Learn to Howl {Alex Vreeke | Jumanji}

13; chestnut & change

The forest seemed... endless. Trudging through it with the only change being the slow darkening of the sky as clouds began to loom overhead. Tetra was uneasy, this side of the gorge was new, different, filled with a strange and uncertain energy that she couldn't quite wrap her head around. She wanted to stay by Alex's side, but it was like a fishing line had sunk it's hook into her chest, her heart, and she was being tugged towards the jewel. This did not sit well with Fridge, who lead the group, map in hand. She knew this because every time she siddled up to him, he began to reek of paranoia, not completely without reason, mind you, the two walking shoulder to shoulder for a while because every instinct Tetra possessed was telling her to get the jewel, and tear him apart to do so. But then she would back off because she could feel Alex's eyes boring into the back of her skull, or Spencer would not so subtly ask her to come and talk to him about the lore of the game.

At about the fifth time this had happened - that she and Fridge had been walking together, not that she had been called away - he turns to her, actually stops and grabs her shoulder and squares off against her. With a solid head of height over him, she simply raises an eyebrow and pries his grip from her bandaged shoulder, refusing to let the pain show on her face.

"What is it? What do you want from me? What's your problem?" He cried, and Tetra laid her hands on his shoulders, refusing to bend, to lower herself to look in his eyes.

"I want the jewel." She told him, and he stepped back, shoulders square and eyes clear.

"Do you have a backpack?" He asked, and Tetra's eyebrows shot up in surprise. Bethany managed to lose her lion's pelt, did it look like she had a backpack? At least, that's what she tried to convey with her scoff. Fridge rolled his eyes, sagging from his righteous pose to something more casual and skeptical. "Yeah that's what I thought. Come back when you can carry things and have free hands." He turned on his heel and marched forward into the oncoming darkness of the clouds, leaving Tetra to scoff with bewilderment. "It's my job, Jungle Queen." Fridge boasted, without turning around, and when the others followed, it ended up being just Tetra and Alex a good twenty metres behind them.

"I need that jewel, Alex." She muttered as she began to walk, dragging behind the group. Alex ghosted his fingers along her arm until his hand was in hers, but his expression wasn't a positive one.

"You don't, Tet-" He tried, but she cut him off.

"Yes, Alex, I do." She grasped his hand tight enough that he sucked in a gasp of air between his teeth, but looking at Tetra, her eyes are glowing fiercely emerald. "I need it, my whole body needs it, I can feel it, in here," and she lifted their joined hands to press the back of his against her chest where her heart was beating erratically. The brief moment of contact their skin makes has Alex noticing that she's running hot, almost feverish. He's never seen her like this before, oh he's seen her hot and bothered before, and usually he's been the cause, but not like this. The jewel has her all but salivating and primal, ready to act on instinct, "I killed Nigel for it." She admits, her grip on his hand loosening just a fraction, light in her eyes dying just for a moment. "I killed him a lot for it." Alex is dumbstruck, he knew Nigel kept dying in the early days of her trying to get the jewel for them, but to know she killed him- "Well, he wouldn't give it to me, and I'd-"

"Yeah, I get it." Alex stops her, and Tetra's lip curls into a snarl at the memory.

"Weakness." She spat. "How can something that makes me need it so much be a weakness?" Glowering, she doesn't look at Alex, but he can't tear his eyes away from her. This woman next to him feels foreign, the jewel makes her savage and cruel.