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skzdarlings · 2 months ago

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the fifteenth heir ; faerie prince au ; jeongin/reader ; part one

masterlist.

When you save the life of an injured wolf, you are not expecting him to turn into a prince and save you in return. Of course, as it turns out, fairy tales are not that simple. - A prequel to The Same But Different: The story of how Prince Jeongin overpowered his fourteen older brothers to take the throne of the summer court.

part one | chapters tba | ao3 link.

pairing: yang jeongin/reader content info: set in the faerie prince universe, the prequel to the same but different. faerie/human romance. strangers to lovers. eventual sexual content.

content warnings: please heed the following trigger warnings and read at your own discretion. this story is predominately a romance but classified under horror as well. there will be gruesome scenes, images, and threatening scenarios. this chapter features murder, isolation, mentions of human cannibalism, neglect, suicidal thoughts, explicit violence, and dark fantasy elements.

chapter word count: 7000 words.

enjoy <3

Absolute silence surrounds the house. In daylight, pests are lured closer by the meaty red stench of blood. At nightfall, every lowly thing knows to keep away from the yawning maw of that front door. Even animals understand a chasm, this black hole that swallows life and belches bones back into the woods.

You wake behind the eyes of the monster, curled up in your cot by the attic window. Even the slightest noise wakes you, the smallest disturbed pebble a thunderous exclamation in the silence.

Your eyes adjust to the moonlight darkness. You scan the yard.

Leave, you think, pleading with everything and nothing. You beg whatever is out there to get away before it gets hurt.

It’s been a week since your father’s last hunt and his hunger is going to get the better of him – and you are a selfish little girl in a terrified woman’s body and you don’t want to hear another murder.

Silence is absolute until it is not. It always ends with a scream.

Your own shriek is strangled in the sleepy rasp of your voice, startled by a shape emerging from the thrush of the woods. Your racing heart patters as the shadow takes shape in the moonlight.

Oh, it’s a stag.

Two - no, three of them.

It’s better than a person. Your father won’t be hungry for an animal this late in the week.

It’s still unsettling. Your father occasionally allows you into the woods to hunt for animals. You are not allowed to venture far and nothing intelligent approaches the house, so you never find anything more than rabbits and squirrels. If there are more animals out there, it is deep, deep in the miles of trees, well past where the footpaths fade and the branches start to tangle into a wall of impenetrable brambles.

You have never seen a stag before.

The first stag crosses the yard. It steps tentatively, as you suppose deer are wont. But there is something about the angle of its head, the curious, scrutinizing tilt as it looks at the house – like it’s really considering it, the way people might. The way people do, with a breath of relief.

Thank god, they always say. A house.

Our car broke down on the highway.

We were hiking and got lost.

There’s something about these woods.

We don’t know how we got here.

You don’t know how they get here either. Despite the repeated claim, there is no highway anywhere close. You have looked. There’s nothing but the house.

The stags cross the yard one by one, flicking their heads, their antlers waving in the dark. For a moment, the shadows look like long, spindly fingers, stretching up and up as if taunting you with a friendly wave. Hello, they say, we’re out here and you’re in there. Can you see us too?

Then the porch lights wash yellow over the blue night. Your father steps onto the porch. He always answers the door, just like you are always in the attic.

The stags run, though it seems more jaunty than afraid, a bouncing trot back into the woods. Your father hollers after them, enraged his hunger was piqued only to find no satisfaction.

You lay back down and close your eyes. This screaming is preferable to the usual kind, but it is still screaming.

And it always ends with a scream.

You are sitting by the window, legs curled up and arms around your knees. You watch the yard, the flies zipping here and there in the daylight. You have been watching for hours, wondering if the stags will come back. They seem like an impossible dream in the light of day. Try as you might, you cannot picture them in the yard. They just don’t belong there. Nothing does. It makes that murky dream feel like a nightmare.

Your watching is interrupted by a creaking on the stairs. Your father is coming up to the attic.

You jump out of bed, dressed in your too-small shorts and too-big shirt, like always, and you fetch the key under your cot, like always, and you are waiting at the closed door when he arrives, like always.

Even though you can hear each other breathing, he still knocks at the door. A semblance of politeness. Knocking, like he is protecting your privacy. Knocking, like you can’t hear him hacking his way through human bodies, like you can’t hear the mess, like you don’t know where the meat goes.

He knocks, like always.

You slide the key under the door so he can unlock it. It’s a type of understanding, isn’t it? You can’t leave without his permission. He can’t reach you without yours.

The door opens.

He is holding a hunting knife. It should scare you. He has used it against you before, the one and only time you tried to run away. He let you out to hunt and you ran for that elusive highway. Ran, got lost, got scared, got found. He cut at your legs, not to sever or maim, but in a frantic, desperate kind of threat. That he would. That he would do a lot.

But there are things he won’t do. He won’t make you eat the remains of his human catches. He hands you the knife and says, “Go.”

“Do you want something too?” you ask like you don’t know the answer.

“No,” he says, with no further explanation for what he intends to hunt and eat.

You take the knife.

It’s a cool day. You think it must be autumn but the deeper you sink into the woods, the warmer it gets. The gentle breath of the autumnal breeze vanishes as you leave range of the house. The sun brightens while the shade thickens, the forest a starker and starker contrast of light and dark. You keep to the shade because it is sweltering in the sun with no breeze.

It feels strange to do something like that. Does a moment of comfort really matter? Your legs are scarred, the woods are hot, and the house is always waiting. Does a minute of shade really matter?

Resigned, you trudge through the woods in your bare feet, stepping into patches of hot sunlight. The knife dangles in your loose grip. You hardly feel the path under your feet.

A sound bleeds into the quiet nothing. You ignore it even though it could be a catch. That’s why you’re out here, isn’t it? To find food? A rabbit, a squirrel. There are no stags. You were dreaming. There is nothing. Nothing but the house, right?

Nothing but this, like always.

You stop. Your grip tightens around the knife. Every part of you throbs like it is begging to be pierced. Maybe it will wake you out of this nightmare. Maybe it will set you free. Maybe you just want the house to spit your bones into the woods. At least you’d never have to go back in.

You hear it again. It is not the skitter of an animal or a human scream or any sound you know.

Crying, you realize. It’s the whining wail of a hurt thing, more despondent than afraid. It pierces those vulnerable places faster than a knife. A new ache replaces it.

You follow the sound. It sadness is so persuasive that you begin to cry as well.

You stumble towards some trees, their branches low and tangled. You swing at them with the knife like it’s a machete. You need to get through. You don’t know why.

It must be an animal on the other side. It could be hurt or it could hurt you. It could be one of the stags. Somehow, you know it’s not, thinking of those taunting antlers. They couldn’t make a sound like this.

The branches cave with a shatter, all at once as if tired of fighting. You stumble into an alcove, a little shelter among the trees.

In the middle of it, curled up and crying, is a wolf.

A wolf?

Its fur is a solid midnight black, darker than the shadows around it. Its big body is irrefutably canine but the face is not wolf-like.

A fox, you think, though the proportions are all wrong. Foxes are not this big and overwhelming.

You don’t dwell on it because this fox-wolf is hurt. In the obsidian darkness of its coat, you almost miss the streaks of blood, the open cuts just barely visible.

You drop the knife. The fox-wolf watches it fall, its whine gone silent in your presence. Its black eyes are steady. It looks at the knife then at you. There is a horrible sadness in its gaze, a miserable resignation to the droop of its head.

You know this feeling well.

“Did he do this to you?” you ask, as if you expect an answer. It is not more unusual than speaking to yourself.

The fox-wolf whines, a sad, imploring beg. Its gaze goes to the knife.

“I’m not like him,” you say. “I’m not here to hurt you.”

Even as you say it, you are not sure your father is responsible for this. It’s not his nature. For all his abominable offences, your father does not hunt for sport. He slaughters indiscriminately but it is always purposefully. Animals, early in the week, brought back skinned and ready for cooking. Humans, later, when he changes, when he starts sweating under some invisible heat source and nothing else satisfies him.

That is when you go to the attic and let the door lock behind you. You know he’s still your father when you can hear him breathing on the other side. When the hunger possesses him, he is a screaming, mindless thing, throwing himself at that fortified door, clawing it up like an animal before leaving to hunt easier prey.

He has managed to avoid that state for a while, no longer waiting for the arrival of a meal but seeking it out in advance. Preventative measures became necessary over time. The length of his satisfaction keeps shrinking. He used to last months, then one month. Now it is a week before he hunts again.

He is hunting tonight so the hunger has not yet taken over. He did not mindlessly attack this animal. If he deliberately targeted this fox-wolf, he would have brought it back as meat for you.

You approach the animal, tentative but not as wary as you should be. It has big teeth: visible, sharp incisors when it opens its mouth. It would keep away any sane person with a reasonable fear of suffering. But a bite is not different than a walk in the hot sun.

You kneel beside the animal. You touch it carefully, parting the bloody fur and exposing the wound beneath. It is not the work of a knife. It’s a gash near the neck, an attack as wild as it was intentional.

Blinking, you recall those antlers in the dark.

“Did the stags do this?” you ask gently.

The fox-wolf whines. It sound affirmative, even though that’s impossible.

The greatest impossibility is the sudden pang in your heart. You thought it had already turned to dust. A small, broken shard beats for this hurt creature.

“Poor foxy,” you say.

You kiss the crown of the fox-wolf’s head. It emits a whimper. It rests its head in your lap.

It has been so long since you kissed anything. You kissed your parents a long time ago. Long before they disappeared on a walk in the woods, when your father came back alone and unnaturally hungry no matter how much your then-teenage self cooked and cooked and cooked.

There was one final kiss you gave each of them, but you don’t remember it now. It would have been inconsequential at the time, taken for granted there would be many more.

You will remember this one. Giving affection to another living thing is as important as receiving it. You were affectionate, once, you think.

For a time, you sit in the alcove, tucked away from the world and the woods. You stroke the fox-wolf’s head from the crown to the neck, then back up. You drag your pinky down its snout and its eyes close like a person lulled to sleep.

The fox-wolf stirs first. It lifts its head and looks at the knife. When it looks at you with those glossy black eyes, you understand.

“No,” you say without hesitation. Terrible sadness cloys in your throat. “I know it hurts, but you’re not going to die. I won’t hurt you. Don’t ask me that.”

You don’t question its seeming understanding. You know it’s still impossible, but you cling to that connection. You imagine it sees your own scars and the obvious exhaustion of your weary body. You imagine it recognizes the droop of your head. You imagine a broken part of its animal heart beats for you too.

“You’re not going to die like this, okay?” Your voice is small and rough. A tear slides right off your cheek and onto the fox-wolf. Despite your efforts, the tears keep coming, plinking along the fox-wolf’s scars like raindrops. You brush the creature with careful fingers.

“You’ll be okay,” you say. “I promise.”

You use the knife to cut a strip of fabric from the bottom of your t-shirt.

“This is the only shirt that fits me, you know,” you say, talking to keep the animal calm while you wipe its wounds clean. “It was big when I got it. We were just coming to the house for the summer. I was thirteen. I didn’t even want to go but Mama said it would be good to get out of the city for a couple weeks. It’s been longer than that now, you see. A lot longer. I’m all grown up. And Mama’s gone. It’s just me and Daddy and the House. This isn’t a good place, but you know that. The forest did something to him and now he gets hungry. He's not my Daddy when that happens. He’s just hunger. And when he’s not hungry anymore, it’s like he wakes up, and then he’s a mess, like he sees all the blood for the first time. The worst part? I think it’s all because of me.”

You never say this out loud, not even to yourself in the quiet nothing. You say it now because it’s the reason you rip your last shirt and bandage the hurt animal.

You have to save something because of how much has died to save you.

“He doesn’t want me to run away, to get too far in the woods,” you say. “I think he’s scared that what got him and Mama will get me. And whatever it is, it’s worse than this. Whatever it is, it makes the house safe in comparison. He’d rather keep getting hungry and kill all those people than risk the forest getting me.”

You kiss the fox-wolf’s head when it whimpers.

“I want to save you, foxy,” you say. “Because he only stays alive to keep me alive. He hunts so he won’t hurt me. All the horror, all the bodies, all the death… it’s to keep me alive. Trapped, but alive. And it’s not any kind of life worth protecting, but that’s what a daddy does, I guess. I’m all he has left to protect. I don’t think he’ll die until I do. Maybe I should. Maybe I should let this all end.”

The fox-wolf whines again but not from pain, lifting its head to turn those solemn eyes onto yours.

“I know,” you whisper, scratching behind its ears. “I guess we never know why things happen the way they do. Maybe I was meant to be here so I could find you and help you. Let’s make a bargain.”

Steady black eyes gaze up at you.

“I saved your life,” you say. “And maybe that was the purpose of mine. So you have to use it. You can’t lay down and die in these woods. You have to be okay. Then you have to go back where you belong and you have to keep using the life I gave you. Okay?”

You curl around the fox-wolf. You hide your tears in its fur, uselessly because it can feel your shoulders shake.

“I think I’ll be okay for a little longer,” you say. “Until it gets me – the forest, or the hunger, or him. But I’ll be okay if I know you’re alive, all right? You’re the first real thing I’ve seen in years. I forgot the world could make such beautiful things. If I can think about you free somewhere outside of the woods, it will make me happy, foxy. Please be alive for me.”

The fox-wolf curls around you too, twining in a big coil of wolven bulk and fur.

“Thank you,” you say.

You lay there for another moment, until the sun has shifted in the sky and the shadows fall differently. The hot light touches the border of the alcove. By then, your tears have stopped.

You sit up and wipe your wet face. You take a breath and the fox-wolf watches.

“I have to go now,” you say. “Be careful, foxy.”

You kiss its head once more.

Then, because you never take a kiss or word for granted anymore, you say, “I love you.”

Because you do, because all the love you had for the world and your family is somewhere inside you still. It needs somewhere to go. It feels right, giving it to this sad creature that needs more life.

“Take care,” you say.

It does not whimper or whine. It watches with those steady eyes as you take the knife and leave the alcove in your too-small shorts and ripped-up shirt, the only thing left that’s yours as you leave your love and hope behind.

Your father usually hunts through the night. You don’t know where he goes and you don’t what the path is like. You just know that he doesn’t trust to send you down it even though you could get away once and for all. You suppose it’s not hard to believe the path would be laden with monsters. After all, he must be one of them.

The house is empty. You go inside with a bundle of berries cupped in the remains of your shirt. The front door swings behind you. It doesn’t lock because nothing approaches it willingly. If it does, it won’t last long.

You go to the attic. It’s the only locking door. It traps you, like always.

You put the berries on the bed and the knife under the bed beside the key. Your shirt is now a sticky, juice-spattered mess, cut at the belly, but it doesn’t really matter. You sit on the bed and eat your berries one by one, watching the yard.

You fall asleep at some point. You wake hours later in your cot, long after the sun has set and the gloaming is gone.

It takes a moment for your eyes to adjust to the dark. You peer through the attic window across the moonlit yard, looking for the disturbance that woke you. It might be your father. He is due back. Sometimes he kills his catch on the way but sometimes he waits until he’s at the house. The body ends up over the fire in what used to be a cozy sitting room.

You don’t go there. You don’t need to see when you can hear and smell.

You hear a clatter on the porch. He must have reached the house before your eyes adjusted. The automatic porch lights flip on, that wash of yellow over the dark yard.

It illuminates something on the border between the yard and the woods. It’s another stag, tall and broad with spindly antlers. You can just barely see the shadow of more stags behind it. It’s hard to count them, antlers blending into branches.

The first stag steps forward. Your head tilts as you watch, bemused by its awkward step. Is it hurt? It seems to crick and creak as it moves. You imagine a pop as it lumbers forward.

Then it rears up. It lifts its head.

No. No, it doesn’t.

Its neck is craning, its torso elongating. It lengthens and pops and rises until it looks halfway like a person in the yard, hunched with too-long arms dangling down the length of a tall body. It still has antlers.

You fall back in a panicked jump when the front door opens and closes. For a moment, it’s you that feels like an animal, skittering frantically on all fours. You climb onto the cot and peek out the window. More antlered half-human figures are in the yard, watching the house. The yellow porch light glints in the eyes of the closest one, human-shaped but flashing bright with a heated anger.

It looks at the door. Then it looks at you.

You drop down, not making a noise, too scared to even scream.

There are footsteps on the stairs. It’s welcome for once. You have a monstrous thing of your own. Your father has returned from his hunt. Maybe he killed and ate it on the way. He’s coming to see you and he will be clear-eyed and horrified but maybe, maybe, maybe you can find your father in that pain. He will comfort you and tell you monsters aren’t real, like he did when you were young, when your father was the most indomitable force in the world. He could keep out any monster.

You grab the key and dash for the door. You wait for the breathing, the gentle cadence. Yours come rapidly.

You slide the key under the door and it scrapes the ground, like always, then it’s inserted into the lock, like always. The mechanical unclick. Like always.

But it doesn’t open like always. You stare at the door, breathing louder than any scream. You push it open. Your eyes are raised to look at your father, but he’s not there.

Your gaze drops.

“Foxy?”

You don’t understand the sight. This is irrevocably the fox-wolf, the very same one, still bandaged in your t-shirt scraps, still with those steady black eyes. It’s sitting on its haunches, gazing up at you. The key is on the floor beside a small covered basket.

You take a tentative step to look around. The house is empty. Your father has not returned.

The fox-wolf, who somehow unlocked your door, accepts your unintentional invitation and trots into your room. You watch as it sniffs around then waits patiently beside the cot.

You pick up the key and the basket, at a loss to do anything else. You close the door and it locks behind you. You don’t know how you are going to hide a wolf from your father, but right now you don’t care. Its presence is an immediate and thorough balm. You rush to the cot and take a seat. A peek out the window shows the yard is now empty.

“You scared them away, foxy,” you say, rubbing its head. Its tail thumps happily, its eyes scrunching with pleasure. It has an almost-human smile. You kiss its head. “I think you’re a sweetie,” you say. “The woods are full of scary things. We sweeties have to stick together.”

You place the key under your bed and the basket on your pillow. The fox-wolf nudges it with its nose, whining eagerly. Its tail continues to hammer with excitement.

You smile. It’s probably an ugly smile, unpracticed and strange, but the smallest uptick of that unused muscle fills you with unparalleled delight. You didn’t even know you could still feel that way.

“Is this for me?” you ask.

The fox-wolf watches with that squinty-eyed grin. Your smile returns, still an awkward flicker on your long unsmiling face, but true.

You uncover the basket. You are truly shocked at what you find.

As much as the monsters scare you, they are not unusual. You are used to the woods and the horror. You are not used to smiling and you are not prepared for a basket full of baked goods.

When did you last see such a thing? It feels like a memory of a story, fantasies of someone else’s life. The basket is filled with rolls of pastries sprinkled with powdery sugar, leaking purple berry and yellow custard. Dark sugar sprinkles, a spicy scent – cinnamon, you think. You remember. Was it your favourite? Maybe it will be now.

You don’t know where to start or what to say or do. You look at the basket of sweet sugar wealth, overwhelmed. The scents are so sweet that it’s almost sickening, your near empty stomach roiling. Your smile quivers and breaks and then you are crying with hysterical abandon.

The fox-wolf whines with concern, its front paws up on the cot as it stretches to check on you. You wipe your eyes and try to speak, though it takes some time to sound coherent through the gasping.

“I’m sorry, foxy,” you say. You are even more distressed to find those black eyes glassy with sympathy. “I promise I’m happy,” you say. “I just don’t know how to be. I’m sorry. I promise I feel it inside.”

It continues to look at you with concern, its short ears wilting. You rub the top of its head affectionately and try to smile again. It feels toothy, like an aggressive snarl more than a smile, but it’s not afraid.

You look at the pastries again. You truly don’t know what to do next. As much as the fox-wolf seems to understand you, it can hardly communicate, so you can’t ask where it found so much luxury in the woods. It makes you think your father might be close, that the fox-wolf found this treasure abandoned by unlucky humans.

You feel guilty, but the pastries are so tempting. There is something especially wondrous about them. Maybe because it’s been so long. The longer you look, the more your mouth waters, and the more it looks like something from a dream.

You lift a pastry, feeling a combination of hunger and nausea. You haven’t eaten anything like this in years and you are scared your body will reject it. You still crave it. You didn’t even realize you wanted it all this time. You didn’t realize you were capable of wanting anything ever again.

You take a small bite. The pastry is delicate. It flakes and melts on your tongue, the sweet sugar leaving a powdery residue on your lips. You lick it off. It’s so sweet but so soft that you cry again.

“It’s perfect, foxy,” you say.

The fox-wolf still looks morose, one ear perked to gauge the slightest negative shift in your tone.

Your smiles are not reassuring, so you extend a gesture instead. You break a piece of the pastry and offer it.

“Please,” you say. “Share with me. It tastes even better that way.”

It tickles when the fox-wolf licks the pastry off your fingers. If a smile felt strange, laughter feels bizarre, an awkward guffaw, subsumed in the gasp of your tears.

You eat a few more bites, sharing with the fox-wolf. Then you cover the basket and put it under the bed. You pace yourself. You know you won’t keep down more than that. Your stomach is already rebelling under the onslaught of foreign sweetness.

There’s also a special pleasure in knowing it’s there. You don’t even want to finish the basket because then it will be gone forever.

You look at the fox-wolf. You know it will be gone soon too. It can’t stay here. It’s not safe. Even at his best, your father will see a beast fit for food. He won’t care about the intelligence in those dark eyes.

For now, the house is empty and the basket is full. You rub the fox-wolf’s head. Its tail thumps again. You smile a smile you thought you had lost.

“Come on, foxy,” you say. You make room on the cot.

The fox-wolf jumps. It turns in a small circle near the foot then settles. It rests its chin on your knees.

You stroke your pinky down its snout as it blinks with sleepy contentment.

For the first time in a long time – since a life that no longer feels like yours – you lay down to sleep with a smile on your face.

You usually sleep lightly, disturbed by the smallest noise as it breaks the silence, but the silence is not absolute tonight. The fox-wolf breathes and the gentle cadence of its slumbering breath is like a lullaby.

It’s the deepest sleep of your life. You hardly ever dream in your light dozes but it comes in vivid colour tonight. Swirls of monsters, antlers, and hunting knives. Also sugar, cinnamon, black fur and dark eyes squinting in an obvious smile. In your dream, those eyes change, the intelligent but animal gaze softening to something human. You dream of your attic room, a dream so vivid it almost feels real. You can feel the cot under you, the chill of the nearby window, the familiar moonlight.

But it isn’t real. It can’t be. The fox-wolf is gone. A young man sits on the end of the cot, gazing out the window into the woods. If this was real, you would petrified, but you feel that same peaceful calm, his company a comfort. Old hurts and present fears feel far away.

The young man looks at you. Moonlight and shadows dance across his features, but you think he is beautiful, with eyes so dark and focused, hair black and smooth. His cheekbones are sharp. His face is like a knife and yet –

And yet –

There is something unspeakably gentle about him. Not because he’s helpless, not because he’s dull, but in spite of all that danger and sharpness. He looks at you with an undoubtedly affectionate gaze, tilting his head as he holds your gaze.

You blink. You think you might be waking because you shiver, but you don’t want to wake. You want to stay right here with him. You have been wanting him before you knew you could. You want to look at those eyes forever. You want to feel this safe always.

He moves, swift and soft as a shadow. A blink and you would miss it. He tugs the blanket back over your shoulder. Your eyes stray along the length of his bare arm, across his bare chest. The scraps of your t-shirt bandage a scar that runs along the juncture between his neck and shoulder.

Then you look at his hand, so close to your face. Any other hand and this dream would be a nightmare. But this is a good dream. You sigh contently as his long fingers gently brush the crown of your head. His fingertips trace your temple, carefully down your jaw. No one has ever been so gentle with you, not in a long time.

You sigh again. He softly sweeps his pinky down the bridge of your nose. Your sleep deepens. You sink into a perfect peace, undisturbed for the rest of the night.

The morning is another matter entirely. You wake in sunlight, more groggy than ever. It’s not the familiar pale light of early morning but the golden heat of noon. You haven’t slept for so long in years.

You feel the usual ache of sleeping on a rickety cot, something designed for weeks of use, not a decade.

You sit up. The fox-wolf is gone. There’s nowhere in the attic for it to hide, the space under the cot too small. You crouch on the floor and check anyway. The key is there, the knife beside it. The basket is there too.

The fox-wolf disappearing is an impossibility among many, but you know it was all very real. You uncover the basket to find the pastries as fresh and appetizing as last night, not even a little stale from sitting out all night.

You look around the empty room, sitting with the basket cradled protectively in your lap.

You don’t know what to do. You haven’t felt that way in a long time. Everyday has been the same, passed through a disassociated state of bland observation and slow breathing. This single disruption has uprooted everything. You feel the basket in your lap and you know you can’t spend another day sitting at the window.

The choice is made for you. There is a clamoring in the yard so you look out the window, not sure what to expect.

It is the most mundane of all creatures. Your father is dashing back to the house in a clumsy sprint.

The hairs on the back of your neck stand on edge. There is something wrong about the way he’s moving. There’s a stumbling desperation to every wide leap. He looks more like a stag than the stags did.

Did he come home last night? His hunt should be over. The hunger should be satisfied.

The front door swings and slams. You can hear his frantic thunder up the stairs, so much thudding he must be racing on all fours. You curl away instinctively, pressed up against the window, as far away from the door as possible.

He throws himself against it with a scream. You squeeze your eyes shut.

He’s still hungry. Maybe his hunt turned up nothing or maybe it didn’t satisfy him. You don’t know what happens now. Maybe he will eventually beat the door down. Maybe he will drive himself to death in his hysterics. If he dies, you’ll be trapped, sealed in here with that basket as it slowly empties. Eventually it will taunt you, like the stags, waving, mocking you caged in your glass like an animal –

You are getting hysterical too, even with your hands clamped over your ears to block out your father’s wailing. It’s not even just the fear. He’s your father, sometimes, somewhere in there. He used to make you laugh and tell you stories, lift you on his shoulders and tell you about the world. He used to scare away the monsters.

“Daddy,” you try, voice breaking on a childish cry. “Stop it. Please. Daddy, it’s me.”

You can’t find the strength to yell. You doubt he can hear your wobbling voice over his own screaming. The door shakes so hard that you imagine all the walls crumbling under the force of each slam.

You drift in the fantasy of it, of this whole house crumbling around you. There’s nothing to do but stare, silent, and wait to die. It’s a better end than you expected, a last meal, a good sleep, a sweet dream to send you off.

You close your eyes.

Something changes in the air. You don’t hear it or see it, but you feel it, a rush of warmth that fills the house. Gentle as a hand drawing a blanket over your shoulder. The sun brightens and heats the window at your back.

You lower your hands. It’s then you hear a piercing bark, almost a scream but not quite. Almost human, but not quite.

It can only be one thing. You whip around and watch as the fox-wolf careens through the yard, fast as a bullet. By the time you are on your feet, it’s already in the house and racing up the stairs.

“Back!” your father screams, the only coherent word out of his mouth.

You can hear them fighting. A body thumps down the stairs but the weight of it sounds too heavy to be your feral, emaciated father. He must have pushed the fox-wolf.

More than anything, that propels you into action. You made a bargain with that fox. You gave it a life. You’re not going to sit here and let your father take another life at the expense of yours.

You put the basket on your pillow. A part of you wants to eat the whole thing while you have the chance, die with a full stomach and a face powdered with sugar, but there’s no time. You reach under the cot and you grab the knife and the key.

Will he even have the clarity to use the key? You’re not sure, but you slide it under the door. There is clearly some intelligent thought churning in his mind, because he picks it up. He fumbles the lock while the fox-wolf stampedes back up the stairs.

The door explodes open. Your father and the fox-wolf crash inside, tangled in a violent fury. Your father yells at it, prying at its jaw to release its brutal clamp on his forearm. He is not stronger. The fox-wolf might have ripped his arm right off it you hadn’t cried out.

The fox-wolf releases your father so it can look at you. Your father kicks it in its distraction, sending it hurtling to the door with a yelp.

“Don’t hurt it!” you cry. “It’s already injured!”

Your father does not reply. When he looks at you, your heart stops. There is nothing of your father in his eyes, something vicious and lost staring back at you.

No. Not at you. He doesn’t see you anymore. He sees a clear path to prey and he takes it.

He charges you, too fast for you to react in your terror. The knife clatters to the floor as he tackles you and slams you onto your back.

Your body fights, an instinctive propulsion from something buried deep inside you. Under all that disassociation, all that resignation, there is a part of you that wants to live. It claws its way to freedom. You push your father, your adrenaline spurred by his. You scream with the same abandon.

The weight and smell of him abruptly disappears. The fox-wolf has clamped its jaws around his ankle. It drags him clear across the room where your father is left to scrabble against the floorboards.

Then the fox-wolf pounces on you. You don’t know what’s happening until you’re lifted, grabbed by the arms and hoisted onto your feet.

Except –

Foxes can’t grab. Wolves can’t stand.

It happens so fast. You are on your back, the ceiling overhead, then you are on your feet and the only thing you see is a pair of dark eyes.

Dark human eyes. You blink at a face, a familiar face, the face of the young man from your dreams. If he was beautiful in moonlight, he is devastating in sunlight. His hair is so black that it sparkles blue in the light, his features so sharp in contrast. He is like a drop of starlight.

The beautiful man grips you with two humans hands. He stands upright in a human body. You can’t look away from his human face, all those sharp and delicate angles. He is so beautiful that he hardly seems real. You would have been less surprised to see another monster.

His grip tightens. It wakes long slumbering parts of you.

“Foxy?” you say in a pathetically small and fragile voice.

Your father is back on his feet and the – the man? –

The fox-wolf-man –

He dives at your father and lands in canine form, those sharp incisors snapping at his face.

The knife is within your father’s reach. You see it but the fox does not. When your father grabs it, you jump, catching his arm before the knife can do any damage.

The three of you are locked in a messy tangle. Your father is bleeding from wolf bites and the animal is snarling. Everything feels wet. You can’t tell finger from claw, limb from wound, spit from blood.

You kick and scratch and bite like an animal, seeing nothing but red in the terror of your frantic adrenaline.

That part of you so desperate for life is at the surface. You feel your whole body for the first time in a long time. You feel the shattering pain when your father hits your head with his own and you spill back. He holds you down while grappling with the knife.

The whole thing is over in seconds. Your mind is flooded with every gory image of a tooth in a slab of meat. You don’t reach for the knife. Your father is close, his neck within reach, and the animal of your body rears with terrified instinct.

Do you mean to kill him? Do you want to kill him?

It doesn’t matter. You kill him anyway.

The skin breaks shockingly easily as you tear into his throat with your teeth. Blood spills out of him, pounding jugular and a bath of red.

You sputter and choke on it. You use a last burst of adrenaline to shove him off you. You are not sure how fast he dies. You don’t look, spitting up blood and retching.

You wipe your mouth, smearing more of the relentless red mess. You are on your hands and knees. You lift your head and open your eyes.

The fox-wolf is a man again. He is on his hands and knees as well, his face only inches from yours. He is staring like you are the wondrous anomaly, his mouth open with his shock.

You look at each other for a long moment. Then he smiles. He has deep dimples, frighteningly sweet next to the sharp inhuman incisors still visible in his mouth. Like your own crooked snarl of a smile, it is not a pretty grin so much as it is big. And like your broken smile, you can see he means it truly affectionately.

You can’t speak with the blood on your mouth. You try but you sputter.

He reaches for you. He gathers a red wet smear on his fingers, gently wiping your lips. It wracks your whole body with a shiver, the shock of violent residue, the shock of being touched.

You finally take a clean breath. He looks at the blood on his fingers.

He flashes you that sharp, dimpled smile again.

“Wow,” he says with a wheezing laugh.

You can’t even think about asking what’s so funny. The last drop of adrenaline bleeds out of you. The floorboards rush to meet you as your arms and legs buckle.

Your body surrenders your mind to blackness.

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