#lycanberg

The two of you stand there staring at each other, achingly aware of the last time you were together. The air feels charged with shared memories and mingled pheromones, heavy with the weight of a million things neither of you is willing - or able - to voice.

The moment lasts only a few seconds, but it feels like entire days from sunrise to sunset go by before you remember that he just asked you a question. 

“I … I was …” You look down at the device in your hands, then back up at him looming over you. “I was putting this back."

He blinks down at you from behind his dark frames, but he still doesn't say anything.

He's ... hesitating?

No, that can't be right. What would he have to hesitate about? What could you have possibly done to make him hesitant? What could you ever do to make this man in particular hesitate?

Unless ... ?

Did he somehow register your split-second desire to charge at him face-first so you can inhale him properly? The thought alone makes you wince in self-consciousness.

Your Lord's silence drags on for a few more agonizing seconds, just long enough for you to wonder if you should repeat yourself.

"So you admit it."

Huh?

His tone is strangely ominous. Which in itself isn't unusual, but the extent to which its noticeable is concerning.

"Those are good instincts." He nods sagely before he plucks the proffered device out of your hands. "Keep listening to them, and you might just make it out of this alive."

You stare at him blankly as he opens up the tape deck and pulls out the cassette inside, beginning to question both his sanity and yours as your already-tenuous grasp on what this conversation is even about continues to fray.

"Recruiting you must have been an eventful process," he says casually before glancing down at the tape in his hand.

... The hell is this man talking about?

Before you can even begin to think of a reply, Lord Heisenberg does a double-take.

His brows knit together in visible confusion, as though he's not quite certain he's seeing what he's seeing. He pushes back the wide brim of his hat and even pockets his signature frames, as if to get a better look at the object in his hand.

And in doing so, he gives you a much better look at him. 

Your eyes widen. He looks awful.

Without the hat and shades in the way, his hair swept back from his face, you can see the clear signs of extreme strain and exhaustion dragging down his features. He looks almost ... haggard. Like he hasn't slept in weeks.

It's no secret in the factory or the village at large that Lord Heisenberg despises his family and resents the trips he has to take in order to maintain cordial ties with them. That's never been in question.

But seeing the dire aftermath up close ... What happened to him? Did something happen to him? Was he ill while he was away? Is he ill right now? Is that why he's talking utter nonsense? What could have -

“... Astronomy?” he hisses. "Astronomy?"

Against all possible sense, you find yourself stifling a nervous laugh at your Lord's outburst. He sounds so unreasonably upset, you have no idea why, and the absurdity of the situation nearly overwhelms you before you get a grip.

"Well … yes," you answer gently.

His hands drop to his sides as he gawks at you in stunned silence.

"I'm guessing that was a side-project? Or something you were doing in your free time?"

You're starting to feel self-conscious again. And the resumed protracted silence is definitely not helping.

"Um ... it was fascinating," you continue, beginning to squirm under the weight of his stare. "I-I'll admit, I don't know much about planetary alignments, but your thoughts on Keplar-"

Your words grind to a halt as you watch Lord Heisenberg drop the tape and the player on the ground. He begins to stomp the two objects over and over again, crushing them repeatedly beneath the sole of his heavy boot.

Sensing this isn't quite the moment to intervene or comment, you watch in silence as he continues to stomp until the items are reduced to unsalvageable scrap, stopping only when both are basically unrecognizable. Then with a final flourish, he kicks the remnants across the floor, sending the parts scattering all over the place.

He swings back around to face you, breathing heavily and looking absolutely furious.

You pick this moment to smile.

Or at least, you try to. It doesn't quite come across, feeling more like a polite grimace etched into your face.

His scowl only deepens in response.

"Here's what's going to happen."

You straighten instinctively, hands folded primly in front of you. Okay. Orders. He's going to give you orders now. Yes. Familiar territory. Totally professional.

"You're going to get out of my fucking sight."

Your stomach drops. "You want me to leave?"

"Yes."

"The ... The factory, my Lord?" You can barely get the words past the lump in your throat, it's a miracle he can even hear you.

Then, seeming to finally register both the stricken look on your face and the lack of clarity in his command, he sighs.

"Let me clarify," he growls. "You're to leave this room. You are not to return until I give you clearance to do so."

Your Lord closes in on you again, crowding you against the edge of the workbench as he glowers down at you like he wants to stomp you into oblivion, too.

"If you attempt to leave the factory grounds," he continues, "there will be consequences."

The implicit threat behind his words has a paradoxical effect, giving you an odd kind of reassurance. He's not sending you away. Not really. He just needs some space. A bit of breathing room to deal with ... whatever this is about.

"Do you understand?"

You nod. “Yes. Understood.”

“Then why are you still here? Get out.”

You incline your head with frosty deference before attempting to leave. 

It’s only an attempt because the second you try to walk around him towards the door, you find yourself jerked immediately to a halt by his hand fastening on your arm.

What now?

He's looking at you again, but not at your face. He's looking much lower.

“... Is that my shirt you’re wearing?”

Did he just realize that?, you think incredulously. He's more tired than I thought ...

You can't really blame him. Somewhere in all the confusion, you also somehow managed to completely forget that all you’re wearing is one of his shirts.

A hot flush creeps under your skin from head to toe. He's staring at your bare legs with barely disguised interest. Almost like he hasn't already seen a lot more of you.

You don’t know what it is exactly - maybe the fact that he’s standing so close to you - but you’re suddenly hyperaware of just how small you are compared to this man. 

It's strange. You’re not at all accustomed to feeling small in very many contexts, and even all this time spent so close to this man, you’re still not used to it.

All things considered, this shouldn't really be anything new to you. You’ve gone toe-to-toe with men bigger than you before.

You’ve had to, just to get by. To make it from one day to the next over the past few decades without much in the way of family, friends, resources or overall stability. 

Not a single one of those men ever made you feel as small as you do right now. Or fragile.  

And even the ones that did ... never made you feel so at peace with that feeling.

With a jolt, you realize you’ve zoned out again. He asked you a question. You've left the conversation hanging. Your knees have started to shake a little bit. And because he's staring at you, he can see that plainly.

You clear your throat, trying to salvage the tattered remains of your dignity before you answer.

“I was out of clean laundry,” you lie.

Karl doesn’t say anything. Instead, he quietly zeroes in on the conspicuous coffee stain on the garment's shoulder at the exact same time that you remember it’s even there.

Damn it.

“... You were … also … out of clean laundry."

His eyes lift from the stain to meet your gaze. Your heart begins to thud as he arches one gray eyebrow at you. The tiniest hint of a smirk teases the corners of his mouth.

He begins to pull you closer. You can’t help but notice that his grip isn’t as firm as you initially thought. You could probably wriggle out of his grasp. 

Probably.

If you wanted to.

But that doesn’t seem to be something you want right now.

“Listening to my monographs … Wearing my clothes,“ he murmurs, his tone soft, almost feather-light. ”Making yourself right at home, aren’t you?”

You’re staring at his mouth, trying so hard not to get tangled up in his scent that you almost forget to reply. 

All you can manage is a low, breathy "Yeah."

You’re not certain if that’s quite satisfactory for him because he still doesn’t release you. 

“...Yeah?” he echoes, his eyes tracing the curve of your lips. 

An unmistakable ripple passes between the two of you, invisible but incandescent. As close as the two of you are standing to one another, you both have the sense that you’re much further apart then either of you would prefer. 

You look back up into his eyes.

God, even dead-tired and clearly not well, he is a sight. Those aquiline features at odds with those long lashes and soft lips. A gray lock falls over his forehead as he leans further over you.

You could look at him forever. And he seems to be giving you ample opportunity, since he’s in no particular hurry to let you go. His scent and body heat is muddling your senses. You feel it mingling with your own, the two seeming to knit together in a way you can't quite describe, but can feel down to the marrow of your bones.

Oh, please, fucking put me out of my misery, you whine silently as a curious immobility takes hold of you. The words echo nonsensically inside your head. Are you begging to die? Surely not. What are you begging for exactly?

You’re staring at his mouth again, thinking back to the last time you saw him. Covered in sweat, flushed, emptying himself inside you as you lay twitching under his weight pressing down on you in the dark. You force yourself to look back up into his eyes.

His fingers shift, and you feel that shift even through the combined layers of his leather glove and your - his - shirt. Unseen, a telepathic exchange takes place: what if we were naked right now? Wouldn’t that be lovely? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we were -

Then your Lord blinks, the current cuts off and the moment passes.

He releases your arm and turns his back on you.

You stay perfectly still, waiting to be re-dismissed and trying not to focus too much on how rejected you feel.

"Go."

There it is. The re-dismissal. Permission to leave. Permission to get on with your day and try to put all this behind you for the time being.

And yet, your first impulse is to disobey.

You hesitate. 

You're not entirely sure why, but a foreboding sense that he shouldn't be left alone right now keeps your feet from moving. 

That's when you hear it.

A chorus of moans and mechanical buzzing coming from beneath the trapdoor.

The soldats.

"Now," he snaps.

Terrible, biting cold, the kind that sank its fangs deep to the bone and felt as if it would never fully leave, as if she was trapped in the jaws of some great devil about to twist her into knots with its death roll. It was so sharp as to make her heart race before her body could catch up, a horrible sensation as though she was trapped in a form that was not her own and doomed to bear witness to something she was powerless to stop. Only the very tips of her fingers twitched in the snow, her fragile, stinging lashes following minutes later.

It was dark. She was alone in the first stretches of wilderness which encircled the village - possibly one of the worst places one could ever be.

For a harrowing moment punctuated by a sharp inhale, Kris's mind raced to puzzle together her circumstances. Lying face down on the frozen earth, she could see just in front of her nose that there was only a fine dusting of fresh snow on the sleeves of her jacket; she must not have been here long, thankfully. With a grunt she managed to lift her head to the web-like canopy of spindly branches overhead, the ominous silence that only the dead of winter could offer nearly suffocating. This was bad. Very bad. Quiet in the valley meant that the beasts were hunting.

"God… fuck." There was a pounding at the back of her head that would assuredly explode into a full on migraine at some point, as if she needed anything to further complicate things.

How in the fresh hell did I get here? With a considerable amount of effort, Kris struggled into a sitting position, pressing her back to the small, root impaled ledge from which she assumed she'd fallen.

I was running - no, chasing. For once, Kris had not been prey - or, at least she couldn't recall feeling as such. Her well loved hiking boots were caked in snow and mud, the laces dragging a couple of errant burrs that had hitched a ride at some point. She inhaled slowly, unable to suppress a wince at what was sure to be a nasty bruise forming on her thigh. Even with such caution, her lungs seized at the influx of icy air and made her chest burn beneath the scratch of her worn wool sweater. If not for the various aches and pains, she might have had the sense to be more frightened.

I'm not supposed to come out here by myself - that's the rule. He's going to kill me-

He.

Yes, that was it - Karl. She'd been chasing after Karl.

Like a skeleton key unlocking a vault, his name opened the floodgates of remembrance. He'd been acting strangely - even by his standards - for days, culminating in an argument mere hours ago that concluded with him not so much storming out as frantically scrambling to be anywhere but near her. Kris, in spite of herself, felt sick at the memory.

"Where've you been?" she'd teased when he'd staggered into the factory's living quarters, cursing and kicking a stray bit of piping he'd left by the door the day prior.

Kris had scarcely looked up from her knitting even at the clatter, assuming to hear the usual excuse of "needing to give in to the sparks of genius" her partner usually provided when nagged on his tendency to lose track of time while working on his army. Karl had always been prone to disappearing for hours or even days at a time ever since they'd met, either because he genuinely had fucked his circadian rhythm so badly being deep in the bowels of the factory for decades or because Mother Miranda had called upon him to do something that he'd rather not do and Kris would rather not hear about. It did not necessarily bother her as someone who enjoyed her space, so long as he always came back. Besides, Kris knew it was in service to something greater - whether she agreed with his methods was a likely painful conversation for a different time.

However, something had clearly been off. Karl stormed past her without so much as a grunt, his breathing heavy and the heavy material of his duster coat smacking into her arm nearly caused her to drop one of her needles.

"Hey!"

Again, no response. Kris understood that, like herself, sometimes the Lord needed to be alone, but like hell she would ever let a man - even one so high and mighty as Karl Fucking Heisenberg disrespect her and pretend she wasn't there. Careful not to drop any stitches, she shoved her half-finished socks into the basket where she kept her yarn and stomped down the hallway after him, her wild curls practically alive with static. And he's got the balls to mess up my hair? Fuck this.

"What have we talked about, Mister?" she called after him, trying to ignore the way the lightbulbs overhead buzzed with his approach or the way the walls seemed to almost bend inward. "I don't appreciate the temper tantrums aimed at me when I haven't done fuck all to you."

"Not now, pumpkin," he barked, again without turning to so much as glance at her. If Kris had laser vision, she would have bored holes in the back of his stupid, shaggy grey head.

For a brief moment, Kris had thought that maybe this was, for lack of any better way to describe it, one of his weird little attempts at foreplay. Instead of asking for what he actually wanted like a well-adjusted adult, he'd just rile her up until she was in such a state that the only way for her to relieve her frustrations was either to kill him flat out or put him in his place the way he craved but would never admit. She'd just been about to venture a flirt or suggestive comment when her hypothesis was shattered into a million pieces before her eyes. Karl whirled like a spectre and was on her, hands on either side of her head and pinning her to the wall before she could process what was happening.

"Don't you get it?" he'd snapped, the clack of his teeth audible from where he loomed mere centimeters from her face. "I cannot be around you. Not right now. Go."

The last part was uttered hastily, desperately as if thrown in at the last moment in a sort of Hail Mary. Behind his pained expression and the strange glow of his pale eyes, there was something apologetic lurking, the twitch of a muscle beneath his bearded jaw betraying the fracture of his ego.

"You've been avoiding me. Don't think I haven't noticed."

"Are you even fucking listening? I'm busy. We can do your little weepy emotional shit later." Despite the harshness in his words, Karl's pupils dilated strangely and his gaze flicked downward then back to her face in a flash.

So it was flirting. Kris cocked a crooked smile and reached to cup his scruffy cheek in her hand. "Aww, did someone miss me while he was toiling away? You don't have to keep pretending with me, you know. If you want something…"

The second she touched him, Karl reacted as if he'd been scalded with a hot iron. He recoiled and hissed, doubled over in a way Kris had never seen from the man who regularly nailed his own hand to the workbench and simply walked it off. Before she could even utter her confusion, he had staggered backward several huge steps and practically growled at her in a way that was far more animal than human.

"You know what your problem is, woman? You don't know when to be fucking afraid. If it wasn't for me you'd be… you'd be fucking worm food a thousand times over. So for once, why don't you get over yourself and leave me the hell alone since apparently you can't figure out what's good for you!"

The next moments were a blur. Kris remembered shouting something, probably something that she didn't mean, that Karl clearly hadn't heard. He was gone in under a minute, moving at a speed she didn't even think him capable of, disappearing out the front gate of the factory and into the night. She'd rushed after him, taking a detour only to grab her jacket from the closet in her bedroom and shove on her footwear, a mixture of anger and fear boiling in her gut and producing an acrid burn at the back of her throat.

"Where the fuck do you think you're going, jackass!?"

The rest was mostly a hollow void. She assumed she must have decided at some point that following him out beyond the treeline was necessary, whether out of genuine concern for him or because of pure spite, she couldn't say - but what transpired to lead her to be temporarily unconscious in the dirt would remain a mystery. Try as she might, Kris couldn't bring herself to be as enraged as she ought to be for reasons she could not parse. Nostrils flared in determination, she at last rose to her feet with a shaky exhale to get her bearings.

Thank goodness for the light of the full moon hanging above that bathed the shadowed world in an unearthly silver halo. Were it any other phase, she might have been swallowed up by the darkness, scarcely able to see the tip of her own nose. The bare trees and shrubs rattled like bones as she crept over the incline where she'd tripped, and whatever relief she'd momentarily felt melted away at the sight of deep red stains marring the snow underfoot. It wasn't hers - she didn't think so at least, judging by her clothing. She rubbed at her shoulders, cursing herself for not having more survival knowledge to discern what the scramble of footprints and other impressions might have meant.

One thing was for sure: she hadn't been alone. And, the more she looked at the scene, the less and less likely it seemed that she had been alone when she'd fallen. A nagging fear tugged at her heart. There were lycans out here, vârcolaci and moroaicǎ and all manner of story book horrors that she'd seen with her own eyes; she knew better than to put herself in this situation, but there was no use lamenting it now. Her fingers closed around the compass at her throat, the one Karl had given her when she'd complained enough about her now dead phone and the lack of GPS signals.

Like I've got a prayer when I don't even know where I am in relation to the factory. There was nothing for it. In a voice that sounded wholly unlike her usually confident, unbothered self, she hesitantly called out into the night.

"Karl?"

She half expected to be maul to death immediately, even going so far as to squeeze her eyes shut in preparation of the inevitable. When it did not come, Kris briefly wondered if she was already in some kind of purgatory situation. The night remained eerily still, and growing colder by the moment. If the monsters didn't get her, hypothermia might stake its claim instead.

She had well and truly fucked up this time. But she could not have lived with herself if she'd let Karl run away in the state he'd been in, loath as she was to admit it.

"Damn it!" Kris spat and kicked a cloud of snow into the air. "Stupid, smelly, handsome, wonderful, dickbag of a man…"

"….okay?"

She froze, the blood in her veins suddenly colder than it had been even before.

"Wh- … who was that?" Her breaths emerged in frantic puffs no matter how hard she tried to keep her air of calm. There was a long silence before a familiar but not quite right voice floated back to her from somewhere nearby, unseen.

"You… okay?"

Was this a trick of some sort? Donna came to mind. One of her horrifying visions, a trap woven perhaps at the behest of Miranda to lure her out where she would be most vulnerable. Of course. How could she have been so stupid? Was this not the exact sort of thing Karl had warned her about, the kind of emotional manipulation that he knew all too well? To say Kris was disappointed in herself would have been a monstrous understatement - and now she'd likely pay a price far in excess of the crime.

A twig snapped. Something large moved behind the trunk of a thick fir tree not but twenty paces away, a form she had thought was simply the shadow of a large rock or bush until she saw the cloud of frozen breath puff before curious eyeshine. It did not escape Kris as she slowly turned her body to face it that there was a suspicious trail of dark droplets headed in the direction of whatever now stalked her.

Perhaps it was pure madness at being faced with what was surely her own bloody demise that bade her speak instead of faint away on the spot.

"Was that… you? Were you talking to me?"

She had surely lost her mind. Here she was talking to what was either a pure hallucination or something out of a nightmare that was a mere leap and bound from divorcing her head from her shoulders. Whatever it was took a single, tentative step forward; though it was hard to discern, it seemed to be crouched and moving on mostly its hind legs with occasional support from the forelimbs.

"Hurt?" Its voice was low, gravelly as if its owner endured great discomfort to utter a single word.

Kris swallowed. There was no point in running; no amount of feistiness would save her from even the least threatening of Miranda's servants. The snow crunched underfoot as she shifted her weight, the sound loud enough comparatively to make her ears hurt.

"Me? No, I don't think so." If she was doomed, what was the harm in talking to her killer for a while? "Why do you care, anyway? Like to play with your food?"

Perhaps no one would remember that she had sassed her killer before the end, but dammit it mattered to her. Kris watched with baited breath as the thing rose to a towering height - at least a good two feet larger than herself - and observed her in a way that was at once menacing and cautious. The more she focused her eyes, the more she realized it was covered in fur; a lycan? She'd never seen one that big before, unless you counted that gargantuan nightmare Santa Claus knockoff Uriaş.

"Go," it snarled. Detectable even in the dark, the size and shine of its teeth nearly convinced Kris to do as she was told.

Still, something in the way it had uttered the word tormented her. The dawning realization was almost too absurd for even this place, a valley where the impossible was nothing more than a day to day occurrence. For a moment she nearly laughed at herself, a painfully slow step forward in spite of her better judgment, wondering how many bad decisions a person could make in the span of a few hours and if there was a trophy for holding the record.

"…Karl?" she whispered, eyes locked on the other figure as a cold breeze rattled her teeth.

The flinch she got in response was more than enough confirmation. He moved a touch closer, the light finally beginning to bathe the pelt of silvery white fur flecked with strands of black and deep grey. He moved as though any sudden motion from her would send him fleeing off into the deep woods again, this time maybe forever.

"Karl, you don't… you don't have to hide from me," she said earnestly. "I'm sorry I chased you, I didn't mean to invade your privacy. I was just worried. You know how you're always crawling up my ass about worrying to much, yeah?"

Subconsciously, Kris sank into a crouching position as she spoke as if to make herself as small and least threatening as possible. It was almost comical, really. Even as a "regular" human, Karl could have torn her apart with a wave of his hand at any moment. That he would be hesitant around her like this was farfetched, to say the least.

When at last Karl was close enough for her to actually see him, Kris discovered that her lycan guess hadn't been far off. Except, he wasn't exactly like the others - he was far more wolf-like, what with his clawed hands and feet, pointed ears, and - to her delight - a short, fluffy tail. His face was still somewhat recognizable, although it was much more bestial and stained a deep wine color around his fanged mouth.

No fucking way.

Was this what he'd been hiding this whole time? This man who had revealed himself to her, albeit in bite sized chunks, to be capable of ferrokinesis, capable of morphing into a hulking behemoth armored in scrap metal, had been worried that throwing werewolf into the mix would be the last straw? If the encounter hadn't been so tense, she might have burst out laughing and drilled into him for having been so stupid.

"You're good, big fella," she ventured. "All good."

Karl sniffed the air around them, pupils wide and dark much like they had been earlier in the night. His expression was unreadable, whether because he was much more lupine in appearance or due to the fact that, if anything, he seemed to be rapid cycling between at least four different emotions, and none of them good.

"Did I fall off of that ledge there?" Kris gestured to her right. "That's pretty embarrassing, huh?"

Her attempt at lightening the mood failed. Karl snapped his jaws at her as he spoke, though she had the feeling the gesture was not really aimed at her.

"Lycan," he explained as he began to slowly circle her. "Hunting. Not… his place. Killed him."

It took Kris a moment to piece the words together. Her eyes followed the blood trail back to where Karl had been watching her at first, now noticing the details her brain had filtered out before, like a torn piece of burlap clothing stuck to a shrub and what looked like - Oh, Christ - a length of sickly gray, furred skin that had been recently removed from its owner.

"So it knocked me off, I fell, but you saved me?" Kris swore she saw Karl's head nod in response - he was obviously somewhat impaired in his human communication, but not hopeless. "I'm flattered."

"Should go," he repeated, voice dropping low as he paused a few paces from her, fingers twitching oddly in the snow.

"But I don't want to leave you, and besides… I don't know the way back."

Human Karl would have chided her for her stupidity, but Werewolf Karl looked positively bewildered. He, too, sat on his haunches, those strange eyes of his now flecked with gold, and watched her as though he was doing so from an entirely different world.

"Didn't mean… factory," was all he said.

Again, the statement hung in the air heavy like an anvil waiting to fall. Kris was just about to ask him where on God's green earth she was supposed to go if not the factory when - between his mournful expression and all that had transpired earlier - she realized what the fool of a man actually meant.

"You actually think a little furry problem is enough to chase me away? After all the wacko shit we've been through?" This time she actually did laugh. "It's like you barely know me at all-"

It happened so fast that it wasn't until she found herself looking up at Karl, and the star speckled sky above his head, that Kris realized she was pinned. For the second time that night she found herself flat out on the ground, only this time she was on her back with an immensely heavy wolfman leering down at her like she was the most appetizing thing in the world. His hands were at her shoulders, those long claws of his pricking all the way through her jacket at the skin beneath as he leaned close to breathe in the scent at her neck. The heat radiating from his body was intense; coupled with the warmth of his breath, it was enough to chase away even the imposing cold of the Carpathian night. The wind that had been knocked out of her returned only to fall into a steady, fast rhythm as she waited to see if she'd be devoured - and how.

A familiar feeling flipped low in Kris's stomach, something she would not name and privately vowed to take to her grave. You've been around these lunatics for way too long, girl. She swallowed, heavy and thick as he continued to investigate her, head dropping lower and lower with every pass. She should have been scared. Instead, impulse commanded her to blurt out perhaps one of the most humiliating things she'd ever asked.

"So are you uh… are you like, the alpha or whatever they call it?"

Karl paused - she wasn't sure if he could laugh in this form or not, but regardless he mercifully spared her and instead nuzzled her sweater upward until the skin of her belly was exposed to the night air. Something like a low, satisfied growl clawed its way from deep in his chest as he licked a hot stripe across her stomach, a motion that made her squirm and clench her thighs together like a ridiculous protagonist in a dollar store romance novel. She would never judge one of those books ever again.

"Mine."

Oh, fuck. She would have been lying if she said she had never had… thoughts about Karl's mutated form, but the logistics were something that continued to confound her and it was a conversation she wasn't sure he would handle well. This, however, seemed a more physically feasible situation. Kris raised her hands as much as she could beneath his weight and gently rested her hands against his scarred, fur-coated arms. Beneath her touch, the muscles flexed.

"Yours," she conceded, suddenly feeling dizzy.

At that he looked back at her face, questioning - no, demanding she elaborate.

"I know you'll hate to hear this, but you don't scare me, Karl. No matter how much you might want to, no matter if you think it's good for me for some convoluted, fuckass reason." Her thumbs rubbed slow, reassuring circles into his hot flesh. "I don't know why you tried to hide this, and I won't pry, but… shit, it's not even cracking the top ten craziest things I've seen since I got here. And besides…"

With gentle urging, Karl released his hold on her. She wrapped her arms around his thick neck, taking note of the way that he leaned into the touch. She should have been disgusted by the dried blood on his teeth and jaw, but it stirred something primal in her all the same.

"I kinda like it." There was a scramble, a puff of disturbed snow as the world spun and she found her self yet again flipped to her front. Human Karl could be rough, if she asked, but tended to be more reverent in his motions despite the mask he often tried to put on in front of others. This was anything but - this was primal. Something heavy prodded at her backside, and Kris was pretty sure she felt saliva drip onto the exposed skin of her lower back. Karl hunched over her, settling into position for what was about to surely be the first of many monthly traditions.

"Don't know what you're getting into," he breathed into the back of her head. One of his thick, furred thighs urged her legs apart as he settled a hand against the soft flesh of her waist. Kris laughed, and it echoed hollow off of nothing in the frigid night.

Back when you were still a newcomer to the village and a new factory recruit, all this chatter seemed rather cryptic and ominous. Now that you’ve been here a while? It’s still ominous, but no longer so cryptic. You can fill in the blanks now and finish the refrain like a tired old jingle everybody knows:

"We'll know if he comes back later than last time."

"We'll know if he comes back earlier than last time.”

"We'll know if soldat security increases at the perimeters."

It’s war. They're talking about war. 

No one says the word, but it's right on the tip of everyone’s tongue: We'll know (we're going to war) if …

You’ve been a resident long enough to have gone through a handful of such visits. And each time is marked by the same feeling of unease and uncertainty. The same tension and speculation. The same whispers.

And why wouldn't it? Along with the whispers, you've also grown familiar with the village's precarious position - the curious razor's edge on which both it and the factory rests:

The four Lords, against all odds, have maintained an uneasy truce in the absence of the puppet-mistress that kept them all (relatively) in check during her infernal heyday.  

An inevitable power vacuum opened up upon Mother Miranda’s death - only to promptly collapse back in on itself when it became clear that none of the Lords were particularly keen on staking their claim over all four territories.

Or getting the wherewithal together to go to war for said claim. 

Or to do seemingly anything but retreat to their own respective domains and continue to quietly loathe one another from a distance.

And so they did exactly that ... for a while, anyway.

For a few years after Miranda's death - or so you had learned through a mix of research, hearsay and context clues - there had been … squabbles here and there. 

Nothing as dramatic as war. More like skirmishes - disputes over taxes and grain and which bodies were dropped in whose territory. Trivial things like that. 

Eventually, a pattern began to emerge:

The longer the Lords stayed out of one another's sights, the more suspicions began to brew. 

The more these suspicions were left brewing, the more these disputes tend to spring up.

And when more of these disputes sprung up, the more talk of honest-to-God warfare was bandied about seriously.

So despite not being able to stand one another, the four Lords realized - much to each of their chagrin - that they needed to maintain some form of close contact just to keep a semblance of peace.

Nothing approaching real unity, but … a mostly indefinite ceasefire, if nothing else.

And so it was decided: there would be a semi-annual gathering.

A "family reunion", of sorts. 

None of their strongholds are ever host to these gatherings, and to the best of anyone’s knowledge (anyone well enough to be alive and running their mouth anyway), no one but the four of them and their approved attendants are privy to these gatherings.

They can't tolerate being in close proximity to one another for much longer than a week, so that’s roughly how long these visits tend to last before they scatter back to their realms. 

How heartwarming, you think acerbically, more than a little reminded of your own purposefully distant relatives ...  

As far as family dynamics go, it's not quite ideal, but they seem to have made it work. You’re hardly one to judge.

You come to a stop in front of the open workshop door. You peek inside, still half-expecting to see him there, as if he never actually left. 

It's empty, of course. Just as you knew it would be.

You step inside, slowly touring the space as though you haven't been here so many times before.

You stop to linger over his desk the same way you did the first time you ever set foot in here.

His absence is an entity unto itself. Everywhere you expect to see him there is only a harsh, crackling void - a cluster of static where flesh, blood, bulk and wrath should be. It has the shape of him, a kind of rough outline, but with nothing inside the lines you have to squint to even see.

Is this what being haunted feels like?

You park yourself in his chair, take a deep breath and try to gather your thoughts, shaking off the uncharacteristic superstition with some difficulty.   

As much as the possibility of war might still hang in the balance, it seems neither more nor less likely than it did the last few times they gathered.

There's really no use worrying about it further. If it's coming, it's coming; if it's not, it's not. Even with your tendency to overthink, you're perfectly fine leaving it at that. 

Besides … even with all the whispers and speculation and the usual hand wringing all around, you can't help but dwell on ... other matters.

…

... Who are you kidding? Your mind isn't on war at all. It hasn't been for quite some time now. Not really.

The only thing troubling you at the moment is the waiting. The loneliness. The knowledge that you're here alone, he's nowhere to be found, and you have entirely too much time on your hands to dwell on how you'll likely fall all over yourself upon his return. 

That alone would be humiliating enough, but of course, your tortured psyche doesn’t stop there. Oh, no.

To add insult to injury, your sense of honor pretty much dictates that you have to thank him the next time you see him. 

You crumple over your Lord’s desk, dropping your head into your folded arms and letting out a wretched groan. 

Kill me. Fucking kill me.

You tried to reason with yourself. You tried to talk yourself out of your resolution. Really, you did. But you have to face the facts. The relief he gave you was essentially by force - no getting around that - but he gave it to you regardless.

An awful, queasy tenderness clenches your stomach. Yeah … Yeah, he gave it to me, alright … 

Your heat seems to have ... not vanished, per se, but ... it's calmer now.

Not calm, mind you, but definitely calmer than it was before he took you in hand.

You still have a libido, to be sure, but it seems to have returned to the state that it was in prior to you getting so close to Karl - perfectly healthy, able to be satiated by one (or two) self-induced orgasms before you fall asleep. 

It's a bit like the banged-up old furnace in the workshop: still chugging along, not in any particular danger of getting out of control, but always just a hair too friendly to leave anything flammable near it without worry.

It's not the dizzy, ravenous thing that it was before, ready to engulf you in flames. For that alone, you have to thank him. It’s only fair.

Maybe that's how this works? Maybe he fucked it right out of me …

The idea seems ridiculous. You can’t help but wonder, though.

You’re wondering about a lot of things, in fact. Even if he did put that fire out, your Lord still left you with a lot of unanswered questions, far more than he did the last time he disappeared on you. 

Chief among them being just how he plans to debauch you the next time you meet.

You try to temper your expectations. After all, who's to say he's got anything up his sleeve?

You've been around the block once or twice. Enough to have known more than a few men who lose interest once the chase is over. 

Who's to say Lord Heisenberg isn't the same? 

Somehow you doubt that. With anyone else you might have called this misplaced optimism or maybe even an excess of confidence in your womanly charms, but … not him.

No, he made himself very clear.

You shut your eyes as his melodic voice breaks into your mind for what might be the millionth time that week: 

… Good girl … 

… We’ll do the rest next time …

A shudder passes through you yet again at the memory of that night and of that moment at the end, in particular. You rub the gooseflesh up and down your arms. 

What did he mean by that? 

What could he possibly have meant by that? 

What in the bloody fuck is "the rest"?

Yes, these are the questions and concerns plaguing you night and day.

Not the prospect of war. Not the possibility of the village and the factory and every living thing therein going up in smoke.

No.

It's what Lord Heisenberg might still have in store for the two of you.

****

Your Lord is standing over you.

Hovering, really. With clear intent.

The intent being sex. Needy, reckless sex. Hip-bruising, irresponsible, "daddy's home" sex.

Of course, you have no way of knowing this because you're fast asleep.

He returned to the factory under cover of darkness, didn't alert anyone to his presence, didn't drum up any kind of fanfare. Again: you don't know because you're asleep.

Asleep, less than half-dressed for bed and being utterly devoured by your Lord's travel-weary gaze.

You truly are a sight to behold - all brown skin, soft curves pillowing solid muscle, sweet little snores and such delicious vulnerability.

He sinks to his knees beside his own bed, watching the rise and fall of your shoulders and back. You're a face-down sleeper. He can't see your face in this position.

Thankfully, you're prone to toss and turn.

He watches you do exactly that. You toss. You turn. The longer and more intently he looks, the more restless you seem to become.

You roll onto your back. And then your side. You adjust and readjust several times, still deep in your slumber but clearly made restless by your Lord's proximity.

The tiniest smile - the first one he’s cracked in weeks - begins to stir at the corners of his mouth at the notion that even dead-asleep, you can't help but respond to his presence.

He's tired. Nearly worn out from this hellish but necessary trip. Not too tired to put it all behind him and lose himself inside of you again.

He watches you a little longer, the urge to pounce nearly unbearable.

Then his eyes shift to something else, something resting on your bedside table. Something that gives him pause.

Something that shouldn't be there.

He looks at you again. He backs away even as the urge to rut starts to claw at his insides.

Those welcoming curves of yours don't seem quite so friendly now as they did just a moment ago.

He swears under his breath, still tempted to hurl himself on top of you. If not for the express purpose of shooting another load into you, then to interrogate you.

That can wait. He's seen enough for now. Enough to know not to make his presence known.

Not just yet ...

He leaves again, fading into the shadows of the factory. 

****

Somewhere between sleeping and waking, at the foggy intersection of what might be either a dream or a memory, you feel a familiar, thrilling, pulsing awareness rip and crackle through your skin like lightning.

You wake up abruptly, heart pounding, with sweat beading in your scalp and two words blaring like a twin-bell alarm inside your skull:

He's back.

The certainty of it grips your chest so tight you can barely breathe. The excitement measures somewhere between a child on Christmas morning and a helpless bystander bracing for the impact of a nuclear missile.

It takes you a good minute or so, but you manage to get air into your lungs. You roll around, scenting the bed with the feverish determination of a bloodhound.

His scent is there ... but it's faint. Becoming even more faint with each passing moment. As though he was there before, but isn't there anymore.

Your pulse slows back down, becoming almost sluggish with disappointment.

A dream. That's all it was. 

Of course his scent is all around you. 

Of course it's faint.

You’ve been burrowing under the covers on his side of the bed for about six days now, chasing the phantom of his scent even as it grows weaker and weaker the longer he's gone. It's still there, but it wanes more with each night that you're alone.

That doesn’t mean he was here.

You glance around regardless. You were so sure. You could have sworn ...

But no.

You punch his pillow petulantly.

Pathetic, you berate yourself. This is pathetic. You're being pathetic.

You tug the heavy covers back over your head and try to force yourself to go back to sleep. And immediately you know it's going to be impossible. You're already fighting back the urge to climb out of bed and stumble half-naked through the predawn darkness into the workshop.

And then … what, exactly?

Do the exact same shit you've done for the past few weeks? Stare blankly at the schematics and blueprints and gears and jars scattered about the place as though standing where he stood and looking where he looked would somehow conjure the man up? Torture yourself that much more by wallowing in the inescapable fact that he isn’t there?

What good will that do? you try to reason with yourself. Go back to sleep. You have a long day ahead, and it’s still fucking dark out.

You shut your eyes and tell yourself you’re going back to bed - all the while still clinging for dear life to your Lord’s pillow … in your Lord’s bed … clad in one of your Lord’s shirts …

For fuck’s sake - !

It's no use. 

You find yourself drifting back to the last few moments of consciousness you remember prior to your three days of "rest".

Specifically, that unforgettable moment when your Lord spilled himself inside of you.

It's a well-worn memory at this point, every inch of it thoroughly engraved into your body and your brain - yet you still shiver and squirm in his sheets as if it’s still so fresh and new. As if it could be happening all over again, even now.

You remember the preternatural warmth of it, the delicious way it had crept through you, seeming to bridge the boundaries of organs and flesh so that it might seep into your nerves and bones.

You try to focus on that moment as dispassionately as possible. It's difficult because all you want to do is get lost in it again. You want it to overtake you.

By some miracle, you don't let it.

Instead, you consider what came immediately afterwards: namely, that overwhelming certainty that something was ... different. That feeling that something changed in that moment. 

You sit upright in bed, finally confronting the one thing you’ve managed to dance around for the entire time he’s been away.

Something has changed. Something is different. Inside. You don't know what it is, or what it was, or even how worried you should be. But something has definitely changed.

You snort, despite not finding much humor in it. Any other woman would know what that “something" is and not find it all so puzzling.

You place a hand to your belly, allowing yourself a moment to wonder what pregnancy might feel like. Or some other supposedly quintessentially "female" experience must seem like.

You picture your stomach swelling, becoming gradually more distended, a new life forming and growing within, nourished by your body’s resources.

... Then you shrug, bored with what amounts to a useless thought experiment on your part.

You don't menstruate. You never have. There was a time when you were very young when you wondered why, but you've long since outgrown that curiosity.   

When you were young, you grew curly hair under your arms and between your legs. Your shape developed early and opulently. Your features matured, your voice deepened, adolescence carving the woman you are today from the common clay of youthful baby fat, working the same womanly magic as it did on many, if not all, of the other young girls you grew up around.

... But you never bled. Never so much as a drop. Not even once.

Your curious hand had ventured down many times by that point, having discovered the pleasure you could give yourself and the glossy slick that accompanied your arousal - but never blood.

It should stand to reason that Lord Heisenberg couldn't impregnate you even if he wanted to.  

You aren't absolutely certain though. It might be another silly bout of superstition (one too many old wive's tales about men's virility, perhaps?) or your genuine lack of knowledge about lycan breeding, but in the privacy of your own mind, you can admit to worrying about it anyway.

After all ... if anyone's seed was potent enough to find a way around that, it would have to be his, right?

You draw your legs together tightly, crossed at the ankle, knees pressing up against your chest as you fold yourself into a fetal position. Humiliating shudders of arousal begin to ripple through you at the thought of your Lord setting himself to the task of breeding you thoroughly.

You make yourself breathe through your nose, fighting for calm even as the mental image of him hammering his seed into you as you cry and beg him to stop flashes vividly in your mind.

Holy fuck, get a grip, you tell yourself. Even to your own mind, it sounds less like a stern reprimand and more like the desperate plea of a woman on the verge of collapse.

You linger a little longer on the idea, heart fluttering stupidly at the sweet, horrid words your imaginary Lord growls into your ear, all the while keeping up a brutal, steady stroke.

But no. Your own special circumstance and the shared bond of lycanthropy aside, there's one thing that pretty much overrules everything else.

The "gift" coursing like ichor through each of the Lord's veins. The cadou. 

The very thing that makes the four of them so extraordinary. Too extraordinary to replicate or reproduce as every one of the Lords is widely known to be barren, infertile or mutated in such a way as to make insemination and childbearing impossible. 

That's about as close to a guarantee, you think sardonically, as a girl can get.

You wonder if any of the Lords - but Heisenberg, in particular - possess your same incurious stance on their own sterility.

You yourself have had several decades of knowing your particular branch of the family tree won't be bearing any fruit. If there ever was a time when you were saddened or even especially concerned by that, you've long since made peace with the notion.

Ultimately, you do with these thoughts what you did with the collective worries about war, and set them aside for another day. 

No use getting tangled up in hypotheticals. Similar to speculations about war, it wouldn't do much good dwelling on this sort of thing either. Not when there's work to do.

With that much resolved, you crawl to the edge of the massive bed and place your bare feet firmly on the ground. It’s time to start the day.

Your gaze falls on the bedside table, drawn to the cassette player sitting there.

Put that back before he gets home, you think abruptly.

You try to tell yourself you're being paranoid, but you find yourself sitting up and taking the device in your hands anyway.

You stare down at it. You're not sure what this feeling is - apprehension? Dread? Excitement?

Perhaps this is what your dream was really telling you. Not that Karl had really returned, but that you had perhaps gotten a little too … comfortable in some ways during his absence.

Yes, some housekeeping is definitely in order.

You hit rewind on the cassette player, not sure if you're doing so for your own purposes or if you're covering your tracks.

You freeze. There it is again: that curious twinge of fear.

Covering my tracks?

You puzzle at your own phrasing. What an odd thing to say. But now you're wondering: would he be upset if he knew you had been listening his monographs?

Well ... maybe not if he knew why ...

Your face flushes molten-hot at the idea. No. Absolutely not. Confessing to that is simply a bridge too far.

You’ll thank him for fucking some sense back into you, but you can’t cop to anything more embarrassing than that. He’d be so smug and insufferable about it.

Just like he was about his gloves …

Another graphic memory of the two of you together barges back into your mind, sending an unhelpful ripple through your pussy.

GET A FUCKING GRIP, you scold yourself as you march into the workshop, determined to put this whole strange morning with all its circular ruminating behind you.

You're just starting to shimmy the device back into one of the higher cubbyholes over the workbench running along the workshop's back wall when you hear something behind you.

Before you can confirm what that something is, you feel a gust of wind and hear the unmistakable sound of something heavy and metallic connecting with the wall directly to your right.

You turn your head to see what it is and freeze.

A huge, magnetic sheet had been soldered to the wall within the last year or so. Crowding the bottom were a host of screws, wrenches and gears yet to be put to use.

And right at the top was your Lord’s enormous hammer. 

It wasn’t there a moment ago. 

It hasn’t been there for weeks. 

Your Lord took it with him. 

When he left. 

You blink slowly, your stunned brain trying and failing to put the very obvious pieces in front of you together into a coherent picture. 

"Looking for something?"

You finally turn around, unfrozen by the voice suddenly filling what you thought was an empty space.

And there he is, in all his rugged glory. Filling the huge metal door frame like Death come to collect His due.

You stare at him, processing this turn of events just as slowly as you did the sudden appearance of the hammer.

You realize several things at once:

Firstly, that you were right before: he did come back. He must really have been in the bedroom before you woke up in a cold sweat. It wasn't a dream or some weird premonition. Even in a dead sleep, you had sensed his presence.

Second ... during all the commotion, you had instinctively snatched the cassette player back out of the cubby, fearing you might drop or crush it during the chaos. As a result, it's still in your hands when you turn to face him. And even you can tell: it looks awfully suspicious that you’re holding it. 

Oh ... This doesn't look good, does it? you think dumbly as he begins to move toward you.

His eyes fall to the player clutched in your hands.