Oberyn Martell was a snake hybrid living in a forest. A beautiful serpent with shimmering black and red scales and a sleek body. He could shapeshift into humans if he felt like it. A handsome man tall and lean, with sun-kissed skin and a charming smile.

His life used to be simple. Sleep, eat, drift through his territory, and occasionally scaring off other hybrids just for fun.

Then his sister ran away with a human, insisting it was “true love.”

After that, something in Oberyn shifted. And humans, once distant and irrelevant, became his new target.

He used his human form in advantage, lying by roadside in fake distress, waiting for some unlucky bastard to stop and ask if he needed help. That was when he would lure them deeper into the forest, and once their guard was down, he would shift into his serpent form, constrict them to death, and slowly devour them.

Oberyn had always told himself that this was nothing more than a little payback, humans had taken his beloved sister away, after all. Although he had always been unwilling to admit it, his sister had left of her own free will.

It was a warm afternoon. He hadn’t planned to hunt. Instead, he had just finished devouring half a stag, his stomach heavy and full. Curled up in a tight coil in the middle of the road, he dozed lazily under the sun, in an unusually calm mood.

Maybe, he thought drowsily, he should stop punishing humans so relentlessly.

But just as sleep was about to take him, footsteps broke through the quiet. Before he could even slip back into the grass, they stepped directly on him, nearly forcing the stag he had just swallowed back up.

Hissing sharply in pain and fury, Oberyn lifted his head to glare up at them.

Humans. When would they ever learn to leave him alone?