Prey (Male!Naga x Male!Reader)

Part IV: Warmth

"Warmth in your chest,
In your every breath,
Warmth in your heart,
Is mine to take apart."

❃

Chapter 31

Don't.

Y/n's heart was still beating too hard, too fast, too loud in his ears. It felt like it was punching the wall of his chest, as if it was only a second away from bursting. The (h/c) man was distantly aware he was shaking — trembling like a leaf all over.

Enlil's eyes were on him, not blinking at all, and flushing a myriad of different colors. This close, Y/n could finally see the transformation, how colors bloomed from the tiniest blood vessels in the naga's irises first before spreading to color the rest of the area.

Y/n theorized then some natural chemical released into Enlil's bloodstream caused the change of his eye color — it wasn't too dissimilar to the concept of blushing. The flushing of blood to body parts to attract mates and communicate with other members of their species was a common phenomena in the animal kingdom...

The distraction was welcomed but even then, Y/n wasn't calming down. As soon as his thoughts on the curious nature of Enlil's eyes faded, Y/n's heart palpitated.

The scent of blood — like copper and the first step into a butcher shop, with all that raw meat hanging — the sound of Enlil's teeth tearing into Dr. Nilsson's flesh while she screamed —

Y/n shut his eyes hard.

Don't, Y/n, he begged himself. Don't fucking look.

But the (h/c) man still opened his eyes and forced them off Enlil. They found what remained of Dr. Nilsson too fast — Y/n sucked in a breath, sucked in all that tainted air until his lungs felt like they were going to explode.

Immediately, Y/n's eyes were snapping shut again, but the image stayed with him, burned into his very retinas. Dr. Nilsson was unrecognizable from the brilliant — even if crazed and misguided — woman he had worked for. Half of her face had been gnawed off, the naga obviously preferring the tender meat of facial cheeks. Her eyes were a dull green, stretched out wide and horrified. Her hair was stained red and clumped together.

Her throat had been torn open and her chest divested of its meat and tissue, the bone-white exposure of her ribs reaching some primal, almost reptilian part of Y/n's brain that told the (h/c) man to be afraid. Her intestines had been left to spill out across the ground, but her liver was notably absent —

Stop.

Y/n squeezed his eyes shut tighter until all he could see was blackness. Stop seeing it.

But the horror of her being alive through it — how long had she been alive? Long enough to see — to feel the naga tear into her face, her body, eat her liver —

Stop thinking about this. God, please stop.

And then hands were suddenly wrapped around Y/n's head — not too hard, the image of a man's skull bursting — but securely; firmly. The naga, with his cold fingers slicked with drying blood merely held his face. But Y/n now knew the true strength hiding beneath those deceptively gentle fingers, and the breath quivered in his lungs, being expelled from his lips as a tremor.

Y/n did not open his eyes; he refused to face this. He wasn't scared of Dr. Nilsson waving that gun in his face and threatening his life, but he was scared of — Mark's face turning blue as he suffocated, the naga's venom inescapably lethal — Dr. Nilsson's screams as she was eaten alive —