Jinju;

[Ruan]

ruan

He felt the pang of dark memories when her eyes caressed his scars cutting across him on each side. The first half of her life had been spent beneath his wings, sheltered and loved and protected. His first child, and the only one that had remained at his side. Those wings were long gone, now, torn violently from his body in a gory scene by his wife's enemy. A warning for her, a threat.

He had given so much for her.

Ruan gently packed the thoughts away again, blue eyes still settled comfortably on his daughter of fire. In a few days time, she'd managed to look younger. She looked like she did when he'd had wings, not as small as she'd been when he first found her but at this age, he'd still been able to curl a protective wing around her. Soft confusion furrowed in his brow, and his head tilted in question.

"Where is Ander?"

How do you look younger? was the question to follow, embedded as a darkness in his eyes. She'd always known how to read him though. She'd been with him longer than anyone had, even his wife. And he intended to keep it that way. He was home now. They were safe now. Their forest would know them once again.

They would care for it together as they always had.
Always together.

He ached to hold her again, watching her in silent agony that didn't reach his face. He wanted her pressed against him where he could lose himself in her familiar scent, his home, his family. The only place he had ever belonged, a strange man even in this world of magic. The Alpha didn't say it in words, couldn't force himself forward to do it without consent, and so he shifted his weight and repositioned himself. It was only a slight change, a subtle difference, but raised in his wild ways as she had been the invitation was clear. And he felt vulnerable for it, opening himself this way.

Please, come.