Chương 7: Chapter 6: “The Catch”

Finding a small, flat clearing on the leeward side of the marsh, I knelt down by the edge of the water. I set to work skinning the giant goose, while Frank gathered dry tinder to spark a fire for his medicinal tea. Most people harbor the misconception that processing waterfowl requires hours of tedious plucking. In a survival scenario, that's a waste of daylight; it's infinitely faster and cleaner to simply skin the bird entirely.

I was midway through quartering the carcass when a sudden rustle echoed from the tree line, followed instantly by a low, vibrating growl. I sprang to my feet, my framing hammer slipping smoothly from my belt loop into my right hand as I pivoted toward the threat. Slowly filtering out of the dense brush at the base of the pines came a predator I initially mistook for a mountain lion. The sight caught me off guard—mountain lions had absolutely no business being out here in the open valley grasslands.

But given the reality-bending events of the last forty-eight hours, wildlife migration patterns were clearly out the window. As the beast fully cleared the foliage and stepped into the pale light, I realized my mistake. It wasn't a cat. It was a dog. More specifically, an American Dingo. I recognized the breed instantly by its distinct ginger coat, broad skull, and short, triangular ears. Right now, those ears were pinned flat against its skull in a clear, aggressive warning display.

While most people associate the dingo strictly with the Australian outback, the wild American dingo—or Carolina Dog—shares the exact same ancient lineage. They are typically smaller and far more reclusive than their Australian cousins, but the specimen stepping into our clearing was a monstrous aberration. It was easily the size of an English Mastiff, carrying eighty-plus pounds of corded, solid muscle. Frank was positioned a few paces closer to the animal's line of approach.

His hand instinctively drifted toward the handle of his sledgehammer.

"Stop," I whispered sharply, keeping my movements completely fluid.

"Don't make a single sudden movement. Just step back. Slow and steady, drift toward me." As Frank slowly backed away, I reached down to the processing stone and picked up a massive, raw leg-and-thigh quarter I had just cleaved from the goose. I slipped my framing hammer back into its leather belt thong, leaving my hands completely empty and open. Stepping forward to close the distance, I pitched my voice into a soft, high-pitched, non-threatening register.

"It's okay, boy. Take it easy. You're okay." I halted when the gap closed to roughly fifteen feet. My K9 instincts screamed that I was already well within the red zone; if the animal launched an aggressive drive right now, there was zero chance I could draw a weapon fast enough to defend myself. But lethal force wasn't my objective here. I gave the raw goose quarter a gentle toss, landing it a couple of feet in front of the dingo's muzzle. The animal paused its growling, its nostrils flaring as it sniffed the air.

Cautiously, its ears flicked upward. Keeping its amber eyes locked dead on mine, the dog stepped forward, snapped up the meat, and swallowed the heavy quarter in two rapid gulps. It immediately lowered its snout, searching the dirt for more. I focused my mind, triggering the Tame Animal spell. For the next five seconds, the world slowed down as the casting bar initiated, forcing me to pit my raw, unfiltered willpower directly against the primordial consciousness of the beast.

Instantly, the dingo's ears slammed back down. The thick ridge of hackles along its spine stood straight up, and a menacing, throat-clearing rattle erupted from its chest. Through the psychic link of the spell, I could feel the animal's mental matrix—it was an unyielding, territorial Alpha male, driven by an instinctual imperative to dominate or destroy. I immediately shifted my vocal tone. I dropped the high-pitched praise, projecting a low, resonant, authoritative vibration.

"Calm," I commanded, stepping forward. I intentionally closed the physical gap. In K9 work, you never want to give a massive dog space; a large animal needs distance to build up forward momentum and kinetic power. Catching a charge from an eighty-pound predator at full sprint is a fantastic way to end up with a broken limb or a torn artery. During my years as a police K9 handler, I had caught hundreds of bites during training cycles. But that was exactly what it was: catching.

You don't fight the dog's entry; you absorb the impact, ride the momentum, and redirect the force so neither you nor the animal snaps a bone. There is always a precise split-second right before the strike where the dog will check its speed, drop its center of gravity, and coil its haunches to spring. That is the exact window where a handler must feed the dog the specific target area of the bite suit and absorb the hit. Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Except right now, I wasn't wearing a canvas bite suit. I locked my mind onto the dingo's consciousness, pressing my will downward like a physical weight, demanding absolute submission. I felt the animal's mental resolve begin to fracture, but in a final, desperate bid for dominance, the beast snapped. It lunged. Because I had already closed the distance to a mere five feet, it didn't have the space to launch into a full leap.

I braced my stance, tucked my chin, and deliberately fed the dingo my left forearm to catch the bite. The heavy jaws clamped down on my flesh, and a sharp, blinding white pain flared up my arm as the teeth punctured the fabric of my shirt. I screamed through gritted teeth, but instead of executing the fatal mistake of pulling away—which would have only caused the dog to tear and thrash my meat—I converted the agony into raw willpower.

I pivoted my torso violently to the left, throwing my entire body weight into the dog's forward momentum. We crashed to the earth together, and I immediately used my bulk to pin him flat against the dirt. Spreading my legs wide for leverage, I drove my chest squarely over his rib cage, effectively locking his hips and preventing him from rolling his paws underneath his body to regain his footing.

I curled the fingers of my right hand into a rigid claw, burying them deep into the sensitive nerve cluster on his neck—right behind the hinge of the jaw and just beneath the ear. The pressure didn't cause any permanent damage, but it perfectly mimicked the crushing dominance behavior of an Alpha wolf's muzzle-bite. With my left arm still trapped within his jaws, I used my forearm to steadily apply upward pressure against his lower mandible, forcing his chin back toward his own neck.

The mechanical disadvantage severely restricted his bite pressure, allowing me to cleanly slip my arm out from between his teeth. Maintaining maximum physical compression, I held the thrashing, desperate animal pinned to the dirt. For what felt like an absolute eternity, we lay there in the mud, locked in a silent battle of attrition. Slowly, the dingo's furious thrashing began to subside. The deep, guttural growls gradually dissolved into a pathetic, high-pitched whimper.

The moment his muscles went entirely slack, I cautiously eased up on the compression. The dog immediately tensed, attempting to scramble up, but I instantly slammed my weight back down, clamping the hand-lock into his neck. We repeated the cycle twice more until the lesson finally took. The beast lay completely still, breathing heavily, his spirit entirely broken to my will. A familiar amber flare blinked rapidly in the lower quadrant of my vision, accompanied by a profound, telepathic click. The bond was forged.

I rolled off the massive canine and immediately shifted back into standard K9 handler mode. I pitched my voice into a ridiculous, high-pitched, childlike register, hooting and hollering as I roughly scratched him behind the ears and rubbed his flanks.

"Good boy! Yes, you are! Good boy!" I knew without checking the UI that he was a male; the psychic resistance I had just overridden carried the distinct, stubborn hallmark of an Alpha sire. It was a completely different energetic signature than the desperate, frantic ferocity of a female protecting her litter. Had this been a mother defending a den of pups in the brush, there was no amount of mana or willpower in my sheet that could have forced her submission.

I walked back over to the quartered goose, sliced off the second leg-and-thigh piece, and carried it back to my new companion. The moment the scent hit his nose, the dingo coiled, preparing to lunge for the meat. I instantly snatched the quarter back, dropping my voice into a gravelly, commanding snap.

"No." The giant dog froze instantly, dropping his tail between his hocks and lowering his head in a submissive posture. I held the stance for a few seconds, establishing the boundary, before tossing the meat into the dirt. He devoured it instantly while I stepped back in, scratching his neck and reinforcing the praise in that same high-pitched register. It was a solid start, but I knew from professional experience that true integration takes hundreds of repetitions.

A handler and an animal have to learn the subtle nuances of each other's posture, vocalizations, and movement patterns across every conceivable scenario. You don't just train a dog; the handler has to actively train themselves to adapt to the dog. I returned to the campfire, settling onto a flat rock, and channeled a thread of mana into my arm to cast Minor Heal.

The entire process had taken roughly ten minutes, and while my passive regeneration had already topped off my mana pool, my health bar was still displaying a slight deficit from the initial puncture wounds. I took the remaining breast pieces and the two wings, skewering them on clean green sticks, and propped them over the hidden flames of the pit. Frank sat across from me, quietly stirring his dandelion-pine blend.

"That got incredibly dicey for a second," Frank admitted, his eyes drifting toward the giant ginger dog currently resting its heavy chin on its paws.

"I was a second away from bringing the sledge down on his skull to get him off you. But I do have one very important question."

"What's that?" I asked, turning the meat over the heat.

"Why the hell did you have to feed him both of my goose legs?" Frank grumbled, pointing a stick at me.

"You know damn well I prefer dark meat over white." A wide grin broke across my face. I looked over at my old friend, gave a soft chuckle, and offered a simple response.

"I know."