xYzeez

It was years ago that you stumbled into the village, reeking of ash and smoke, hungry from days on end of running through the woods. In lands far past the village your own coven lay as nothing more than cinders and ruined homes, your sisters and mentors dead by crusaders’ blades. Only you had been able to escape, young and small as you were, able to run away undetected as your sisters burned. The memory of their screams remains forever engraved in your mind, echoed through the trees as leaves crunched under your bare feet and you left behind all that you were.

You became the lost girl from the woods, the strange child who didn’t speak of her past, and instead silently buried her magic in a coffin beneath layers of ember and ash. In time you’d become to your neighbors the girl with the healing hands, the one who offered ointments and herbs to cure the ails that plagued them. All the while you kept your magic dormant inside you, a tender flame awaiting a breath of life.

So you listen pleasantly to the murmurs of the beasts, assuring the villagefolk you call neighbors that it must have been some wandering creature that ventured down from the mountains in search of prey before the frost sets in. 

Yet then there’s the mention of livestock going missing. A sheep here, a hen there, of horses being spooked and wild eyed at dawn as if something frightened them. You try to brush it off as mere coincidence. Wild animals are hungry at this time of year, stuffing their bellies full before settling in for the long sleep. There haven’t been wolves in this village since before you were born- hunted to extinction for the safety of everyone inside the stone walls that surround it.

“You should stay inside the village, lass.” Says a regular customer of yours who visits you for a salve to keep her aging, aching joints at bay. “It’s safer inside the walls.”

You assure her that your small cottage down by the lake is perfectly safe. With its large, iron crossed door and the secret hexes you’ve engraved into the frame, it would take a truly massive monster to knock down your sanctuary and cause you to flee. It’s more than that, however. It’s the fact that you can’t possibly imagine yourself around so many people. It’s not safe to be in a place so crowded, in a place with so many eyes. If someone were to find out who you are...what you are....

Instead you hang herbs from the rafters in your cottage, you boil tinctures over the hearth as birchwood spills from the chimney, and you sometimes watch the edge of the woods wondering if perhaps the creatures there feel as lonely as you do.

Things change after the Harvest Moon.

“The size of a horse!” A man in the market outside the church gasps, pale as a sheet and his clothes askew. “Its withers stood above my head! Dark as the night and its face-!” The man shudders as his fellows try to comfort him, draping a cloak about his shoulders. “It looked like the reaper himself, shaped like a skull!” He paces back and forth, and it's only once he turns that you stifle a gasp at the blood splattered across his shirt and down his sleeves. It isn’t his, you realize grimly, and he lifts his head to shout at those gathered around him.

“It took Thomas! H-he tried to shoot it a-and-”

The crowd gasps, and you hover at the edge, something unknown and dreadful simmering low in your stomach. The man seems to have nearly collapsed from fright, eyes wild and darting as if the beast pursues him still. His mouth works in silent words, and it takes you a moment to realize what he’s saying.

Four of them, four of them, four of them.

Eventually the magistrate comes to escort the boy away and restore order to the frightened crowd. He tells you all that the wolves are not nearly as fearsome as the boy proclaimed, and that he and the village hunters will patrol beyond the gate to make sure the village is safe. Even so, it does little to tame the restlessness of your neighbors, who gather and whisper in the quietest of tones, murmuring the words they’re all thinking:

Werewolf.

As the sun lowers behind the trees, you hasten along the lonely forest path home and watch the long shadows grow dim in the waning light. A cold October wind sweeps under your cloak, lifts your hair to the breeze where your breath spills forth in a sigh of steam. In the growing darkness the forest seems quieter, more foreboding as the aspen and pine creak against the wind. An awareness prickles at the edges of your senses, a warning whisper that curls around you in the sudden silence.

You’re being watched.

Heart in your throat, you turn ever so slowly, hands shaking as you finally see it between the trees:

A shadow.

You don’t realize just how massive it is until it stands from where it’s crouched on the forest floor. With horror clawing its way up your throat you watch it rise, rise higher until its shoulders are halfway up the twisted trunks on either side of it. Its paws are easily the size of your head, its withers rise up to your eye level, as large as any bear you’ve seen and Gods-

The strength in your legs leaves you, and as the beast takes a single step forward they fail completely, sending you down into the leaves beneath your feet. A whimper threatens your throat as you urge your frozen limbs to move, to regain themselves and carry you down the path to the assumed safety of your cottage.

Beyond the thunder of your heart beat your mind screams higher than the whistle of the wind: RUN! RUN!

Yet as the beast creeps closer you can’t bring yourself to stand, fearing you’ll die of fright before the killing bite snaps your neck. Even the magic at your fingertips with your vague memory of spells and incantations feels like mist slipping through your hands. With each step the wolf, the monster, takes another step- deathly quiet even as it feels like the ground trembles beneath you. Unblinking, it stares at you, perfectly crouched, ready to strike. You can feel tears threatening at the corner of your eyes, your breath coming only in tight, watery little gasps.

“I-” You try, tongue liked lead as you try to speak, a mere whimper escaping instead: “Please-”

At last the beast comes to stand a mere few feet away from you- ebony black eyes at the level of your own with its head bowed. Its gaze seems fathomless, as if you’ll drown in the sheer darkness of it- never to return. Just like the hunter said, its massive snout and head is jet black except for a white patch that travels the length of its massive jaw. Horrifyingly, it almost looks like a skull.

Not like this. You whisper to the heavens, to your ancient deities, to the earth itself. Please, not like this.

Yet then the monster’s eyes break from yours, and it takes another step, massive nose lowering to the basket with your market gatherings of bread, cheese, and fruit. In a fit of utter mystery you watch as the creature’s tail lifts just marginally, almost like a dog, slowly sweeping back and forth as it snuffles through the goods.

Like the spell has been broken, the paralytic fear inside you evaporates like a puff of smoke. Magic attempts to wind itself through your veins and you raise your hand towards the beast, scooting backwards as a stuttered spell travels the length of your tongue.

Yet then your foot crunches a twig and the beast’s gaze snaps to your horrified features, once more locking its startling, glimmering black stare on your form. The spell freezes on your tongue, words stammering uselessly as your palm glimmers faintly with magic, flashing dimly as you try and fail to defend yourself.

For a heartbeat you think at last the wolf will finally leap, will abandon your meager offerings and seize you between its teeth in a swift death grip. Your bones will crunch between its fangs, your scream cut short as it echoes forth between the trees.

Instead, the creature keeps its gaze locked on you before lowering its mouth to gently, delicately, grip the handle of your basket. Before you can question it the beast leaps toward you, clearing your head in a single bound as you scream and clutch at yourself in terror. By the time you realize you’re still alive, by the time you turn to chase the sound of thundering steps behind you-

The wolf is gone.

It feels as if it takes you hours to stand, and even then your legs shake and tremble like a sapling in a gale. It’s all you can do to stagger down the dark forest path to the door of your cottage, latching the heavy bar behind you to keep out any other beast that may find you here. You sink to the floor, shivering and wrapping your arms around yourself as the memory of the wolf races behind your eyes with his bottomless stare.

You shutter all the windows, latch every entrance and exit as your heart races up into your throat like a rabbit running from a fox. You turn on every light you can find and curl into your straw tick bed, tugging the blankets over your head and trying vainly to fall asleep.

and yet you wonder, even as midnight draws dark upon your cottage...

Why the wolf spared you.

Against everything, you wake to morning light streaming through the gaps in the shutters and falling golden upon your sprawled frame. Birdsong echoes as a chorus in the canopy, a gentle autumn wind rustling the branches outside. For a moment you forget about the events of the night prior, caught in a strange daydream where your fingers run through a dark, soft mane and someone whispers an echo of your name.

You’re frightened to leave the sanctuary of your cottage even in daylight, peeking beyond your curtains towards the small lake and stream that runs beside the path to town in case a shadow dances among the trees. Yet there’s nothing but a bevy of deer that gently lap at the water of your little lake.

You should report the incident to the village guards, you think as you dress yourself and eat. Perhaps by doing so you can aid the hunters in their pursuit of the beasts, keeping you and the rest of the village safe from further encounters.

Yet something sits ill at ease inside your stomach at the thought- a sense of wrongness at the idea of reporting your strange encounter. Perhaps it's because of the fact you’re seen as an odd sort of outsider to the rest of the village- one of the few that live beyond the walls and their safety. A part of you wonders if somehow the village-folk will view your encounter with suspicion. After all, why were you spared when one of the young hunters was not?

More than that- what reason do you have to share what has happened when you were left unharmed?

When at last you step out into the crisp autumn air, water pail in hand, you scream.

There’s a wolf flat to the ground, head resting on the grass and paws crossed as if he has deigned it a perfect place to take a gentle rest. It’s different from the one you saw the night prior- a scruffy sort of brown compared to the raven black of the wolf from before. He’s smaller too- still so much larger than the size of any wolf you’ve ever heard of, but not as massive as a draft horse. There’s an odd ruff of fur that travels the length of its spine, almost like a mane. At your scream the beast’s ears twitch, his great head lifting to observe you with startling blue eyes- only to lower once again. It makes no motion towards you, not moving at all even as you try and fumble for the door handle behind you.

“Stay back!” You gasp over the hammer of your heartbeat. “L-leave me alone!”

Yet rather than pounce, the creature’s ears tilt back and it whines- almost as if it understands you. Almost as if it’s a pup that’s been scolded for stealing a piece of meat from the table. It startles you, makes you blink in utter confusion as your mind desperately tries to process what exactly you are seeing.

“You-” You try, voice dry in your throat as the wolf's massive tongue rolls out and it pants, staring at you. “You’re...not going to eat me, are you?”

The beast snorts as if you’ve offended it, and then turns towards its shoulder before depositing something in front of it.

Your basket.

You stare at it for a long, long moment, thoughts churning uselessly before you look back to the wolf.

“You...can understand me, can’t you?”

At this the wolf yips, tail wagging and eyes glimmering.

“Then...” You try again hesitantly. “Can you...change? Back I mean, into a person?”

The wolf whines, low and whimpering, lowering its great head back down and its ears once again flattened to its head, brow drawn up in an almost human-like concern.

This makes no sense. You’ve always been taught werewolves can turn back at will into their human form outside of a full moon. It’s what makes them so dangerous- their ability to walk among humans and pass as one of them. So then why...?

Suddenly the wolf’s ears flick, and it looks off towards the narrow path that leads through the trees down into the village. All at once the fur on its back rises, lips drawing back in a snarl. You don’t see anything when you follow its gaze, staring through the trees until at last the distant sound of voices begins to float through the branches. You look at the wolf, but he’s already turned, glancing back at you over his shoulder. There’s a strange sort of loneliness to its stare, and he pauses for just a moment before three giant strides take it off into the trees. After a moment, you hear a single, bone-chilling howl rise from beyond the treetops.

One that is echoed by three others.

You huddle in the warmth of your cottage for the rest of the day, sheltered by brick walls and the flickering hearth. From the gaps in the shutters you watch as the sun rises high in the sky and the lake remains eerily still- absent of the usual creatures that wander its bank. All the while your heart flutters in the gap between your ribs and throat, a small bird caught in a cage as it desperately beats its wings with fear.

So you choose to pore over your grimoires, searching in ancient texts for anything that might provide an ounce of knowledge into these creatures. Your mind churns with what you know, and the absence of what you don’t. You don’t understand- nor could you. Despite the interactions you had with both wolves, it’s not as if either can speak. They should be able to transform back at will, the books say. Yet for whatever reason it seems as if they’re trapped within their beast-like forms, unable to walk on anything than four legs. It should scare you. It should frighten you half to death and it does- the idea that such monsters could easily snap your neck and swallow you whole. Yet neither beast had shown any inkling to do so, happy instead to observe what they could of you and then bound off into the woods.

The sun sets, and you hang herbs to dry among your rafters as the pot boils on the stove. Questions remain, haunting every breath, every footstep in the silence left behind by man and beast alike. You can’t help but wonder if...

You clasp a hand over your mouth to silence a scream at the scratching at your door, followed by a low, whimpering whine.

Every instinct beckons you further into the cottage- up into your loft where your quilt covers your head and you shiver against the growing darkness. Yet the thing at your door whines, scratching insistently and even barking so as to demand your rapt attention.

When you creak the door open you almost don’t see anything in the darkness, where the moon is veiled behind dark, inky clouds that roll across the sky. Even then you jump at the wet nose that peeks through the gap, snuffling and pressing up against your hand insistently.

You can hardly see him in the pitch darkness beyond your door- coat ebony dark just like his glinting eyes. Yet there’s a gentleness to them, a human-like emotion contained within that you can’t entirely discern.

“I-I don’t have any more bread.” You try, unsure of the beast’s wants. “I’m sorry.”

The wolf barks, demanding and insistent, and you try to take a step back inside your cottage to close the door- to no avail. “What do you want?” You try with increasing desperation, and the beast snorts, withdrawing entirely from your door just so it can jut one massive paw into the gap. It takes you a moment to notice, but when the wolf withdraws its paw you see it- the dark, crimson stain left against the floor.

“Are you hurt?” You ask instantly, drawing the door a little wider, and much to your shock the wolf leans against it, flinging the heavy wood open and stepping fully into your home.

He can barely fit through the door, having to lean his massive head down just to pass beyond the threshold. As he sniffs and circles you his tail sweeps herbs and cutlery off your kitchen table, scattering them and sending them crashing to the floor. Yet he pays no mind, shoving his massive snout under your hand with an insistent whine.

You’re kept upright only by his massive form circling you, each footfall creaking the floorboards so much you think perhaps they’ll snap in two. You try to look for where the beast is injured, but in his dark fur you can’t see any trace of blood, find any wet slickness with your hands.

“W-wait-” You try. “What are you-”

Before you can finish the thought the beast suddenly leaps away from you, out past the door into your garden, where he stands and looks back and forth between you and the forest. Waiting, watching, or perhaps...wanting.

You hesitate at the doorstep, dressed in nothing but your chemise and feeling the autumn wind blow across the threshold. It lifts the hem of your dress, flutters it in time with your anticipatory heartbeat as you stare at the wolf, and the wolf stares back.

Come. He seems to say. There’s little time to waste.

You shouldn’t.

Even so...

You gather with you what you can- fresh bandages, herbs to stop bleeding and help the pain, your cloak and boots and a lantern to light your way. You blow out the candles to your home and hover on the front step, wondering how on earth you’ll find what the wolf is leading you towards in the dark.

To your amazement the wolf lays flat on the ground, looking at you meaningfully.

You blink, unspoken questions seemingly answered.

The wolf is broad enough that it stretches your legs just to ride atop his shoulders, fingers dug into his thick, warm pelt as you lay flat atop him. With a bark, he races forwards, three great strides taking you off into the forest where branches whip against your face and shoulders. The wind whistles past your ears, and you dig your heels in harder to simply remain atop his rolling withers, face buried into his neck to keep it safe from the brambles and twisting tree limbs that seek to rip you from his back.

He runs without stopping, stamina seemingly endless as he carries you deeper, deeper into the woods, far past where you forage for herbs and mushrooms. Deeper still, to the ancient trees and knotted hills where the townsfolk whisper of strange stories and those that don’t return. The wind chills you to the bone, cloak flying as you too seem to sail through the air, the wolf’s paws hardly touching the ground as he races towards an unknown destination.

The moon reveals itself from behind its gossamer veil, bestowing gentle slants of moonlight through the trees as the wolf begins to slow, nose sniffing the ground before trotting forward into a thick grove of juniper as the leaves crunch under his massive feet. You rise from his back, lifting the branches out of the way as he approaches a crag in the distance, tangled with overgrown ivy where water seeps down from a nearby stream. He pauses at the edge of a clearing, barking once and listening.

A bark answers him in turn, and it sounds familiar just as the wolf from earlier in the morning darts from between the rocks and bounds up to you both, whining and sniffing at your bare legs and licking at your hands. You’re carried into a shallow dip between the boulders, where a jutting rock over your head shields you from the stars above. You can’t see, reaching instead for your lantern and lighting the wick inside.

You freeze when a growl emanates from within the cave, sending a primordial fear washing icy through your limbs. When you lift your lantern it reveals two massive forms huddled in the dark, one of them collapsed on its side and the other with his skull-white head set upon him, teeth drawn back to reveal the gleaming white of his dripping fangs.

The wolf from this morning, the strange ruff-like wolf with the playful blue eyes, shoves his nose up against his snarling friend in what you take as a gesture of reassurance. It seems to settle him, if only marginally, allowing you the space you need to slip from your wolf’s back and creep forward, raising your lantern as you go.

“Oh.” You breathe as you draw towards the fallen wolf. His russet fur is stained dark with blood in places, gashes strewn across his shoulder where a spear juts from muscle. “Oh you poor thing.”

He peers one glassy eye towards you, too weak to lift his head but offering a half-hearted low snarl.

Careful. Help, but be careful.

He makes a pained noise as you lay your hands on him, inspecting the wound. It’s cut deep, almost to the bone, and the notched tip of the spear makes it hard to yank free. It needs to come loose before you can do anything else, lest you agitate it further by tending the wounds around it. Yet the thought of yanking it loose only to have your neck snapped in half makes your shoulders shake and your skin break into goosebumps in the damp darkness of the cave.

“Trust me.” You whisper to the injured wolf- more of a prayer than a plea. He only looks at you, unblinking until at last he closes his eyes again in resignation. Behind you, the youngest of the wolves paces anxiously, whining and keening and stopping to bother his two friends in equal parts concern and reassurance.

Trust me. You plead again skyward, setting your hands on the broken grip of the spear and pulling.

The injured wolf snarls with such ferocity you nearly collapse backwards, but instead pour every ounce of fear and panic into your straining arms, grunting and panting until-

The spear comes loose and you tumble backwards, caught in your own cloak as blood splatters across your chemise and boots. When you look down, the iron tip is as large as your hand, made to kill things much larger than you.

The grunt of the injured wolf draws you back, and instantly you discard the weapon to race forward, pulling your clean rags and pressing it to the oozing wound even as blood drips over your fingers and rivulets down your arms.

“There.” You murmur towards the beast under you. “That’s the hard part done. Just rest now. Rest, and everything will be fine.”

Oddly, the beast lifts its head to you, for the first time focusing on you with a clear gaze. He holds your stare for a long moment, as if searching for something, before at last resting his head again and allowing you to resume your task.

It takes you most of the night to tend to the wounds, mixing an herb paste to stem the bleeding and quietly whispering incantations over the stitches you sew into his side. You don’t fear the wolves finding out about your magic. There’s no one they’d be able to tell anyone anyways, and you think it’s only fair they keep your secret as much as you’ve kept theirs too.

By the time you’ve finished you’re stained elbow deep in red, and you think your chemise is entirely ruined with the amount of blood that’s seeped into it. You’re exhausted, but satisfied with the blood you’ve managed to scrub away from the wolf’s pelt and the stitches that dance up his shoulder. When you at last sit back, he lifts his head and tucks it under your hand in a quiet but sincere gesture of thanks.

The other three wolves, who all have waited patiently while you worked, creep forward to check on their injured friend, licking at his stitches and nuzzling at his head. He seems grumpy at the display of fondness, chuffing quietly and grunting but otherwise tolerating their prodding and nuzzling.

You watch them at a short distance, gathering your supplies and huddling into your cloak. The frigid chill has long since seeped into your bones, and you shiver as you try to retain whatever warmth you have left. You long for your blankets at home, dreaming of laying next to the embers of the fire and sleeping until the sun rises high in the sky.

A nose nudges you, and you peer your eyes open in the dwindling lantern light to the dark-haired wolf nudging you in the direction of his injured friend. You acquiesce, gently hovering by his side until the dark-haired wolf settles on your other side, tucking his huge, warm form next to your cold, shivering one. His tawny brown friend is quick to join, circling several times before he lays across your numb feet and rests his head on your shivering thighs. The white-muzzled wolf tucks in behind him, arranging himself so he watches the mouth of the cave vigilantly, keeping watch as the forest turns soft hues of purple in the early dawn light.

Exhausted, now warm and blissfully comfortable, you twist into the massive forms of the wolves around you and allow sleep to find you between the soft snores of the beasts you once feared.

When you shut your eyes, dreams find you.

There’s voices you don’t recognize, touches of others warm against your skin. They surround you, tender and reverent despite their obscurity. A brush of your hair against your cheek, a warm breath across the nape of your neck, gathering you to them and bestowing tenderheartedness against the gentle fibers of your soul. They feel familiar somehow, but in the midst of your strange woolgather you can’t discern who they are.

“Hush, sweetheart, back to dreams.” They whisper, even as they kiss up along your jaw, down the swell of your breasts, fingers splayed against your stomach as a breathy sort of moan travels up your throat. It’s warm, like honey against your skin, sweet and cloying against your senses. A mouth presses fluttering, sucking kisses down the length of your collar bone, another sliding his fingers through silky folds and coaxing your arousal into a tender flame. Yet every time you try to stir, every time you try to chase sensation it only slips away again- like mist through your fingers even as those same voices whisper a distant echo of your name.

You wake within the confines of the cave alone.

Yet as the days come to pass, you discover you are far from the only one in the glade you call home.

You go to the market the day after, and allow your neighbors to fuss over you. The woods are dangerous, they warn you. You should stay behind the safety of the village walls. You ease their anxieties, offering them their usual tonics and herbs, and as the sun wanes once again you withdraw to your cottage- only to find a slain hare resting neatly upon your front step. A gesture of thanks, you think, one of many to come.

It stays as such. A turkey, a hare, a fish from your lake, sometimes even wildflowers that grow vibrant in the late autumn light. It’s rare that you see the wolves themselves- often catching their shadows darting into the trees and watching from a distance as you bend to collect the gifts. They’re wary at first, uncertain after you were shown their den deep in the woods. Perhaps they are afraid you will yet change your mind and go to the village guards. You know that even if you did you too would face the end of a spear for helping them, for offering your hands of healing.

Yet after several days of watching, soon the wolves creep closer. You can hear them at night, sniffing around your herb garden outside, snorting at the iron cross above your door to ward off evil, and even romping in the moonlight as strange dreams find you once more. In the darkness, the rustling of the ferns and swish of low hanging boughs brings an odd comfort, and lends itself to the dreamscape you lose yourself in when you close your eyes.

It’s always the same men, the same touches and muted whispers you can hardly hear. It’s always the same distant pleasure, touches that feel like they press through silk into the recesses of your thoughts. You chase them like one would a prism of light, reaching out your hands in desperate hopes you can hold it for just a moment before it disappears.

“Sweet girl.” They whisper in your dreams, as you contain a watery gasp at the fingers that press between your thighs. You can feel yourself leak down onto them just as another hand smoothes down the curve of your spine, pressing you into a delicious arch with an appreciative groan. “So good for us, so pretty-” Your mewls are caught on the digits caught between your teeth, pressing down against your tongue with a sinful, primal growl- like a beast lurking between the trees.

Touch me, touch me, hold me.

You reach out your hands, trying to hold the pleasure in the cup of your palms for just a moment-

and wake up with wetness between your thighs, and the sound of a mourning dove cooing in the rafters.

Names linger upon your lips, and you find when your mouth forms them they slip away with a sigh.

You give the wolves names as well.

To the wolf with the skull-pattern snout, you call him Ghost. He’s the quietest out of the four, but strong and steady, towering over the rest with a grand stature and strength coiled beneath his jet-black coat. He’s more distant than his counterparts at first, slow to warm to you and suspicious. Yet the more time you spend with him, the more he comes to you with a silent demand of ear scratches and your hands running over his dark mane.

His younger counterpart with the strange ruff you call Soap, as one afternoon you watch him splash in the lake nearby and come out sodden and dripping but his maw wide with something akin to laughter. Mischievous, he’s quick to pull his friends into a bout of wrestling or racing through the trees, emerging victorious and requesting your laughing praises as his reward. Out of them all, he’s by far the most demanding of your affections, whining if you are preoccupied by others and quick to shove his snout under your hands.

To the raven-haired wolf with the mahogany eyes twinkling with a slyness you can never put to words, who leans into your hands with a pleased, rumbling growl you call Gaz- meaning gentle in the old languages of your grimoires. When you speak to him, it feels like he understands more than any of the others, and sometimes you spend long hours in one-sided conversation as he blinks back at you with soulful, knowing eyes. More than that- Gaz is sly, quick to steal away a piece of prey from Soap or Ghost when they turn their backs, blinking innocently at them with a slight tilt of his head as if to say “What, me?”

Finally the older wolf, the one who lays still the most due to his healing wounds, who seems to have paid a heavy tribute to survive as long as he has, you call Price. He’s not as scarred as Ghost, but within him he seems to carry a sort of inner knowledge, a weight that bears heavy down upon his massive shoulders. You spend many afternoons tending to Price’s healing wounds, to which he rewards you by gently nuzzling against your hip until you succumb to a nap against his massive frame.

It’s Soap who accompanies you on long walks in the afternoon sunshine, darting between the trees to chase prey and often returning with something for your hearth. Gaz watches you dig for herbs in the soft soil of the forest, sometimes using his massive paws to expose roots that grow deep within the mossy earth. Ghost patrols the border of your glade at a distance, always vigilant for unwanted visitors and quick to alert the others if hunters are nearby. Yet he always returns at the end of the day, huffing with a begrudging sort of humor and allowing you to stroke the dense fur of his pelt. Price often lays near your front step, resting and healing from his injuries. When you nap in the warm sunshine, Price tucks himself around your form, curling protectively against your figure as you dream.

And dream you do, for as the days pass the dreams become clearer still. Sometimes you can catch glimpses of the men the voices belong to. A flash of lightning blue eyes, smooth dark skin, a jagged pink scar curving up a pale spine, a glimpse of a worried brow staring down at you despite the fondness in his eyes. You rest your head on his hairy, soft stomach, his hand carding through your hair as you move with the impact of every slapping thrust behind you.

“Taking him well, love.” He whispers, and you whimper at the unattainable need coiling low in your stomach, a desire that can’t be quelled here where you’re caught between wakefulness and sleep. You whisper as much to him, a plea to release you, to give you the words you need to find the end of your desire. Yet he only smiles, hushing you as the hands bracing on your hips dip lower between your thighs. You hiccup, writhing, needing, on the cusp-

and then you wake up.

You spend the day in town if only to avoid your newfound company after realizing you make noises in your sleep.

You spend fewer days in town thanks to the wolves who have made your cottage their home, but when you do you hear the constant murmur of hushed whispers. Tracks found in the outer pastures, a sheep slain and left to drown in its own blood, dark shadows and strange howling at night are among the stories you hear. They sit uneasily inside you, knowing the danger your newfound friends are in, but to raise your voice against it is to cast suspicion upon yourself- a danger which you can’t abide.

Ill at ease are you too with the whispers you hear behind your back. There’s fewer customers at your little stall now, and those who visit do so quickly and do not linger. Something has changed inside the village. There’s a paranoia now with every passing day the beasts are not caught and slaughtered. It infects the minds of the weak and afraid, and casts shadows of doubt upon their neighbors- including you.

“Step carefully.” The guard at the gate tells you as you walk out of the village, but when you turn to him, he refuses to meet your eyes.

The shadows in the woods seem longer that night.

That night, you dream of them once more.

Sometimes it’s just this- curled between them, up against phantom limbs and faces you can never clearly see. The veil of dreams hides the true memory of their appearances even as you cling tighter to them, relishing the warmth they offer. To you they whisper soft endearments, offer chaste kisses and embraces that fill the longing emptiness inside you.

“We’ll protect you.” They whisper, stroking your hair, tracing the curve of your bare spine. “We will keep you safe.”

You wish you could do the same for your wolves.

It’s not safe for them here, you think. It’s only a matter of time before someone sees your wolves and tracks them. Together the four of them could slaughter all of the hunters in the village without so much as a scratch, but if one of them were caught alone the way Price was, if the worst were to come to pass...

“You should leave.” You whisper to them one night. Their massive forms take up almost all the space in your cottage. It smells like animal, like musk and earth and warmth as they each come to rest near the hearth and you curl up between them. Gaz’s soft pelt sinks against your fingertips, and you stare into the flames listlessly, speaking words you know they can’t return.

“It’s not safe.” You go on. “You should go to the mountains, up the valley, further into the forbidden lands.” Yet even as you speak the words, you can feel your throat swell with emotion at the thought of them leaving you behind. It breaks before you can stop it, and you sob as you turn your face into Gaz’s shoulder, listening to the worried whines of the wolves around you.

“I don’t want to say goodbye.” You cry. “But you can’t stay. If...if somehow you get hurt...”

Soap shoves his massive snout under the crook of your arm, and even Ghost gently bends his head so you can tuck yourself against his jaw.

“I can’t be the reason you die.” It goes unspoken, but your meaning is clear. Yet none of the wolves make a motion to leave you, instead curling further around you like you’re something precious, something to be kept safe no matter what.

You didn’t realize how lonely you were until you met them.

Lonely are you still in the village- but now you feel more afraid than anything. There’s a word whispered behind your back now as you pass the others, a hatred in their eyes that pierces your fragile heart.

Witch.

It’s a term thrown as an insult, but these days it feels less like a passing bite and more like an accusation- one ending within a fiery blaze that will burn you down to ash. The terror of it all is that it’s true. You don’t attend Sunday mass because the inside of a church feels too warm, too crowded, and you can feel so many eyes upon you. You don’t recite the scriptures, you don’t join your hands in prayers with the others. You live so far away from the village, out of sight and beyond their scrutiny and it makes you a target.

It’s a rainy afternoon as you travel back to your cottage, and despite the drizzle you can hear the sound of someone behind you.

Following you.

A voice that is not yours whispers to you inside the recesses of your mind, echoing a warning, a command:

“Run.”

You’re not sure why but you do, breaking into a sprint as mud finds its way into your boots and the rain lashes against your skin. You run as fast as you can- towards the safety of your cottage, towards your friends, towards the wolves-

Your pursuer catches you- faster, stronger as he wrestles you to the ground. You scream, thrashing as the man above you brandishes a knife that you can see your horrified eyes on the reflection of the blade.

“Witch!” He hisses down at you, a single hand keeping you pinned by your throat so you choke for air. “It’s you who cursed our village! You’re the reason behind all this- I know it!”

Tears burn at your eyes, and you whimper a broken sort of sound- something like a plea, but more akin to a prey animal in their dying throes.

“Once you’re dead, everything will be set right- and those beasts will go back to wherever they came from.”

The knife descends, and you call out to them- the men from your dreams, the ones who whisper your name with tender touches and beloved kisses.

There’s a roar from the woods, and the man leans back just as a massive form leaps from the trees. He’s torn away from you with a cut off scream, and you cough and splutter, eyes burning as you try to regain your breath. Through your tears you see him- you see Price standing above your attacker, his lips pulled back to reveal his dripping fangs bared in a horrifying snarl. One paw immobilizes the man under him, who shouts and screams just as Price’s teeth lean down to his neck for a killing bite.

“No!” You cry, and Price’s ears flick to you, pausing before turning his steel blue stare towards your trembling form.

“Don’t.” You manage, rubbing at your throat. “He’s just scared. He didn’t-”

Beneath Price’s paw, the man whimpers, trying to shield his face.

“Don’t hurt him.” You beg again, wincing at the hard scrape of your throat. It’s enough to summon Price to you, circling you protectively and licking at your face. The man scrambled to his feet, crying out in terror as he races back towards the village.

You pray he will take this as a warning, but inside you know:

It’s time.

You turn to Price, throwing your arms around him with a shuddering sort of gasp, fingers curling into his thick pelt as he offers a low, comforting growl to you in turn.

“You need to leave.” You whisper urgently, turning your head to stare into his eyes. “All of you. I can buy you some time, but it won’t be long before they’ll be back.”

You watch as he bares his teeth in a snarl, and despite the languages lost between you, you understand even so.

“Let them come.”

You race with Price back to the cottage, where the other three members of the pack whine and pace around you, barking as if they’re communicating among themselves. All the while you watch the sun sink lower behind the naked branches and hear the ever present ticking of a clock inside your mind.

You’re running out of time.

You gather what you can: Grimoires, a bedroll, a few changes of clothes, your bag of tinctures and potions, things needed to keep you alive, things to help protect you if the worst comes. You have no plan beyond escaping, beyond vanishing into the woods before the villagers can track you down and find you. With every minute that passes you fear you’ll hear the sound of them coming through the woods, and with every minute you pray the wolves are already gone far beyond the trees, even if it makes your heart ache endlessly with their absence.

At last you pause, bundled in your heaviest cloak and warmest pair of boots, tracing the runes and sigils you’ve carved into the beams of your beloved little home. There’s magic imbued still within them- a comforting sort of miasma that welcomes you warm into its embrace. It feels like where you belong- like home, like something that hadn’t felt quite so until it had been full with the forms of your beloved wolves.

A single, lone howl raises its voice towards the sky.

You know the voice of Price when you hear him, and soon to join him are the voices of Soap, Gaz, and the deep, lonely tenor of Ghost underneath. The volume of it shakes your home to its foundations, rattles the rafters and with it the bones inside your fragile frame. Beyond it you can hear it, just barely, the sound of approaching voices. Beyond the trees, the torchlight glows bright in the darkness.

“You need to leave.” You cry to Ghost outside as he stands at the edge of the trees, ruff bristled and his teeth gleaming in the orange moonlight. “You can’t stay- they’ll kill you!”

Yet Ghost does not answer, does not even flick his ears in your direction even as you tug desperately at him.

“Run!” You try at Gaz instead, but Gaz ignores you, ears pointed forward, alert and undeterred.

“WITCH!!”

It raises and snaps like a whip, crying out from the trees as a cluster of shadows walks through the trees, torches held aloft. The villagers stalk forward as one, filtering between the trembling trunks and twisted roots, further into the sanctuary of your glade. In their faces you see fury, betrayal, you see fear as they spot the wolves standing between you and them, expressions contorting into that of hatred.

“BURN THE WITCH!”

Your heart leaps into your throat, a scream threatening to burst from your lungs. There’s so many of them, guards, huntsmen, and villagers alike coalescing into a single mob intent on your own destruction.

And that of your friends.

They snarl in return, your wolves, barking and exposing their fangs for all to see. You can spot crossbows in the crowd, spears held aloft as the iron tips glint from the flames. You know they’ll embed themselves into the hides and pelts of your friends, and you will become awash in flame as the fallen forms of your wolves fall at your feet.

They’ll kill us all.

It’s that thought that pushes you forward, shoving you way past Soap and Gaz who stand protectively in front of you, snarling and bristled, seconds away from throwing themselves into the fray. You hear them yelp as you race forward, teeth snapping as they try to catch you by your cloak and drag you back to safety.

The villagers draw back, gasping and screaming as you plant yourself before them, arms spread wide to keep them from your pack just as an autumn wind curls itself about your form, lifting your cloak and parting the clouds so the moonlight streams down onto your shoulders.

“You are in MY woods.” You tell them, voice pitched low as the wind whistles and the treetops shiver above you. “You’ll take not one step further.”

There’s a hush over the crowd at that, at the promise of danger in the timbre of your voice, at the fire in your eyes. They look between each other, as if daring one another to be the first one to take a step forwards towards the witch who enchanted four monstrous beasts and brought devastation upon their homes.

Then, a voice from the crowd: “KILL THEM ALL!”

It startles one of the hunters at the front of the crowd, who lifts his crossbow and levies it straight for your throat.

And you, you remember the runes and sigils engraved into your home. You remember the magic you’ve woven into the soil you stand upon, into the very air that billows around you.

And, silently, you remember the first spell you ever learned.

“If I burn-” You murmur, hand outstretched as a low, simmering heat rapidly boils through your veins and threatens to ignite you from the inside out. “Then you burn too.”

All at once, the ground in between you and the mob erupts as a path of flame carves its way past your feet, cutting you off from the villagers in front of you. They scream, leaping away as flames lick at their boots, crying out in terror as the truth of your magic finally unveils itself with horrifying carnage.

“These wolves are under my protection!” You shout forth, hands extended as flames leap around you but offer no harm. “You will not harm them!”

Amidst the flames, amidst the gale that lifts the hem of your cape, amidst the glinting eyes and dripping fangs of your wolves behind you- you become the thing that they accuse you of. You become the thing from their nightmares, the one who brings devastation upon their land, who lays waste to the peace they’ve built atop the graves of your kind. You become the witch, who stands with the fire burning bright in her eyes, her hair wild in the wind and retribution clear in her furious gaze.

They scream, the villagers, falling over each other in their bid to escape from the encroaching fire. Weapons are discarded, shields left to singe within the blaze, and you watch as they flee away from you, away from your protected glade and the creatures who dwell within it.

When at last the remaining few grow distant into the trees, you feel the strength in your legs give way. Your knees hit the scorched earth, arms trembling with your weight as the draw of magic on your body saps away your vigor and leaves you panting and shivering.

It’s Ghost who comes to you first, offering a low, throaty grumble as he nudges you with his wet nose. You lean onto him, take his muzzle between your hands and stare into his golden eyes like you did once so long ago. It’s in his stare that you see the unspoken words he cannot say, but find you all the same.

You climb atop his broad shoulders, and give one last look to your cottage with its sigils and runes engraved into the beams, with the herbs planted in the garden and hung from the rafters. And you know that by leaving it, so too do you leave the person you pretended to be.

The four of you travel deep into the woods, with the knotted knells and twisted roots of ancient oaks. Further still do you travel up into the hills, where heather grows between the rocky slopes and you traverse paths made not by man, but by creature alone. Up into the mountains you pause to take in the rising sun that spills crimson across the snow-white peaks. It’s there that the four of you rest, and you curl into the forms of the wolves you’ve come to love- the wolves you plan to keep.

It’s there, surrounded on all sides by the scent of musk and fur, that you dream of them at last.

You see them, each of them with their own smiles and faces. You hear the sound of their laughter in distant twilight, and their voices soft with a tenderness you can scarcely comprehend. You move as one, as if you’ve memorized the maps of each other's bodies long ago. You know the sensation of every touch, every voice, every noise and breath against you. You know their desires even in the silence, drawing them into you like you’re the kindling to their flame. Lips kiss at your feet, your thighs, the flesh of your stomach and against your closed eyes.

They draw forth your pleasure with gasping kisses and the deep, pushing rolls of their hips. Even in dreams you feel them spread you open, take apart all your inner lacings so nothing is left but your own desire gushing forth. You feel the touch of their hands as they grasp a leg to lift it higher, as they grasp your waist to keep you flush against them. You feel their breath fan across your folds with a whisper of their reverence, and you know just how much you are wanted.

They speak to you in words you can’t yet hear, but you watch their lips form your name over and over, as if it’s a prayer they speak unto the glittering heavens.

In your sleep, you at last, at last, speak their own names for the first time.

The voices become clearer as wakefulness slowly rouses you, slipping between your thoughts like sounds beneath the surface of a lake.

“Should we wake her?”

“No, let her sleep.”

“Ye ken, I’ve always wanted to say this but- she’s so soft when she’s asleep.”

“Mind yourself, Soap. Don’t get any ideas.”

You eventually come to with a groggy sort of whine, extending your frigid limbs to stretch- only to find that the furs and manes that surrounded you the night prior are replaced instead by a tangle of very solid, very naked, very human limbs.

Any remaining semblance of sleep fades in an instant as you jolt wide awake, a gasp upon your lips and ready to defend yourself if need be. Instead, a gentle hand catches your wrist and keeps you where you lay. You freeze automatically if only because the touch itself feels so...familiar.

You blink, turning towards the owner of the hand, eyes wide and lips parted as you meet a familiar set of soft, soulful brown eyes.

“...Gaz?”

Oh. When he smiles, it feels like a sunrise.

“Kyle.” He tells you softly, and presses a chaste kiss to the back of your knuckles. “Or at least that’s what you said in your sleep, doll.”

You blink at him, a thousand questions on your tongue before you’re interrupted by a chin tucking over your shoulder.

“Aye, and he’s not the only one.” A brawny pair of arms wraps around your middle, dragging you back into a firm, warm mass of a body. “Said my name too, Bonnie.”

You know his voice even without looking at his lightening blue stare. “Soap.” You breathe. “How...?”

“Seems you broke our curse, love.” You look up to realize your head is resting on a warm, hairy thigh, connected above to a pair of heart-achingly gentle eyes and furrowed brow.

“Took you long enough.” Another body grumbles, tucking in behind Johnny and slinging a massive, tattooed arm over you both.

“Simon.” Price warns, but Simon only chuckles, warm and fond and oh how it fills an aching corner of your soul you never quite realized was empty.

“You- you’re all human.” You whisper in awe, sitting up on your elbows and turning to look at each face individually for the first time. “I thought-”

“We thought so too.” Gaz interrupts gently, stroking a hand down your shoulder. “We all pretty much resigned ourselves to stay wolves forever after we were cursed.”

Cursed?

Price can see the question in your eyes, breathing a heavy sigh before adjusting the both of you so you can face him better. His large, calloused hands wrap gently around your frame, scooping you up so you balance on his lap and stare into his steel blue eyes.

“We stumbled upon a coven, years ago.” Price tells you. “Hunted on their land without permission, and incurred their wrath as a result. Several of the witches put a hex upon us.”

“They said we’d remain as wolves until we found our mate, until she said our real names.” Soap pipes up, arms crossed under him and head propped up to look at you.

“Then I...” You whisper, looking from him to Price. “I broke it. I broke the curse.”

Price’s smile is soft, achingly tender, and you feel as if you could curl up inside it like a ray of sunshine, basking in its glow until the sun goes down. When you turn to look at the others, you see in their eyes too- the same expressions you saw in your dreams. Endlessly doting, reverent, and full of love.

“Then...” You whisper breathlessly as the true meaning of Soap’s words wash upon you with blessed, endlessly hopeful realization. “Then I’m-”

“Our mate.” Gaz offers, and leans so that his head rests upon your lap, staring up into your eyes with his own, soulful brown gaze.

Oh.

Words escape you. What is there to say? You’ve been so lost for so long, staring out the windows of your cottage and praying for a day like this to come- for someone to come and take you away to a place where you are endlessly cherished and adored for all you are. Now that day has come, and it’s come in the form of not one, but four beings you’ve come to cherish inside your own heart.

“That’s why you never left.” You realize aloud. “Why you stayed.”

“We’ll stay as long as you keep us, pet.” Ghost offers, solemn and sincere.

“We want to stay.” Soap adds quickly. “We- we talked about giving you our mark to prove it.”

“Only if you want it.” Gaz interjects.

“A mark?” You ask, trying to recall what your grimoires had to say about werewolves and whatever the men around you seem to be referencing, recalling with a sudden flash of realization. “Oh.”

“A mating bite.” Price clarifies to your wide-eyed gaze. “From all of us.”

Soap seems to recognize your confusion, because he scoots a little closer, if only to look up directly into your face.

“We’re a pack, bonnie. We’ve been bonded for a while but...it never felt complete until we found ye.”

Emotion floods through you, a deep wash of sensation so fierce it makes your chest tighten and a sob curl in your throat. The loneliness, the grief, the isolation and even the fragile hope- it all seems to coalesce into a single, unnamed emotion that has you reaching for them- for the men you’ve come to love.

Their arms settle around you, hushing and cooing as you cry openly into their bare forms. Loud, sobbing hiccups and cries break down the crumbling walls inside you, releasing a torrent of endless tenderness and an emotion you’ve come now to understand is love.

“I didn’t know where I belonged until I met you.” You weep, fat tears rolling down your face as Gaz tenderly smears them across your cheeks. “I-I’ve been alone for so long-”

“You never have to be alone again.” Price murmurs into your hair. “Not with us, love.”

It feels like magic, you think. It feels like the freedom of something trapped within you for so long, fragile and waiting to spread its wings. The years of being alone slowly lift from you with each sob, and with each shuddering sigh they dissipate into the frosty air, up into the clouds. The forms of the men around you warm you through, imbibe in you a fathomless sort of hope to which there is no end.

They hold you, they keep you, they whisper loving praises onto your skin and lips. In the light of dawn you descend into further unknown valleys, and build there the home you’ve always dreamt of. Under moonlight you race with them through the trees, you awake with them in your bed, you forget all your fears and sorrows and feel your magic woven into every breath, every smile, every laugh of joy.

And you know at last-

You’re home.

---

Your mouth moves before your brain catches up. “Simon—”

He stops, buried balls deep inside you. His eyes lift to yours from beneath the black smear of his paint. Brown eyes gone flat and dangerous.

“What?”

Your fingers swipe at his throat, and then pull back to show him your now candied fingertips. “You’re bleeding.”

For a second, he just stares at you.

Then his mouth shifts beneath the mask. “S’not mine.”

The room seems to go airless around you. For a moment, your brain does not know what to do with the words.

Not mine.

They land somewhere distant - muffled by euphoria and the heat of him still seated inside you. They should mean something immediately - they should send you upright, sober you, sharpen you. But you’re too gone beneath him, too pliant and overheated and pinned, your thighs trembling around his waist while he stays buried deep enough that every breath you take has to move around him.

So you just stare at him.

At the dark paint around his eyes, at the blood smear, at the shape of his shoulders above you. You stare long enough that the unusual details begin arranging themselves in whatever clear space you’ve got left in your mind.

His gloves, first.

They’re clean. Fresh black tactical gloves, one of them still gripping your hip as he stares down at you in pause. You can’t shake the feeling that they’re different - you know his kit. You know the worn seams, the scuffs, the little frays on the knuckles from use. These aren’t the pair he wore earlier.

Your gaze flicks lower.

His shirt, too.

Not the one from briefing. Not the one with the faded shoulder seam and the dust at the collar. This one is clean, dark, newly pulled on in a hurry. You catch a faint whiff of barracks detergent and bathroom soap with every move he makes.

He cleaned up.

The thought comes through the haze in pieces.

Simon cleaned himself up before he came here but somehow, he missed this. One dark smear beneath his jaw.

You swallow. Your voice comes out thin. “What happened?”

Simon watches your mouth form the words.

Your breathing sounds too loud now, while his somehow stays perfectly even - like he isn’t pressed into you to the hilt - like he isn’t the reason your thighs are shaking around his waist. Like he didn’t come to your room with another persons blood still drying in the place he forgot to wash. He lowers himself closer and the mattress dips beneath the weight of him.

His masked mouth brushes the corner of yours, not quite kissing you but just hovering there - dragging the rough fabric against your skin as he speaks.

“What happened was,” he pauses. “Graves opened his fuckin’ mouth.”

A cold thread winds through the heat in your stomach.

You go still beneath him, even though your cunt is still fluttering helplessly around the thick of him. The name alone does something ugly to the room. Sours the air. Pulls the world back in around the two of you.

“What—” you have to stop to breathe. Your nails dig into his shoulder. “What did he say?”

Simon’s hand slides slowly from your hip.

His palm moves over your waist, up your ribs, dragging goosebumps in its wake. He maps you like he already knows every reaction he is about to get - like he can feel the exact second your pulse jumps. His gloved fingers skim the base of your throat and settle there.

Thumb resting over your pulse. Counting it.

“He said he’d wondered what you sounded like when you begged.”

Your breath locks. You blink at him, stupidly.

For a second, you can’t reconcile the sentence with the room you’re in. With Simon above you. With Graves’s name in Simon’s mouth and blood under Simon’s jaw and your own pulse hammering against his thumb like it wants to betray you.

But Simon says it like he has had the words sitting behind his teeth for hours. Like he has been waiting to put them somewhere. Like he needs you to understand exactly what happened to the man who said them.

“He said,” Simon continues, each word dragged low through his teeth, “that a mouth like yours would be wasted on 141.”

Your nails bite into his shoulder.

“I-I—“ you whimper. “Si—“

His hips move before you can say anything else.

A slow, devastating thrust that punches the air out of you and leaves the rest of his name caught uselessly in your throat. He watches you take it. Watches your face twist. Watches the thought you were trying to form scatter completely.

“That Price needs to put you in your place,” he hisses through his teeth. “That he’d have had you on your knees by now.”

Your stomach twists.

You shake your head, but you don’t even know what you’re denying. Graves. Simon. The heat blooming under your skin. The fact that the words should disgust you cleanly, but Simon’s voice saying them like a death sentence makes something dark and shameful coil inside you.

He pulls out just to thrust in again.

Harder this time - hard enough to break the breath right out of you. Enough to make the headboard creak traitorously behind you. Enough to make your thighs tighten around his waist before you can stop them.

Simon feels it.

“Then he looked at me,” he says, voice dropping into something ruined and vicious, “and asked if I’d taught you to take orders.”

Your heart slams so hard you feel it in your throat, pulsing viscously under his palm. The room narrows to three things - Simon’s eyes, the blood on his neck, and the place where he is still holding you down.

There is blood on him.

Someone else’s blood.

Graves’s blood.

The realization comes slowly at first, then all at once.

You see it too clearly: Simon standing there silent while Graves ran his mouth. Simon listening. The moment the Ghost stops being a man in a room and becomes a consequence. You see the gloves he must have taken off. The blood on the old pair. The careful cleanup after. The way he must have washed his hands, changed, checked himself in the mirror, decided he was clean enough to come to you.

Clean enough. Except for the one place he missed.

Simon watches the realization move across your face.

“Oh God.” You force the words out. “What did you do?”

Your voice is barely a whisper.

His answer is immediate. “I hit him.”

The answer is too simple, too small for the blood under his jaw and the hell in his eyes and that is only because you know Simon.

You know the careful economy of him - the terrifying restraint. The discipline carved into his bones so deep it has become part of his breathing. Simon does not hit men because he is angry. He does not waste movement. He does not lose control unless something in him has already decided the consequence is worth it.

He ends things because he has weighed the cost and found it acceptable.

Your fingers curl tighter in his shirt. “How bad?”

For the first time, something almost like satisfaction passes through his eyes.

His hips roll in one slow, merciless stroke and your back arches before you can stop it. You spread your legs and take him deeper; helplessly, embarrassingly, betraying every sensible thought trying to form in your head.

“How—“ you try to ask again, but the question fractures halfway through another thrust.

Simon lowers his mouth to your ear. “Bad enough Price had to pull me off him.”

Your stomach flips in something stupid. Fear should come first.

It doesn’t.

It should be horror. Concern. Anger. Maybe all three. You should shove at his chest. Demand to know if he’s lost his fucking mind. Tell him he can’t do that, can’t put his hands on Graves over his disgusting mouth and a half-formed threat. Can’t turn command into a blood sport. Can’t risk his place, his rank, Price’s trust, your trust, just because another man said something deserving yet ultimately meaningless.

But what blooms under your ribs is not sensible enough to be outrage - it is hot. It is fucking shameful.

It is dark and possessive and awful in the exact shape of him.

Because he heard another man talk about you. Heard Graves put his hands on you in theory. Heard him degrade you, heard him imagine you on your knees, your mouth, your begging, and decided violence was the only answer he trusted.

Your body betrays you before your pride can stop it - a tight little clench around him.

Simon feels it. Of course he does.

He stills above you, and somehow that is worse than movement. He’s pressed to the hilt again, the pressure of him so intense now it leaves your breath caught uselessly behind your teeth. His eyes narrow in something that sees the betrayal before you can hide it.

Your face burns.

“No,” you whisper, before he even says anything.

His mouth shifts beneath the mask. “Oh.”

The sound is low. Cruel in its understanding.

Your pulse kicks under his thumb. “Simon—”

“There she is.”

Your breath stutters, caught somewhere between a moan and a denial, and you hate that he hears both. Hate that he can read you so easily. Hate that your body has already answered him before your pride can even get its feet under it.

Simon looks down at the place where your legs have tightened, then slowly back up to your face. It’s a deliberate act; he is taking inventory of every betrayal.

“You liked that.” He croons.

You shake your head, but it’s weak. Useless. Barely more than the brush of your hair against the pillow.

“N-no.”

His thumb presses against your throat, not hard, just enough to feel the wild little flutter of your pulse.

“Liar.”

Your mouth opens but nothing comes out. You can’t find a single defence, a single outrage. No clever thing you can throw between you and the truth and it is all because he is still inside you. Still wearing fresh gloves like he thought that would be enough to keep you from knowing. Still carrying that one missed smear of Graves’s blood under his jaw like a secret he failed to bury properly.

And now he has caught you reacting to it.

Caught the hitch in your breath. The clench of your cunt. The heat climbing up your neck. The way your whole body went soft and greedy around him the second you understood what he had done.

Simon’s eyes go darker. Hungry in a way that feels worse than anger.

“You should be pissed at me,” he murmurs.

His hips pull back an inch - just enough to make you feel the loss before he sinks back in, slow and devastating, until your hands shift to grab at his shoulders because there is no dignity left in you. No clean line of thought. No clever answer.

“You should be callin’ me reckless.”

Another thrust. Your eyes squeeze shut.

His hand leaves your throat and for half a second, you think he is letting you breathe. That is until both of his hands find your own wrists and pin them firmly above your head.

Your eyes snap open to meet his, expecting full satisfaction, but what you see is worse.

It’s all of him - the width of his shoulders blotting out the dim light, the black of his mask, the hard set of his jaw beneath it, the blood under his neck, those steady eyes watching you like he has already decided exactly how much of you he is going to take apart before he is finished.

“You should be asking what the fuck I was thinkin’,” he says, and you can almost hear the grin in it.

You swallow. “You can’t—”

He moves again, and the words break apart in your mouth.

Your back arches and your fingers curl helplessly against his grip. Your knees shift higher around his ribs, dragging him closer instead of pushing him away, because apparently your body has no interest in helping you survive this with any pride intact.

Simon’s eyes drop to your mouth, then back up to the glass in yours.

“I can’t what?” He murmurs.

You try.

You really do.

You drag the sentence up through the wreckage of yourself, but he is too deep, too thick, too much. The stretch of him keeps interrupting every thought before it can become language.

“You can’t just—” your breath catches on a thrust. “You can’t hit him because he—”

“Because he talked about fucking you?” Your whole body jolts. His eyes burn into yours. “If that’s what you mean, say it proper. Like you fuckin’ believe it.”

You can’t.

Your mouth parts, but all that comes out is a broken little sound when he grinds deeper, cockhead bullying your walls slow enough to make you feel every inch of him, cruel enough to leave you trembling closer to the edge. Any sensible thought is drowned out by the wave of bliss washing over you.

Simon makes a low sound. A rough breath leaves him.

“Too far gone to scold me now?”

You glare at him, or try to. It doesn’t land.

And it didn’t stand a chance, either. Not like this - not with your lips parted and your eyes glassy and cunt stretched pathetically around him. Not with your wrists trapped above your head and your hips still trying to meet him every time he gives you another devastating inch.

“I’m, mmff—serious,” you whisper.

“So am I.”

“Simon—”

“No.” His voice cuts low through the room. “You don’t get to say my name like that while you’re grippin’ me tighter for it.”

Your breath leaves you in a gasp.

He feels the way you clench again, and you see it hit him. See the slight flare of his nostrils beneath the mask. The way his eyes flutter for just a second. The way something brutal and possessive moves through him before he can smooth it down.

“Mhm. Yeah.” His voice drops into something rougher. “Fuckin’ problem, you are.”

Your face burns hotter.

You want to deny it - you want to shove at his chest and tell him he’s wrong. Tell him it’s just your body. Just the position. Just the fact that he has you pinned and overstimulated and too cockdrunk to think straight.

But it’s useless because Simon would know it’s a lie.

He moves again, slow and deep, and the denial dies somewhere behind your teeth.

“That’s it,” he murmurs. “Nothing clever now?”

“Mmff.” Your nails dig into your own palms where he holds your wrists down. “Shut up.”

His eyes flash. “Mhm.”

“I mean it.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I do.”

He gives you another measured thrust, and your voice breaks around a gasp. Simon watches it happen with only the most intent focus.

“Try that again.”

You hate him a little. You want him too much for it to matter.

“You’re—” you inhale sharply when he pulls out almost all the way and then back presses in hard enough to make the mattress shift beneath you. “You’re going to get yourself benched.”

“Probably.”

“Price is going to—”

“Already did.”

You blink up at him, breathless and stupid. “What?”

His thumb drags once along the inside of your wrist.

“Read me the riot act.”

Your nerves jump at that. “And you came here?”

“Yes.”

Something in your chest tightens. “Why?”

Simon looks at you for a long second and the room almost seems to shrink around his silence. Your head swims with all of it; the blood under his jaw, the fresh gloves, the heat of him still locked between your thighs.

When he finally speaks, his voice is quieter. “Because I had to see you.”

God. You think he’s lost his mind.

“Simon—“ your back arches and his mouth falls to your neck. “That’s not—this isn’t—“

He lowers himself closer to you, folding you deeper into the mattress.

“You think I lost it because he insulted you?” You don’t answer. His thumb strokes once over the pulse flying at your wrist. “No, sweet’eart.”

His hips move again, slow enough to be cruel, deep enough to make your eyes flutter.

“I lost it because he thought about touching what’s mine.”

The words hit you low and you make a sound you do not mean to make. Your cunt pulses at the word. Mine. A catastrophic vulnerability to a word you will never ever tire of hearing him say.

“That’s it,” he murmurs. “That’s what you like, yeah?”

You squirm under him, helpless. “Simon—”

“He said your name like he had a right to it.” His voice roughens. “Like he’d survive putting his hands on you.” The next thrust punches a feral moan out of you, and the pace turns to something almost vicious. “I had to let him know what mine felt like first.”

You moan, eyes shut. Helpless and needy as a whore.

He pauses again. One hand leaves your wrists and grips your jaw. “Look at me.”

You do.

“Another man touches you like this,” he whispers, a lethal rasp through his teeth, “and I’ll break every finger he owns.”

You shiver. His eyes flick down over your face, your mouth, the wrecked shape of you beneath him.

“And if he talks about you like that again?”

You barely manage the whisper. “What?”

Simon presses his forehead to yours. “I won’t stop at his face.”

For a long second, neither of you moves. Then he rolls his hips, and the whole world narrows back down to him - his body over yours, his hand at your jaw, Graves’s blood drying on his neck, and the awful, devastating tenderness in the way Simon kisses you like he is still trying not to become the worst version of himself.

One of your hands slip out from under his to touch the smear of blood again. Simon catches it and pins it back beside your head.

“Leave it.”

Your breath trembles. “Why?”

His eyes darken. “Because I want you to remember what happens when a man forgets who you belong to.”

And in the back of your mind, you think maybe you should argue. Maybe you should tell him you don’t belong to anyone or that this is crazy or that he’s going to get you both transferred - but then he does what he always does and starts fucking you deep and hard and mean - and your body reacts before your pride can save you.

Simon huffs a quiet, humorless breath. “That’s what I thought.”

Then he kisses you - filthy, possessive, furious, and fucks you like Graves is still in the room and Simon needs the whole world to understand it.

The fire has burned down to embers again. You've been meaning to add a log for the better part of an hour. The intention is there, but so is the frost-pale light coming through the east-facing window, and the open book you stopped reading twenty minutes ago, and the tree line you keep looking at without quite meaning to. It was an old habit— the kind that gets into your bones during years of watching horizons for things that want to kill you, and doesn't fully leave just because the killing has stopped.

The world is quieter now. You're still learning what to do with that. The cabin sits on a patch of land that belonged to nobody when you found it, which means it belongs to you both now— yours by the particular logic of people who built something with their own hands and decided to stay. You'd spent the better part of a summer on it together, you and Reiner, arguing cheerfully about load-bearing walls and window placement while the rest of the world held its breath over reparations and the long, painful work of figuring out what came after.

You hear him before you see him. The crunch of boots on frost, and the particular weight of his foot fall— heavier on the left, a habit from an old injury he'd never quite shaken. Your heart lifts the way it always does, that small involuntary oh, and you think: ten years….Ten years of knowing this man and your heart still does that and it doesn't seem inclined to stop.

Reiner comes through the tree line with an armful of split logs and pine needles in his hair and his breath making soft clouds in the cold air, and you look at him the way you've been looking at him since you saw him again after those years apart— with something that is partly love and partly relief so profound it hasn't finished moving through you yet, and maybe never will.

You'd found each other again in the aftermath. In the dust and the ringing silence and the terrible, tender shock of still being alive. He'd looked at you across the rubble like a man who had prepared himself very thoroughly for a world without you in it and was having to rapidly revise every assumption—and then he'd crossed the distance between you without a word, and held on, and said your name into your hair like a question and an answer at the same time. I love you—finally said out loud. Years too late and yet exactly on time. You'd married him four months later, in a small ceremony because neither of you saw any reason to wait for the world to be more presentable.

He nudges the door open with his shoulder and the cold comes in with him— pine, winter and woodsmoke, and he still hasn't seen you watching.

He goes straight to the hearth. Sets the logs down with focused efficiency and crouches to coax the embers back, feeding the flame. You watch the firelight shift across his face— the short blond hair, the jaw you know by heart after tracing it so often. He glances back at you over his shoulder, and there it is—that expression. The one that undoes you every time.

"The fire died," he says.

"I know."

"You were right here."

"I was busy…."

"With what?"

You meet his eyes, pouting slightly. "Waiting for you to come back…"

Something moves across his face— that brief, helpless thing, before he turns back to the fire. You watch his shoulders rise and settle as the flame catches and the room begins to warm.

He stays crouched a moment longer, watching the fire establish itself, and you wonder what he's thinking. Whether he's here, or whether he's somewhere in the past—there are a lot of pasts to choose from, for Reiner Braun, and not all of them are kind to him. But then he pushes himself upright and shrugs off the coat and comes to you, pulling a chair around to your side of the table without any preamble, sitting close enough that your knees nearly touch.

He takes your hand between both of his. Just like that— immediate, like he's been meaning to since he left this morning. His hands are always warm, even in winter. Some artifact of what his body used to be capable of, some residual heat that stayed after everything else was surrendered. You have never once taken it for granted.

"You have pine needles in your hair," you tell him.

He reaches up and finds one, pulling it free with an expression of mild affront. 

"There was this branch that came out of nowhere."

"They tend to do that."

He sets the pine needle on the table with great dignity and you bite back a smile, and he watches you do it with those hazel eyes that have been watching you for a decade— from training yards at the Survey Corps to across the ruins of a world that kept trying to make sure you'd never sit at a quiet table together like this. His thumb traces slow arcs across your knuckles.

"I wasn't gone long," he says, softly, and it's not quite a question.

"An hour," you correct him.

"Was it—" He stops, before looking carefully at you, almost worried. "Are you alright?"

And there it is. The thing underneath the ordinary morning, the thing that lives in him now and probably always will. The fear that he'll come back and something will have changed. That the life he's built here—quietly, carefully, with his hands—will have turned out to be the kind of thing he only gets to have for a little while. You turn your hand over so your fingers can lace through his.

"I'm perfect," you assure him. "I just like it better when you're here."

The exhale he lets out is slow and even, but you feel the tension leave his shoulders. His grip on your hand tightens slightly. There it is— that undoing. The specific relief of being told, again, that he gets to stay.

He asks if you want to walk after breakfast, and you do. The frost crunches and the pines stand very still and Reiner's arm settles around your shoulders the way it always does when he's stopped thinking and just acted, and you lean into the solid warmth of him.

"Do you ever think about what it would have been like?" you ask. "If we'd said it sooner– that we loved each other?" He's quiet long enough that you know he's actually considering it.

"Yes," he says. "I used to think about it a lot." A pause. "But less now."

"What changed?"

The trees move slightly overhead, soft and dry.

"It brought me here," he says simply. "All of it, every wrong turn I took— it brought me to you."

You look up at him. At his pale lashes in the sunlight, the profile of a man who spent years convinced he didn't deserve to survive and has been quietly, incrementally, learning to be wrong about that.

"That might be the most optimistic thing you've ever said."

"Don't tell anyone."

You don't say anything, just press closer into his side, and his arm tightens around you as if to say— there you are, don't move—and you walk the rest of the path in the good silence you've built together, the kind that doesn't need filling.

By midday the frost is gone and the light has gone pale gold and you're back at the table with a cup of tea and his coffee—and you're trying to read a book quietly. Reiner is watching you again across the rim of his cup with that expression you've stopped pretending not to notice.

"You're staring," you say. 

"I'm looking at you."

"What's the difference?"

"Staring implies I shouldn't be."

You set your book down. He says it so simply, so completely without shame. Reiner Braun who spent the better part of a decade folding himself in half to take up less space, to want less, to need less— sitting here in the home he built with you looking at you like you're the best thing that ever happened to a life. You're so proud of him for that, but you don't say it. "Come here," you say instead.

He's on his feet before you've finished the sentence, rounding the table, and when you push your chair back he steps into the space like he was always meant to fill it. You stand and his hands find your waist and he pulls you in with that particular certainty— not desperate, not clumsy, just sure, like there is no version of this moment where he hesitates.

"Hi," you say softly, hands resting on his chest.

"Hi." His forehead comes down to rest against yours. That long exhale— the one that means he's setting something down. His arms tighten around you and you feel the full weight of his relief, that thing he carries for you, the gratitude that never quite resolves because it has nowhere to go except here, into this— into holding on.

"I keep thinking," he says quietly, against your hair, "about how many times it almost didn't happen."

"Reiner—"

"I know." His arms tighten. "I know–I'm not stuck in it. I just—" A pause. "I need you to know that I know how lucky I am. Every day. I know."

You pull back just enough to look at him. His eyes are very serious and steady, the way they get when he's saying something he's been sitting with for a while. There are faint lines at the corners now that weren't there when you met him, and a life written plainly on his face— and you love every year of it. Every hard-won line he had gotten. 

"You're my husband," you say. "You're allowed to just be here without earning it."

His throat moves. Something shifts in his expression, that specific undoing. "I'm working on realising that," he says.

"I know you are."

A quiet settles between you—the good kind, the kind your silences are almost always made of now as his hands move slowly up your back. His chin dips toward your shoulder and then, after a long moment, he speaks again, his voice lower than before. Careful in a different way.

"I've been thinking about something else, too."

You wait. You've learned to wait for him—to leave the space open and let him find his way to the thing he actually means. "A baby," he says. Just like that. Plainly, the way he says things when he's been holding them long enough that there's no more room for circling. His arms don't loosen—if anything, they pull you closer, like the admission has made him need the anchor. "I want— I keep thinking about it, and I can't stop, and I know it's—" His voice drops. "I need that. With you….I think I've needed it for a while."

You go very still, not out of shock— you've seen it, the way his eyes follow parents with their children in the market town, the softness that crosses his face and then disappears like he caught himself wanting something he hadn't cleared yet. You couldn't deny you had considered you and Reiner having children— the thought did cross your mind quite frequently. You pulled back far enough to look at his face properly— he looked terrified, but he also looked hopeful. He looks like a man holding something breakable with hands that spent too many years breaking things, hardly daring to believe they've been given this.

"Reiner." You bring your hand up to his jaw and feel him lean into it immediately, that helpless gravitating toward you he can never quite help. His eyes don’t meet yours, darting away to look at the ground. "Hey. Look at me." He does immediately, his eyes softening. "…..Yes," you say simply.

He blinks. "Yeah?"

"Yes." You smooth your thumb along his cheekbone, the same way he does to you. "Let's do this. Let's have a baby."

The breath that leaves him is shaky in a way you almost never hear from him, and then his forehead drops back to yours and he just stays there for a moment, eyes closed, undone in the quietest possible way. His hands spread wide and warm against your back like he wants to make sure all of you is real.

"Okay," he breathes. Then, softer: "Okay."

You tilt up and kiss him before he can say anything else— and it is deeper and slower and full of everything the word yes just opened up between you. Reiner's hand cradled the back of your head, his fingers tangling in your hair as he kissed you back with desperate, grateful tenderness, like a man drowning who'd just been thrown a lifeline. When you finally broke apart, his pupils were blown wide, the firelight swimming in their depths.

"Please..." he whispered, his voice cracking. "Let me show you how much I need this.…how much I need you." His fingers trembled as they fumbled with the buttons of your shirt, his usual practiced ease completely undone by the shaking of his hands. The fabric parted, and cool air washed over your exposed breasts, making your nipples pebble instantly. Reiner's gaze was raw and needy as he looked at you, his thumbs brushing over the hardened peaks.

"God, you're perfect," he breathed, lowering his head. His warm breath ghosted across your skin before his lips closed around one nipple. You gasped, your fingers digging into his shoulders as he suckled gently at first, then with increasing desperation. Whimpers vibrated against your breast as his other hand toyed with your other nipple, rolling and pinching until you were arching against him, gasping and begging for more. 

"Reiner," you moaned, your head falling back as pleasure washed through you in hot waves.

He switched sides, his tongue swirling patterns around your sensitive flesh while his free hand slid down your stomach. The tea and coffee cups rattled as his elbow knocked against them, dark liquid spilling across the wooden table, but Reiner didn't even notice or if he did he didn't care. His focus was entirely on you, on getting you naked and filling you full of him. His fingers dipped beneath your skirt, and you lifted your hips to help him tug it down along with your underwear.

The rough wood of the table pressed into your bare back as he laid you down onto it, but you barely registered the discomfort. All you could focus on was the heat building between your legs, the wetness gathering as his fingers found their way between your thighs.

"You're so wet for me," he groaned, his voice thick with awe and need. "So fucking ready for me."

His fingers explored your folds, spreading your wetness before one, then two slid inside you slowly. "Please," you begged, bucking against his hand as your inner muscles clamped around his fingers. He began pumping them in and out, his thumb circling your clit in time with his thrusts as he continued his assault on your breasts. 

"Need to be inside you," he whimpered against your breast. "Please... let me fuck you here, on this table... let me put my baby inside you..." His fingers curled inside you, pressing against that spot that made your vision blur. "Want to see you swollen with my child... want everyone to know you're carrying my baby..."

The minute you nodded at him Reiner shed his clothes with frantic movements, his body a familiar landscape of scars and muscle that made your mouth water. His cock sprang free, thick and already leaking precum, the head flushed an angry red as he pulled you to the edge of the table, positioning himself between your spread thighs.

"Please... Can I.." he begged, his voice breaking.

You nodded desperately, reaching between your bodies to guide him to your entrance. He slid in with a desperate groan, stretching you open inch by delicious inch. "Fuck...so perfect..." he panted against your neck.

He started thrusting immediately, hard and deep into you, setting a frantic pace that had the table creaking beneath you— your tea cup spilling over and smashing to the ground. Neither of you moved as Reiner continued. "Gonna fill you up... gonna make you mine forever..." he growled, his hips snapping against yours. The spilled drink on the floor seeped into your clothes and stained the table as you dug your nails into Reiner’s arms, hard enough to leave crescent shaped marks.

"Want to see you pregnant," he panted, his voice ragged with emotion. "Want everyone to know you're carrying my child..." His hands gripped your hips hard enough to bruise as he drove into you again and again, the table moving across the floor the harsher he thrusted. 

Your orgasm built rapidly, a tight coil in your belly wound by his desperate words and the relentless drag of his cock against your inner walls. "Reiner," you gasped. "I—I'm close."

His thumb found your clit, rubbing tight circles that had you seeing stars. "Cum for me... cum on my cock... please..." he begged, his thrusts becoming erratic. "Fuck, fuck, fuck...gonna get you pregnant ..." That command from him did it— your orgasm crashing over you, waves of pleasure so intense they left you shaking on the table. Your pussy spasmed around him, milking his cock as he continued to thrust into you from below.

"Take it...I’m gonna fill you up—fuck” he growled lowly as he buried himself deep with a final thrust, his cock pulsing as he spilled into you. You could feel the warmth flooding your pussy, painting your insides with his cum. He collapsed against you, his face buried in your neck as he shook with the force of his release, low whimpers escaping his lips.

For a long moment, you stayed joined like that, his softening cock still inside you as you both caught your breath. The fire crackled softly, casting a warm glow over your tangled limbs and the mess of spilled drinks across the table and floor.  "I love you," he whispered against your skin. "So much..."

You kissed his forehead, your fingers stroking through his sweat-damp hair. "I love you too."

As he pulled out, his cum immediately started leaking down your thighs. He watched with dark, intense eyes, his fingers coming up to trace through the mess before pushing it back inside you. "Don't want to waste any," he whimpered softly. "Need to make sure it takes..."

Soap caught him at it in the mess — Simon parked against the far wall with a coffee going cold in his fist, focused on watching you eat. Soap followed the line of his stare, found you at the end of it, and grinned like the cheshire cat. "Oh, her," he said, delighted. "Aye, she's one of the hybrids. Mantis." He said it the way you'd mention someone supported the wrong football team. Then, because Soap cannot leave fuck-all alone, he leaned in and cheerfully added, "You'll want to be careful there, big man. Mantis females, ehh— they eat the fella after. During, sometimes. Bite the head clean off and finish the job. Read it somewhere once." He clapped Simon on the shoulder. "Best of luck."

And then he left. Wandered off to find some grub, whistling.

Simon stood very still against the wall, then. Felt the information go into him like a splinter you can't find to pull.

Bite the head clean off?

He looked back at you across the room — you'd tilted your head to listen to the person beside you, smooth and too far round, big dark eyes catching the strip-lights — and the want did not go anywhere, that was the horror of it, the want stayed exactly where it was and the new knowledge simply moved in alongside it and started rearranging some things.

He wanted you.

And being Simon, he did not do the sensible thing and walk away. He did the research.

The thing about dating Simon, you would learn, is that you have never in your life been so well fed.

You understood it maybe six weeks in, when you opened his fridge expecting the usual bachelor wasteland and found it stocked like he was provisioning for a siege. Yogurt. Three kinds of cheese. A bowl of cut fruit under cling film. A tin labeled ‘FROG LEGS’.

It was risk management dressed up as romance, which in fairness is mostly what romance is… Isn’t it?

He'd taken Soap's splinter and built a guideline out of it. He knows — he has read, in studies he will deny owning — that the trouble starts when you're hungry. Or stressed. Or both, which is the cocktail that turns a nice evening into something a coroner writes up.

He has constructed an entire relationship on the single principle of never ever letting you get to that point.

You'll be reaching for him on the sofa, hand sliding up under his shirt, mouth at the hot pulse in his throat, and he'll go rigid and say, in that flat  rumble of his, "When d’you last eat?"

"Simon," you sigh,

"Tha’ s’not an answer, love."

"I'm not hungry–,"

"I saw you skipped lunch."

He watches a lot. He watches you eat with open, naked satisfaction, and the first time you caught him at it you'd put your fork down and said ‘did you want some?’ and he'd said ‘no, you have it,’ and meant it with his whole strange heart.

The man can produce a plate of food out of thin air, and there's no point arguing, because he'll simply outlast you, planted there immovable as a boulder until you've eaten enough that his shoulders come down from around his ears.

He's never once said the word out loud. Cannibalism. He skirts it like a tripwire. Early on you'd tilted your head at him a degree too sharp while he was shaving — honestly just affection — and caught his eye in the mirror, and he'd nicked his own jaw and not flinched at the blood at all, only at you. Razor frozen halfway up his neck. The muscle in his cheek jumped and his pupils shrank to pinpricks and you'd thought: Oh. He's frightened. Big, terrible Ghost, who garrotes men in their sleep, scared witless by the tilt of your head. 

You felt bad for almost a full minute.

You have, in fairness, never confirmed or denied a thing. When he goes still and careful you let him. It's the most romantic thing anyone's ever done for you, this grim devout terror, and you're not about to spoil it with reassurance.

Soap, for the record, has really no idea what he started. He'll see the two of you in the canteen, Simon angling the better-fed plate toward you and think, good lad, taking my advice.

Simon had you down — the eyes that hold on him no matter where he moves, that dark point in each one that stays, tracking, while the rest of your face goes soft and human; the too-far head-turn; the way your hands fold up against your chest when you go truly still, wrists tucked, prayer-shaped.

He did not account for the wings.

You hadn't told him because you genuinely forget they're there — folded flat along your spine, a faint seam under the skin, a sheen across your shoulder blades he'd assumed was an old scar. You can't really fly. You never thought to mention them. Plus, it seemed like he knew plenty.

But now he's got you under him with your shirt long gone and his mouth working at the junction of your neck and collar, and there's none of the careful bracing tonight — he fed you an hour ago, he made sure, he watched you finish — and now there's just his weight and his hands and the husky sounds he makes against your skin. One big palm splays flat on your stomach and slides lower, fingers finding you already slick, stroking slow over your clit until your hips chase it on their own. "So soft, love," he murmurs, like he's not shaking. He gets two fingers inside you, curls them, and your whole spine bows off the mattress.

That's when they snap open.

In the dark it's monstrous; a sudden unfolding of something unknown and far too wide for the room, fanning from your back in a wash of color he can't quite name in the half-light. A deep iridescent purple shot through with flares of red, eyespots blooming towards the tips. One instant flat girl, the next a thing twice your size.

Simon goes to stone, shuts down, every system offline. This is it, he thinks — this is the bit where she takes the head. His fingers still inside you. He holds his breath, bracing.

You make a small strangled noise and pull them back down.

They fold away almost as fast as they came, gone into brackets around your spine, and you throw an arm over your face and refuse to look at him. Your ears are hot. He can feel it where his jaw rests on your cheek.

"Sorry," you whisper. "That just— happens sometimes. It– it doesn't mean anything bad, I swear… just… you… just feels good, is all.”

The single most dangerous woman he's ever shared a bed with has flashed her startle display because he got two fingers knuckle deep inside of her, and now she's mortified, hiding her face like a kid. Four months of Soap's splinter works its way loose, pushing out of his muscle, and falls out somewhere in the dark, and Simon — who has never in his life felt safe and certainly never expected to find it here, of all the deranged places — starts to come softly apart with relief. He pulls himself back to look at you.

"Le’me see you," he says, and peels your arm off your face, and when you do his eyes are doing something you've never seen on him: wet at the edges, wide open, not afraid of you at all. 

Worse than not afraid. Pleased with himself.

He leans back down and kisses you hard, pushing his fingers deeper and says it against your mouth because he’s got nothing left to lose: "Do it again. Want to watch."

So you do. 

And Simon fucks you slow and then not slow at all, and every time he tips you over they snap wide behind you and fill the room with color, and by the third time he's stopped flinching and started hunting it, smug, learning the exact angle that does it. When he finally comes it's with his forehead pressed to yours and your wings open around the both of you like something out of a church window, and he's saying something into your jaw, rough and ruined, that takes you a second to parse as all mine, there she is, there's my good girl.

Afterward you bite him. Just a little on the shoulder, just to be a menace, licking the taste of iron from your canine. 

He doesn't even twitch. "Knew it," he says into your hair, wrecked and grinning where you can't see. "Tellin’ Soap he was right."