#collar inspired by livestock guardian dog collars | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

mothiir · 5 months ago

Text

the hand that feeds

So I’m really sorry to the anon who inspired this for two reasons: one for deleting your ask accidentally, and two for taking “leman russ puts the reader in a collar” in a direction you did not mean.

cw: violence against wolves, dubcon

—

Long ago, the people of Prospero were famed for their hunting dogs — great rangy animals designed to run on the burning sands for days, tireless in the face of famine and thirst, tracking down long-extinct beasts. Later, as the people discovered farming, the hunting dogs became livestock guardians instead; their limbs thickened over generations, but their teeth remained sharp, and their eyes keen. Later still, when hardship was but a tale to tell children, you were born, a squirming red bitch, the only living pup of a litter of four. Your mother was the beloved pet of a sorcerer named Ahriman, and it was he who gave you to his father, and his father who gifted you to his lover as a birthday gift. “Her name,” said the wizard’s father; a one-eyed man you would later know as Master, “is Hathor. After an ancient farming goddess.”

Hathor is your name, but your mistress calls you all sorts of things — sweetie pie, darling, fluffikins. She feeds you treats from her table, and sleeps with you pressed to her breast, even when you are larger enough to lick her face when you stand on your hind legs. In a throwback to your fierce ancestors — or perhaps as a result of your indulgent diet — you grow larger than your mother, larger than your father; a red-furred hound that glitters with jewellery, the only discomfort you know is when Mistress puts you outside of her room so that Master and her can try to make a pup. They try often, and enthusiastically, but have yet to manage it.

All that is to say that you live a coddled, cosy life — and then one day you wake, and the entire world is burning. Black ships blot out the sun; great palaces crumble under the assault of shining lights. All is chaos and screaming, fear-stink and blood-stink and Mistress calling for her mate, over and over. She calls for him as her armoured guard herd her deeper into the palace, to shelter; she calls for him as the park you used to run in explodes in a shower of black dirt and blue-red flame.

She calls for him as she is shut away into a small guard room that smells all wrong, and once inside she calls for him one last time, a weak guttering sob into your fur. You do not know how to tell her what you instinctively know to be true: that Master is Master no longer. You can only lick the salt from her cheeks and whine, switching fretfully from foot to foot.

Your ancestors were livestock guardians once, and hunters before that, and their blood runs in your veins, even if you have never raced along the golden flank of the dunes, eyes fixed on distant prey. You have never prowled the edge of a night-dark field, sheep bleating at your back, watching for the hungry eyes of would-be monsters.

But you remember. You remember.

The four-legged wolves sniff you out; the two-legged ones open up the door. Thick black smoke billows into your hiding place from behind them. The palace is burning. It is all burning. But you do not think of that, because the palace is not — was never — your home.

You do not know that the goddess Hathor was a goddess of war before she hammered her sword into a scythe; you do not know the irony in your name.

You only know that there are wolves, and behind you is your flock.

The four-leg wolf enters first in a hairy fetid spill. He is larger than you, but you surprise him, dropping your shoulder to hit his legs with your full body weight, bowling him off his feet. He was not expecting a fight, and it is his arrogance that costs him his life. Your teeth find the soft flesh of his throat before he can so much as whimper, and crush down.

Blood froths between your teeth and paints your front as you wheel to face his mate; your hackles up, your body bristling. But the she-wolf never attacks; instead, the coward retreats, whining at the loss of her companion.

The two-leg wolf enters instead: larger than most, stinking of battle. His yellow fur is matted with blood and ash. He shows his teeth in a clear threat, and says something in the two-leg tongue, addressing your Mistress. You know a few words — “Easy…girl…” — and these normally mean an attempt at peace-making, but then he reaches for her, with those great hairless paws.

What other choice do you have, but to lunge forwards, and to bite?

—

“I am not going to kill your mistress,” says the two-leg wolf, a while later. A new leather collar has replaced your former gem-encrusted one, and you feel vaguely guilty — insofar as a dog can feel guilt — that the leather is more comfortable against your flesh than the gold ever was. “She’s not a witch like Magnus, and she came along quietly enough. We’re just going to keep hold of her to make sure he behaves.”

You huff, and paw at the muzzle around your snout. Unlike the collar, you resent this new hardware mightily. The two-leg wolf chuckles.

“Oh, don’t sulk over that. You have to wear it. You bit me, you vicious bitch.”

He waves his hand in front of you. Much to your displeasure, the wound your fangs left healed almost instantly, clean flesh sealing over the raw red tissue.

“You’re one of a very lucky few to say that they have drawn blood from me and lived!”

He guffaws again. You hate the sound of his laughter; it reminds you of a wolf choking on a bit of meat.

He ruffles your nape. You try and snap at his fingers, knowing you cannot bite them, but wanting him to know how desperately you want to.

“Easy there. Magnus’s girls really don’t like me, do they? You. Your mistress. She almost bit my ear off when I tucked her into her quarters.”

Magnus is not Master, you snap.

“Ah. Of course. A pack leader who cannot defend his pack is no leader at all.”

You understand? you say.

“Of course I understand! Dogs, wolves — you all speak the same tongue. I was raised by wolves.”

Can tell, you say.

Again: that ugly, ugly laugh.

“You’re a vicious little thing. I like you.”

He takes a sip from the foul-smelling tankard held loosely in his left hand.

”I was going to bring you over to her. You can share the same rooms. Would you like that?”

Your ears prick up despite yourself. See your Mistress? There is nothing you would like more.

“You must wear that muzzle. I don’t want to kill you, but if you draw blood on me a second time I will not hesitate to do so.”

—

The wolves have at least made an adequate den for Mistress, with a big bed bedecked with skins, and a roaring fire. The smell of smoke reminds you of the burning city, and the battle that still haunts your dreams — what if the wolf had been stronger, what if, what if — but you swallow down your fear and nestle close to her. She pats your ears, and hugs you close. Her eyes are red-rimmed and it is clear she has cried herself empty. The sour reek of her despair is worse than the smoke. The thick, rancid smell of despair; of a heart wrung dry.

But she is like you: born and reared on Prospero’s ochre sands — not like once-called Master, who tumbled from the stars, and belonged neither there nor anywhere else. She is a survivor, the child of famine and destitution; her grandmothers survived warlords and raiders and worse.

As you lie in paw-twitching slumber, you hunt wolves, chasing them down and tearing throats loose from shaggy grey fur. You wake with the taste of iron on your tongue, and the hum of exertion in your limbs. And she dreams as well — of other things, of wolves with human forms, of the stories told around campfires, and the things women do to survive. “You’re my family,” she says to you, often. “The only family I have left.”

—

The two leg wolf’s name, you have learned, is Leman Russ, and he is the ruler of these wolves, and of more besides; a pack large enough to span the stars. You are not impressed by such vague numbers. He still tries to bribe you with chicken legs, despite you steadfastly refusing to eat a single thing he offers you.

But he is strong, and steadfast, and ruler here, and you are not surprised when Mistress invites him to her furs. Wolves, humans, dogs: all are lost without the protection of a pack, and Magnus is long gone, lost in the ashes of Prospero. Russ is here, and when he clambers atop your mistress you avert your eyes. He does not bother to lock you outside, as Magnus would have done, but you still feel it is impolite to watch.

It takes him a while to satisfy himself. Hours pass, and eventually you fall asleep to the sound of the headboard banging against the wall, and Russ’s groaning and effusive praise about your Mistress’s nether regions.

Honestly. Wolves.

When you wake, it is to Russ fiddling with the lock on your muzzle.

“There,” he says, easing it away from your snout. The firelight gleams on his fangs. “I think I can trust you not to bite now, eh? You’re a clever girl.”

He is talking to you. He is talking to your mistress, who lies in the furs, dozing.

When he offers you his hand, you very gently lick his palm.

#Yeah so reader is a dog #leman russ/reader

76 notes · View notes