Time Travel to Ancient Times: Farming and Having Babies

The smell hit her first. A thick, metallic stench of rust mixed with something cloyingly sweet, like rotting fruit left in the sun. It coated the back of Karlie Holloway's throat, dragging her up from the dark void of unconsciousness.

She remembered the explosion—the sickening lurch of the plane, the screech of tearing metal, and then fire swallowing everything. She had died. Or should have. But instead of an afterlife, she woke here, on this alien ground, with Unit 9's cold voice in her skull explaining the impossible: she had transmigrated into a interstellar beastman world. A reality ripped from the trashy romance serials she used to mock. Here, the rules were inverted. Females were rare, their psychic energy capable of soothing the violent frenzies that plagued the males. A single high-ranking female could bond with multiple males, and she was now one of those precious, hunted few. The thought made her stomach turn.

Her eyes flew open. The world was a blur of shadows and jagged rock. A splitting pain hammered behind her eyeballs, pulsing in time with her frantic heartbeat. She gasped, the sound echoing too loud in the enclosed space.

She tried to push herself up. Her right palm slapped against something wet and sticky. Warmth seeped between her fingers. Karlie froze, her breath catching. She forced her head down, blinking away the haze.

Blood. Her hand was covered in it.

Half of it was hers, seeping from a gash on her forearm. The other half came from the twisted piece of metal shrapnel pinning her left leg to the dirt floor of the cave. The sharp edge had sliced through her pants, biting deep into her calf.

"Damn it." she hissed through clenched teeth. The pain was a live wire, shooting up her leg and making her stomach heave.

She grabbed the metal shard with her bloody hand, muscles tensing to pull it free, when a sound stopped her cold.

A low, guttural growl rolled out from the darkest depths of the cave. It wasn't human. It vibrated in the air, rattling the loose pebbles near her feet.

Karlie's hands dropped. She pressed her back against the cold, damp rock wall, her chest so tight she couldn't breathe. Her eyes darted into the blackness, searching.

Two points of crimson light flickered to life.

They weren't lights. They were eyes. Red, vertical slits that cut through the darkness like laser beams. Heavy, ragged breathing followed, the sound of a massive chest heaving with effort.

A shape detached itself from the shadows. It stood on two legs, but the proportions were wrong—too broad, too hunched. As it stepped into the faint light filtering through the cave entrance, Karlie's heart slammed against her ribs so hard she thought it would crack bone.

It was a man. Or at least, it had been.

Gavin Knapp. Even through the haze of terror, she recognized the broad shoulders and the dark hair matted with sweat. But his features were twisted into something