bitterness is thick like blood and cold as a wind sea breeze
if you must drink of me, take of me what you please
She fights and that delights him as much as it infuriates him.
He watches as she lungs, feeling her slip underneath his belly and reach up to bite at the tender flesh, tearing it open. His blood splatters the ground beneath him, slipping out of him easily and he does nothing to stop it. Instead, he just snarls, reaching down to bite at her and lifting up into a half rear before stomping on the ground—hard. His heavy hooves land harder than they have any right to, the ground trembling beneath his manipulated weight. Sparks fly in the darkness as his growl echoes around them.
Without hesitating, he shifts, turning into a mulberry dire wolf, emerald eyes predatory.
He rolls with the impact, twisting with momentum and then lunging for her again.
It’s not a fair fight—
He knows it’s not.
But he also can’t stop from rising to her challenge, goaded into more action than he thought possible. She snarls and yips and slashes out and he doesn’t hold himself back, mouth gaping open and snapping shut, aiming for whatever part of her he can reach. “You are impossible,” he snarls as they fight, his bright eyes flashing in the darkness. All she needs to do is tell him the truth, let him know why she behaves the way she does and he would stop, but she insists on withholding, on keeping it from him.
Eventually though, he stops, breaking from her and opening up a space in between them.
He throws up an invisible barrier between them, enough to keep them from reaching one another but not enough to make it difficult to communicate. Blood flows freely from his shoulder and his belly, caused by both his own powers and her teeth alike and matting his fur. “Enough.” His voice is harsh and he lets it sit there for a moment before he takes a steadying breath. “Fine. Don’t tell me.”
All of the barriers, both between them and around them, fall, dust pluming as their invisible weight sinks into the earth. Similarly, his hold on the night loosens, the unnatural darkness beginning to lighten around them, dawn beginning to make itself known on the horizon. He glances toward it, the rays just beginning to peek, and then he looks back to her, his face unreadable. “You should hurry. It will be light soon.”
The same hungry curiosity still growls in his stomach but he ignores it and steps back, letting her pass.
woolf
I am loathed to say it's the devil's taste
