# HNTBL 42: Tread Lightly

By: TheDragonBoy

## Content

How Not To Become Lunch: 42 - Tread Lightly

Fiona, lunch tray in hand, took one more glance at Jack, just to see once more that he had made it to his table with his own lunch, safely seated with Ozzy and a few other kids. Well, as safe as any human could be in a room full of hungry predators. Still, it gave her some comfort knowing he had some protective company.

Speaking of hungry predators, she was arriving at her own table now, where the classmates from her advanced predator class were already seated- none of them having been delayed by an extra-extended bathroom visit. She put her tray down, taking her normal seat next to Arthur.

“Hey everyone,” she greeted. But she saw Udon’s pleasant smile flick into a little frown; an easy sign that her voice was letting on what was on her mind. The naga swallowed the hunk of meat she’d been happily savoring; the tiny bulge slithering down her neck.

“Something wrong?” she asked sympathetically.

“Oh, not really… it’s just Jack. Before lunch he was-” Fiona stopped herself, realizing that the finer details of what happened were perhaps better left out. “-he was almost eaten again,” she finished.

“Aww… you alright?” the naga asked sincerely. The last few days had made it clear to all of them how unhappy Fiona was at the idea of Jack winding up in someone’s belly.

“Yeah,” Fiona replied, rather unconvincingly.

“Who was the unlucky pred?” Pyre asked with a smirk on his scaly face. It had also been made clear to them that anyone who tried to steal the werewolf’s marked human wouldn’t be getting away without a fight.

“Some fox. She dropped him as soon as I showed up.”

“I bet she did,” the dragon boy chuckled superiorly, releasing a flicker of orange light from his bioluminescent maw. The preds in their group were not to be taken lightly.

“So, um,” Mort started, hesitantly, “you’re not ever planning to eat him, right? Like, you’re not just saving him for later?” He seemed to consider the concept so strange that he was trying to make sure he understood correctly.

“Of course not; we’re friends. You’re not saving Pyre for later, are you?” Fiona joked innocently.

“Heh, I’m not a marked human,” the red dragon replied. “How long do you think you can keep that up, anyway? Protecting your human?”

Fiona frowned as worrying thoughts came up to answer the question, but they only lasted for a moment.

“You don’t think she can defend her mark?” Arthur asked. He had a confidence in his voice, a confidence in her, that helped chase her thoughts away.

“For a while,” chimed in the quiet Chelsie, in her typical, matter of fact voice.

“Oh?” the wolf boy inquired. The neko glanced up at him.

“Nearly all humans end up eaten eventually, marked ones especially. If Fiona won’t eat hers, odds are someone else will.” She looked back down to her lunch. “One day, anyway,” she added.

“Come on, Chelsie,” Udon urged, clearly concerned for Fiona’s feelings. And her concern wasn’t unfounded. Fiona’s ears drooped. The cat had a point; when was the last time she’d heard of a human passing any other way than through a predator? But an unexpected touch on her shoulder brought her once again out from those gloomy thoughts. And more than that: when she saw what it was, she felt a rush. It was Arthur’s hand.

“Well, eventually aside, I’m sure Fiona can keep that human all to herself for as long as she cares to.”

Fiona’s tail fluttered a bit at his words. Feeling his hand linger for a moment before receding, she smiled again.

“I hope so,” she said, still not certain, but certainly inspired.

“…Does seem like a ton of work, just to keep one good scent around,” Pyre remarked after a moment.

Fiona arched her brow at him, confused.

“That’s the idea, right? The longer you keep your marked ‘friend’ around, the better he smells?” The dragon spoke as if trying to convince her that he’d ‘figured it out’. “I mean, he does smell pretty good, but…” He shrugged.

His cool demeanor broke when Fiona started to chuckle.

“What!?” she laughed. “You think I just want to keep smelling Jack?” The idea was too absurd not to be funny, especially considering she’d had to train herself to ignore the scent of his mark.

“You know that’s not how the mark works, right?” Mort snickered. “It doesn’t just keep getting stronger the longer you wait.”

“Yeah- well- How should I know?!” Pyre replied indignantly “I just eat my food like everyone else. I don’t keep it around!”

“Because Mr. Gold told us in class,” Chelsie pointed out.

“I knew that, and I don’t even have teeth,” Mort teased, laughing harder.

The red dragon looked as if he were about to reply, but it seemed he couldn’t find anything else to say. He snorted disgruntledly.

“Come on, guys, leave him alone,” Arthur urged mercifully, though at this point he was chuckling a bit too. It took a few moments before everyone’s breathing returned to normal.

“So, then, what do you do with him?” Mortimer asked Fiona. “I mean, I know you say you’re ‘friends’, but you don’t, like, actually hang out, do you?” Far less presumptuous than his draconic friend, the toad did still seem genuinely confused.

“Of course we do!” Fiona replied. She wasn’t sure why the concept was so hard to grasp. “We spent the whole weekend together.”

That seemed to catch everyone’s attention, so she decided to give a few more details; maybe they’d finally start understanding that she and Jack really were friends.

“On Saturday he hung out at my house- with me and my family.” She decided to leave out the part where two of those family members tried to turn him into wolf-chow. “And Sunday we hung out at his place. Well, for a while anyway. We ended up taking a walk to the edge of town because he got this invitation to talk with a bunch of other marked humans who meet up there every week.”

“You just sat around in a room full of marked humans?!” Mort exclaimed.

“Oh, no,” Fiona corrected, “I didn’t want to be tempted, so I went hunting in the park nearby while he was busy; caught a nice lunch there.”

*GUUUURGLE*

The sudden noise grabbed the attention of all, interrupting Fiona. All eyes and ears turned… and landed on Mortimer.

“Sorry!” the toad apologized, embarrassed. “But all this talk about humans, and marked humans, and a whole room of marked humans… I could really go for a human right now.” He glanced down at his lunch tray with a dissatisfied frown, then peeked over his shoulder toward the human side of the room.

“Oh, no!” Pyre suddenly exclaimed. “I am not about to watch you lounge around with a stuffed gut while I have to settle for table food again.”

“What, you mean like yesterday?” the toad replied with a smirk. “When you were the only one without a nice human to gurgle?”

“Yeah, after you stole mine!”

“Early tongue gets the squirm,” Mort teased. “Besides, you could’ve caught another one. You said you didn’t want one.”

Pyre snorted. What he really hadn’t wanted was to be the last one to manage to make a catch. He hadn’t expected Mort to lord his stolen meal over him like a jerk.

“Well, today I do!”

“Well, after you then.”

Pyre stood up hastily in his aggravation, his chair scraping against the floor. Mortimer stood up a moment later, the tip of his long tongue already peeking through his lips as he chewed it in hungry anticipation of the satisfying meal he would soon be enjoying.

Well, so much for that conversation, Fiona thought. She herself didn’t feel quite so hungry as to need a whole human for her lunch- she had taken an adult yesterday, after all- so she took another bite of her ‘table food’ and watched with the others as Mort and Pyre ventured off into the cafeteria.

The two split up- it was a bit less conspicuous that way- but they didn’t spread far, just a few tables apart. They glanced at each other frequently, gauging the progress of the other’s hunt, each hoping to be the first to make a move.

Much to his delight, it was Pyre who pinpointed his prospective prey first. And it was a good spot too. A tubby girl, on her way from the lunch line to her table. She held her tray in one hand with a slice of pizza in the other; apparently too hungry to wait. She seemed quite distracted, between balancing her tray and keeping the hot oils from the pizza under control, walking almost on automatic.

The dragon changed course. In a bold move, he turned into the aisle she was heading down, placing himself right in her path, and began walking in her direction. He watched his meal savor the little bites of human food, oblivious that she was only moments away from becoming food herself. He smiled as he grew closer, feeling a little burble behind his scales as his stomach shifted in anticipation.

*gurg*

Eyes now locked on his prey, Pyre stepped nearer and nearer, the busy scent of the greasy food reaching his nostrils, followed by the human’s own milder scent. Poor humans, he thought, needing to add so much extra flavor to their meals just to enjoy them. Only a predator can enjoy the simple, powerful sensation of a proper meal well earned.

“Hey! Look out!”

Only a few feet away, the plump girl in the dragon’s gaze had remained blissfully ignorant, but another human sitting nearby had seen the approaching pred and called out a warning. Now the girl looked up in a fright, and her eyes only grew wider as she saw the wall of red scales in her path.

“EEP!” Pyre’s prey panicked and recoiled, tossing her lunch haphazardly into the air. His quarry alerted, the dragon dashed forward confidently to close the remaining gap, hunger in his eyes. The girl’s arm instantly darted toward her wand, hanging at her hip.

To her credit, she was a fast draw. Lunch still in the air, and her predator still a few bounds away, her fingers wrapped around her magical implement, pulling it from its place at her side and raising it in a flash. It seemed she might have just enough time to save herself if her spellcasting was as quick as her reflexes.

Except the wand flew right out of the girl’s greasy hands… and before she even had time to gasp, careened right into the dragon boy’s eye. Pyre roared and crashed into a table, sending humans fleeing, and his prey turned tailless-tail and ran as fast as she could.

But she wouldn’t get far.

From down the aisle, just a few tables away, came a wet smack. And not a moment later a pink streak whizzed between the rows of tables, sailing through the air faster than an accidentally discarded wand, and striking with an even wetter smack right into the back of Pyre’s ex-prey.

The dragon boy looked up when he heard the girl scream, a scaly hand covering one eye, just in time to see the gooey appendage mold itself around her body and yank her off her feet.

But when she left the ground, she wasn’t alone. In her panic, she grabbed hold of the nearest heavy object she could find, desperately trying to keep herself in place. That ‘heavy object’ ended up being another girl; a redhead who’d been at the table Pyre had crashed into. She’d been running just ahead of the pizza-loving teen when said teen had been grabbed.

A move like that might have been a problem for a lesser predator, but Mortimer’s tough tongue had no problem pulling both girls straight back towards him, screaming in unison as they sailed through the air, headed right square at his gaping, pink, amphibian maw.

The red-haired girl shrieked and thrashed, but luckily for her, Pizza Girl’s grip wasn’t nearly as good as the toad’s. She slipped free mid-air, thudding against the floor and skidding a good distance as her classmate continued to speed by overhead. She came to a stop in a heap only a moment later, but her head continued to spin for a few good seconds more. As she regained her bearings, she heard a sound. One that sent a jolt of pure terror down her sore spine. It was a loud, thick, meaty, gluttonous swallow.

*GULP*

She looked up. There was Mortimer. She’d skidded right up to his feet. And directly above her was the huge, writhing bulge that had been her schoolmate, dropping all at once in a sudden lurch down his stretchy throat to land just inches away from her with a lively jiggle in his hungry, gurgling stomach.

She screamed again, scrambling away from the predator and his newly claimed meal. Mort only stood there and watched as she frantically fled. He let her go; he didn’t have room for her anyway.

But sprinting down the aisle, constantly looking back at the wriggling belly she’d narrowly avoided, the red-haired girl wasn’t paying enough attention to where she was going. And running away from Mort, she happened to be heading straight toward Pyre… who in turn was too busy being distracted by his smarted eye to notice.

What the red dragon did notice was another sudden scream, coming from right next to him, followed by a harsh thud. He looked down, finally taking his hand away from his face, and what he saw was a red-haired human girl sprawled across the floor at the end of a streak of tomato sauce and cheese. By a second stroke of poor luck, it seemed she’d slipped on the remains of Pizza Girl’s lunch.

Seizing his chance, Pyre reached out, claws bared, and seized the girl’s legs. Her groan turned into a yelp of surprise as she was dragged back across the floor and then hoisted up upside down. Her yelp in turn was replaced by a whimper, as the breathless teen laid eyes on the wall of muscle and scale that was the dragon who held her.

Pyre smirked. Despite his prey’s attempt to deny him, he’d caught himself a meal after all. His belly rumbled loudly, reminding him just how hungry this hunt had made him, and sending his new prey into a fit of futile struggles. It was time to fill that hungry belly.

The dragon boy parted his jaws with an eager stroke of his tongue across his upper lip, and then greedily he stuffed the girl’s feet inside.

“Ah! No!” she shrieked. She reached for her wand, difficult while dangling upside down, but found nothing in its usual place. Pyre smirked around his meal’s ankles as he took his first, satisfying little swallow. He’d noticed as soon as he’d grabbed her that she’d lost that little magical toy somewhere in all the commotion. Wherever it was, it wouldn’t save her now.

“No! No-no-no-no!!” Clenching her fists, she hammered harmlessly against the scales of the dragon’s belly, openly on display courtesy of the cutaway in his shirt. Pyre couldn’t help but think that those soft human hands would feel even better pounding from the inside.

Most predators would’ve had considerable trouble swallowing a meal like this; feet-first and face-to-face all the prey’s joints were facing the wrong way. But Pyre was not most predators. Using practically his muzzle alone, he flung the human’s entire body upward by her calves, keeping a tight hold, with just enough force to get her upright. Then, just as momentum gave out and gravity began to take hold, he gave an enormous:

*GULP*

He swallowed hard and greedily, slorping his meal nearly up to her waist in a single contraction of his throat. Suddenly right-side-up, the girl reached down instinctively to try and keep her balance. The dragon boy had one hand ready to grab each of hers, taking hold and shoving them both down his gullet into the space between her thighs. She looked down in terror, seeing the glowing orange maw wrapping itself around her body. She screamed.

“No!! Stop!! I don’t want to be food!!”

If the predator’s mouth hadn’t been full at the time, he certainly would have spoken the response that came to mind:

You were born food.

*gulp*

The dragon’s powerful throat shuddered again with a loud squelch, and the poor human meal felt the warmth of her predator’s gullet suddenly rise over her belly, the radiant heat wafting up to reach her face as if she were sinking into a fire. And almost as alarming, she felt her legs being forced to bend outward, as her feet reached the end of their journey- the very spot where her entire lifelong journey would end- the predator’s stomach.

Arms and legs firmly grasped by orange, gleaming muscle, she was well past the point of escape. Mentally, she was also well past the point of words. All she could do now was wriggle fiercely in a hopeless attempt at freedom, grunting and whimpering and wailing the whole way down.

*gulp*

Another domineering squeeze from Pyre’s gullet prompted an equally terrified squeal from his prey as she was yanked deeper, her knees pressing a bulge in his scaly belly, her shoulders barely peeking out from the sides of his upturned maw, her red hair spilling around the edges of his muzzle like strands of fire.

As white, pointed teeth began to eclipse her view, her gaze fixed downward. Her chin to her chest, she stared down at the approaching orange abyss. Only moments after his last swallow, she could already see fresh drool beginning to pool, leaking from the living, hungry flesh engulfing her. She could feel its wet heat soaking into the last dry reaches of her shirt, rising and rising, encroaching up her body as it threatened to cover her completely.

*gulp*

The glistening slime chugged down into the throat below as it opened briefly, pulling her body just a bit further down along with it. But only a bit. Her shoulders slipped out of view of the outside world, her chest eclipsed from her own view by the swell of the dragon’s tongue, the tongue that now flexed and dripped before her very eyes- the only thing left she could see. Already pushed to the height of terror, she watched it rise. It pressed up against her face, snaking around her cheek, twisting, wrapping itself around her entire head like a slimy serpent.

She gave one last scream, heavily muffled, as the dragon slowly closed his jaws around the last bits of her, his tongue lightly squeezing her in a touch more to clear the edges of his teeth.

*gulp*

With one last, sensual squelch, the former schoolgirl slipped completely into the predator’s throat, and then further and further down, her bulge descending the scaly neck, pressed deeper and deeper until she finally arrived wholly in Pyre’s eager stomach. Another squirming bulge in a predator’s hungry belly.

The dragon smiled in pleasure and satisfaction, sizing up his belly with his hands as the gratification of a fresh, squirming meal came through.

After a few moments, he heard the heavy steps of a familiar amphibian approaching.

“You’re welcome,” Pyre said smugly, turning to Mort. “I got us both a meal.”

“Oh, is that what happened?” the toad replied sarcastically. “Cause to me it looked like I caught your prey after you let it get away.”

“I sent her running right at you.”

“Was that before or after you got poked in the eye?”

“It was after my diversion.”

“Ah, your ‘diversion’. And having that other human slip on the pizza was all part of the plan too?”

“Of course. That’s why I scared the first human into dropping it.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“Sure as this human sitting in my gut.”

“Well, I wonder what the others will think?”

“Pff, like I care what they ‘think’ happened. I’ve got a nice lunch to digest, and that’s what matters.”

“Well, I can’t argue with you there.” The toad gave his squirming belly a good pat.

*glorp*

The pair walked back to their table, continuing to banter, only looking away from each other once they had nearly arrived.

“What do you mean you’re the one who helped me catch my lunch?” Pyre disputed. Finally turning to look at the table, he asked: “What do you guys th- Hey, where’d Fiona go?”

Mortimer looked as well. Sure enough, the werewolf’s seat was empty. They both looked to Arthur, but Arthur wasn’t looking at them. His stern, somewhat unreadable gaze was focused toward the other end of the lunch room.

…

“…Hey, Jack…”

“Uh- hey, Fi…”

They both smiled at each other through the awkwardness, all the other human kids at the table naturally watching the newly arrived werewolf and her non-bulging belly with wary eyes.

“Listen, um,” Jack began, “I’m sorry about the whole… incident, before lunch. I didn’t mean to end up in… you know.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Fiona urged. “I know it wasn’t your fault. …Actually, I… um… feel kinda like it was mine. …I know you need help staying safe here.”

Jack couldn’t help but agree with her a bit on an emotional level, but he felt guilty about it. Yes, he needed her help to stay alive, but she had a life too. Even though one problem was obviously more dangerous than the other, seeing her standing there like this, with her tail drooping and her ears flat, he felt bad knowing she was pulling herself away from her other friends just for him. Still… he did need it.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I know things have been… different.”

Fiona smiled just a little- or rather her frown shrank a bit.

“I promise I’ll come find you right after next period and walk you to history,” she told him.

Jack actually did smile at that, feeling a sizable amount of relief.

“Thanks,” he said.

Seeing him smile, Fiona’s tail lifted just a bit.

“See ya then,” he said with an appreciative nod.

She nodded back, then turned to head off toward the predator tables once again.

Originally Published: 27-Nov-2021