. Pairing the pattern pieces together, Samantha stitched the gut string through the holes St. Benjamin had made for her earlier, turning them inside-out when they were finished enough to be stuffed with the clean chicken feathers. While she worked, her thoughts were filled with images of Bub, from the moment she had first seen him through the week she had known him. He had been a lost and dying cub among a party of arguing strangers, but now they had all pooled their various skills to care for him. As she articulated fake bear legs on the torso she was sewing, she thought about Bub's unique way of running through the woods; he didn't leap gracefully like Spencer did, nor did he slither naturally like St. Benjamin. He lumbered through the forest without a care in the world, charging forward bravely into whatever awaited him. As she tucked the finished stuffed bear into his arms, she hoped that she could run into her new future in the same way as her Bub.

Author's Note:

Thank you all so much for accompanying me through my 30th chapter! I made it an extra-long one to celebrate, and I hope you've enjoyed reading it! I also recently hit 3k reads and 250 votes, and I'd like to do something new to recognize these milestones. That something is a Q&A! Feel free to comment on this chapter to ask me anything, or ask a question of one or more of the characters! If there are a lot of responses, I'll choose the ones I'm able to answer best, though I'm hopeful I'll be able to get to everyone. Thank you again for your support through this difficult time in my life, and I hope you'll enjoy the future chapters I have yet to publish and write as well! Until next time, and don't forget to ask away!