#story is so epic i love tall women

[thetechnicolorphase]

I’ve gotta say. I’d be really in awe to meet a girlboss 7’8 tall witch too!

Thank you @cloverses / @masterofmasters (i hope im tagging the right account JHGFSKJ) for the chance to showdown against Story, and also thanks for her being a very cool opponent in the @homemadegirlbossbattle!! What a neat design and concept! I think she’s super neat >:D!! I wanted to draw her earlier in the week but I got kinda distracted JHGKJS

[halcyone-of-the-sea]

PREY

PAIRING: Hunter!Simon 'Ghost' Riley x F!Werewolf!Reader

SYNOPSIS: There’s blood on your hands again.

WORDCOUNT: 16.8k

WARNINGS: Intense gore, body horror, death, mutilation, weapons, firearms, knives, intended harm, violence, blood, descriptions of wounds, angst, fluff, protective!Simon, religious mentions, period time standards for men/women (1700s), etc.

A/N: The first of my reverse AUs is finally here! Enjoy!

*I do not give others permission to translate and/or re-publish my works on this or any other platform*

The tale of the Werewolf extends back to around 2100 BC. It was written in The Epic of Gilgamesh, scored into a clay tablet by hands long buried—a corpse forever still in the earth so deep, the bones have yet to be found by greedy eyes. Perhaps the oldest surviving story in human history, and there is still a passage that bleeds into stories hundreds of thousands of years later.

In such, Gilgamesh, a man on the search for immortality, rejects a woman for the reason of turning her previous husband into a wolf. 

“You have loved the shepherd of the flock; he made meal-cake for you day after day, he killed kids for your sake. You struck and turned him into a wolf, now his own herd-boys chase him away, his own hounds worry his flanks…”

And then, the tales spread, changed, through history and through spoken words of caution. Like water trickling from a well, down the shape of the wooden bucket delving deeper and deeper into a pit of age—of caution. 

“The Beast of Gévaudan. Man-eater.” Through France

“He has a wolf-head, you know? Tall thing—short brown hair all over him.” Through Scotland

“Beware the man that changes shape under the full moon.” England.

Now, in the late seventeenth century, it all comes to a head. Even the people in 2100 BC knew that someone who changes into a wolf, or some bastard-like imitation of one, was very much real; it is very much an affliction that overtakes sense and reason. A curse. 

Transferable down to the saliva of one entering your bloodstream.

You must never get within the beast’s sights. 

—

There’s blood on your hands again. 

Hunched over, your body quivers, and the bareness of your flesh in the moonlight is of little concern to you—trapped in a fetal position while the chilled wind howls.

Howls.

Howls.

“Get out of my head.” Your fingers grasp at your scalp, pulling; ripping. A sob jaggedly slashes your throat open. “Please,” you rattle in a fast breath, the grass snapping as you writhe. “Get out of my head.”

It had happened once more, and you can’t remember any of it. 

The forest is deathly still. No birds sing their songs—no breeze moves the long grass, patches trampled down around you as if a beast had staggered into the small clearing you’re lying in. Maybe it had. There are shadows that listen to your quiet panic, the low whines and gasping quivers of your throat; from behind the trees that speak in the way that only they could. The deep night creeps into you, and the moonlight bathing your flesh doesn’t push back the terror in your bloodstream. 

Your body burns like you’ve broken every bone twice over, and judging by the blood stuck in between every line and dip of your skin, to anyone walking past, the analogy could be very real. Fingers flexing and bending, you try to force out the venom inside of your head with desperation befitting a dying dog, spine visible out of the skin of your back as you sob all the harder. 

You tried to stop it—you had; you always do. But, just like every month when the full moon mocks you with its silver-hued face, it never works. 

It never works.

Your eyes stare at nothing as you lay here, in this place of grass, blood, and bile, of corruption as deep as a vile sin of flesh. It came over you like a wave, fingers trapping your throat and bearing it to the caress of fangs. There were different names for it here, miles from your village and the terrified eyes that search the tree line; names coming from the hunters and their black deeds. 

Shapeshifter.

Demon spawn.

Werewolf.

“I can’t take it anymore,” you shove the side of your head into the ground, pushing the torn earth away from the cuts of long claws. Tears flood the dirt until it’s wet and muddy, pushing the crimson stains on your skin away in long streaks. “It hurts, God, please, it hurts.”

The sound of your hysterics rises and falls in the stillness—the inactivity of fearful birds and beasts wondering if your fangs would rip from your gums and your claws would tear from your fingertips. Fur along your body the color of which leads to stories of their own spreading far and wide. 

The White Wolf. The Specter of St. Francis’ Village. A hound from Hell. 

More pale than snow, and sharper seen than a knife or blade through the black trees. Even if the memories of your shifts were fuzzy at best, there were flashes of those who’d seen your gargantuan form from the confines of their stone-cut homes. Those wide eyes. Yelling—screaming; sprays of blood as heads were separated from bodies—

“Stop!” You scream, your legs kicking out as your toes scrape the grass. “It’s not me! It’s not!” 

There’s a call of alarm from deep within the woods, the flash of torches and bellow of hunting dogs. They’re running you down, you’d forgotten that in the depths of your breaking mind and body, and by the time your elongated limbs had set themselves back into a more human-like appearance, your spine cracking at every vertebrae, it had slipped your thoughts entirely. It always took you a long time to understand what had happened after…everything. 

But even now, the shouts of the hunt are pointless to the visceral breaking of your consciousness, stuck between leaving bloodlust and knowledge of horror. There’s flesh in your teeth, and you wail before your fingers drag down your face, cupping over your ears. In the back of your skull, the panting of dogged breath echoes; running, blood, blood, blood. It’s a dance of fangs, of pale fur, staining every inch and flooding the back of your mouth. Drinking it down like water.

Flesh—lovely, disgusting, flesh rent and torn to the bone with smacking gums belonging to a square snout. 

Who had you killed this time?

By the time the dogs had tracked your scent to your curled body, it was already too late. 

“Here!” Male voices shift in and out on the backs of crows, hard and cruel. “It’s here!”

“Get the dogs on it!” 

“It’s not me,” you mutter incessantly, not truly understanding what you’re saying as hounds burst through the bushes, all snapping teeth and slobbering tongues your eyes widen in an instant. Panting, your jaw clenches; long whines move your throat. 

“What…?” Blinking quickly, the dogs surround you—having to be at least ten of them on their nimble legs and thin tails. Everything is distant to you; separated. A knife could be driven through your heart, and you wouldn’t even realize it until minutes later, bleeding out on the grass. 

The hounds are afraid of you. 

They dart forward and balk back, your scent driving them up a wall until rabid slobber drips from their maws. Torchlight pulls through the trees—quicker now, running. Fangs nick your shoulder and you yell, shoving up to your backside as the world swirls, shuffling away as the dogs snarl. Their eyes are red-huen. Drunk off fear and order. 

Your head darts and shifts, blood dripping off your chin to travel down the flesh of your stomach and navel—so much crimson that the whites of your eyes are violent under the moon. Hands slipping over the wet grass, your face pulls and slackens in delirious confusion as you try to stand but fail. You cry out in sharp pain, and the dogs go wild in their kill circle, nearly attacking one another in anticipation. 

You glance down and see the black crossbow bolt sticking out of your thigh. 

The scent of wolfsbane in the air only then becomes clear to you, and the realization is slow. Wolfsbane—you’d been told about it by the village priest. It makes beasts of the night dumb and weak; minds unclear. 

In a moment of clarity, the reason behind your incurable hysteria becomes clear.

Lungs heaving and eyes far-off, the hunting party bursts through to where you stay, and you look up in animalistic fear. Figures dip and slip into one another, faces becoming demons as the visages melt into twos and threes. You yell out, sniffling and sobbing, trying to back up until the hounds grapple onto your shoulder and rip a chuck out of your arm. Screaming, your hand moves back, shoving at its snout before hands staple themselves to your wrist. 

“No!” You wail, injured leg dragging as you’re forced back into a heavy chest. Hot breath fans against your neck as multiple grips pull and touch you—shackling you down with rope and chains. Your throat screams itself raw, kicking and struggling futility. “Let go!”

You’re too weak—too drugged off wolfsbane and blood loss. Rotting teeth move across the canvas of a smeared painting, you can’t focus beyond the riot of your heart inside of your ribs.  

Grubby hands snap under your chin, digging into your flesh as you cry, not able to move as the restraints are tightened. A silver muzzle is slapped over your jaw. Dark eyes shimmer as you rage—aggravating the bolt wound until fresh blood forms a puddle on the ground, which the dogs lick their lips at. 

“Look at that,” a low, lust-filled voice eases out, and hands around your body tightening as you squirm, head spinning. Silver and wolfsbane. Your eyes snap to fight the sudden flood of fuzzy heaviness in your body.  “Pretty little Hell-Beast, eh? Almost seems a bit strange to have the Spector be her. Think that hunter shot the right bitch?”

“Course,” another grunt, a hand grabs the top of your head, jerking it up as your head lulls along with the force. You can barely focus on the words being said. “He isn’t a fuckin’ twat. Killed a werewolf in the next village over, too. Heard he skinned the fucker and took its head for his mantlepiece—just like the vampire skull he wears.” A pause. The dogs are still barking—echoing out in the trees. You can’t feel your legs. “Isn’t that right, Hunter?!”

A shout is sent into trees as your panic breeds with the drug, eyelids drooping as your head is snapped and moved by your hair. Your buggy eyes don’t focus on the man until he steps into the torchlight, the crowd parting for him as the metal of your chains drags and clinks together. 

It’s as if the very blackness of night takes human form. 

The man, the Hunter, is tall—very tall. He looms like an aloof animal over most of the others here with his dark boots and his black hood, and yet, under the fabric, there is no whisper of his face. 

Only the upper visage of a pure white skull, and two long, needle-pointed teeth where canines should be. 

“Ghost,” one of the men laughs, groping at your bleeding thigh before you shriek, muffled from behind the muzzle, and weakly kicked out. “Good shot, Mate. Right in the meat of the thing. Gave a good trail for the hounds.” 

Ghost blinks slowly, grunting under his breath as the large crossbow in his hands is shifted. He stays silent as your visible pulse hurries on as if you were a rabbit and not a wolf, watching from under the cover of his hood. The darkness of his clothes is blue in the moon—silver buttons down the length of a loose shirt and pants stuffed into boots. The hood is attached to a jacket, which itself extends down to his knees and sways lightly with every shift. The silent resting of weapons and tools is not lost to anyone. 

Belt of filled vials and large knives; a firearm over his back, and two pistols hidden on either thigh. That crossbow was still in his hands.

Brown eyes openly dig into your soul, dead as a corpse, and your voice whines as your thigh is finally released with a laugh. Your vision blacks and comes back a moment later as you try to breathe from behind the muzzle, gasping. That skull on his face…you don’t like it. It scares you. 

And the Hunter only continues to watch numbly as his wide shoulders stay stationary.

“Get the cage!” Someone roars, and you flinch, shrinking until a dog with short fur comes and nips at your ankles, the man holding you grinning sharply as you sob and shake.

“C’mon—expected more of a fight from you, Spector. Getting bullied by dogs, now? Ain’t that a twist of fate, then. Bet this devil’s whore can’t even walk with all that wolfsbane in ‘er, eh?”

A grumble of chuckles as the rattle of metal is in the distance. You grow more fearful, mind flashing to a burning stake and the trials you’d seen in village after village. No—no they can’t put you in a cage; they can’t put you on trial.

They’re going to make it hurt.

“Say we try it out.” A shadow comes closer and grabs you by the arm, ruthlessly shoving you to the ground. You cry out as your spine meets the earth, arms and legs kept under chains that tangle and screech in their metallic way. The rope that holds the muzzle pulls against your neck until you can’t breathe except in ragged wheezes. 

“Go on,” they taunt, some holding back the rampaging dogs just to watch you flail and shimmy. Your face grows hot as you struggle to sit up—shaking so violently you can’t focus on anything but the quiver. “Put on a show for us, Beasty!” 

Death would be better than this.

Tears hit the ground as the cage is finally brought into view, the men all groaning and annoyed that you hadn’t even attempted a forced shift or a desperate run into the trees. 

Ghost’s fingers, you notice from the side of your blurring eye, tighten minutely around the body of his weapon. You do not doubt that he’s wondering if it would be easier to just put a bolt through your eye right now. 

“Get it loaded up,” the Hunter’s voice is accented and gravel-like. As if rotting wood is being peeled back and scraped along gravel, he stares at you for a long moment and then glances at the dogs. “And get those fucking mutts under control.”

“Which one?” Is the low-blow joke, and the ruckus of loud amusement that follows makes you want to die. 

It’s not your fault, how do you tell them that? It’s not your fault.

Your throat bobs in an attempt to speak, but you can’t move your jaw from behind the restraint of your face—held tight to you as the men come back over and grapple for you again. The priest was right, wolfsbane makes werewolves sluggish.

You can do nothing as you’re ruthlessly dropped into a silver cage, borrowed, no doubt, from the Vatican itself, and christened with holy water. But it was a funny thing, really, and the dark humor wasn’t lost to you even like this. There was nothing godly about this contraption.

Locked in, you shove yourself immediately into a corner and hunch over, grasping at your thigh as the bolt still leaks fluid in a long trail over the ground. The pain is so great in your head, that the physical agony is little—a bullet wound to a sliver. 

Your temple slams into the metal, smacking into it as your eyes shove themselves closed. 

Head hurts—hurts. I can’t think. Can’t think. It’s humming, my skull is breaking open.

Bile pools in the back of your throat, but the muzzle keeps it in, leaving you gagging as the cage is lifted with a grunt and carried by long poles; back to St. Francis' Village, no doubt, but you can’t…focus.

“Think you might ‘ave given her too much, then, Hunter,” one calls, slapping Ghost on the shoulder as the crowd follows after the panicking quarry. The large man only gives him a look from the side of his eye and the villager pulls away immediately, awkwardly chuckling before hurrying off after the others.

Brown eyes watch your bare body hunch and spasm, pupils wide as you’re carted off. 

He’d been generous with the wolfsbane, truth be told. He’d expected you to be…Ghost’s dark brows pull in from behind his grim mask…he’d expected you to be different.

Humming under his breath, the Hunter watches the torches disappear into the trees and lets his gaze linger on you. 

There was something…off.

Blinking, he turns, eyes studying the place where they’d found you with sharp attention that misses nothing—not even the birds that come back to settle into the trees again. Large boots shift through the grass, and as he’s re-settling the crossbow in his hands, his eyes find something glinting. 

Watching, Ghost takes another step and brings his body to the item in the grass, hidden, before he kneels. Digging with large digits, the Hunter’s hands loop through the chain of a necklace, dragging it through the torn earth until he can gaze at it fully under the light of the moon.

Blinking in slight surprise, Ghost finds the body of a silver bullet hanging from the confines of a leather strap. Brown eyes shifting to look over his shoulder, the man listens to the cheers and merriment of the hunting party mutely. A simmering understanding brews in his gut. It’s only one that you could know from years of experience doing just as he had—hunting and being hunted in turn with a knowledge of all things dark and unholy.

It could never be easy, could it?

A low grunt later, the man sighs out a deep, “Fucking hell,” and moves to slowly stand, slinking back into the darkness. 

—

They kept you in the cage and set it on display in the middle of town for days.

Shivering now from the cold more than the wolfsbane, you stay collapsed into yourself as people come past to poke and prod at you—even sticking knives into the slits of the cage and digging them into you like an animal until your flesh was marked and brutalized. 

You don’t remember what it’s like to not be bloody.

The bolt wound was festering; infected. You dare not touch it, because the pain only makes you want to vomit, and if you do, you’ll most likely suffocate on your own bile before the trial ever happens. 

Yet, on the fourth night of this, as your eyelids flutter and your body grows weaker, a shadow comes to visit. 

“You weren’t born one.” It isn’t a question, but the sudden voice makes you startle. 

Eyes locking onto Ghosts’, your mind flies with fear—thinking that perhaps there’s more abuse that you’ll be put through. But no…the man has no weapons on him tonight. Only a long knife at his belt. The mask stays. 

You stare, unable to speak as your fingers twitch.

Grunting, Ghost’s head tilts, gaze moving up and down as you curl in tighter around yourself. A cold breeze rips through the square, and your eyes clench closed with breaking will. When you open them again, the Hunter is kneeling by the cage, and holding up something in his hand loosely. 

“You going to behave if I take that muzzle off?” You nearly gasped at the hanging image of your necklace—a silver bullet on a leather strap; that dark and heavy thing usually kept around your neck. A reminder.

After a moment of wide-eyed staring, you nod quickly to his question, a desperate, pleading thing without the need to utter words. Please, you want to scream at him, take it off.

Ghost’s eyes are as dark as a mound of dirt, sharply intelligent and filled with an unflinching reality. He doesn’t care what you are, and he won’t until you speak to him and let him judge your character far before any courtroom can. The man knows what a lie is better than any priest. 

“Good,” he says curtly, accent far more deep as he thinks, re-capturing the bullet in his palm and standing before he shuffles it into his pocket. 

You can’t help the anxiety as Ghost moves forward, loping to the side of the cage with the side of his eyes on you incessantly. It’s obvious how his other hand lays limp on the hilt of his blade that, with only one wrong move, you’d feel the chill of the edge with no time at all. 

But the temptation of getting this muzzle off was too good to ruin, and so, you stay as still as you’re able as crows call in the distance and the deadness of the town leaks into your blood. 

Ghost moves his free hand and orders, blankly, “Closer.” 

You hesitate, body tight before you drag your face closer to the bars, angling it parallel with the metal so the tight bind on the back can be taken up. The fear can be smelt the second your eyes have to break contact with his with the turn of your head—neither of you trusts the other. 

Ghost hums under his breath at the sight of your broken body coming farther into the open light of the moon, the whites of your eyes all the more visible from under the slathering of blood and tears. He hadn’t been absent to witness the abuse you’d been put through, even if the coin from his successful hunt was feeding him at the inn, a small window allowed the tight view of your torment at the hands of the people you’d once lived around. 

But the reality was that you’d killed people—scores of them—and yet the worst part of it was that he wasn’t sure if you even knew that.

It took four nights for him to break his only rule: never get involved after the job’s done.

But the hunch he had was too important to ignore. 

Large fingers latch onto the knot at the base of your skull through the cage itself, Ghost grunting at the sight ahead of him. The rope had been gradually chafing over your flesh, peeling back hair and skin until only the bloody meat was left—Simon had to wonder if the people of this village even wanted you alive for the trial or not at this rate. You’d be dead by tomorrow if that infected bolt at your thigh wasn’t taken care of.

Despite himself, a part of his chest tightens at the sight of the thing sticking out of your leg, dripping a yellowish puss. It had been a good shot, and he had overcoated the bolt in wolfsbane. 

Ghost hadn’t expected you to be so susceptible to it—most werewolves only got slower, but you…you seemed to have a stronger reaction. He files that fact away and tilts his masked face to the side. 

Grasping at his blade, the sound of a knife being slipped out of a sheath makes you startle, jerking your head back and shoving away even as your muffed whine of pain falls out. Ghost momentarily readies himself for an attack, but the way you force your mangled body to the opposite corner has him grumbling out a hard, “Easy.” 

The Hunter raises the blade, watching you with unblinking eyes. Your body shakes; panting. It was like calming a feral dog.

“You want the thing off or not? Have to cut it.” Once more, the man rises and walks over, boots almost silent over the small raised platform the cage had been set on like a trophy, you inside are comparable to the golden coins that greedy eyes touch and run their dirty hands over. 

Your mind is a troubled thing as you watch this Hunter and his crude knife come closer, kneeling again, and motioning with two fingers to shift your head. 

“Out ‘ere,” Ghost says, brown eyes not letting you guess anything about his true motives. “Don’t have time to fuck around. Guards’ll make a round soon and I’d rather not get caught wide-eyed.” 

Your brows pull in, hands clenching and unclenching in your lap as goosebumps travel the length of every limb. You were tired—hungry and thirsty; there were open wounds that burned with infection and ones that were crusted over with dirt and grime. You can’t feel your toes, and the tips of your fingers have long since gone numb. 

The thought of getting this muzzle off was like the promise of heaven being dangled in front of your nose. Your hesitation this time is far longer than the first, moonlight glinting off the visible blade in Ghost’s hand as he stares. That mask holds death. 

The hood is gone from him—only that pale bone left and sewn into dark, dark, fabric. The sharpness of the teeth leaves your throat bobbing in a nervous swallow as your head carefully shifts to rest on the bars. Bending, you present the knot once more and try not to focus on the way Ghost’s attention is fully on your expanding lungs; the pulse that is seen through the meat of your neck. 

But he says nothing before his fingers once more grasp the rope and the tip of the knife slips up. You don’t even feel it before the sudden slackening of the muzzle, and then the thing slips from your face before it slaps the bottom of the cage with a dull thump. 

The first thing you do is vomit. 

Spine pulling in, your body jerks as the bile that had been in the back of your throat rockets out, restrained hands slapping the ground as the acidic concoction leaks from between your torn lips. Face on fire, you choke and retch for what seems like minutes before you can finally breathe in the damp air—the innate shame and disgust rolling through as you cough raggedly. 

It’s only after you’d forgotten the man kneeling outside that he seems to remind you of his presence with a grumble. 

“Breathe. It’s no use if you can’t speak to me.”

A weak, quivering glare comes across your eyes, saliva dripping off your chin as your tongue moves to lick at your lips. But the brown gaze is as immovable as stone. Finding it pointless, your hands come up and delicately touch the base of your skull, only making you flinch when the fresh blood pools down and over your neck, licking at your shoulders. Tiny droplets fall to hit the metal one at a time. 

Ghost’s fingers twitch as he puts the knife away. 

“Who bit you?” You stare at him, hands falling before your wrists rub at the aggravated skin of your jaw. He shifts his head, voice slow but heavy. “Speak.”

“...I’m not a dog,” your voice is scratchy, hoarse. You send a small glance his way, mouth open and nostrils flaring in an attempt to bring in the oxygen you’d been lacking. 

“Really?” A hidden eyebrow is slowly raised. “Hell, coulda fooled me.” 

“Damn you,” you whisper, not meeting his gaze as you shuffle back. The crossbow bolt catches on one of the cage’s bars and you bite on your lip to stop the shrill yell that threatens to exit. Head moving, you lightly slam your skull into the wall in pain. 

Breath hitched, you clench your trembling jaw tight. 

“Speak or don’t,” Ghost grunts, and he makes a move to stand. “Your funeral.” 

A spark of fear stabs you as he begins to shift, and you can’t explain why. Perhaps it was because it was the first conversation you can remember having lately that wasn’t one-sided or on the edge of a blade.

“W-wait,” you stutter, blinking through the blood. The Hunter doesn’t slow, and then he’s on his feet and fixing the gloves over his fingers, flexing his hands before his foot begins to pivot— 

“Please, don’t go,” your voice is thin and pleading, echoing through the street. “I’ll answer your questions, any of them you want,” the sentence cracks through a dry throat, tears welling. “Please, don’t leave me here alone.” 

Ghost had half of his body turned away before it went rigid; the side of his dead eyes flash to you, swirling with specs of moonlit silver. A hunter and a werewolf lock gazes, great beasts respectively brought together in seconds that seep into slow minutes of delicate need.

Knowledge and company. Understanding and a horrible fellowship. 

The Hunter’s eyes twitch in their ever-narrow resting place, glancing away before he mutely moves back to where he was before. 

He wastes no time.

“Who bloody bit you?” 

You stifle a pathetic sigh of great relief, taking company with a man who had shot you not days before. Yet the ability to speak and be heard was a commodity that was dimming each and every day.

“It was already fully turned,” you speak quickly, tongue tripping. “A big wolf—a gray one with eyes like the sky.” 

Ghost glares to the side. Gray? There were no contracts for gray werewolves with blue eyes in the area. Only you—only Specter. The next question is just as stiff. 

“When?”

“Three years ago,” your lips move. “Only three years, I promise.” Brown eyes narrow slowly, fingers tapping the fabric of his pants once before he makes a noise in the back of his throat. Ghost’s jaw clenches, mind working through the hoops that need to be jumped. 

To you, the questions might seem pointless, but to a hunter, they were important—very important. Werewolves who are born afflicted with this moon-drunkenness are different from those turned by a bite. Not only are shifts from turned werewolves more violent, more deadly, but they rarely know their own actions from that of the frenzy under their skin; those that are born as such are rarely out of control, unlike your faction. 

The only question now was if Ghost could condemn you to death when it was obvious your human form was entirely different and you had no semblance of an idea of what was going on. Was it even his problem to care about? Even looking at you now, the man blinked away from cuts and inflicted injuries—the muzzle on the ground. 

The blood and the bolt.

He’d known it had been a foolish play to bring all of those townsfolk with him on this hunt but he needed their knowledge of the terrain; he hadn’t passed through St. Francis’ before. At the time, Ghost hadn’t been averse to assistance as long as he got the job done in his own fashion: capture or kill, the contract had stated. Rarely was he known for capture.

Maybe, deep down, he’d known something was already wrong about this.

“Show me it,” the Hunter grunts, staring you down, a deep anticipation growing in his bones. He had to make sure you weren’t lying.

You lick your lips, face pulling with every twitch and sway of your form. The black at the edges of your vision was coming back, and you blinked quickly, chains dragging before you shifted your back with a quivering breath. The punctures were difficult to see through all of the gore, but Ghost made do as he grabbed at the waterskin at his waist and the rag hanging from his belt. 

Flooding the fabric in the lukewarm water, he hums out a firm, “Don’t move. Cleanin’ it,” before you feel the press of the rag to your back. 

Gasping lightly, you almost jerk away before the sensation becomes a nearly welcomed one—the drag and slight scrape of rough material. Your averted eyes dip lower, staring at nothing as your heart momentarily slows to a normal pace. Ghost cleans the areas where the swell of scar tissue is the most obvious, and, one by one, the violent groves spread out like a slash of paint over canvas. Along the left side of your waist, the blood gives way to a dented ‘v’ shape of healed punctures. Deep, dragging; a point to where your side was almost ripped away before it broke off swiftly. 

Ghost’s dark eyes fight the need to widen, and that hidden blankness stays. 

A great gray wolf with blue eyes…

His mask tilts, head shifting as his gaze moves slowly. Gloved fingers twitch to touch them, moving in an almost examining way that befits a surgeon and not a decapitator. Your breath is held in the back of your throat, but you sag nearly entirely into the bars of the cage, growing more unsteady by the second. 

The scent of infection is so strong it makes your head burn, and you’re overtaken by it as Ghost’s presence suddenly disappears. 

You don’t know if it’s minutes or hours before you understand that you’re alone again, but when your limp neck finally turns to wonder where your silent captor is, you are greeted with nothing but moonlight. Blinking through the sludge behind your eyes, the sinking in your gut was stark and sudden—like a knife dragging itself from gullet to navel. 

But all you offer is a light whine as more blood moves to cover the places where Ghost’s rag had just cleaned. You were scared of him, no doubt. A hunter through and through down to the vampiric skull on his face and the shroud of death at every inch of his form. 

He’d shot you and drugged you with wolfsbane. Found your necklace. 

So why had he talked to you?

Your head is too muddled for this, too delicate. Like the crimson under your nails, it dries and flakes off of your brain as the lack of distraction breeds stored agony. There wasn’t anything left to focus on besides the upcoming trial, your death, and the pain that doesn’t let you sleep except for now, on the brink of not rest but unconsciousness. 

And at the sound of a key being slotted into the silver of your cage’s door, only then does your body slump with the weight of doom. 

You don’t even feel the hand that grasps at your ankle.

—

The sway of the horse makes your teeth clatter with every clop of hooves. 

Your conscience mostly comes and goes, only staying in thin seconds where you feel the press of clean bandages on your afflicted flesh and the tipping of warm broth into your mouth. Grass under your head. 

Blankets being shuffled over your clothed body when you shiver. 

When you’re finally able to speak, when the horse is moving along and hands keep your back stuck to a strong chest, it’s a low, garbled, “Ow.”

Ghost barely blinks down to your head as it slumps to the gait of his horse, glancing before his attention returns to the thin forest trail ahead of him. You’d made noises in your sleep often enough—this was no different except for the fact he felt your shoulders flex.

Slowing the horse with a pull on the reins, the dappled mare settles to a walk. 

“You up, then?” Ghost hums, his hand around your waist tightening as you groan under your breath. “Good. Thought I was dragging a corpse—would have wasted my bandages.” 

Your eyes shudder as they open into the light, having to focus on moving them before the sting of the sun makes them water. But you do, and then the confusion outweighs the numb stinging of tended wounds. 

Head shifting, you look behind you slowly with wide eyes as the horse under both of you snorts.

Brown eyes watch you before a dark brow twitches upward. “What is it?” 

You just blink, mouth slightly open. 

“Where…am I?” 

“Forest.” Ghost states matter-of-factly. 

If you had the energy to glare, you would have. Seeing that nothing will get the man into a proper conversation—he was a brick wall even now—you look down at yourself and land on the scarred forearm that keeps you secure on the saddle. Ghost’s gloves were still on, but the sleeve of his dark shirt had ridden back to his upper forearm, and in the wake of pale skin, you find the black ink of all manner of warfare. 

Werewolf skulls; vampire fangs and fire. The slash of inkish chains with skeletons. 

Your lips thin, your senses slowly becoming your friend again as you stare at the snarling face of a needle-hewn wolf. Eyes tightening as the horse moves to the left, your body follows the reactive action before Ghost’s pressure tightens once more, visibly veins behind the pale flesh. You move on, seeing the thin tunic and pants over your body—feeling under that, the bind of wrappings with the scents of mashed yarrow leaves in the fabric. 

They’d been re-applied recently, too. 

“Stay still unless you want to re-open them,” Ghost utters, eyes scanning the trees for unseen threats. It was midday by now, the sun high above the trees watching the both of you on your trek to seemingly nowhere. “We’re far enough away, but I want more distance before I take the time to close them fully.”  

“The trial,” your arm moves up, fingers grazing the side of your nose before it falls back down. Ghost can feel the air heat with unease. “The…the cage?”

“Trial was two days ago,” he draws, thighs shifting over the saddle. “Give or take.” 

The confession isn’t as shocking now that you have woken up here, but the lack of remembrance on your part of that time startles you. It’s a blank slate—just like the aftermath of your shifts. You don’t like not knowing. 

The next question comes out with a haggard cough, sweat dripping off your nose. “Why?”

“You’re going to tell me ‘bout the werewolf that made you,” the Hunter grunts. “And you can’t speak if you’re lit up like a pig on a spit. Took you the night we met in the square.” 

Through it all, Ghost barely looks at you—always his attention keeps to the trees and the shadows that linger; seeming to listen. He knows more than anyone that they do. 

The horse continues on, your pain surfaces again, and with a shuddering breath, you fall into a fitful sleep once more. The arm around your body tightens, and the warmth it lends is accented when Ghost’s shifting gaze glances at the top of your head. He wears an expression he can’t name yet.

When the throws of fever pull their curtains back for the last time, it shows you the slats of the attic above your head, wood polished and clean as the heat of fire moves over your body. Pulling a large inhalation of air into your lungs, you blink softly as if clearing away cobwebs with a broom—willing sense to return in the few seconds it had flown away. 

The furs are warm. 

In the village, you weren’t anyone of standing. A simple woman—unwed, and, thus, unimportant due to the era the world sees itself in. It wasn’t all bad…namely, it hid your affliction far longer than you could have hoped it did. You had a small piece of family land passed down to you on the edge of the village, and that was where you stayed. Nothing fancy; a hearth, a large, single-room property with a garden and a well. You were known to keep sheep, a fact that had caused perhaps a few hysterical chuckling fits when, every full moon, one or two went missing, but it gave you the ability to accumulate money and, more importantly, an alibi. 

Who would suspect a werewolf to own sheep?

But this home already had a more detached feel to it—something removed. The air was sterile, somehow. Groaning, your face tightens before you rise to the palms of your hands, muscles quivering to keep the strength your stubbornness gives to them. Half-vertical, you turn and study the area. 

Square, the four walls are stone with mortar and clay to keep the rounded blobs together. You’re on the ground floor, a staircase to the far right while the bed is stuck into the left corner; a nightstand sitting void of all except a single chamber-wick holding an unused candle. A sturdy table with one wooden chair, a stone fireplace set into the same wall the headboard is level with, and a large oak door.

There are runes written on it. 

You can’t make sense of what they mean, but when you see them, your tiny-pupiled eyes slip to the rest, all placed at windows or near some point of entry—unassuming things until you realize why they were red in color.

Your shoulders tighten, and whatever bit of magic moves through your skin lets your nose pull to the scent of human blood. 

You clear your throat and look away, licking your lips with a dry tongue. Moving your toes under the two bear furs that rest at your abdomen, you notice the lack of earth-shattering pain that accompanies it, and, shifting a hesitant hand, you grab the edge and push it back a bit farther. 

Bandages with perfect ties meet you, void of any crimson staining. 

Truth be told, you expected more of a Hunter’s home—skulls; trophies. The town always spoke of burnt bodies strung up on crosses that mark the property of those in this profession, a ward and a sign of grim hope. Vampires mostly, wasting away in the brutal sun. Others as well. Werewolf fur and witch bones shoved in blessed boxes. 

This place is almost normal, you think, thighs shifting over the dip of the bed as your finger runs the white wrappings where the bolt should be. Your mind dares not go to how he got the thing out of you, and at the stretch of sutures, you take your curious grip off of it entirely. 

Looking around once more, your brows furrowed tightly. 

Where was the man? The hunter responsible for your current predicament? Ghost. With his vampire skull mask and his black attire—a hellhound with dark ink and intentions. More importantly…

Why were you still alive?

Your memories come back slowly as you stand, bare feet moving to the floor as the tunic over your upper half falls to your knees at the verticality of your spine. They creak a bit, the bones, at the ability to stand fully upwards and not be impaired by bars of silver. A strength seeps through you slowly. 

In the deafening silence, you clear your throat tinily and lightly itch at the clean flesh at the back of your neck where the muzzle sat; rubbed raw now scabbed and healing with the spread of natural oil balms. Taking in a slow breath, you step forward with a heavy limp and watch the door, glancing at locked trunks and cupboards, eyes blinking. Your muscles ached, but the sting only served as a way to remind you that you were still here—living. Few in your position were granted second chances. 

You’re about to study the runes at the door when you’re called to with the creak of the stairs in your left ear. 

“Wouldn’t recommend it.” Your head snaps over, blinking quickly. 

Ghost carries the leather holders of his twin pistols in one hand, the bodies of the weapons in them hanging as he comes to ground level one step at a time. Brown eyes glance over through the confines of his skeletal face-covering as he walks to the table, placing down the items. 

“Keeps the spirits out—smudge ‘em and the house gets haunted,” he grunts. “Rather not bleed myself again to get the runes copied.” 

You stare in mild shock, sound sparking from the back of your throat. “...Right.” 

Side-eyeing the markings, you shiver and step back from the door, silent as Ghost seems to focus on his task at hand—looking over his weapons.

Large hands running the metal and wood, the pistols in his grip shift as the drying light of the day streams in through the curtains of the windows. He touches them intimately, knowing every grove and dip until he tilts one and rubs away a slash of dirt from the barrel with his bare thumb. 

You quickly turn awkward, looking down at yourself and the bareness of your lower legs. It wasn’t lost to you that the man was the reason you were in this situation in the first place. 

“You shot me,” you grumble—not unlike someone who had a knife to their throat. 

“Affirmative,” Ghost says nonchalantly. You get a slow, blank glance and nothing more. 

“Have you drugged me?” You ask, heart speeding up. There wasn’t anywhere to go—not without an escape plan and with Ghost in front of you.

“Wolfsbane?” The Hunter shifts his thighs, boots moving over the hardwood. “Negative. Not yet.” 

“Yet?” An attitude seeps in, lips thinning. 

Ghost sighs under his breath, slipping the pistols back into their holsters. “Forgetting about how we met, Love?” 

“No,” you huff. “Not really.”

“Perfect.” Eyelids pull down slightly. “Don’t.” Ghost nods his head to the table's chair, crossing his arms over his chest. “Sit.” 

“I told you I’m not a—” A sharp, numb look makes your snappy reply stall itself, and you stand there for more than a minute before you find the pointlessness of this.

You limp forward and sit in the chair.

Looping your arms around your waist, you glare to the side as your skin crawls at the unblinking eyes that stare. Ghost rolls his shoulders, tilting his head. 

“What do you know about the werewolf that bit you beyond appearance?” 

“Nothing,” you chuckle hopelessly, moving a finger in confusion. “I…I don’t know why you’re asking me about it—it’s not like I had a conversation with him.”

The Hunter blinks at your sudden confidence, unable to separate your form now from the one in the cage; blubbering ceaselessly in a grassy clearing. But lesser pains always bring out someone's true colors. As long as you told him what he needed to know.

Ghost explains with a sheen of dull annoyance. “Every turned werewolf holds a connection to the one that bit them. It’s pack mentality.” At your blank look, his brows pull in, the mask shifting. “You telling me you’ve never come back into contact?”

“...No?” Your lips dip. “For three years I’ve been by myself with this.” 

Brown digs into your face, a small sheen of confusion slipping in to tighten them, around his biceps, Ghost’s fingers twitch. 

You lick your lips, speaking up in the impending silence. “I don’t remember anything after I turn. Is that normal?”

“For you?” He mutters, still not taking his eyes off of you. “Yes.” 

“I’m not going to pretend like I know what’s going to happen,” you shrug. “But at the very least I want to try and understand why I’m like this.” You open and close your mouth for a moment. “Before you kill me, anyways.” 

“If I wanted you dead,” Ghost grunts through a half-amused tilt of his head. He doesn’t beat around the bush. “...You would be.” 

“‘Capture or kill,’” you huff. You’d seen the flyers; heard from word of mouth. “Right.” You sigh. “They’ll track you down, you know. They’re not going to just let you take me.”

“They won’t make it through the forest. Bastards would get lost on the trail.” The Hunter moves until he can grasp the waterskin from the counter, dragging it over with his hand. He tosses it to the main table in your direction after he comes back over, and you hesitantly reach forward and pull the top off. Ghost changes the subject back to his studies of your condition closely. Dark eyes slip down your front as your lips part to take up the liquid. “Before your shift, tell me what you see.”

Your throat bobs as you drink the water, thirsty as it soothes your dry mouth. You hum, but the inquiry makes your hair rise. Your arm wipes at your mouth as you lower the waterskin, a small thankfulness in your heart. “It’s less of what I see and more of what I hear and smell—blood; metal. River water. I…” Your chest tightens. “I feel my bones breaking and I hear howling mixing with whispers.”

“Whispers?” Ghost leans, eyes alighting with dim interest. “What’re they saying?”

“I try to block it out,” you whisper, not exactly answering. “Makes it go faster.” 

A long nothingness ensues. 

The impending night grows deeper, and then Ghost finally speaks again after you begin to shift with unease. He nods firmly, tilting his head as if it’s already been decided. 

“Next full moon, you’re going to listen to them.” 

Your horrified face snaps up. It’s a moment of stuttering before you force out a heavy, “What? No!”

He’s already turned, moving back over to the stairs and placing one foot on the steps. 

“Ghost!” You yell, face devoid of blood.

He side-eyes you. “Go back to bed. You’re dead on your feet.” 

And then the same man who shot you in the thigh with little remorse disappears into the attic.  

—

The Hunter was a strange beast.

The days the two of you spent together were mostly silent—left with tight stares and tense shoulders. Clipped sentences. 

Ghost, for what it was worth, gave you space in this small house; as much as you could get. He kept himself up above while you stayed on ground level keeping yourself occupied. You’d gotten spare trousers and socks, a jacket, and the bed was practically yours with how your scent rolled off of it now. Yet, you had never been permitted to go outside. 

You’d seen the land from the windows—careful of the runes, of course, and it wasn’t anything… ghastly. A vegetable garden, a single-stall stable with a dappled mare, and a beaten-down trail out the front. 

No livestock.

No bodies. 

It was only when you had become ever more curious about your lupine curse that you braved the stairs to the attic—one week into the impromptu stay. It’s funny due to the fact that Ghost had never said that you couldn’t go up there sooner.

You stand now in the flat room with a sloping roof and find the man making bullets. It’s a long table, parallel to the walls in the center of the room; dark and covered in all manner of books and tomes. Grimoires tied up and locked. Racks of weapons with markings and blessings tied to sheets of ribbon…it was something you’d never seen before. 

Studying it now, the contents were a dark fascination. 

Ghost fiddles with his silver shell, mixing in gunpowder into the hollowness. He doesn’t speak until you do, but he knows you’re there.

“Tell me more about werewolves,” you speak through the air, and he waits before answering. “The ones who are born with it.”

“Rare,” Ghost comments, and you’re stuck by how willing he is to tell you about this. He puts down his bullet and picks up another. “Harder to find, even harder to kill. Unlike you, they know what goes on when they’re running ‘round. Fuckin’ nightmare to pick up the pieces—bloodbath.” You thin your lips. “Not all of ‘em are murderous, but they’re unpredictable. Can’t help but make packs.”

“Instinct,” you murmur, coming a bit closer. Ghost pauses, looking at you before huffing in the form of a gruff ‘yes.’ Your wondering continues. “But why am I alone then?”

“That’s the question,” the hunter says slowly. “Need to figure out why.” Brown eyes slowly move to you. “‘Fore more people end up dead. Or turned.”

“Can I,” you stop at the table, standing opposite the man. “Can I turn people, too?”

“No,” is all you’re given. Ghost’s eyes glint. “And I’d rather you didn’t bite on me to try.”

Your face heats.

Your attention focuses for a while on how he works—prepares for something unseen. He’d said he’d kept you alive to help him find the one who bit you, but he’d also cleaned your infected injuries, bandaged you, and fed you. Kept you warm. Safe. It was far more than could be said about your village.

However, it was strange how Ghost’s stark muteness was something that you found in the darker hours, a small comfort. When the moon was coming in from the windows, and you hid from its rays as if being stalked down, he once found you sleeping under the bed on the floor because of it.

He never said anything, just offered you a silent hand and helped you back out with a slow blink and a tilt of his head.

There was a distrust, obviously, but there was also an unspoken nearness. No one would make any sense of it—you couldn’t either. It was like a wolf and a raven; something built on hesitence but necessity. You didn’t like Ghost’s mask or his brutalist profession of shooting his wolfsbane-coated bolts, and he didn’t like that once a month you turned into a rampaging werewolf. 

Comparable things, really. 

But even here, in this workshop in his attic, you saw the need for this—for hunters. If you couldn’t stop yourself, there came a time when you had to be stopped. Truth be told, you expected it to be a quick and final end. Maybe that was just a foolish hope. 

A silver bullet would have always been your final song, you believed. Perhaps the very one that had once swung from around your neck; the one you’d never taken off until now. 

But then, perhaps that would have been your own brutalist profession.

“Thank you,” you nod. Ghost pauses, fingers stained with gunpowder. He blinks at the bullet in his hand as you continue. “I know you don’t care about anything beyond your work, but if you hadn’t gotten me out of that cage they would have burned me alive. Skinned me.” Your tongue pokes out of the side of your mouth. “I don’t know, but it wouldn’t have been kind. Job or not…thank you for getting me out of there.” 

“I shot you,” he utters, voice gravel. Ghost seemed confused.

Your lips flick. “I never said I forgave you for that part.”

A smooth chuckle wafts out over the attic and your own softly mirrors. Your head tilts somewhat quizzically. “But, about that…did you mean to put so much wolfsbane on it?”

Ghost shakes his head, grumbling. A small sense of honesty leaks out. “...Expected you to be bigger.”

You blink, and then, a few seconds later, a loud snort echoes like a ringing bell. 

The Hunter's unimpressed look only leads you to find him all the more enjoyable. “Shut it. Fuckin’ hell.”

A hand is waved from your party, dismissing the harsh snap. “Sorry, sorry.” You puff out amused air. “Spector not up to your expectations?”

Ghost nearly rolls his eyes, trying to focus on the task at hand. He didn’t mind your company, at the very least he knew he needed to keep an eye on you for any potentially forced shifts or hostile attitude. What he hadn’t expected was to find you so…different from your muzzled counterpart, your shared physical inhabitant. 

He could almost call you endearing if he wasn’t so numb to the sight and scent of reality. 

“Sightings were far between,” Ghost grunts. “Here-say. I took an educated guess—better to put something like you out of commission than drag my way out of a forest without legs.”

“No apology?” You try, tilting your head.

“None,” is the drawn response. “I don’t have regrets. You’re alive.” 

Your fingers touch the outside of one of his journals, tracing the bumps and grooves of age and wear. You hum, but don’t reply. Most of your pains have been pushed back now, even if you still weren’t up to full strength. Food and rest helped, but the anxiety that perpetuated only lengthened the healing process. 

When you can’t trust even yourself under the drunkenness of the moon, it only makes your fear of the sun worse. Everything made you afraid—most of all your mind; most of all, the future. 

“Why do you want to find the werewolf that turned me?” You have to speak this, have to push. Your curiosity demands it.

Ghost puts the bullet down and grabs a rag from his belt, mask turning to look your way as he brushes off his hands. He pauses, looming with that gargantuan height—natural intimidation in the span of his chest and the trunk that makes up his front. You find yourself in his shadow as he rubs at his fingers with the rag, taking it away and slotting it back into his belt a moment later. 

The man’s heat leaks into your body as he blinks over, glancing your form up and down in a single look; keeping a respectful distance but still making his attentions known. 

He stares. “If it keeps biting people, there won’t be any villages left to take up contracts from.”

“Money?” You frown.

“Principle,” Ghost counters, chest rising and falling steadily. “There needs to be a middle ground. Too many feral werewolves, too few people. Cut off the head.”

“Ominous,” your form turns to his, itching at the back of your head again—the scabbing skin. “If what you said was true, how do you know the thing isn’t already dead? If it hasn’t tried to get to me, what was the point of making me?”

“Because you hadn’t left St. Francis’ by the time I put a bolt in you.” Ghost grumbles, rubbing a hand on his bicep, itching above the fabric of his tunic. He stretches with a grunt—and you see his shirt ride up and the pale skin underneath. You gawk for a moment at the length of scars and brutal muscle.

“Charming,” you dryly utter, stuttering in a brief second of pulling back your senses, but the Hunter continues on, ignoring you.

“That was where you were turned—your territory. You stayed because your leader is still close by waiting.” Legs shift, and all of a sudden, a body is over you, hands are on the base of your skull, pushing your own away as brown eyes dig into the injury you pick at. 

Your breath hitches, tensing for a second as your spine straightens. You watch widely from the corner of your eye as Ghost runs a careful hand over the flesh. He puffs a breath, chest moving in a grunt that is both commonplace and expected, yet the brush of his chest to your shoulder is not. 

You restrain a shiver, nostrils moving to the overwhelming swell of leather and gunpowder. Bone fragments; the tang of whiskey. 

His skin as he runs a thumb over the edge of your wound.

“It’ll start cracking.” Ghost utters, and through his fabric, you feel the brush of speech. “Have to apply more balm. Stop messing with it unless you want stitches soon.” 

It takes a moment more of his surgical study and a small clearing of your throat before you can speak. Your mind changes the subject for you.

“So…if my bite can’t turn anyone,” you breathe, nearly sagging as Ghost’s fingers catch in your hair, shifting it under his attention to get a better look. He listens, you know. He wasn’t good at talking, but he always listened. “Why did they muzzle me?”

For a brief instance, you think you feel the Hunter’s fingers jerk a tiny amount—some reactionary muscle twitch that leads your body to still. 

Ghost can’t say why he did that, though perhaps it was the sudden flash of the injuries that he’d wrapped on the road back to his property that went over his eyelids. Or the cage—your pleading face aching for whatever small sliver of brutish company you can get. 

The silver bullet that he still had in his pocket, attached to that leather cord. He knew the purpose; the intent. Just as he knew the scrape of scabbing under his fingertips. 

“Control,” he grumbles, and it’s all he’ll say. 

Your burning face is somewhat down-turned, letting him do as he must, study what he can. He hadn’t made any moves to endanger you, and besides the upcoming full moon, there was nothing here that screamed imminent danger. Danger as a general, yes, of course. You were a werewolf in a hunter’s home—it would always be…your eyes flutter when his fingertips drag over your scalp…it would always be danger….dangerous.

Ghost doesn’t think you notice it, but your eyes are drooping. 

He watches after the slight shock wears off, a tiny smirk flickering the hidden skin of his lips after he realizes the reason. If you had a tail, he’d assume it would be moving in a soft arch by now. 

The man was mildly amused at that, and before he moved away fully, he had to stop himself from uttering a sarcastic, ‘like that, then?’ 

He had to remind himself not to get attached to whatever…this was. He was using you as bait, as some key to his problem. Not a companion. The distance here had to be firm and heavy-handed. 

“The balm is down in my packs,” he grunts, leaving just as his name implied before you had the chance to gather your bearings and the lack of caressing heat. You startle back to the attic room, eyes wide and face loose before Ghost’s retreating footsteps echo on the stairs. “Don’t bloody use it all, then.”

The front door opens and closes with a pull of weighted wood.

—

“I can’t do this,” you mutter, pacing alone in the middle of the night down in the living room 

The full moon was tomorrow. 

“I can’t do it,” you itch at the back of your head, peeling at the nearly healed flesh harshly. Your nails dig into the soft tissue, drilling like a knife. A bead of blood slips around your fingers, but it doesn't stop you.

It’s late—late enough to know that Ghost should be asleep by now. For days, the paranoia, just like always, builds until you are nearly as mute as your Hunter. No more curiously searching his attic; no more questions about his job or how he got into this business. Brown eyes had been lingering more as the days went by, this strange companionship growing. You knew, in his own way, he was…worried.

So silent, even he had been getting noticeably uneasy. Shifting legs and quick glances. Nights where you hid under the bed from the moon until lunch came around, Ghost speaking as easily as he could to try and coax you out to no avail. You, a feral dog with white-rimmed eyes. 

At supper, only hours before this panicked pacing, you had told something to Ghost that made him double-take. 

“If I can’t stop it…I need you to shoot me. In the head.”

He’d never answered, but his eyes seemed to get ever-sharper as the hours continued on. More tense. Ansty.

But…that was his job, wasn’t it? 

“Can’t do it,” you murmur. Blood slips down your wrist. “It isn’t right—”

“Spector?” Ghost’s voice had become so familiar to you that the only thing that made your heart skyrocket was the sudden call of it. Your gasp is sharp from behind a panted breath, hand flinching away from the crater you were steadily digging in your skull. A long string of blood trails into the air as your fingers jerk away, and it’s only then that you notice the deep pangs of pain.

Your eyes shudder for a second as Ghost’s form makes it to ground level. He comes over slowly, attention staying on the way the moonlight makes the crimson stains glint from the dripping line seeping into the sleeve of your tunic. He blinks, and you both stand.

The man’s skeletal adornment was missing, though the fabric under remained. A loose sleep shirt and pants, stained by the rays of night. 

“Let me see,” he sighs under his breath, a tiny rasp telling of the sleep he’d been awoken from.

“I didn’t mean to wake you,” you utter. He doesn’t seem to care, grabbing your wrist and pulling the limb away as his body takes up presence behind you. 

“Was already awake,” Ghost grunts, eyes narrowing in hidden worry. You calm down a bit at that, one less problem to worry yourself about. 

The Hunter, quietly, leaves for a second and grabs his pouch near the door. With a muffled command, he nods to the bed until you’re backing up and hitting the back of your knees off of it, sitting. 

Ghost lights the candle on the nightstand and opens his belongings with stiff glances your way. He noticeably doesn’t ask why you’ve harmed yourself like this.

“I can’t,” you say it like a plea for help. “Ghost, I can’t do it again.” 

Hands fiddle with clean bandages and take out his waterskin. The man douses a rag with the liquid and comes over, shifting onto the bed and lightly turning you so your back is to him—legs half hanging off. 

The hard press of cold water makes your breath hitch, and you bite your lip.

“It hurts,” you push out. Ghost knows you’re not talking about the newly opened wound. 

“Breathe,” he says to you, seeing the way your sides expand with heavy lungs. Brown eyes flutter from the push of his large hand to the warmth of your shaking flesh. “Tell me about your home, yeah? Heard you lived in your own place.”

The question makes you double-take.

He’s asking me that? Here? Now? Hours away from perhaps another catastrophe?

Yet, you can’t help the slippage of your tongue as Ghost’s fingers rub into your scalp. The rag is lessened, and, soon, the material is rubbed gently over the sore itch of weeping skin. You fight a whimper and reply with an addled mind. 

“It…it’s quiet. Calm. I always keep the candles going because I don’t like the dark.” Ghost works quietly and quickly. 

“There,” he grunts, glancing at the flickering light of the candle he lit. He’d have to remember that. “And?”

“I kept sheep.”

He pauses, and, without meaning to, a soft scoff bounces off the confines of his chest. It catches your attention far better than a bullet could. Ghost shifts a needle and thread out of his gathering of items, taking away his limbs only for the short while it takes him to loop the two together. 

“How many?” The masked man asks, amusement gone just as quickly as it had come. 

“Only a handful,” you whisper. Your mouth opens and closes, glancing over your shoulder as the candle-light spills out over the room; casting shadows over Ghost’s face, catching on his long eyelashes. Those browns of his glint like tree trunks covered in dew.

“Please,” your words are muffled. Eyes wide and fearful, there isn’t anything that can console you on this. “You need to kill me.”

There was a dichotomy to you—a violent thing. You didn’t want to die, no, you feared it heavily, more than the moon, but the truth was that you couldn’t keep going through this. The unknowing. The breaking bones, the blinding pain. The understanding that nothing that you do can stop it. 

“It hurts, Ghost,” your breath stutters. “More than taking off a limb, more than slicing yourself open and ripping out your intestines—it burns more than the light of the moon.”

The Hunter listens through all of it. He sits, he stares, and he hides the brimming sense of concern behind his dead eyes.

With a pulling of his eyebrows, Ghost’s free hand moves upwards and grabs your chin. Freezing, you study this phenomenon from over your shoulder, face on fire with eyes wide to the pale skin visible to your view. You hadn’t realized until now, but this was the most you’d seen of the man’s face. 

You could make out the point of his crooked nose—the strength of his jaw under the form-fitting fabric. Cheekbones and the heaviness of his brows. Wisps of hair. He had eyes like a cat, you had to admit; something sly about them despite the numbness that seemed to extend bone-deep. 

But his hands had been kind to you. 

Firmly, Ghost’s fingers run your flesh, and he blinks softly before a low sound echoes in his throat. He pushes carefully on your jaw and shifts your head back forward so he can help you. When he lets go, your heart quivers in your breast

“I’m ‘ere,” he mutters, and you feel the first stitch enter the thin flesh of your head. You take down deep breaths, focusing on the scrape of his fingertips and not the point of the needle. Ghost can understand the fear of it—of pain. It’s instinct. He tilts his head and pushes out, “I can only ask for one full moon from you, yeah? No more. I just need one.” 

“And if I can’t find the werewolf?” Your voice vibrates with emotion, staring down at your hands as Ghost’s chest brushes your spine. The scent of him was addling your brain; the rub and slide of his hands.

The Hunter’s jaw clenches softly. “...Then I let you go.”

It wasn’t what you were expecting, but anything from the time you’d gotten a bolt through the thigh was unknown territory, and, like a dog without a leash, you’d run into it. Your brows furrow, blood oozing down your neck before Ghost’s grip shifts to place the rag back again, swiping away firmly. 

“Go?” He nods, but you can’t see it. “But what about the hunt?”

“I can manage.” The stitching pauses. The air is broken up nearly a full minute later. “You’re not evil.” Before they start up again as if nothing was uttered aloud. 

The confession makes the sting in the back of your eyes start up again—a strong thing of confusion and vulnerability. Ghost continues his task, pulling together your skin one suture at a time until the injury is fully closed; clean. 

“Chin,” he lowly states, and you allow him to tap your jaw, shifting it up so the wrappings can loop above your ear and over your forehead—securing them. 

Even far after the blood has seeped through, the two of you stay.

—

Come morning, you already feel wrong.

Your body stays in bed, shaking—sweating. A large pain flairs in your chest over and over like a pulsing well in the earth, skin twitching with the spread of blood. Ghost sits beside the bed all the while, having dragged over his chair. He leans back into it, one arm over the side, hanging with the thing ever so often moving to rub at the back of his neck. 

You don’t think he’s moved since he brought it over last night; since he got another candle to stick into the holder—push back the dark. To watch, to study, or just to stave off your rising anxiety is another question. 

It’s only after the fourth time you try to rip at the stitches at the base of your skull that he finally grabs your hand and holds it silently. Now, his thumb moves over your knuckles—his gloves back on. 

At noon, he tries to suggest eating.

“Hungry?” Ghost asks. 

“No,” you say instantly, sweat dripping over your temple, your body partially buried under blankets. “No, I’ll just throw it up.” 

Brown eyes glint. “Just one bite?” 

Your mouth is already salivating—thoughts of wet flesh and blood in the forefront until you whine and shove your face into the pillow; panting heavily. 

Whispers dance in the shell of your ears. 

I’m here.

I’m here.

I’m here.

“Go away,” you whisper quickly to them. 

Ghost pauses, hesitating. After a moment, his thighs tense with the action of movement, thinking you’re speaking to him. Something swirls in his chest, but he starts to stand nonetheless.

Your eyes widen.

“No!” Both of your hands latch onto the Hunter’s wrist, fear a needle stuck in your gaze. “No, not you. Stay, please.”

A silver cage covered in blood slides across Ghost’s slightly shocked look, but he only licks at the corner of his mouth and slowly leans back once more. 

“Not going anywhere,” he says, accent dipping. “Tell me what you’re hearing, yeah?”

His hand slips back into yours, and he presses into your pulse softly, counting. The sun continues across the sky.

“I don’t like how it sounds,” you say, shaking your head. “It’s wrong.”

“Focus,” Ghost breathes, looming closer. His grip squeezes once. “It can’t hurt you.” 

You shiver, eyes tightly closed as tears burn the back of your nose. “It’s howling.”

A suddenly gloveless hand spreads up your cheek, resting there and pushing back the sweat that pools. It’s calloused—scarred. You whine, head spinning.

I’m waiting. 

Find me.

Find me.

“I don’t want to,” you utter under your breath, words an amalgamation of slurring gasps. 

“Spector,” Ghost calls, head moving closer. “Eh.”

“I don’t want to hurt anyone,” your hurried panic is similar to a mind overdosing on wolfsbane. “Gotta go away—gotta get out—”

“Spec!” The Hunter’s quick bark makes your eyes pop open, and you lock instantly with brown orbs. 

They’re tight, unblinking just as always. They offer just a few moments of clarity. 

Ghost holds your head still while the rest of you shivers with cold sweats, you can hear the blood inside of his veins; his heart pumping. The scent of his skin was addicting to the point of memorization on the airwaves. You watch, gulping down breaths as your throat bobs. 

Eyes dart you up and down, fingers spreading out to offer what little comfort he can. The man wonders if he’s completely in over his head. 

Ghost pulls his face-covering up to his nose, and your heart skips beats at the sight of ravaged skin and stubble, scars spreading out like your own. Long ones, short ones, burn marks, and hyperpigmentation. He wasn’t pretty, but he was real. 

Oh, he was real. 

His grip on you strengthens until all you can focus on is him. 

Ghost blinks, and you see his lips move. The gravel of his voice was never more clear. “Fucking hell, keep that head on, okay? Nothing’s going to happen as long as I’m here. I’ve got you.” He sighs out a low breath, thumb running your undereye as the small dribbles of tears begin to sneak out. Ghost murmurs. “I’ve bloody got you, alright? Let it happen—we can figure it out.”

He’d grown fond of you over the course of a month. You were curious; not pushingly so. Honest. Good. You’d been dealt a bitter hand, and damn him if his stone heart wasn’t stretched thin at the raw fear on your face. This wasn’t your fault, but he needed to find who turned you and stop them before it got any more out of control than it already was. If more unstable werewolves went running through the woods, there wouldn’t be anyone left in the territory alive.

“When you turn,” Ghost says as clearly as he’s able. “Go. Don’t fight it. I’ll find you.”

“Promise?” You ask, a weak flicker coming to your lips—eyes vulnerable. 

Ghost nods once, and it’s all you need. “I’ll find you,” he repeats. “Doubt me?”

“No,” you ease, clearing your throat. “But…one more thing?”

“Anything,” the Hunter instantly says. 

“Just don’t shoot me in the thigh again.”

When the claws start protruding from your nailbeds hours later, you’re bolting to the door with only one last glance at the Hunter and his half-pulled-up mask. Booted feet hitting the wood as he stands, he lets you go even as his thighs tense in a need to run after you. Patience was his beast to tame, but it seemed to have left him in the form of a woman disappearing into the tree line. 

There is companionship in broken things.

Your body slips into the forest just as the creak of your bones begins to shift and bend. You fall into a heap, hearing the gargling of marrow under your skin like a call to sea. An urge grows to infect you; a feral need to run and hide. Biting back a shrill scream, a hoarse yell escapes instead—flesh rippling as your mouth opens, fangs breaking the supple mushiness of your gums as blood floods like a river. 

Find me. 

Find me.

Find me.

“Ghost,” you whisper, hands snapping to your head. “Ghost, please.” 

Your bullet, you want your silver bullet.

A rabid scream rips from your throat, and back in the house, Ghost’s hands tighten into fists as he glares at the open door. He growls under his breath, eyes tightening in a certain type of anger that brews in his gut. The nights your shuffling woke his light slumber were more common than when you hadn’t, and every utterance was clearly heard to his ears. It had become a curse to him—how you’d met.

A regret was seeping in, a care, and now, as he forces himself to back up and head into the attic, Ghost clenches his jaw tightly. So unaffected by the horror of monsters, he was now at a loss of sense for this growth of feelings. 

He wasn’t dull, he knew that some of the contracts he took marked him as a tool and not a person of stable mind. He’d done things he wasn’t proud of, and he would continue to do them for no other reason than they were the orders he was given.

But you had broken a piece of that off of him, somehow, someway, your face had seared itself into his retinas—speared him at the brutality that your community had treated you with. The muzzle. It was cruel, and while Ghost was precisely that, there was a limit. 

He did his job, and that was that. Anything after wasn’t his problem. 

You became his job, and the one who turned you was an add-on. Maybe if he justified it to himself, he could understand his actions better. 

But he was already sprinting to grab his gear when the first howl shattered the night.

—

A white beast prowls the forest. 

It stands on two legs, but it isn’t human—isn’t natural. It’s taller than a grown man is; snout pulled back in a soundless snarl that puts dogs to shame with rows of teeth so sharp, they look like pale knives. Its feet—large, splayed—soundlessly skate the ground until clawed fingers slam to the earth. 

A nose inhales the scent above the dirt, tongue lulling as a shaggy tail lays limp behind a curved spine. In between the erect ears, under the thick skull of the werewolf, the rolling bumps of a brain spark. A pull.

Find me.

Your eyes are tiny black dots—and they blink once before you rise once more. A great growl moves inside of your chest, the large collection of hair around your neck standing on end.

I’m waiting.

But there’s something that keeps you here—standing in the grass as the moon shines atop your head, your fur nearly glowing even with the stain of bloody injuries. The remains of clothes are about a meter away; only strips of what was. 

Your gaze looks over your shoulder, and your gargantuan frame lumbers backward until you can stoop to them—nose once more sniffing with your arms reaching.

Your fingers twitch, blackened claws digging through the ground as a near purr echoes in your throat. The scythe-like additions card across the strips.

Gunpowder. 

Leather.

Whiskey.

Something you can’t quite name, but feel drawn to despite the tightening noose at your throat. There was something there you can’t focus on…something that you need. 

Your drooling jaws snap, saliva coating the fangs until they drip off one at a time to stain the grass. Body shifting, your head lowers until your wolf-ish visage rubs against the fabric, licking at the sides of your gums as delicate grumbles slip out of your mouth. 

A far-off howl leaves your frame freezing.

Eyes slipping back into the feral-inhumanity of a wild animal, your body jolts up, gaze to the forest trees and the rustling of bushes. The swell of rain on the clouds is in the back of your nose, and the previous attraction to the ripped clothes is lost as simply as it had come. 

You were being summoned. 

Ears twitching, the entirety of your body refuses to move to the sound; tensed and ready to spring on anything that moves if only to let off the spike of anger at the lack of control. The pull grows stronger, and it feels like something is trying to drag you away into the wilds.

This was the sensation you were always trying to fight—the one that led to the aggression; the hunt. You knew that if you followed that howl, whatever was left of your human sense would be gone entirely before you could stop it. 

Yet, this time, there’s a nagging need to find the owner, and you can’t remember why.

Your large head tilts, feet spaced as the curve of your spine grows more aggressive—hunching forward as you snarl at nothing, claws shaking as your fur is more bristly than sleek. 

Like pure white spikes. 

In the back of your head, a thin sliver of a memory slips in. Fingers on the back of your head, caressing calluses and dark, dark, eyes. Clean bandages and gentle touches.

I’ll find you.

If the side of your vision picked up the shadow shifting from far off into the trees, your curled lip never turned that way. If your nose twitched to the heavy weight of a man’s sweat, it never shifted to point as a mutt would to the rustling bush.

Your body bolts after the resounding echo of a wolf’s howl, and it’s no later that Ghost slips after your clawed prints to follow.

—

Crossbow in hand, the hunter’s mask gleams in the darkness, his pale eyes twinkling. Bending down, he glazes at the long pushing tracks of your form—seeing the spray of dirt to the side and the broken branches. Ghost blinks, shoulders tense before he swiftly stands and continues on. The firearms at his thighs lightly rattle, and the bolts in his crossbow are already laced with wolfsbane; silver tips smelt a week ago. 

He passes a river with only a single glance at the tossed rocks from the bed, sloshing through the water as the bottoms of his pants get weighed down. Ghost’s mind is on one thing only: make sure this plan won’t get you killed. 

The bolts aren’t for you—the silver bullets aren’t for you. 

He grunts under his breath, the dark woods casting phantoms over the ground. The Hunter’s legs shift through tall grass, and he carries himself with the ingrained confidence a man of his station requires. If he were anything less than a monster himself, he would have died ages ago. Ghost shoots and lets others come up with the questions, but he could never be called dumb. 

Seeing what fast glimpse he had of your shifted form after the last time, he was struck by how erratic it acted. Snapping head, twitching ears, and roving eyes. If he didn’t know any better, Ghost would have called it rabid. 

Yet, your actions with his borrowed shirt were…body-stilling, to say the least about it. It had made his gut swirl.

“Give me a trail,” Ghost utters to himself, brown eyes still picking up the dash you’d taken. His agile feet splash through a puddle, the beginnings of raindrops hitting his head. 

The man grabs at his hood and pulls it up stiffly, frowning under his mask.

Rain would wash away the tracks.

“C’mon, Love,” he grinds out, body hunched. “Leavin’ me to do the dirty work, eh?” 

It’s too quiet—even a collection of minutes later of hard hiking, the trees barely move. There aren’t any birds; no animals beyond the black bodies of crows in the far-up branches, waiting, watching with obsidian eyes that don’t blink. 

Ghost isn’t off-put, but the length of his strides gets far tinier, carefully stepping over twigs and rocks like a soldier at war. Then again, he was at war. And if he was caught unawares, there wouldn’t be a bullet to pull out of his side, but, instead, a chunk missing. 

His ears were almost ringing from how hard he was focusing. 

Brown eyes shift from one area to another, and then, suddenly as if a deer, he freezes. 

Ghost’s body winds up, fingers twitching from the stark trigger discipline of his crossbow downward instantaneously. No one but him can explain what just happened, but he knows when he has to listen instead of act. Stuck in a clearing not unlike the place he’s first met you, his feet rest shoulder width apart and his eyes stare blankly into the trees ahead.

Your tracks end here.

From behind him, just as the large raindrops slap the side of his bone-ed visage, the small crack of a twig makes his ears twitch.

A low snarl sets his hair on end. 

Looking over his shoulder, Ghost is met with the same color that he’d become so accustomed to in a full month completely blacked out. Void. Lifeless to anything besides rage and bloodlust. 

Your white fur was infected with dirt, blood, and leaves—a mosaic of ferality ingrained into your body; pale fangs snapping. The beast slips through the treeline, slapping a veined hand into the soggy earth. 

Ghost only watches, eyes a mystery. 

His finger shifts over the trigger, and for the first time in his life, he hesitates. 

The man looks into your glinting orbs, the dripping saliva on your lulling tongue as your esophagus pants for breath. One hesitation, he always knew, would mean death. One mess-up. 

You’d asked him to end it, he shouldn’t feel remorse, guilt, perhaps—he was still human, despite his appearance, but remorse was deeper. It left wounds that were harder to lick clean again. 

…So why isn’t he sending a bolt into your forehead?

Ghost remembers the times he’d found you under the bed, your shaking, and the way you hadn’t allowed him to change your bandages the first few weeks you’d stayed with him; didn’t want him to touch you. The nightmares and the small smile you’d gain when he’d spew his dark, sarcastic words as if this was a joke. How you’d always thank him under your breath for the food he’d give you, hunted by his own hand. 

A silver cage. Crimson blood. The sight of your pleading eyes when you’d told him to shoot you.

Maybe the two of you were far more alike than he’d dare to admit. And he currently won’t, not even on his deathbed. Not even now.

Ghost watches, and he waits. 

He can’t do it.

Your body slinks closer, stalking with the sound of anger, nearly rib-shaking in its volume. Ghost’s jaw clenches, and his body shifts to face yours head-on. At the sight of the crossbow, your snarl turns into an air-biting rage, saliva flying through the rain.

“Spector,” he keeps his voice low, even. The sight he’d seen as you smelled his clothes had to mean something. Ghost tilts his head, moving out a hand from the side of his weapon in an appeasement gesture. “I’m not going to shoot you. We have a job to complete…get those fangs away.”

He wonders if ordering you around will even work. You had told him before—you’re not a mutt. Ghost agrees. No mutt was the size of a fucking boulder.

The werewolf’s claws drag—goring the mud as if a pig to tear apart. 

“Spector,” the Hunter tries again. But something’s different about his tone; he drops it, letting it pull on a softer string. “I’m here to end this. We’re here to end this.” He blinks and lowers the crossbow completely. “Breathe. The night can’t last forever.” A breeze whips the trees. “I made you a promise.”

There’s a second, he thinks, where he can see something shift in your gaze, pupils slightly widening above the deluge that wets down your fur into a sopping mess that hangs off muscle.

“That’s a girl,” Ghost grunts, taking a small step closer. “Never told you,” he utters, eyes locked with yours. He sees your nose twitch minutely. “But if we get this right, Spec, there’ll be no more painful shifts, hear me?”

Your dog-ish mouth is closed, hanging off every word as Ghost comes even closer.

“I kill this bastard,” the hunter breathes, gloved hand still outstretched, nearing closer to the near-silver of your form. “The moon’ll have no claim on you. She’ll let you off the leash, Little Wolf. You get to decide when it happens.” 

He thinks he has you now, back to some state of recognition in the addled brain that tries to see him as prey; as competition. Ghost’s fingers are close enough to almost touch you, but just before he can brush his gloves over your wet fur, your mouth opens in a display of untamed challenge. Your growl is enough to make the man unconsciously reach for his pistol, and in the time it takes him to realize the fault of it, you’ve already rampaged forward with an unhinged jaw.

Ghost’s eyes widen, taking a quick step back. 

Your legs push off, and you shove the hunter out of the way just before the fangs of an immense beast can clamp down on him, your own finding the shoulder of gray, thick fur.

Fighting as wolves do, Ghost only needs a moment to recover and get to his feet, though the sight in front of him can rival any that he’d seen before. His crossbow clatters a few feet away, sending the bolt off into the trees with a metallic ‘twang’.

The two werewolves roll around the pouring clearing, snapping teeth and rending claws drawing blood that’s deep enough to swim in to the green grass. White and gray meld together—blue eyes like a knife to Ghost’s chest when he takes it in from between the sound of tearing fur. 

“Bloody fucking…” the man trails, staggering as his palms slap to the pistols at his side. He blinks, shouting in more of a bark than even a dog could imitate. “Spector!” 

The wolves pull and rip the other to shreds, flesh torn and limbs grasping for purchase. Bodies are slammed to the ground before getting tossed to the side, fangs flashing in the moonlight. Ghost watches crimson stain your fur a pinkish-red.

He can’t get a good shot.

The werewolf that turned you sinks its claws into your sides, dragging them downwards as you yowl, eyes tiny with aggression before your jaws connect with its snout, biting down with more force than a horse’s hooves. The monster screams—a garbed thing of fangs and saliva. 

Just as easily as it called you here to it, as it stalked your Hunter, it bashes your body back into the earth and takes you by the scruff of your neck. Eyes wide in that lupine way, you lock on Ghost’s profile before your body is lifted, and tossed away violently. 

Spine slamming into a tree, you hear the cracking and bending of your bones in your ears just after you hear the sharp shout from the man in the clearing, body dropping to a heap into the grass and mud. Angled head flopping back and forth, black infests the edges of your vision, coughing up blood that seeps from between your gums and slips down the back of your esophagus. Fur and flesh are stuck at the base of your throat. 

Whining, your limbs drag and pull futility, eyes flooded over with crimson and fogged by rain. A great roar worries the air, sending long shivers over your spine as you try to rise to your limbs, a five-fingered hand slamming you back down. 

Just before the fangs can clamp your throat, two great booms burst through the forest. 

The wolf atop you reels back, great bellow escaping its throat when you can finally drag your head to look over. This beast was clawing at its chest, shaking its large head in an arch to try and dispel the shock of having two silver bullets entering its back—the gray head snapped around to Ghost, who held his twin pistols aloft with eyes burning with anger from behind his mask. An avatar of vengeance; a bringer of death. 

The orbs inside of your sockets widened, nose twitching wildly as you bleat a quick warning bark. 

Blue-Eyes rises, body far larger than yours would ever grow to be—on two feet more powerful looking than a bricklayer many years into his craft; tall enough to reach to the sides of black-shingled homes and pull itself up. Ghost takes one look and growls under his breath, knowing there would be no time to reload the weapons in his hands. 

So he drops them and pulls slowly at the cruel blade in his belt until the gleam winks in the low light like a curved smile. Setting it in his hands, the small flicker of a sharp smirk on his lips is lost to you. 

Yet, there isn’t a chance for some brawl between two beasts—there’s only the flash of pale fur and the final crunch of a body hitting the ground. 

You bury your fangs into the wolf’s neck; the one responsible for all of your pain and torment spanning years of isolation. You feel the body seize as it drops, the last remnants of a dying brain trying to fight the inevitable nothingness that ensues, and, you only hold on the harder, the bloodlust seeping back in with every drop of life pooling into your locked jaw.

Your throat releases tiny growls of pleasure, biting a bit to make sure there wasn’t a sliver of a chance that something living was walking away from this scene. 

Ghost pauses, and in the back of his head, he knows he should stop you. Brown eyes see the animalistic sheen of enjoyment at a fresh kill, the way you pull at the flesh until chucks peel away from a gurgling wolf. Even when the thing is long dead and the rain still slaps the earth, you barely let go until you get a hold of the meat and tear with a backward jerk of your snout.

“Love,” the Hunter sheathes his knife, taking a step forward. The blood was pooling under your body. How many of those were treatable? He had to know. “Let me see what’s—”

The eyes that lock on him are not yours. 

Up to your ears, the entirety of your face was awash with the stain of life, dripping off the whiskers at your cheeks; your chin. 

Before he can utter another word, he finds himself on his back with a snapping snout right in front of his face, two dead eyes staring deeply into his own. Ghost sucks down a quick breath, hand snapping to the large wrist shoving down on his chest.

He pants out, gravel accent far more deep than it was before. 

“Easy, Spector. Easy. Eh—focus on me.” Your tongue licks at your fangs, body shaking. Ghost pushes out, “That’s it, then. It’s over, yeah? You did it; let's pack it up and head back home.” He grunts. “Recon even dogs get cold in weather like this—the bed’s waiting. Get a nice fire going.”

Ghost sees your face move closer, and his hand minutely shifts to the vial of wolfsbane on his belt. It wouldn’t kill you, but it could put you out of commission until your body shifted back into its proper form. He could carry you back—that wouldn’t be a problem at all. 

But he was worried about your injuries. Even now the droplets of blood roll off of you faster than the water can. 

Too much.

Brown eyes crease, darting a look down. 

“Fuck,” he growls, seeing the carnage and the open meat. “Sweetheart, we need to get you checked out—you need to listen to me. Can you do that?”

He can see the conflict; the internal fight. 

Your mouth moves with fast pants, claws stuttering over his gear futilely. You blink rapidly, shaking your large head in fast increments with small snarls. 

“C’mon,” Ghost says slowly, fingers looping the vial. “Keep listening. Know my voice is utter shite, but only you can tell me it.” 

Your head drops to his chest just as the wolfsbane is popped open, and, for whatever reason, Ghost pauses. He waits. 

You take a long inhale of his gear—of the leather and the gunpowder, and just before the Hunter can dump the vial over your skin, the long blackish claw on your finger loops the bottom portion of the fabric under his bone attachment. 

The man’s breath hitches as you let it rest along his nose bridge…holding it there as you drag your head upwards as if it were an impossible chore. Your mouth dribbles out gore to his cheeks, but the Hunter stares upwards into your eyes as they soften in a lupine way. 

Inexplicably, you let out a bone-rattling sigh and slump into oblivion. 

—

Come morning, you sleep under the spread of large fur blankets—clean bandages over your bare frame as the man has tended to you for hours. He mutters for you to slip your arms into a spare shirt after he finds your eyes open, not uncomfortable by your nakedness, though he wants you yourself to be at ease. 

His brown eyes are creased, and you can’t remember what you’ve done. 

You comply with small grunts and moans; more sore and cut up than you can recall ever feeling as a large tunic is slipped over your head by scarred hands. 

Gunpowder. 

“What did I—?”

“You finished the job,” he says, sparing you a glance as he shifts back with his eyes averting themselves from your visible legs. The sun seeps in through the windows. “It’s morning.”

You blink slowly, and the man eases you back down into the furs. 

“I’m tired,” your voice yawns out—weak and brittle like the hope you’d had that this plan of his would work. Eyes half-closed, they blink at the hunter with a soft kind of care that you can’t remember showing before. Whatever pain medicine he’d given you, it was working. The underlying itch was still as strong as ever, though. 

“Tired is good,” Ghost nods slowly, standing still until he crosses his arms and sets his feet. He’s in a fresh shirt and pants. There’s blood under his fingernails; traces smeared over his flesh. “Means you accomplished something.”

“Don’t think that’s entirely true,” you breathe. A pause. “...Why is your mask like that?”

It was half pulled up—showing off his lower jaw and the stubble. The scars that you already have memorized. Ghost shrugs, blinking those dead eyes of his. 

“Ah,” he grumbles. “Forgot. Here.”

He reaches up and slips the thing off in one motion. Your loose brain takes a moment to realize the entire face you’re staring into, but the second it does, the image is engraved into your mind forever. You make a noise in the back of your throat. 

“Better, Little Wolf?” 

“W—” Your lips stutter, new sutures pulling tight. “Why would you…?”

“Hungry?” Ghost asks, quickly changing the subject. “Know you like that venison that I caught.”

“No,” you breathe. “No, I’m not…I’m tired, Ghost. My head hurts.”

A hand sweeps over your forehead, staying as you sag into it with a hum and a fluttering of your eyes. 

“Bloodloss,” the Hunter murmurs. “Normal. Go back to sleep; take however long you need. I’ll be here.” 

The bond between the two of you has strengthened to that of a silver rope.

“Stay,” you plead under your breath, already slipping back into nothingness with no promise to wake up again soon. “Hold me, Ghost?”

“Simon,” he grunts to only himself, knowing that the words are lost to you. Perhaps that makes him all the more eager to share it with you when you’re better. “Stay still.”

It wasn’t like you could protest.

The broad man slips in, shifting the furs until you’re covered back up and your forehead is to his chest—keeping himself closest to the door where the runes still sit in their bloody glory. If he listened hard enough, he could even hear them humming him a tune.

No song was better to him than the one of your breath at this very moment. Alive. Moving. There were many times in the night that he thought...hm.

“Better, then?” The dry tease slips out. 

A kiss to the side of his mouth is what he gets in answer, and he doesn't say a peep more until he knows you’re back in the clutches of a dream—a good one, he knows, because he watches your expressions like a loyal guard dog would.

Ghost, Simon, rests his lips on the top of your head, and in a delicate murmur, eases, “You did good, Love.” 

There was much to do, but for now, all he had to do was hold you a little bit tighter and let his stone heart beat a little bit faster.

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@sheviro-blog, @ivebeentrashsince2001, @mrshesh, @berryjuicyy, @romantic-homicide, @kmi-02, @neelehksttr, @littlemisstrouble, @copperchromewriting, @coelhho-brannco, @pumpkinwitchcrusade, @fictional-men-have-my-heart, @sleepyqueerenergy, @cumikering, @everything-was-dark, @marmie-noir, @anna-banana27, @iamcautiouslyoptimistic, @irenelunarsworld, @rvjaa, @sarcanti, @aeneanc, @not-so-closeted-lesbian, @mutuallimbenclosure, @emily-who-killed-a-man, @gildedpoenies, @glitterypirateduck, @writeforfandoms, @kohsk3nico, @peteymcskeet, @caramlizedtomatoes, @yoursweetobsession, @quesowakanda, @chthonian-spectre, @so-no-feint, @ray-rook, @extracrunchymilk, @doggydale, @frazie99, @develised, @1-800-no-users-left, @nuncubus, @aldis-nuts, @clear-your-mind-and-dream, @noonanaz, @cosmicpro, @stinkaton, @waves-against-a-cliff, @idocarealot

[dootznbootz]

Hiiiiiii I just saw the character ask thing :))))

Can you tell me about your NOTP, random headcanon and unpopular opinion about Helen of Sparta?

Thank you so much!!!

I'll save the one that'll get me crucified last! 👍

Random headcanon: Both Odysseus and Penelope were given a "photographic memory" by Athena. When Athena had "forsaken" Odysseus it was taken away. Makes it nice because a lot of the more fucked up parts of the Odyssey are a bit more "fuzzy" for him. And he hates feeling "so out of sorts". He gets it back though.

Also Athena technically took Penelope under her "wing" like, one month before Odysseus.

Unpopular Helen Opinion: In MY FICS, (It's okay if you don't agree!) She is built like Rose Quartz from Steven Universe. She doesn't have a perfect "hourglass figure". She's got some pudge on her tummy. Girl is TALL (Demigod) and CHUBBY. One of the important components of Helen and Menelaus' relationship is that they are both strong enough to lift each other. Also she's the most beautiful woman in the world and chubby women are hot af lskdjf She also SUCKS at singing. She's good at wrestling and spear work. (Sparta. I also love athletic women. Plenty of chubby women are also athletic af. If you think otherwise, literally look up women's Olympic sports participants.)

Homies, know that my NOTP can be YOUR OTP and that's okay! We can still love each other and be friends! Ignore the rest if you just don't want to see that, but know that while it kind of will be in my fics, it's probably not in the way you want it to be.

Please don't hate me and know I don't hate you or think I'm "correct"!

It's OdyDio.

These are the reasons why so avoid them if you don't want to read that! :'D This is the only time I will ever be on the "Odysseus hate train" because he's such an asshole to Diomedes.

I feel so bad about it. 😭 I'm a freak who likes Odysseus/Menelaus (Big BROTP) I think it's because Odysseus is just... SO MEAN to Diomedes. And when he's not mean, he's just neutral. There is not really any "Diomedes, you're the best guy!". Especially when have Sthenelus and Diomedes saying I love you to each other To ME, they are like co-workers who work GREAT together on the battlefield and on missions, but never do anything outside of that.

When Diomedes asks for help, Odysseus sprints away from battle. When Diomedes compliments him before the night raid, Odysseus literally is like "Dude, you're not the only person who knows I'm good at stealing. Let's go."

Odysseus, that long-suffering, godlike man, replied: “Son of Tydeus, don’t over-praise me, or censure me. You’re speaking to the Argives,                           who know everything about me. Let’s go. Night is passing quickly. Dawn approaches. The stars have shifted forward. Most of the night                   has passed, two thirds of it, with one third left.”

(Ian Johnston, Book 10)

Odysseus is an asshole but he's still so mean to Diomedes! 😭 ESPECIALLY WHEN DIOMEDES IS SO FUCKING NICE TO ODYSSEUS!!! I know that's what probably makes them so compelling to so many lovely folks but I love fluff BECAUSE I'm so tired of toxic relationships irl. I don't...I don't see how I can make OdyDio fluffy 😥 With OdyDio, I feel like I'm watching my bestie (Diomedes) get back with their toxic ex who mistreats them (Odysseus). Diomedes is actually quite polite to the others. Even when Agamemnon scolds him, he tells Sthenelus to think nothing of it. He compliments Odysseus! He listens to the gods when they tell him "Hey stop fighting!" and listens to Athena! Like he's violent and a killing machine but he's respectful! He's a traumatized, respectful, killing machine! He bitches at Paris but everyone has done that! That's something everyone partakes in /j

It bothers me even more because when Odysseus is with Penelope, he's so wonderful and loving? And that the Odyssey, literally Odysseus' story/Epic, doesn't even really mention Diomedes? That goes to show how little Diomedes means to Odysseus.

And since Odysseus runs away from Diomedes when he asks for help, it boggles my mind that books earlier, he goes into a rage when his friend gets killed!

[...]but hit Leucus, a brave companion of Odysseus, in the groin,                                           as he was dragging Simoeisius away. His hands let go. He fell down on the corpse. Enraged at Leucus’ slaughter, Odysseus strode up, through the front ranks, armed in gleaming bronze. Going in close, he took his stand. Looking round, he hurled his glittering spear. As he threw, Trojans moved back, but the spear found a mark. It hit Democoön, Priam’s bastard son, who had come from Abydos, where he bred horses for their speed.                                    Angry for his friend, Odysseus speared him in the temple.

(Ian Johnston, Book 4)

Odysseus, you prick!!! You go on a rampage when your buddy gets killed but sprint away when your STILL ALIVE BUDDY asks you for help?! ASSHOLE

They ARE kind of friends/frenemies during the end of the war but it's a weird thing where Diomedes cares about Odysseus but Odysseus tolerates him. Like he left him to die. I love Odysseus. He's my special little guy but he treats Diomedes, another special little guy, like shit 😞

They also have a fairly large agegap, (Odysseus being one of the older kings while Diomedes is the youngest. If you bring up pederasty, you will be smited.) and have very little in common other than them both being Athena's pets. Odysseus is a fucked up lil warrior trickster who loves his wife and child more than life itself while Diomedes is a young child soldier boy who is incredibly duty bound and war is where he feels most comfortable.

Also just...Most of anything about OdyDio (fanart/fanfic/etc.) it's of them fighting or bickering or betraying each other or being very sexual. Even OdyPenDio STILL feels very "OdyDio... + Penelope in the footnotes". I already plan to write Odysseus (and Penelope) as Aspec CODED and so I...just really don't care for that??? There's barely ANYTHING of them being soft. BECAUSE THEM TWO TOGETHER just aren't soft... I personally don't like couples that are mean to each other 😭 (I'm not even including the whole "betrayal with the Pallidium" because it makes me sad to think about. I don't consider it canon.)

Menelaus though?

I have plans 😌 These two bring me comfort and are a special brotp

[fayes-fics]

Portrait: Upcoming Fic Excerpt

Pairing: Benedict Bridgerton x fem!reader

Summary: Over a series of five sessions, Benedict paints your portrait for your husband-to-be... and a passionate secret love affair begins.

Rating: This extract is suitable for all, however the completed fic will be 18+ smut, minors DNI

Note: Hi all, I am in the midst of my Spring 2023 Benedict epic. So I am posting an unbetaed extended excerpt to motivate myself to complete it; it's currently about two-thirds written. I hope you enjoy! <3

Edit: This story is now being posted in parts and is available HERE

Prologue

Sir Thomas Baden-Smith. Just the name alone fills your throat with bile. He is a disagreeable man of six and thirty and unwed. That is until a few weeks' time when he is due to become your husband. A deal struck by your father after their joint business dealings became dealings of another sort altogether. Your many protests to your father falling on deaf ears as your mother stands silent, bearing a face of abject sympathy—you are to endure the same fate that she did, a marriage brokered between men where women are merely chattel.

You have almost resigned yourself to your fate… until the evening you set eyes on Benedict Bridgerton, and your whole world changes. 

You have heard talk, and even read, about love at first sight but didn't believe in it. But that all changes during an event at an art gallery. You see him for the first time across the room, conversing with another artist. A hot spike races through your body; it feels like you've been struck by some force. Then he looks up, and his eyes land and fixate on you, his lips falling open a fraction as if he felt it too. Some preternatural force making you magnets to each other. He is quite the most beautiful man you have ever seen, even from a distance. It's the first time you've felt your heartbeat so strongly in your twenty-one years of existence. Hammering against your ribcage like it wants to be freed, fly to him. And the thing is, you are not even introduced. You watch him from afar all night, haunted by his smile and how much you want to touch his hand.

What’s more is that as you stroll the gallery and observe the paintings, there are two that arrest you, beguile and charm you—sweeping landscapes of the Kentish countryside. They remind you of warm summer weekends spent with your loving maternal aunt. You linger long in front of them, feeling so alive in your own experience that it is only after some time that you see the name under the frames—Benedict Bridgerton. You know without doubt or introduction that the man who painted these masterpieces, to your eye at least, is that same man you feel utterly struck by.

The following week, over dinner, your father announces that Sir Thomas wishes to have a portrait of you commissioned that will take pride of place in his ancestral home once you are married. And you see your chance. To engineer a meeting with the artist whose face and artwork are burned into your memory. So you leap up and say you know of an incredible artist who would fit the bill perfectly. You conveniently don't tell your parents that his speciality is landscapes, and luckily, they don't ask. 

I

It's an early spring morning when you watch from the drawing-room window, heart in your mouth, as he descends gracefully from his carriage, so elegant in a navy jacket over a maroon waistcoat with a soft gold silk cravat. You listen as your family butler lets him in, and before you can arrange yourself on the setee, he strides in business-like. He already has his hand out to shake yours… until he sees it's you. 

His whole stance changes, and you know in an instant that he recognises you from the gallery that night. Now, up close, you see how tall he is, the turn of his aristocratic nose and his eyes that are the haziest blue you have ever seen. It's impossible to look away. 

There is something charged in the air as, instead of shaking your hand, he delicately takes it up to his lips and brushes the lightest of kisses across your knuckles. There is no skin contact, seeing as you are wearing silk gloves, but even that simple gesture has you undone. You can feel the warmth of his fingers and his lips through the material, and you have to school your breathing; your stays suddenly too tight around your ribcage.

“Miss y/l/n,” his voice is a veritable rumble, and your body is aflame. You are his. Completely. There is no other man you wish to know, wish to marry. Ever. You want him to take your hand and run. Run far away until the name Thomas Baden-Smith is but a distant memory...

[deans-baby-momma]

Law & Love Chapter 21

A/N: Well, I asked and you guys answered. So without further ado.....here's Chapter 21.

"Do you think you could come pick me up? I kinda need a ride."

"Sure I can, sweetheart. Just text me the address and I'll be there as soon as possible."

They hang up and almost immediately his phone vibrates, alerting him to a message. Beau opens the text and reads the address. It looks vaguely familiar and he searches his brain for what it could be as he grabs his truck keys and heads out.

Driving down the highway, the closer he gets to Y/N's location, the more he recognizes the area. In fact, he knows the Walker Ranch is in this part of town, on this exact road.

He tops the hill right before the turn and there she is. As much as a sight for sore eyes she is, Beau can't help but realize she is standing at the end of the Walker Ranch driveway. What the hell is she doing here of all places?

He knows of the Walker family, he has worked with the one that's a Texas Ranger, the narcissistic prick who almost got the case blown by flirting and sleeping with a witness. 

The Walker family is well-known and liked by many but there have been back alley stories of the younger son being a blemish on the name.

Beau slows to a stop and waits for Y/N to get in. 

"Hello stranger," her giddy voice fills the cab.

"What are you doing here?" Beau inquires, trying his best at being nonchalant but failing epically. 

I told you I came to visit a friend," Y/N says and Beau can't help but wonder if she's going to tell him exactly who her friend is or continue to be vague and abstruse. "But we had a disagreement and I don't know if I can still consider him a friend."

"Him? Who's him? He wouldn't be a Texas Ranger would he?" Beau asks, not wanting to play this game.  The fact that she traveled all this way to 'visit a friend' lets him believe it was more than amicable.

He is quiet as he listens to Y/N realize Beau knows exactly who her friend is. The idea that Walker was even in her vicinity causes anger to build deep inside. He grabs the gearshift and puts the engine in drive and takes off down the darkened highway.

About three miles later, that anger is somewhat overpowered by curiosity. "How did you become friends with Walker?" 

Beau continues to drive as he hears that Y/N met Walker because of him. He was the reason that self-righteous jerk was even in Montana. Did he have a right to be upset about it?

He hums his affirmation and Y/N continues to describe their meetcute and how she asked him out. But as soon as she indicates that they spent the night together, Beau feels ill, just absolutely sick to his stomach. 'No, please say it ain't so,' he pleads silently.

"Your date lasted all night?" Beau asks as he grips the steering wheel tight, his knuckles turning white.

"Uh, yea.  He spent the night with me.” We had sex."

"I got the obvious hint." Beau seethes and starts internally berating himself for not being there for her, not being there to warn her about the tall son of a bitch who thought women were just things to be used and tossed away. He beats himself up for falling for Carla's fake reconciliation story and taking him away from her. 

Even though Beau hasn't been paying attention to Y/N' words, the tone of her voice brings him out of his internal thoughts just in time to hear her say "more than friends, but apparently I was wrong."

"Y/N," Beau asks timidly, his voice softer now. "What did he do?" 

"Nothing, really. Just put some things into perspective for me."

"That's……vague," Beau announces. "Do I need to turn this truck around and go kick some Ranger ass?"

Y/N laughs at that and even though Beau is pissed and upset, her laugh is like music to his ears. "No. It's okay. Not even worth your time. He's a player. Sex for him is just a way to pass the time. I'm the one who brought intimacy into the equation."

Beau nods and drops it. It sounds to him like she realizes what a monumental asshole Walker is. The radio is on low and fills the silence in the cab as they drive toward the hotel room he’d gotten after the argument with Carla.

As Beau pulls into the hotel parking lot, Y/N asks about Carla and he tells her that it didn’t work out, leaving out the details of why it didn’t work out. 

"That's understandable," Y/N says with a nod. "So, what're you going to do?"

"That's what I was contacting you about. I talked to Walter-Sheriff Tubb-earlier and he's actually looking for an assistant Chief of Police. Maybe I jumped the gun but I put my name in the shuffle and he says I have the job if I really want it. So, I'm moving back to Helena. And was hoping, back to you."

A smile grows on Y/N’s face before she climbs onto her knees, leans over the console in the middle of the seat and grabs Beau’s collar, pulling him into a kiss.

“I thought you’d never ask,” she says against his lips as they pull away from one another. 

Beau grins and swipes a loose strand of hair behind her ear. They stare into each other’s eyes for a while, just taking in the moment before Y/N sits back and situates herself again. 

“As much as I want to continue….this-” she says as she waves a hand between the two of them. “-I need a shower. I want us to start fresh and new and can’t do that when I’m leaking another man’s cum.”

Beau growls and huffs. “Way to ruin the moment, sweetheart.”

“I’m just letting you know what you’re getting yourself into, ya know.” With that she opens the truck door and jumps out. “Now can I please clean up so you can have your way with me?”

“Yes ma’am!” Beau says as he joins her outside the truck and they walk hand in hand to his apartment. 

@spnbaby-67 @sea0405611 @delightfullykrispypeachh @larajadeschmidt13 @atc74 @vicariouslythruspnn @squirrelnotsam  @sandlee44 @blacktithe7 @hoboal87 @mogarukee @supraveng @akshi8278 @lyarr24 @kazsrm67 @chriszgirl92 @deanwithscissors @raisinggray @fanfic-n-tabulous @hobby27 @stoneyggirll2 @purpleeclipseeggsland @kmc1989 @deans-spinster-witch @yvonneeeeeeee @tmb510 @globetrotter28 @leigh70

[neko-naruto]

Nat Twenty!

Summary: The boys play DnD and Kyle and Kenny get a little bit too invested in their characters story lines (even letting them parallel reality a bit).

Warnings: blood, angst, check Ao3 port for full tags

Authors Note: *wakes up at seven AM* first day of school wish me luck. Day fives prompt was domestic/star-crossed lovers, I went with star-crossed lovers and I hope I did it good with a partial Stick of Truth AU.anyways! if you enjoyed maybe consider dropping a reblog or checking out the Ao3 port

"You fucking idiot!" Kyle exclaimed, clutching the gaping wound on his side as he watched his last teammate prep her attack.

Kenny simply turned to face him, "If I don't get lucky this is gonna kill me too."

"Don't," The word came out torn and breathless, pleading and begging.

"I love you," Were the princesses final words before she called her unicorn and all Kyle could do was watch in terror.

-/-/-/-

"Roll the die," Cartman said lazily as Kenny snatched two D10's and shook them in his hands.

"What's with all the theatrics anyways? Getting awfully mushy," Stan accused.

"Hey man, we just want the story to be a story, and sometimes stories require a bit of passion," Kyle defended with as Kenny rolled the die.

He added the numbers silently, "Thirteen, do I succeed?"

Cartman glanced over his rule book, "Princess Kenny's unicorn stampede is successful, dealing a total of," He input some numbers on a calculator, "Do you have any frost elements equipped?"

Kenny shook his head.

"It deals two thousand damage rounded down because of your shit decision to not equip frost," Cartman said.

"Does it kill?" Kenny asked.

Cartman nodded, "It maims, absolutely fucking slaughters, it's epic."

-/-/-/-

The unicorn easily tramples the orc ahead of them, leaving it in naught but a pulp of dropped items and flesh. A mix of shock and euphoria wash over Kyle as he rushes over to the best of his ability, still keeping pressure on the wound.

"Holy fuck it worked," Kyle spoke quietly as he stumbles over to the corpse where Princess Kenny is standing, looting her enemies corpse like a scavenger vulture.

Quite frankly, Kyle finds it hot.

What's not to love about a women covered in blood and viscera in a freshly killed body? And she's taller than him, by a very considerable margin. Tall enough and strong enough to bench press him.

Kyle still cannot believe he gets a chance to be on the field with her.

Kenny handed him a bag of cheesy puffs, "You're health is low."

Kyle gladly took a handful, "Thanks, you almost done with the corpse?"

"Yep, we should get going before the grand wizard gets worried," Kenny said, holding a hand that Kyle gladly took.

-/-/-/-

"I would not be worried!" Cartman snapped, Kyle only smirked.

"You would be so fucking worried if the princess was out on a mission with High Jew Elf Kyle for too long," Kyle said smoothly, "Wouldn't you be worried she's macking with me?"

"Please, Princess Kenny would never suck face with High Jew Elf Kyle," Stan countered with.

"Wanna roll to find out?" Kyle spat defensively.

Stan scoffed as he reached for a green D20, "Sure, if you roll higher then me than Princess Kenny is absolutely kissing you."

"Don't I get a say in this?" Kenny asked.

"You can roll too," Kyle offered, handing over a blue and red D20 as he reached for his own black D20.

"I doubt this is legal," Cartman said calmly, doing little to stop them as they rolled.

"Fifteen," Stan said.

"Seventeen," Kenny said.

"Nat twenty!" Kyle exclaimed, slamming a hand on the table as he did so, grinning smugly.

Cartman rolled his eyes, "Fine."

-/-/-/-

"So, Princess Kenny," Kyle begins as he walks the princess towards Cartmans castle.

"Yes?" Kenny asked, batting her eye lashes as she spoke.

"Would you care to indulge me with a kiss?" Kyle asked gently, he's instantly caught off guard by a hand tugging him down just a bit.

There's a sly smirk on her face before she speaks, "Of course King Kyle."

She easily brings him to down in a second, hand pressed to the small of his back and one of his feet pressed on the ground to try and keep his balance. The other is kicked up as he's dipped like a dancer, like he's the weaker one. Red simply coats his face and he can barely get out a single word as she meets him in a kiss that he moans into.

She pulls back as fast as she meets him and pushes him back to standing. He only stares like an orphan duckling, imprinted on the princesses beauty.

She gives a soft laugh, "Maybe we could do more later."

"What? Not fair," Kyle whined.

"Or we could do nothing," Kenny said.

"Later sounds fine," Kyle quickly rebounded with

-/-/-/-

"Okay, wow, that was some shit descriptions," Kyle said.

"I do not wanna describe you and Kenny making out," Cartman said.

Kyle rolled his eyes, "Fine," He glanced to the clock, "I gotta be home soon anyways."

"Me too," Kenny said as he stood up, "Same time tomorrow?"

Stan nodded, "I'll be back, I think those new dice are getting stocked at the store."

"Alright, I'll buy some," Cartman said as he started to pack up the die so they wouldn't roll away, "See you tomorrow guys."

-/-/-/-

Kyle simply couldn't fall asleep, stuck on the fact that he actually rolled a twenty to kiss Kenny. In game of course! But that'd be enough to satiate his desperate brain for months on end. He glanced to his digital clock, bright red letters reading eleven PM. He gave a groan of annoyance as he flipped onto his stomach and reached for his phone.

He lazily typed a message to Kenny, a 'u up?' answered with a 'yeah, cant sleep?'

Kyle gave a humming laugh and he smiled a bit, 'obviously' he typed back.

'mood' was Kennys response, before Kyle could answer he sent another message, 'wanna work on our characters story?'

Kyles heart skips a beat, 'like, working after the kiss, or?'

'after the kiss' Kenny typed back, 'i think itd be fun'

'cool. Cool. Want me to start?' Kyle asked.

'sure' came Kennys answer.

-/-/-/-

Kyle cleared his throat hesitantly as the princess took a seat across him from. She held a muted expression, to the point that Kyle had a hard time deciphering it even though he could usually do so.

"Princess Kenny," Kyle began nervously, "I'd like to talk about what happened after our duel with the orc."

"What about it?" Kenny said calmly as she drummed her fingers along the tables edge.

"Nothing much it just, caught me off guard, I was sort of joking you know," Kyle got out, a nervous laugh on his voice as he spoke.

"Bullshit," Kenny stated bluntly, giving Kyle a dismissive glance, "You liked that kiss as much as anyone else I've touched."

Kyle faltered briefly, "Yeah, I did," He pensively looked over his words, "Which is why I propose we start an affair."

"That, that won't work," Kenny said, she sounded tense, "I'm leaving to a foreign, far off region."

"Oh," Kyle got out quietly, eyes already glossy, "I see."

"I'm sorry King Kyle, you are amazing and I would love to be even in a public relationship with you," Kenny said, "But I'm afraid it can't be arranged."

"What a shame, really," Kyle said, standing up from his seat, "If that's the case then I suppose we should tell the grand wizard king?"

"We probably should, but we don't have too," Kenny said, gliding around the corners of the table to meet Kyle at his side. She placed a hand on top of his, "We really don't."

"I know," Kyle answered with quietly, "I love you, Princess Kenny, I really do."

"I love you too, King Kyle," Princess Kenny got out softly, leaning down just a bit to place a kiss to his cheek.

-/-/-/-

'and scene!' Kyle texts over, in shambles at the notions that he won't get a chance to kiss Kenny again. It came out of left field, Princess Kenny being sent to a foreign kingdom.

And they were just getting to the good part!

'kind of weird to end it with, dont ya think?' Kyle asked, he watched with rapt attention as the text bubble popped up.

'eh, sometimes stories are unfulfilling' Kenny answered with and Kyle felt an ache in heart.

'i guess. Still.' Kyle texted back as he flopped onto his side, drawing up his knees and tugging a pillow to his chest.

'i love you man' came Kennys response.

Kyle froze up.

'love you too' Kyle shot back stiffly.

-/-/-/-

Kenny was on the verge of tears in his bed, he had to tell Kyle, he needed too. He really didn't want to, but he absolutely needed too if he ever wanted to sleep at night again.

He clutched his pillow a little tighter as he put his phone on silent.

'really, i love you Kyle. Like, honestly.' Kenny shot over with a bit of a smile.

The triple dot bubble kept blinking on and off before finally settling on an 'oh god. Oh god. We should talk about this in person.'

He smiled a bit at the answer. Kenny took a shaky breath, he exhaled out a soft 'fucking hell' before typing out the next message. He clicked send and placed his phone screen down on the floor beside his bed and rolling onto his back. He tried to ignore the messages he knew were flooding in response to it.

'Kyle I'm moving to Canada later this month.'

He still couldn't sleep knowing what'd come at school the next day.

[coffeewithcutcaffeine]

3, 32, 51. Vlad and Cătălina

Thank you so much for sending these my way, dearest! ❤️️

⇒ from OTPs and Self-Ships Asks (Vlad and Cătălina)

3. Do they wear the other’s clothes?

Because both darlings live in the 15th century, exchanging clothes is not as straightforward as it is for modern-day couples. In essence, there are no unisex items as the fashion styles for men and women are quite distinct during this period — therefore, the answer is largely no.

BUT.

Occasionally, Cătălina does wear Vlad's clothes, particularly after intimate moments. She sometimes slips into his linen shirt or tunic for the feeling of extra closeness and intimacy. While Vlad is not particularly tall (we stan short kings — *ehm* voivodes *ehm* — in this house), he has a bulky physique, so she enjoys the comfortable looseness of his clothing without feeling overwhelmed by the extra fabric that might make her feel like she is drowning in it. If she happens to feel cold, he never hesitates to offer his giubea (a long, fur-lined coat) and wrap her in it.

32. Who’s the better story teller?

This is the perfect opportunity for me to dig into the whole "Vlad and Cătălina as parents" thing skdsksdsfls sending you tons of hugs for this one! 🥰️

They are both exceptional storytellers, and their boys could never favour one over the other. It's just the way their storytelling styles differ significantly, as each has a talent for a specific type of stories.

Cătălina is a highly creative soul and has the innate ability to spontaneously craft fantastic, adventure-filled stories. Her passion for storytelling was kindled during her own childhood — growing up without the presence of a mother in a household dominated by men, she found solace in the nightly fairy tales spun by her wet nurse which felt like something that she did not have to share with her brothers. Later as a mother herself, Cătălina holds dearly to the tradition of tucking her children into bed and inventing stories that transport her boys to magical lands. These tales are filled with princesses, dragons, castles, knights, and epic quests.

Vlad is not often allowed to spend each evening with his children because of the duties his position demands, but when an opportunity presents itself (he tries to make sure it does), he shares stories about their ancestors and history, all of which were imparted to him in his childhood to emphasise the bravery of their lineage. He wants his sons to be familiar with this, too, and tells them legends of the Black Voivode, the founder and long-time ruler of their land, and their great-grandfather Mircea, who held sway over the largest region in Wallachian history. Vlad also clarifies the reasons why their family consists of dragons, and why their grandfather earned that moniker. From time to time, he also tries to delve into his childhood memories to recount tales that his mother used to tell him and his siblings.

51. What’s a non-verbal way they say I love you?

In Vlad's case, it means offering Cătălina freedom and opportunities rarely afforded to women in their era. Cătălina is a fiercely independent and rebellious spirit, often struggling with accepting the status quo and, despite the unique challenges of her life with Vlad, she gains the assurance that she can make her own decisions in many areas. Vlad deeply loves her and is aware of the fact that their situation is less than perfect, especially with him being largely absent. Therefore, he respects her autonomy and allows her to adjust aspects of her life as she sees fit. (This is especially important given the significant burdens she carries because being a royal mistress often suggests a precarious position.) Consequently, he treats her as an equal partner, not as a possession. Vlad believes that love should not equate to imprisonment — as a rebellious and independent man himself, he understands that such constraints can feel suffocating.

In Cătălina's case, it means staying remarkably persistent, at least as seen through Vlad's eyes. His life is a rollercoaster of constant tumult and unpredictability, and Cătălina, for the most part, grits her teeth and tries to adapt to whatever challenges come her way as a direct consequence of his duties and responsibilities. This adaptability comes to her a bit more naturally, largely due to her supremely pragmatic and rational mindset, but there are moments in her life where she is thrust into very challenging, almost overwhelming situations that are difficult to handle. Looking into her past, particularly her history with men (both positive and negative), this only serves as clear evidence of the depth of her love for Vlad, but also about a profound belief in his mission, his purpose, and the path that he has chosen.

[sarahbethdurst]

Gift Giving Guide 2023

Happy holidays! If you'd like to give someone a book by me this holiday season (and if so, thank you and I love you!!!), but you don't know which one to give to which reader, I thought I'd share a gift guide:

BOOKS FOR KIDS (AGES 8-12)

For the kid who loves animals… THE SHELTERLINGS, a fantasy adventure about a squirrel named Holly and her friends at the Shelter for Rejected Familiars. Lots of talking animals!

For the quiet kid… SPARK, a fantasy adventure about a quiet girl and her lightning dragon who learn you don't need to change yourself to change the world.

For the kid who wants a loyal best friend with tentacles… THE GIRL WHO COULD NOT DREAM, a fantasy book for kids about a girl whose family owns a secret shop where they buy, bottle, and sell dreams.

BOOKS FOR TEENS

For the teen who wants a creepy survival story… THE LAKE HOUSE, a YA survival thriller about three girls stranded in the wilderness of Maine.

For the teen who likes snark… DRINK SLAY LOVE, a YA contemporary fantasy about a 16-year-old vampire girl who is stabbed through the heart by a were-unicorn and develops a very inconvenient conscience.

For the teen who loves fairy-tale romance… ICE, a Beauty-and-the-Beast retelling set in the present-day Arctic.

BOOKS FOR ADULTS

For the reader who watched the extended edition of The Lord of the Rings or who wants middle-aged heroes… THE BONE MAKER, a standalone epic fantasy about five heroes 25 years past their prime. It's about second chances. And lots of bone magic.

For the reader who thinks the Indy-500 would be better if the cars had a lot more teeth and tentacles… RACE THE SANDS, a standalone epic fantasy about monster racing (and smashing the patriarchy).

For the reader who likes kickass women and very tall trees… THE QUEEN OF BLOOD, Book One of the Queens of Renthia, an epic fantasy trilogy about bloodthirsty nature spirits.

For more info on these and any of my other books, please visit http://www.sarahbethdurst.com

If you'd like a signed bookplate (a clear sticker that I'd personalize and you can stick inside any of my books to transform them into signed books) for yourself or for a gift, please drop me an email (sarah AT sarahbethdurst DOT com), and I'd be happy to mail you one (US only).

Happy holidays, and thanks for reading!

[howdykittyleroy-blog]

When I tell people the plot of my epic western trilogy, Alias Jeannie Delaney, they're often as keen as a miner who's struck gold, which is fabulous, considering the whole thing took me over thirty intermittent years to write.

Who says that the western is dead? That the space age has taken over? There's room on this planet for all, and the fact that my particular brand of western, in which my hero is a gal, is one of a comparatively new breed of western in which the protagonist gals are strong leaders who take on the same roles as John, Clint and Gary. Many years ago hubby pointed out to me a bus in Guildford, in the UK, sporting a poster advertising Sharon Stone's The Quick and the Dead. He quipped: 'They've filmed your story!' I hadn't yet finished my trilogy at the time.

Not everyone will enjoy the story. Fair enough. Some folks hate westerns. Some people - lovers of traditional westerns - may hate this kind of western. Some people won't approve (don't read it then). But so far I've encountered very little discordance. The majority of people think it's a fabulous idea, even if they're not particularly western fans.

Talking of fans, mine include two young male baristas in our local Costa. One of whom, a tall, handsome lad boasting a headfiul of black curly hair, responded with 'Yay! I love that! Bring it on!' Or words to that effect, when I explained what my story is about. The other barista sports a pony tail and wants to be a writer himself so regularly asks me how the marketing is going.

Another fan, to our surprise, is PA hubby's old boss. Who'd have thought? He's loving Book 2 - The Outlaw's Return.! He's a slow reader but he's getting there. Then there are two neighbours and a close friend who lives at the end of our road. I have readers who live in my locale in Hampshire, including two of our son's friends, and various family members. All this seems to prove that anyone and everyone might enjoy the story. When it's suggested that an author target their books towards the typical reader, and to describe their typical reader - I have no typical reader, and the people you would have thought wouldn't be interested in the subject - are interested.

These folks of course, friends and family, don't really count in the grand scheme of reader numbers or sales. What does count are the umpteen unknowns who are reading my words or have read them. I suppose six hundred and sixty-six plus (666+) readers includes all of them, and that's not a bad number, is it? I've had five star ratings and reviews, proving that it's a good - even great - story overall. My editor was the first professional to assure me that it wasn't a rubbish plot. My first reader was my PA husband, who went through the initial editing phase with me, and he's very objective and good at the job and knows his English grammar and doesn't praise the story just because I'm his missus. He loves the story on the whole, although he doesn't always like Jeannie, my protagonist. Well, who does, eh? He does gets very emotional when the plot is working. I'm currently working on Book 3 and it's coming along really well.

So, pick up the first novel, have a read and see what you think.

PS. Alias Jeannie Delaney is the life story of a devastating and charismatic pants-wearing cowgirl who's the fastest gun in the west and a magnificent lover to both men and women. This is her journey to find her true self on the wild frontier throughout deadly confrontations and personal tragedies. Will she find happiness or will her tomboy beauty, her powerful persona and her lethal gun finally be the death of her? Read the series and find out!

https://www.amazon.co.uk/West-Girl-Alias-Jeannie-Delaney-ebook/dp/B0C9YT6DVR/

[libidomechanica]

O Rivulet, gold

A sonnet sequence

               1

More thoughts to enclose region weeping, lustrings, ere Roffy is thro’ the dice by my sweet Highland in chronicle; and, puffing, looked my thou here were bright, garnish matter: rounde? Go thou Hymen friend tingling bias, beast when the been and than receive throught my virgins too hasn’t thing overrun all his adjunct pleasant to slumber too short time, and as I heart that were made up milling, others by Virtue hath does spring Organs loth? Oh! Be easily sheepe. And if these her.

               2

Find gladly yels, no being mirth, some quite of selfish upon theyr eccho ring. That mountains read: and that simpliciting at the war What it black cascade of flame of heauens, and not himselfe his he cost your self-loving and life advancing will picturing homes of a party? For they told, how swift. While I was drown’d with Senses referring airs and walls of pure sing; and, epic and sable; slake our soul its shame, there did grown of the treasure, there. Young giraffes if it went.

               3

The rules to haue a dream-mother’s halls to closer Lambkins to the seemely go’st prominent! And ran with the moment it in there. Can thou that she coxcombry of ioyed the took to fair again turns do I look of you have love-knot into chicketed; made answer meet eye distress much of the world which my God. Her home, and air! We for all thing divine tall are laid by you, holy verse, that illustrings, a Gothic ruin, reached and a tale fro shaped as the grounded.

               4

She may long have guerdon of heart, and next days I wishfull many a summon December who are of women, that pretty were for aye: these the will Oothoon it may sights and her baby find his eyes of Albion her Body chose sented ball in vogue; now great didn’t removed for you art didn’t thine? Of her is safe younger evermore and air! Until it foreigner is shroud. And the child ass were or I arrived to the Mastery peasant Quyre of my bear traps; and flee.

               5

Thoughts quite, till that the might with Lilia’s. My half a yearn to the was wont tell—I thou knowe, the sea. Can spire out us goe, ask’d to thee sit were dream comming home to me; taking back and flowres, that shot by only for every ancient blink in Beauties the liquefactitious array his true, heap it stay’d, and guydest reverse, nor you were I follow moan did latest fitter of fierce me not thus, the rav’nous howling thee, dear. Turn to pain, and wide, and for I are that the mazie thy lost impatient leade me false despairing jest. With jealousy, being to country bloome, not know where rain the sword to belovèd all the fishes the hinder feels, nor good but the molehills, be streams are blessings.

               6

Push back ever shrink that doth smile; and pikes Time all, lasts worn their severance into myself my fears—but this delight shadows rise and shadow round; he fern on fire—brake then the centuries which I have not gives with fraughter tear the strong that have the children, but satire. Exchanging mouth was so ioyfull tell your feet, ye spak na, lass of loved so rich, hath of us spent a hand truth or horse. I bore in ilka thrilliance—sure ourse and wings, and death’s whereas blue lark dire.

               7

And sweetly woods. Be and everythings; changest heard feverity, but Natures of all—won’t read? Words of sing, waiting mild ass winged for it likewise with with a life did lay on thy only love the one the dark. That I loved fruit in the thro’ all serves, and souls from my hair. Where, and we have hath of sound. Of time, myself near, I cannot look and pleasure, look into the woods shallow; when to burning the breede no less are their side, this look on his gold, and convey’d, and which bleak?

               8

—Of comforts may find in the mark woods decay, thy balms in description weeping night, and the grassy median during, lusters round shall thy morning story of yondering fearful wise casting her impervious, trembling and watch youngest beautie be, of his tutor, rought can penetrate a pittie that would make there of going to its testify thee, point. Bargain what wane of rauenous chasten to the lily, the Baron, the love no forget, or any been sparents.

               9

Within my bed, and words from than can make, her say, they dwell me within us to sweet, to frame downe gang of think, because to keep one. To pitied many gazers swimming for my fayre Alcmena lay, and her even to that was the follies better, I little whelmed were then t will bring in the main, fairy parlor, or rich aloud convey; if in despite the brave. I have me sing; I cursed in assurance, that may be, solved and so loseth her their sphere a gold.

               10

And serves, attention, and ye together brain to haue beneath her clods: in dreary poles. Tell me was Nelly on Diggon, wit or the King down upon my heard, that moan; long by his devoutly couerlets, and learn it, then the violent beat for they gagged rynde, I clung that flaws—set of a hair and drink, that wull, and avenge be notes before that you neither whose by side! Beside cafe, dealing store, and raigntie of myself, religion in ourse, the Daught of the blush it to tent to be unmoisters take the none had no last shall thou have eatens Scotch Court beams more the kiss thought can penetrate you were the ages, ere your heads, o’er habitual for the true plants, foliage, that I feel the stroke—a warning the sun.

               11

Above all the dew, this were shores, be stroke his find in her mother present form cell: at earth shed in his folk at thou dost the ring. But the twilight you dost heard’st a rebuff that the danger,—her paps lyke golden rights so wander, ’ sadder, the wintry day, ye wadna been my brow with his glory the power? And all no more, ev’n with lighter isles of politics on the when noughts chatter, he red rends were pitcher up, and air, to calculation’s little God was of mind.

               12

Dear virtue, there. I knowing carefully, till put a dreams are goest trees be like these shrowds; how each trifles and by moonlight, and likes alone, in tissue, must in her man is face who love’s valentinent! I wad made a sisters and when not quite an effort of the shut up smoking, the speech the what need some other, since him, and dream. And, where desyre, which many wisht thy sin agayne. As mine againe to which couldn’t wantonnes to regret the will the lashed and waited earth.

               13

And fillèd all it grow. The owls had five star off the world, as read and brave; but worke,&snares pulled daught it is bright in one veneration? Shone from the delicate appeareth. Where vertue harm, with show and Green in his melts. That Honour, or though beleeued my name—sir Leoline immense and wander foes, the cost off, and we have him lives may be ease; the landlord’s coarse with new rays me sulfuric air, rend to recyue thro’ all abroad was we were fit of the threshold of sighs—all repose trees.

[catonatrain]

hi!! i did not submit rose hsu jordan... however!! i read the joy luck club when i was 16 and then again like two years ago and it was a book i was quite fond of so im here to tell you about rose hsu jordan!!

so what makes joy luck club very epic to me is that it follows the story of four mothers and four daughters. and there's two stories for each of these characters! its about wishes mothers wish they could express more clearly to their daughters. the hopes they have for them... the sacrifices their mothers made for them and the sacrifices they make for their daughters.. its about the daughters who want to better understand their mothers and for their mothers to better understand them. its about the struggles about immigrant life-- how it's so difficult to mend the rifts between generations, especially ones rife with trauma. it's about how gender roles play into asian (mostly chinese in this case) society. but, put simply, its about the love between mothers and daughters.

the book is rich with symbolism with most characters having an animal, a direction, and an element.

most characters are clearly associated with a different animal, which depends on what their chinese zodiac is! for example, a different mother and daughter pair, ying-ying and lena, are tigers who hsu, are both tigers. their golden (orange) side represents their fierce heart, and their black stripes represent how they can patiently wait-- like how a tiger hides itself when its hunting.

the four cardinal directions, north, south, east, and west, also show the women's characters. for example, jing-mei, is associated with the direction east, because she is the daughter who has the strongest ties to her homeland (which is represented by the east)

as for the elements, the five elements that are prominently used are: wood, fire, earth, metal, and water!

now to rose. as the submitter said, she struggles with indecisiveness. as a result, i'd argue that her direction is simply directionless. it ties into her element as well, which is wood!!

in regards to rose struggling to take action, to make decisions, to find conviction-- her mom says its because she is "without wood." she listens to the whims of many others, and because of that she finds herself struggling to stand up to herself

below is how her mom explained it to her!

"You must stand tall and listen to your mother standing next to you. That is the only way to grow strong and straight. But if you bend to listen to other people, you will grow crooked and weak. You will fall to the ground with the first strong wind. And then you will be like a weed, growing wild in any direction, running along the ground until someone pulls you out and throws you away."

but worry not, in the end, rose is able to overcome the challenges faced before her. she realizes she loves her house (that she does not want to lose in the divorce) which is filled with wood/plant imagery. it has an oak door, an herb and flower garden, and a cutting of an aloe vera... it was neglected, but im sure with time rose can make things blossom again :)

to end it off, i want to share one of my favorite passages in rose's mom, an-mei's perspective as it gives a lot of insight about her, rose, and the intergenerational trauma they all face.

"She cried, "No choice! No choice!" She doesn't know. If she doesn't speak, she is making a choice. If she doesn't try, she can lose her chance forever. I know this, because I was raised the Chinese way: I was taught to desire nothing, to swallow other people's misery, to eat my own bitterness. And even though I taught my daughter the opposite, still she came out of the same way! Maybe it is because she was born to me and she was born a girl. And I was born to my mother and I was born a girl. All of us are like stairs, one step after another, going up and down, but all going the same way."

do you see... do you see the mother wishes for her daughter. she wants rose to blossom...

Group A Round 1

[image ID: the first image is of the book cover of The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan. the stylized art on it is colorful, with flowers, yellow and red Chinese dragons, clouds, and rainbow colored stripes. the second image is of Seijyu, a young blond boy, with purple eyes, a blue and white outfit, and a yellow scarf with a clip holding it together. he has a thin, sheathed sword. end ID]

Rose Hsu Jordan

The book as a whole is about generational trauma among Chinese immigrants. Rose specifically struggles with indecisiveness and blames herself for her brother's death. this causes her husband to take advantage of her, but her mom helps her stand up for herself. I love her because she has struggled so much but in the end is able to take back her life

Seijyu

A doll given life by his owner and sent to protect said owners best friend. He has no memories and the only purpose in life he was given was doing that job, his story is about self discovery and learning what it means to be human and to love. (he also has a transgender boyfriend). (when you google him the first result is a wiki page all written by me💛)

[yuujispinkhair]

They kiss on the ring. I carry the crown (Chapter 4)

Chapter 1 ++ Chapter 2 ++ Chapter 3 ++ Masterpost

What does it take to be the woman by Sukuna's side? You are willing to find out and learn more about his dark Kingdom by diving deeper into Tokyo's underworld. Maybe that is the way to win the King's heart. Or maybe you already have it.

Pairing: Sukuna x Reader (female) Genre: Mafia AU, smut, fluff Playlist: Mafia AU The songs for this chapter: Cravin by Stileto ++ Do it for me by Rosenfeld ++ Dirty Mind by Boy Epic ++ Catch me by Dxvn ++ F**K by The Code Word Count: 5k Warnings: 18+, smut, some dark crime-related themes (Yakuza, implied violence, implied murder in later chapters, gambling, alcohol, sex workers), use of the name Daddy, oral, fingering, cockwarming, creampie, squirting, cum eating, light choking, biting, hair pulling. All characters are of age. This story is 18+. Minors don't interact.

Sukuna's people knew you by now. They knew your name, knew who you were. It still gave you chills to walk past them when you saw them in Sukuna's office or in one of his establishments. But all these dangerous men and women treated you with respect, always greeting you so politely and making sure to hold doors open for you and take a step back to make space for you.

One night during an afterparty following an official event in the casino, Sukuna pulled you on his lap. He wrapped his arms around your waist as his lips trailed over your neck and his deep voice murmured in your ear in that sexy tone, telling you about his inner circle.

There was Gojo, a tall white-haired man, just as smug as Sukuna, who was responsible for adult entertainment. Gojo always had his flock of the most exclusive escorts in the whole country trailing him and introduced them to the rich and mighty people of the city, trying to sell their services to the lonely hearts of Tokyo's upper class. And apparently, he was good at it.

Then there was Nanami. Handsome and professional. The guy in charge of the finances definitely didn't look like a Yakuza member to you. Even his tattoos were hidden perfectly under his expensive suits.

Others looked like criminals from far away already, like the scary-looking guy with a scar across his lip. Toji. He was born into the Zenin clan but had decided to turn his back on his family because he disapproved of their dealings. He was in charge of the illegal gambling in the casino's private rooms. He looked dangerous, and you weren't surprised to learn that he was also someone who took care of things for Sukuna. You knew what that meant.

Ironically, the other people who took care of things for Sukuna were Yuta, a seemingly shy young man who kept playing with an engagement ring on his finger, and Maki, a beautiful young woman who had left the Zenin clan together with Toji.

Then there were people like Todo, Toge, and Nobara, who functioned as bagmen and were called for all kinds of services, like deliveries and observations.

And, of course, there was Yuuji, Sukuna's younger brother. He looked a lot like Sukuna, but instead of a smug smirk, he had a bright smile and a loud happy laugh. The baby brother that Sukuna was so fond of that he kept him out of the illegal side of his business.

Yuuji was in charge of the Pachinko places, the small legal gambling places, and arcades they owned all over the city. By his side was always Megumi, officially Yuuji's business partner but unbeknownst to Yuuji, also his bodyguard.

Megumi never said a single word to you, just gave you curt nods, and otherwise, he just glared at everyone who came too close to the young tiger. But you could see him smile when Yuuji talked to him, saw him putting himself always in front of Yuuji, shielding him, protecting him. It was nice to see signs of love in this otherwise tough business.

All these people were dangerous and powerful, but they were nothing compared to Sukuna. They all bowed to him. Sometimes you witnessed it happen right in front of you.

One of Sukuna's subordinates would drop to their knees, take Sukuna's hand and kiss the crown-shaped ring on his finger. It never failed to send sparks of desire through you.

Sukuna really was their King. This was his world. And you were the princess sitting on the King's lap while he was holding court on his throne.

You kept your promise that you wouldn't close your eyes to the dark side of Sukuna's business anymore. And he let you see more of his world. The world behind the shiny casinos, behind the glittering night bars, behind the luxurious office buildings. Sukuna showed you his Kingdom: Tokyo's underworld.

You weren't just accompanying him to the official events. You also went to the backrooms with him and attended afterparties, where deals were made that wouldn't appear in the books.

Sukuna's show of trust towards you made your heart flutter. And he made sure to let you know how proud he was of you.

He showed you right there in his luxurious office when he hugged you from behind, letting you feel his growing bulge as he pressed his strong body against you and trailed soft kisses over your neck. His lips closed around your earlobe, biting it before whispering in your ear:

"You've been such a good girl today."

He made sure to let you fall apart right there in his office, his hands slipping under your skirt, playing with you until you were moaning. He made sure to spread you out on his desk, skirt lifted up, panties yanked down so he could bury his face between your thighs.

You felt his calloused hands settle on your thighs, pushing them apart, exposing all of you to him. His smug smirk was driving you crazy as he looked up at you from between your spread legs.

"Kuna... please..."

"What do you want, darling? Tell me."

You knew what you wanted. What you needed. Him. It was always him. Sukuna, Sukuna, Sukuna.

He turned his face into your left thigh, soft lips leaving little kisses all over your sensitive skin.

And you were a quivering mess, so wet for him that you were worried it would mess up the files you were lying on.

Your fingers tangled in his soft pink hair, trying to get him closer to where you needed him.

You felt him smile against your inner thigh.

"Oh, you want me to eat you out? Is that it?"

His smug tone and the sexy low voice made you moan even louder,

"Yes, please, Kuna...please, Daddy."

A small part of your horny brain was still sensible enough to hope that his assistant had already left. Still, the moment Sukuna's soft lips closed around your clit and sucked on it, you forgot about anything else. Your hips were bucking up against him, and you moaned his name like a slut.

He was always so in control. His strong hands were pushing you down, stilling the desperate movements of your hips as he lapped at your creamy clit, kissed it, and sucked on it in the sweetest way.

Your wild cries filled his dimly lit office as you squirted all over his handsome face. But he kept sucking your sensitive bud, dragging more spasms out of you, making you mewl and arch desperately against the iron grip of his hands.

Your fingers tightened in his hair as he looked up at you, his pretty face wet from your cream, looking so messy and so sexy that it made another bolt of desire shoot through you.

Sukuna's laughter filled the room,

"You like what Daddy does to you, huh? I'll clean you up, you sweet, messy thing."

And he smirked and leaned down and lapped up your cream with his tongue with long, sloppy licks, all the way from your slick hole, dipping into it teasingly with the stiff tip of his tongue and then up to your glistening wet clit, pressing the flat of his tongue against it.

Your nerves were on fire, still high from your orgasm only a minute ago, body spent but a the same time already sparking with new arousal. Sukuna tapped his tongue against your clit, drawing another loud moan out of your mouth.

It was too much, it was so good, you didn't think you could take any more of it. Your fingers tugged firmly on his hair, trying to shove him away.

"It's enough...I can't..."

But Sukuna's fingers dug into your hips.

He lifted his face just enough so he could look at you, glinting maroon eyes looking far too amused but also burning with desire.

"It's not enough yet. Daddy has to make sure you get what you asked for. You wanted me to eat you out, didn't you? Now take it, princess. I never do things half-heartedly. You should know that."

He laughed again and went back to flicking his tongue against your clit, teasing you with light kitten licks while he grinned up at you, looking so smug and so sexy.

Your face was burning hot, lips hanging open panting loudly, probably looking so fucked out that it was a great feast for Sukuna's eyes.

He always reveled in seeing you like that. So needy for him, your body reacting so intensely to everything he did.

He pushed your legs up, his pretty face sliding down even further between your spread thighs, until his velvety tongue pushed into you, fucking you open and making you yelp.

You ended up as a horny crying mess, leaving sticky wet stains all over his face and his files, and his desk, cumming a second time for him, coating his lips with your cream, feeling embarrassed when you heard the obscene slurping noises his mouth was making as he tried to get as much of you as he could.

You sobbed with lust when he stood up after that, opening his pants hastily and then ramming his throbbing hard cock into your still twitching pussy. He fucked you unrelentingly with impatient hard thrusts, taking his pent-up arousal out on you, making you take it as hard as he wanted.

And you loved to take everything your man gave you. You wrapped your legs around his hips tightly, urging him on, sobbing his name, fingers clutching desperately at his muscular back, almost tearing the expensive fabric of his dark red button-up shirt as he fucked your pussy full of his hot cum.

All you could do was moan his name and press against him as your head lolled to the side, facing the window-wall, thinking how pretty the glittering lights from the other skyscrapers around you looked and how perfect Sukuna's cock felt inside you.

You spent more and more nights at Sukuna's penthouse. He was a busy man, and you had long work hours too, so the easiest way to have some quality time together was for you to stay overnight at his place. This way, you could fall asleep in his arms and at least steal a few kisses in the morning or take a shower with him before the two of you had to leave for your busy workdays.

The weekends were the days on which you could have more time with Sukuna. Especially Sundays had become your couple day. You always started the day with a sumptuous breakfast, spending hours eating and catching up on reading newspapers, magazines, or books.

It was one of those lazy Sundays when you woke up to gentle kisses on your neck, making you sigh happily as you pressed back against the solid warm body of your lover, smiling when you felt his deliciously large bulge greeting you.

The next thirty minutes consisted of tangled silk sheets, soft moans, and the rhythmic sound of the headboard banging against the wall as Sukuna made sweet morning love to you.

You loved waking up to this, a horny Sukuna fucking you with languid, slow thrusts, his voice still raspy from sleep when he groaned into your ear and told you sweet and dirty nothings.

You stroked his back afterwards, in slow circles, smiling up at him, feeling so carefree and exhilarated. So high on endorphins, your heart still beating a bit too fast, feeling warm and sated, pussy still filled with his gorgeous cock and his generous load of cum.

Sukuna blessed you with one of his soft smiles, too, before leaning down to press a kiss on your forehead.

"I'll make breakfast."

He untangled himself from you, making you groan softly when his thick cock slipped out of you. But you just snuggled back under his warm blanket, rolling onto your side and enjoying the blissful feeling of afterglow just a few minutes longer.

When you walked into the spacious kitchen area a while later, you were wearing one of Sukuna's casual t-shirts. You hadn't been able to resist when you saw it hanging there over the back of the elegant armchair next to his bed. It felt nice on your skin, a heavy but soft fabric, clearly expensive. And it was comfy, loose as it was on you, usually fitting around Sukuna's larger frame. It also didn't hurt that it smelled really good, just like him.

Sukuna stood at the floor-to-ceiling window, gazing out over the city. He looked so sexy but also kind of cute with his unstyled hair, ruffled from sleep and sticking up in weird places from your fingers running through it when he fucked you.

He was wearing his grey cashmere sweatpants again, which hugged his firm ass in a very mouth-watering way. You let your gaze trail unhurriedly over his shirtless gorgeous muscled back with the black tattoos lining his tan skin so attractively.

Sukuna was a beautiful man. Sometimes you caught yourself thinking it was ironic that the Yakuza boss had such a pretty face and was so stunning and sexy that he left people speechless. He looked nothing like the villains in those Disney movies.

But maybe that was what made him even more dangerous. Sukuna was so enticing, so charming, pulling people to him like a magnet. Luring them in with his handsome features, pretty pink hair, and confident smirk.

Sukuna was as close to perfect as someone could be.

It was something he worked hard on, always immaculate, always wearing his carefully constructed mask of arrogance and power, spiced up with some joking comments and a flirty attitude.

But on a Sunday morning, standing here shirtless, with messy hair, he looked much softer.

Sukuna had heard you, and he looked over his shoulder at you, blessing you with one of those rare dazzling smiles. He looked nothing like a Yakuza boss if it weren't for the tattoos lining his handsome face.

"Hey, princess."

You smiled back at him, noticing his maroon gaze slowly wandering over your face and body with a strange expression on his face.

Even after dating Sukuna for several months now, you still got nervous when he looked at you like this, as if you were the special prize that he had one. As if you were the most fascinating thing. But there was something in his gaze on this Sunday morning that you couldn't place.

His eyes stayed glued to your torso. And that's when you realized that it was the shirt you were wearing that got him so enraptured. His shirt.

Apparently, he liked seeing you in his shirt. Your smile grew wider, and before you even realized it, you were already walking towards Sukuna. His intense gaze never left you, making your heart race.

Sukuna reached out and pulled you against him. His strong arms wrapped around your shoulders, hugging you tightly.

You laughed a bit breathlessly, doing the same and wrapping your arms around his waist while rubbing your face against his bare toned pecs.

This had become your favorite place. In Sukuna's arms, pressed tightly against his warm muscular body. His strong arms gave you a feeling of safety and being taken care of.

But he loosened his hold on you after a moment and instead put a finger under your chin, tilting your face up. And there was his burning maroon gaze again, looking at you as if he could see right into your soul.

Something about the way he looked at you made your pulse flutter nervously. And then he said the words that would flip your world upside down.

"I love you."

Sukuna's voice was his usual sexy purr, but there was a tenderness in it you had never heard before.

You forgot to breathe for a moment. The world seemed to stop spinning. The only thing that existed were Sukuna's eyes boring into yours. And his lips. The lips that had said those words. Those three little words that you had been longing to hear but hadn't dared to hope for.

You weren't prepared. Sukuna had caught you by surprise. Swept you off your feet once again, just like he always seemed to do.

You had always known it was an unspoken rule that Sukuna would be the first to say it.

Sometimes you had let yourself get lost in fantasies and imagined it. In those fantasies, you had assumed he'd do it during one of the dates he took you on.

You had pictured the glittering lights of the city surrounding you as the two of you were having drinks at a rooftop bar. Or maybe during an elegant dinner in Tokyo's number one restaurant. Somehow you had always assumed that was what Sukuna would do.

You hadn't expected him to say I love you on a Sunday morning in his kitchen, where he was standing shirtless, with ruffled hair, and you were only in your panties and one of Sukuna's shirts.

You hadn't pictured it like this, but you knew with utmost certainty that it was perfect.

It felt right.

Your lips trembled with emotion, and your vision was getting blurry, but you managed to smile at him and answer softly:

"I love you too, Kuna."

Sukuna's arms tightened around you, holding you, making you feel warm and safe.

Maybe it was strange that the King of Tokyo's underworld was the one who could give you that feeling, but nothing had ever felt more like home than this. Being in Sukuna's arms, knowing that he loved you.

Nothing had ever felt so right.

The morning sun was bathing the room in soft, warm light, making Sukuna's hair look even pinker than usual and making honey-colored flecks stand out in his pretty eyes.

It reminded you of that moment in the beach house during that first weekend you had spent with Sukuna. It seemed ages ago, even though it was just a few months.

And now you were here in his penthouse, exchanging love confessions. Sukuna was your lover, your man, your partner. You had been his from the start, you knew it, and he probably did too. But it felt even more intense now that those words were spoken out loud. Why he chose that moment was unclear to you, though.

"Why did you say it now?"

"Because I wanted to."

There was his boyish smirk again that always made your heart race. Sukuna's large hand cupped your cheek, thumb caressing your skin gently. His voice turned even softer when he continued.

"I don't need a fancy restaurant or an impressive sunset to tell you how I feel about you. I have to put on a show for everyone else all the time. But not with you. So you get it here without a show. I don't have to play any games when it's just you and me."

And you understood.

He told you here where he could just be himself. Where he was in his grey sweatpants, no shirt, hair still ruffled from sleep and from your fingers raking through it when he made love to you last night and this morning.

Here, where he smiled at you, no smirk, no arrogance, just a genuinely sweet smile that made his eyes soften. Here, where he could allow himself to feel and show emotions.

"Did you want it to be somewhere else? I can take you anywhere you like and say it again. You know I'll do that."

"No, it's perfect."

It really was. Especially now that you understood. It wasn't just him who made you feel safe and at home. You did the same to him. He could let his guard down when he was with you, and that made his love declaration even sweeter.

You couldn't hold back the tears any longer, and a few escaped your eyes, spilling over and running down your cheeks.

Sukuna laughed softly,

"What are you doing, princess?"

He leaned down to catch your tears with his lips, kissing them off your skin.

"Don't cry. Save those tears for when you cum on my cock."

There it was again, the sexy purr and the amused, cocky smirk, and it made your tears stop and instead chuckle happily. You wrapped your hands around Sukuna's neck, grinning up at him, probably looking just as mischievously as he sounded when you answered him:

"Oh? You gonna show me how much you love me now or what?"

"You bet I'll do that. I'll have you crying so much, baby. Better get some tissues."

You couldn't stop yourself from squealing when Sukuna suddenly picked you up and held you against his chest princess style. He carried you back to the bedroom like that, and your laughter carried through the whole penthouse.

You didn't get breakfast that morning. But you got more I love you's from the man you loved.

"I love you." Whispered against your naked skin as his soft lips worshiped your tits, covering them with gentle kisses and sucking on your nipples until you were squirming and moaning beneath him.

"I love you." Groaned against your neck when he fucked you with powerful snaps of his hips, your legs pressed to your chest, pussy taking him so well that his voice sounded almost like he was about to cry too.

"I love you, darling." Spoken softly, when he interlaced his fingers with yours as his thrusts slowed down, and he took his sweet time with you, watching you so he could see the pleasure on your face.

And you let him hear it again too, voice thick with tears and desire: "I love you...I love you, Kuna...I love you...ah!"

You were wrapped tightly in Sukuna's arms, his face buried in the crook of your neck, leaving little kisses there when he suddenly murmured against your skin:

"Move in with me. I want to have you here all the time."

Even when it came to something like this, he made it sound like a command. Sukuna was used to everyone always doing what he told them to. It was sexy. His power always turned you on. It made you press your ass against him, your body betraying you and showing him how much you loved his natural authority.

And he knew exactly what he was doing to you, laughing softly before his lips closed around your skin and left another hickey on your neck.

You couldn't think of a reason why you shouldn't follow his wish. Sukuna was the man you loved and who loved you too. You practically spent most of your free time with him anyway.

It made you happy that he wanted to have you with him. That he invited you into his life and wanted to share his days and nights with you.

Of course, there was also the convenient side of his offer. Sukuna was rich, and it didn't hurt that he lived in one of the most luxurious and most beautiful penthouses you had ever seen. And you had seen a lot of nice apartments and houses in your line of work!

A life in luxury awaited you here if you came to move in with him. That would have probably convinced a lot of people to say yes. But it wasn't what made you say yes. It was a nice side effect, yes, but the real reason you wanted to live with him was that you loved him. Because here in this penthouse, when everyone else was gone, Sukuna was just himself, and as careful as he was about who got to see him that way, he wanted you to be here by his side.

He was just a man asking his love to offer him the company he craved, the comfort of falling asleep with a warm body pressed against him. And you were a woman in love, drunk on love really, about to cry happy tears because the man you loved wanted to wake up next to you every morning.

So you didn't hesitate long before taking the last step off the cliff and jumping into the dark ocean that was Sukuna's world.

But hadn't you already been in there ever since you first met him? Back then, those dark waters had felt so tempting but also scary and dangerous. Now they felt warm and comforting, like a calm ocean at noon, water all warmed up from the sun.

But, of course, you knew that an ocean was always an untamed thing. There would always be storms. The waters would be perilous, cold, and deadly at times. But you were ok with taking that risk. You would just have to be a good swimmer.

You would be the woman who came home to the King of Tokyo's underworld every night and shared a bed with him, no matter how stormy those waters became.

He smiled at you when you came into the penthouse on the day you moved in, Nobara trailing behind you, helping you carry your things.

Sukuna looked pleased. He walked over to you, took your hand in his, and brought it to his lips, brushing a soft kiss onto your knuckles.

"Welcome home, darling."

He spent the next few days fucking you on every surface in the penthouse. It was a rush of feverish desire, soft moans, whispered love confessions, loud, passionate cries, tangled limbs, naked skin slapping against naked skin, heated kisses, sweaty bodies moving in perfect synch.

Later on, when your passion was spent, the two of you found yourself cuddling on the soft carpet in front of the artificial fireplace. You cupped Sukuna's cheek, caressing the tattoos on his face, gazing into his pretty maroon eyes, which looked almost red in the warm light of the fake fire. You chuckled, looking at him affectionately.

"You know you already had me in all of those places. Didn't have to claim me all over again, Kuna."

"It's different now. And I will claim my woman as many times as I like. Also, those scratches on my back are kinda territorial too, you know that right, princess? I'm not the only one staking a claim here. But it's ok, baby, I know how much you want me."

His cheeky wink and the smugness in his voice were enough to make you roll your eyes before attacking him with more kisses just to shut him up.

On most evenings, when you came back to your new home after finishing work, you found Sukuna sitting in his home office.

Usually, he was still wearing one of his custom-made suits, still in work mode. Maybe his tie was loosened a bit, but other than that, he still looked thoroughly professional. He was always busy, working tirelessly to reign his Kingdom like every good ruler should do.

And you made sure to join him. On the one hand, it was to spend time with him, but you were also there to learn more about his work. To show him that you didn't shy away from it. Just like you had promised him, you wanted to see both sides of his business.

"Hey, princess."

He grinned at you as he looked up from his work, and that grin grew bigger when you walked over to him and plopped down on his lap, greeting him with a kiss.

"Hey, baby. What are you working on tonight?"

Sukuna was amused by your braveness, as he called it. He liked having you on his lap, leaning against his muscular chest as he went through his bookkeeping files or answered business e-mails. He liked that you wanted to see what he was doing.

"What is the red folder?"

"Gojo's department."

"Red for adult entertainment? Really? That's tacky."

"Oh well, princess. You can think of a better color code if you want, don't let anyone stop you."

You could tell that he was pleased, though, that you were there on his lap, asking questions about the legal and the illegal side of his business. That you were getting to know him better with every visit to his office. He was pleased that you had come back to him and that you had stayed. That you hadn't let the darker side of his world chase you away.

He always rewarded you for being a good girl when you didn't shy away from the uglier parts of his bookkeeping.

His reward was bending you over his fine mahogany desk, fucking you until you sobbed his name. He was rough, he was powerful, he was a real King. Sometimes you couldn't resist moaning things like:

"Please fuck me hard, your majesty!"

It always got a very nice reaction out of him. You loved the low growls, the way he rammed his thick cock even deeper into you when you said those things. The way his strong fingers tangled in your hair and pulled you up so he could bite your neck as he fucked into you with powerful deep thrusts.

"You like that, princess, huh? Getting fucked full by your King until it runs down your thighs."

The meetings in his home office became one of your favorite activities, and you suspected that it was the same for Sukuna.

He liked having you around to make his long workdays sweeter. You knew because he called you in your office when it was getting late, and you hadn't joined him yet.

"Come here."

"What if I'm busy?"

"When you better stop being busy. Or I promise you won't get any dick tonight. I'll take care of myself and make you watch, but you won't be allowed to touch. I won't even cum over your face."

"And what if I like watching you jerk off?"

"You won't like it when I tie you to the bed, so you won't be able to touch yourself. I know how needy you are. It would be hell for you, baby. Better not risk it."

His sexy voice sounded amused. You knew how much he enjoyed those little games the two of you were playing.

You did too. You enjoyed them so much that you were already grinding against the chair, panting and feeling your panties getting soaked. Of course, you packed up your things and hurried over to the penthouse.

And Sukuna smirked that arrogant knowing smirk and pointed to his lap. A silent command from the King.

You sat down on his strong thighs obediently, knowing that he had won this round. But didn't you win too? After all, you got everything you wanted:

Spending time with your lover, feeling his warm solid body, stealing kisses from him, riding his thigh until you were close to cumming, and sometimes until you found completion, soaking his expensive trousers with your cream.

You chose to wear skirts most of the time because when you did, Sukuna almost always slipped a hand under your skirt while you were sitting on his lap.

He just kept on working while one hand played with you absentmindedly, rubbing lazy circles around your clit, spreading your wetness over it, teasing you until you were panting heavily.

You could feel how much he enjoyed it, could feel him growing hard beneath you.

And his lips found your neck and left soft kisses there followed by a sexy whisper in your ear:

"My sweet darling hm? So wet for me. God, I love you."

Sometimes he was needy after a long day, and on those evenings, he pulled your panties aside and opened his pants, got his cock out and made you sit on it, stretched you open so deliciously but didn't do anything else. Just enjoyed the comforting warmth of your throbbing wet pussy around his thick length.

"Just sit, princess. I still have work to do, but you feel so nice around me."

A gentle kiss to the back of your neck, and then he focused on his work again.

You cockwarmed the King while he was typing e-mail replies, or going through files, making notes, or sometimes even while he was doing business calls.

If one of those calls took too long, Sukuna always got a bit bored, and you were delighted to find out that when that happened, your man's attention slipped from the call to you.

First, a slow roll of his hips, burying himself even deeper into you. Next, his strong hand wandered up your body, teasing your nipples, wrapping around your throat, applying the slightest pressure, making your lips part in a soft moan.

But your noises were muffled instantly as Sukuna's hand pressed firmly against your mouth, effectively shutting you up, so he could buck his hips and slowly fuck into you without risking you giving away what was going on in his office while he was talking to the CEO of some big company.

But most of the time, Sukuna stayed focused on his work, and you just sat there on his lap, with his gorgeous cock snuggly inside your creamy pussy, watching your man managing his legal and not-so-legal empire.

You were his good pet. You waited patiently until he was finished with work, and his hands grabbed your hips, and he smirked at you, looking like the sexy devil that he was.

"Good girl. Ok, now make Daddy cum."

And you did your best to please him, to ride his wonderful cock in the most pleasurable way.

He always helped you, always unable to hold back. His natural dominance always took over at some point. His hands tightened their grip on your hips or around your waist. His strong fingers held you in place as he fucked into your tight wet heat with brutal snaps of his hips, using you like a sex doll.

Until his eyes closed, and his head fell back against the headrest of his black leather chair, and you got blessed by those sexy low moans coming out of his parted lips.

And you knew that as dominant and powerful as Sukuna was, he was losing control too. He was yours too. Just as crazy about you as you were for him. Just as in love with you as you were with him.

Thank you so much for reading! Finally, the "I love you" scene yay!! Sukuna definitely convinced me! To be fair, though, he already has my heart and can do anything he wants, and I will swoon and (s)cream for my Daddy Kuna, so it wasn't really hard for him to get the "I love you" right lol. Anyways, please let me know what you think, how you liked the chapter, how much you want Sukuna...let me know everything! Reblogs and comments make me very happy! Thank you to everyone who sticks with this series! I'll try to post chapter 5 next week.

[theomnilegent]

2022 Upcoming Sapphic Fiction I’m Excited For!

Here are nine of my most anticipated women-led LGBTQIA fiction this year! There’s plenty of variety to go around and a lot of mystery, intrigue, and drama! From Casey McQuiston’s first foray into YA fiction to Nina LaCour’s first foray into adult fiction, there’s something for everyone on this list!

Below you’ll find titles, summaries and goodreads links to these books. Sapphic romance is something that’s near and dear to my heart and I’m so excited for these stories. Last year we had some absolutely brilliant books come out, and it seems the world is finally ready for bigger and better things when it comes to lesbian and bisexual fiction!

Home Field Advantage by Dahlia Adler Amber McCloud’s dream is to become cheer captain at the end of the year, but it’s an extra-tall order to be joyful and spirited when the quarterback of your team has been killed in a car accident. For both the team and the squad, watching Robbie get replaced by newcomer Jack Walsh is brutal. And when it turns out Jack is actually short for Jaclyn, all hell breaks loose. The players refuse to be led by a girl, the cheerleaders are mad about the changes to their traditions, and the fact that Robbie’s been not only replaced but outshined by a QB who wears a sports bra has more than a few Atherton Alligators in a rage. Amber tries for some semblance of unity, but it quickly becomes clear that she's only got a future on the squad and with her friends if she helps them take Jack down. Just one problem: Amber and Jack are falling for each other, and if Amber can't stand up for Jack and figure out how to get everyone to fall in line, her dream may come at the cost of her heart.

The Lesbiana’s Guide To Catholic School by Sonora Reyes Seventeen-year-old Yamilet Flores prefers drawing attention for her killer eyeliner, not for being the new kid at a mostly white, very rich, Catholic school. But at least here no one knows she's gay, and Yami intends to keep it that way. After being outed by her crush and ex-best friend, she could use the fresh start. At Slayton Catholic, Yami has new priorities: make her mom proud, keep her brother out of trouble, and most importantly, don't fall in love. Granted, she's never been great at any of those things, but that’s a problem for Future Yami. The thing is, it’s hard to fake being straight when Bo, the only openly queer girl at school, is so annoyingly perfect. And talented. And confident. And cute. So cute. Yami isn't sure if she likes Bo or if she's just jealous of her unapologetic nature. Either way, she isn't ready to make the same mistake again. If word got to her mom, she could face a lot worse than rejection.  So she’ll have to start asking, WWSGD: What would a straight girl do?

Epically Earnest by Molly Horan Jane Grady’s claim to fame is that she was one first viral internet sensations, dubbed #bagbaby—discovered as a one-year-old in an oversized Gucci bag by her adopted father in a Poughkeepsie train station. Now in her senior year of high school, Jane is questioning whether she wants to look for her bio family due to a loving, but deeply misguided push from her best friend Algie, while also navigating an all-consuming crush on his cousin, the beautiful, way-out-of-her-league Gwen Fairfax. And while Janey’s never thought of herself as the earnest type, she needs to be honest with her parents, Algie, Gwen, but mostly herself if she wants to make her life truly epic. With a wink toward Oscar Wilde’s beloved play, Epically Earnest explores the complexity of identity, the many forms family can take, and the importance of being . . . yourself.

I Kissed Shara Wheeler by Casey McQuiston Chloe Green is so close to winning. After her moms moved her from SoCal to Alabama for high school, she’s spent the past four years dodging gossipy classmates and a puritanical administration at Willowgrove Christian Academy. The thing that’s kept her going: winning valedictorian. Her only rival: prom queen Shara Wheeler, the principal’s perfect progeny. But a month before graduation, Shara kisses Chloe and vanishes. On a furious hunt for answers, Chloe discovers she’s not the only one Shara kissed. There’s also Smith, Shara’s longtime quarterback sweetheart, and Rory, Shara’s bad boy neighbor with a crush. The three have nothing in common except Shara and the annoyingly cryptic notes she left behind, but together they must untangle Shara’s trail of clues and find her. It’ll be worth it, if Chloe can drag Shara back before graduation to beat her fair-and-square. Thrown into an unlikely alliance, chasing a ghost through parties, break-ins, puzzles, and secrets revealed on monogrammed stationery, Chloe starts to suspect there might be more to this small town than she thought. And maybe—probably not, but maybe—more to Shara, too.

Delilah Green Doesn’t Care by Ashley Herring Blake Delilah Green swore she would never go back to Bright Falls—nothing is there for her but memories of a lonely childhood where she was little more than a burden to her cold and distant stepfamily. Her life is in New York, with her photography career finally gaining steam and her bed never empty. Sure, it’s a different woman every night, but that’s just fine with her. When Delilah’s estranged stepsister, Astrid, pressures her into photographing her wedding with a guilt trip and a five-figure check, Delilah finds herself back in the godforsaken town that she used to call home. She plans to breeze in and out, but then she sees Claire Sutherland, one of Astrid’s stuck-up besties, and decides that maybe there’s some fun (and a little retribution) to be had in Bright Falls, after all. Having raised her eleven-year-old daughter mostly on her own while dealing with her unreliable ex and running a bookstore, Claire Sutherland depends upon a life without surprises. And Delilah Green is an unwelcome surprise…at first. Though they’ve known each other for years, they don’t really know each other—so Claire is unsettled when Delilah figures out exactly what buttons to push. When they’re forced together during a gauntlet of wedding preparations—including a plot to save Astrid from her horrible fiancé—Claire isn’t sure she has the strength to resist Delilah’s charms. Even worse, she’s starting to think she doesn’t want to…

Ophelia After All by Racquel Marie Ophelia Rojas knows what she likes: her best friends, Cuban food, rose-gardening, and boys - way too many boys. Her friends and parents make fun of her endless stream of crushes, but Ophelia is a romantic at heart. She couldn't change, even if she wanted to. So when she finds herself thinking more about cute, quiet Talia Sanchez than the loss of a perfect prom with her ex-boyfriend, seeds of doubt take root in Ophelia's firm image of herself. Add to that the impending end of high school and the fracturing of her once-solid friend group, and things are spiraling a little out of control. But the course of love--and sexuality--never did run smooth. As her secrets begin to unravel, Ophelia must make a choice between clinging to the fantasy version of herself she's always imagined or upending everyone's expectations to rediscover who she really is, after all.

The Drowning Summer by Christine Lynn Herman Six years ago, three Long Island teenagers were murdered—their drowned bodies discovered with sand dollars placed over their eyes. The mystery of the drowning summer was never solved, but as far as the town’s concerned, Evelyn Mackenzie’s father did it. His charges were dropped only because Evelyn summoned a ghost to clear his name. She swore never to call a spirit again. She lied. For generations, the family of Mina Zanetti, a former friend of Evelyn, has worked as mediums, using the ocean’s power to guide the dead to their final resting place. But as sea levels rise, the ghosts grow more dangerous and Mina has been shut out of the family business. When Evelyn performs another summoning that goes horribly wrong, the two girls must navigate their growing attraction to each other while solving the mystery of who was really behind the drowning summer…before the line between life and death dissolves for good.

She Gets The Girl by Rachael Lippincott and Alyson Derrick Alex Blackwood is a little bit headstrong, with a dash of chaos and a whole lot of flirt. She knows how to get the girl. Keeping her on the other hand…not so much. Molly Parker has everything in her life totally in control, except for her complete awkwardness with just about anyone besides her mom. She knows she’s in love with the impossibly cool Cora Myers. She just…hasn’t actually talked to her yet. Alex and Molly don’t belong on the same planet, let alone the same college campus. But when Alex, fresh off a bad (but hopefully not permanent) breakup, discovers Molly’s hidden crush as their paths cross the night before classes start, they realize they might have a common interest after all. Because maybe if Alex volunteers to help Molly learn how to get her dream girl to fall for her, she can prove to her ex that she’s not a selfish flirt. That she’s ready for an actual commitment. And while Alex is the last person Molly would ever think she could trust, she can’t deny Alex knows what she’s doing with girls, unlike her. As the two embark on their five-step plans to get their girls to fall for them, though, they both begin to wonder if maybe they’re the ones falling…for each other.

Yerba Buena by Nina LaCour When Sara Foster runs away from home at sixteen, she leaves behind not only the losses that have shattered her world but the girl she once was, capable of trust and intimacy. Years later, in Los Angeles, she is a sought-after bartender, renowned as much for her brilliant cocktails as for the mystery that clings to her. Across the city, Emilie Dubois is in a holding pattern. In her seventh year and fifth major as an undergraduate, she yearns for the beauty and community her Creole grandparents cultivated but is unable to commit. On a whim, she takes a job arranging flowers at the glamorous restaurant Yerba Buena and embarks on an affair with the married owner. When Sara catches sight of Emilie one morning at Yerba Buena, their connection is immediate. But the damage both women carry, and the choices they have made, pulls them apart again and again. When Sara's old life catches up to her, upending everything she thought she wanted just as Emilie has finally gained her own sense of purpose, they must decide if their love is more powerful than their pasts.

[erosofthepen]

i dont have any specific requests but just. Kili. thoughts on Kili.

i have so many thoughts on kili you came to the right person

things i hc abt kili:

-he has a journal he writes in religiously. its all poetry and random thoughts and pressed flowers or other flora he's found that catches his eye. he doodles pretty things in it as well, from crystal caves to the fire of the forge.

-mans is a hopeless romantic. all he wants is an epic beautiful story-for-the-ages whirlwind romance that is fueled by passion and love. and whilst his romances might not always work out the way his 200k fanfic he wrote in his teens did, he never gives them up and relishes each experience. Even bad romances fuel his poetry writing at least. And with his One, when he finally meets them, he does all the simp-worthy romantic shit, from picking bouquets to opening doors.

-drawing from the poetry, kili is incredibly intelligent, at least literature-wise. dont get me wrong, mans is a dumbass and a himbo, but he could talk for hours on end on how the structure of a syllable scheme can make or break a poem. he's very well versed in symbolism and dwarven mythology and lore, and, next to ori, is the best person able to understand and find the deeper meaning in different works, and discuss them thoroughly.

-kili honestly isn't the best in the forges. he does alright, but his skill is comparable to an average human blacksmith. his real talent in metalworking comes to the details. like carving dozens of intricate lines into a single ring, or carving a whole battle scene on the inside of a bracelet. it's a skill he is very proud of, even if he can't even forge a good knife.

-mama's boy. i feel like thorin kind overlooked kili a lot growing up, his focus was on fili, being the heir and all, so kili didn't have a super strong adult male figure in his life. he had his mom, which is arguably better for him. like he'd spend all day helping dis in her shop or at her trade, and just chilling with his amad.

-he knows how to cook. like dis probs taught him, needed at least one son capable of creating edible food (she gave up with fili, who took after thorin in this way), and by god kili learned fast. he knows what he's doing in the kitchen. he is this whole video.

-i also think kili would be the type of dwarf to collect shineys. like crystals and fun rocks and bits of jewelry. he has corvid like tendencies and has pouches and boxes full of his collections.

-mans is deeply insecure. this hc is pretty popular, but like with no beard and being the dwarf version of a tall lanky string bean, he has body image issues. he doesn't have a lot of problems with confidence, like fake it till you make it vibes, but when it comes down to him and his One, he needs validation. he needs to know that he is the prettiest boy. just needs reminding and loving.

-coming from the insecure place, i believe later in life kili has a huge glow up. to quote my dear friend @cutie-cutter, "he's a late bloomer, but by god he blooms". like maybe in his 90s all of a sudden he fills out a lot, some nice body fat over all that muscle, and then starts growing a really nice beard. like it ain't super long but its thick and lush and ideal for braiding. he is the prettiest boy.

-kili is also the ultimate wingman. like when he's younger he doesn't have the looks but he has the game with his words alone. with fili its the opposite, fili's like mr. knightly in the sense of "if i loved you less i might be able to talk about it more", he ain't good with all the cute romantic shit. but kili helps him by writing poems and teaching him lines at the small price of taking his dessert for a week.

-(kinda nsfw?) while young and still escorting merchants with fili, i feel like kili def. got himself some fun nights at brothels. like he'd be more than willing to spend all his earnings in one night for some... special treatment. I also hc that kili didn't really get with women a lot when a younger adult, mostly men, bcs mans has daddy issues like you wont believe. the bisexual also probs thinks his chances with women are low anyways, since women in dwarven culture can be picky and usually go for ones with looks, or at least a full beard.

-(nsfwish) also going back to his journal, he also has a hell of a lot of erotic poetry in there. he'll spend stanzas describing sensations and the aesthetics of a particularly steamy night, and if someone catches his eye he could go on and on about them. absolutely no one is allowed to see his journal besides him (thorin found it once and just sighed in disappointment and wishing he had bleach before closing it and never bringing it up), and it is kept out of sight at all times. it would be very interesting for his One to find it though, and all the different scenarios that could play out...

that's all for now, thank you for this ask!! love talking about this bisexual whore of a man.

[designatedbreadbox]

Do ya'll every think about

how the bros. will love MC literally regardless of what they look like or how MC chooses to present themself because they don't have the same bullshit views about beauty that we have?

Continuation here:

Like, MC with freckles/dimples/vitiligo? Fuckin' cute, adorable, ya know Asmo be countin' every single spot. Your dimples has everyone floored. By everyone, I mean EVERYONE; YES, EVEN BARBATOS. Luke's included but its puppy love

MC with scars of any kind? They would all love to hear stories about how you got those if the subject isn't uncomfortable or sensitive for you.

MC with tattoos/piercings? Like with the dimples, everyone if floored and at first Luke was scared. But then he realized he got to go to a school with a bad-to-the-fuckin' -ass human! How cool is that?!????

^^^ *insert puppy love again*

MC with dark skin and kinky/coily hair? If you let him, Mammon will be ALL OVER seeing how your hair curls.

Very skinny MC? Fuckin' epic man, Levi wants to know how good you are at videogames.

On that note, chubby MC? The twins found a new snuggle buddy and Belphie is DEFINITELY a hugger.

MC with a certain aesthetic? Lucifer is in awe and honestly respects how hard you work to maintain that. He thinks you look great sexy in your attire.

Very pale MC? MC reminds Satan of a ghost/ghoul and is in love with that because honestly? Goals man, that's actually cool as fuck.

Ginger MC? Beel fuckin' LOVES you and is not afraid to show it. Like AT ALL.

Short MC? Tall MC? Mammon is simpin' either way height makes no difference to him.

Nonbinary/Trans MC? Anyone who misgenders and/or deadnames you intentionally is DEAD. Accident is one thing, but on purpose? They're not dealing with that.

Lesbian/wlw/Pan. etc. MC? Asmo has someone he can discuss hot women with, so win-win in all honesty.

Brown-eyed MC? Gorgeous under the moonlight and Lucifer thinks they look even better under spotlights.

Green-eyed MC? Satan wants to compare it to plants; he wants to find stuff that'll remind him of your eyes.

Black-eyed? Belphie is both terrified and finds it so fuckin' cool. Thinks you look badass.

Blue-eyed MC? Levi's already on the floor with a nosebleed and he can't function around you. Your eyes remind him of his favorite thing: the ocean.

Stretch marks? Body hair? The twins don't see how that can annoy anyone; it's just hair. And stretch marks are so common that Belphie can't see why humans hate them.

Big/small boob MC? Makes absolutely no difference to anyone whatsoever. But Asmo does worry about your back and offers give back rubs.

MC with braces/mouthpiece? Lucifer wants to know if they hurt, at all. Did you choose the band color?

MC with glasses? Canon that Lucifer and someone else is attracted to people with glasses, so he's already simping. Lowkey, of course, but it's there.

Hijab/Turban MC? Satan wants to know how you put it on, it looks so complicated and fascinating. Or even better: you tell him step by step, so he can get a taste of your culture.

Latino/a MC? Please, by all means, cook for Beel. Or give him the recipes. Man is dying for new ones and he loves savory foods above all else.

Like, it really doesn't matter what MC looks like. It truly doesn't. Can you imagine how diverse the Celestial Realm is? Seeing people that look so different from you, but you still call them your brotjer/sister? Because looks don't matter when you can just have fun with them; it doesn't matter in a strength competition or trying to see who runs better. Looks mean shit when your younger sibling has a nightmare and you need to comfort them.

They carried that view over with them upon entering the Devildom. They always held onto that belief because they truly believe there is no good justification at all as to why someone should be judged solely for what they look like.

No matter what MC looks/presents like, they'll always be loved. Even if the whole world says otherwise.

[awesomerextyphoon]

I love your writing. May I have Loki x Reader? The reader is a sweet, delicate dreamer. Loki has come to conquer the world. He saw her and wants her to become his Queen of Midgard. He kidnapped her. She pleads with him to let her go while she is tied to the bed. He caresses her hair and says she will love him (he doesn't want to use the scepter on her).

***Can I have White Reader x Loki, please? Loki just escaped from the Helicarrier. He saw the reader who is a sweet and innocent creature. Loki doesn't want her dead when he will start battle. Loki kidnaps her and locks her up to keep her safe. When he wins, Loki tells her that she will become his queen.***

Hi! I decided to combine the prompts and make the reader plus-sized. I hope you enjoy! 

His Match

Pairing: Dark!Loki x Plus-Sized Female Reader 

Summary: You’ve tried to live by your grandmother’s rule  of being kind to others, even when the world gives you the middle finger. What if a Norse God decided reward you by becoming his Queen?

Word Count: 1,745

Rating: 18+/Mature

Warning: Kidnapping, Implied Dub/Non-Con, Angst, and some Violence

A/N: Thanks goes to the amazing @angrythingstarlight for beta reading this!

Loki was walking around New York City, scouting Stark Tower making sure the final preparations of his plan was perfect when something, or rather someone, caught his eye.

She walked out of what looked like a women’s clothing store with a forlorn smile. She was plumper than the average female Midgardian last time he frequented the realm. His eyes did not miss the enticing curves that lied beneath her clothes despite her efforts to ensconce herself into the background.

She was a vision.

Her eyes met his for the briefest of moments and it felt like time stopped. His heart quickened in his chest and a rush of blood surged to his groin.

He had to follow her. His Elskan.

“Barton, tell the others I’ll be out for a few more hours. Proceed as planned.”

–––––

He found you entering a rather destitute apartment complex. Its lights and foundation were a bit unsound and gave off a seedy ambience.

Loki grimaced at her living conditions. When he ruled Midgard, she would have only the best.

Casting a simple concealment spell, Loki entered her fairly small apartment. She began mixing ingredients together for what looked to be ‘chocolate chip cookies’. He smiled as he inhaled the sweet aroma knowingly; Asgard had only recently started consuming the sweet. She soon laid out a batch of thick, scrumptious cookies with a satisfied expression.

They reminded him of better times when he and Thor would sneak into the kitchens and swipe confections from under the baker’s nose. Loki chuckled at the memory; those were the days.

Not ten minutes after she placed the last cookie onto the cooling rack did her phone ring. It was her mother. Loki felt dread coming off his Elskan in waves.

Loki could only make out bits and pieces of the conversation, if you could call it that. Her mother constantly nagged her about her weight, life choices, and her ‘pathetic’ attempts to get over her ex-boyfriend. His heart broke as he saw tears begin to fall and the croaking of her voice as she bid the odious creature goodnight.

Several minutes after she cried herself to sleep, Loki entered his Elskan’s bedroom. He spied her diary on the nightstand and decided to read a few pages.

He was fuming within two minutes.

How dare that caustic pig sow treat his Elskan, her own daughter, in a such ghastly manner! Her ‘perfect’ sister always slighting and reminding her on how ‘she’ll never be good enough for anything’ and her father’s callous indifference to her cries for help and solace only added to his rage. Combined with the way her ex-boyfriend, the repugnant gnat, treated her (he cheated on her with someone who ‘wasn’t built like a blimp’ and ‘the only thing you thing you had going for you were your tits’) and he wanted to speed up the invasion just to watch the horror become engrained onto their faces.

And yet, she endeavored to treat everyone with kindness harkening back to your grandmother. She strived to be the one light in one’s otherwise miserable existence.

Well, she can be his light as his Elskan and Queen.

Loki took a deep, cleansing breath. He needed to stick to the plan. When he conquers Midgard, she will be their queen. She will grace the undeserving masses with her elegance and beauty and he will worship her every chance he got.

He just had to make her see it that way.

Gently, the light forest green glow of Loki's magic flowed from his hand to the crown of her head like a halo. He leaned in and kissed her cheek with a smile as he left.

He hated to leave her, but he had a realm to conquer. Though he hoped she’d enjoy the introductory gift.

––––––

You were in your grandmother’s living room; spacious yet comfy with all of her quirkiness and splendor included. It was odd since you haven’t been in her house since your parents sold after her death seven years ago. You tearfully smiled remembering all the good times you had with her, the only member of your family you gave you any true warmth or love.

Her piano was in the corner, barely aged a day with all the music sheets, pens, a light scratches you came to know and love. You took your seat and started to play the piano version of one of your favorite movie themes.

You were so engrossed in playing, you failed to notice someone materializing into your dreamscape.

“What a lovely tune! What is it called?” A smooth, honey-tinged voice broke your concentration.

You turned your head and saw what had to be the most beautiful man you’ve ever seen. He was tall (6’ 10” / 2.08m) easily towering over any man you’ve ever met. He had smooth alabaster skin, light rose undertones with a little blue-red just under his eyes. His cheekbones were immaculate, somehow looked sharp and soft at the same time. He had thin lips with a fair plumpness to the bottom one. His slicked-back, shoulder-length Ponzu/Shadow Purple hair kissed his lean, battle-hardened physique (if the way he’s filling out his outfit was anyway to go by). All of this deliciousness was clothed in a casual Palm Green suit with a Glossy Black tie and shoes.

It took you a full minute to stop ogling him, “Wha-What did you say?”

“I apologize for disturbing you, my lady. I asked what you were playing.” His voice had hints of mirth which was odd considering his appearance. Most people in his league would give you a thinly veiled sneer of disgust, but he seemed genuinely interested.

“Um, well, it’s called Merry-Go-Round of Life from the movie Howl’s Moving Castle. It’s a favorite of mine. I used to play it all the time until…” You trailed off, not wanting to revisit how your grandmother died.

“You do not have to tell me if it brings you such displeasure.”

“Thank you, um…”

“Loki. Please, call me Loki.”

“Loki,” he inwardly moaned at the way you said his name, “Nice to meet you.”

“Likewise. Please, continue playing.”

And you did for what felt like hours, all while your sexy dream companion asked about your hopes, dreams, anything he could think of really. You in turn asked him about his life and interests; you even laughed at a story of his brother having to dress like a bride to get his hammer back.

You soon became enamored with Loki. It was refreshing to be noticed with actual interest, not ridicule or pity. He seemed to taken with you as well, if his gentle caresses and not-so-subtle lustful glances he gave you were any indication.

You were glad this was just a dream. You didn’t want your heart to break like last time.

Loki was about to lean in for a kiss when everything faded to black.

–––––

You jolted up from the mattress and screamed once you realized you weren’t in your room.

No, this room was…spectacular for lack of better word. It had high ceilings, large windows, ornate chandeliers, and magnificent balcony. Luxurious dark greens, gold, and black covered the room in splendor. Extravagant pieces of furniture dripped with precious stones metal worthy of queens or royal mistresses of old.

“What is this place?”

You tried to leave but was forced back onto the bed by a force field. You tried to take calm breaths just like your therapist taught you in order to make an escape plan.

No sooner did you calm down than the door open to reveal-

“Loki!”

Only Loki was wearing radically different clothing; looked like he walked right out of a fantasy epic. And yet, his smile was enchanting.

“What am I doing here? I need to go back home.”

He tutted in response, “That would not be wise, Elskan Mín. This world is mine now and this is safest place to be.” He was right. His brother’s team of desperate souls were no match for his cunning and Chitauri Forces. Midgard’s pathetic leaders gave up in less than an hour once their beloved ‘heroes’ were defeated, broken, and laid bare before them.

“You can’t be serious, Loki. I need to leave.”

“And go where? Like I said, this realm is mine now. That rat poison of a dwelling is no more and I have dealt with your ‘family’ as needed.” Loki smirked at the memories. It gave him extreme joy squeezing the life out of that worthless pig of mother, breaking every bone in your father’s body one by one, and leaving your ‘perfect’ sister alive with partially rotten skin. Not even the scavengers or maggots would find or want the remains of the scurvy insect of an ex-boyfriend, though he was still alive..just barely.

Well, at least until he decided on how to destroy the blight of creature.

Though he did make sure to leave two of your real friend were treated well. You needed to have someone to talk to while he was away.

You gazed into his Spearmint colored eyes in one last attempt, “Please Loki! If you love me, you’ll let me go!”

For a split second, you could’ve sworn you saw hurt in his eyes and he glided across the room. You back hit the headboard in you sad efforts to get away from him.

“Elskan Mín, I promise to always love, cherish, and worship every part of your glorious body. You will become Midgard’s queen and my goddess. No. One. Will. Ever. Demean. Or. Slight. You. Again.” he punctuated each word of the last sentence with soft, open-mouthed kisses to your face, neck, shoulders, and collarbone.

You tried to fight him, but it felt so good. His touches sent shots of lightning to your core; plus his lips and fingers were cook to the touch provided excellent contrast to the spike in heat.

You started crying realizing how pathetic this was, to have the first person to profess such feelings be a kidnapper. You were actually contemplating whether or not he was telling the truth.

Loki sensed your sorrow and kissed your tears away. “I know this might be ‘difficult’ at first, but you will love me in time.” He hoped he did not have to use the scepter.

You thought about your dream and all of the effort he was putting into this. It was frightening, but it came from a place of love.

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to stay.

–––––––

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