"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
09-03-2018, 02:22 AM (This post was last modified: 09-03-2018, 02:23 AM by pyxis.)
she'll lie and steal and cheat and beg you from her knees make you thinks she means it this time
So much time has passed and yet—and yet it feels like none has passed at all.
She stands upon the precipice of a land she has never traveled before, that is not haunted by the sight of his glowing eyes, and she breathes in deep, the winter air chilling the edges of her lungs. The years have not been hard on her. At least not in all of the immediate ways that show. She is still youthful, still beautiful, still cold. There is a new strength to her body though—a new ranginess in the muscles that is the result of traveling long and hard with the red wolf by her side. She is tougher now, hardier, but beneath the new muscle and sinew is still the same girl, the scared girl, the one she hides away.
The one who run. Who always ran.
But not now, at least not yet.
Now she stood along the river, listening to the crash of the water as it hit rock and bramble. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the familiar sight of the wolf—never far behind. She exhales, clearly annoyed, but doesn’t bother to turn toward her. Instead, she just huffs again and rolls her eyes. “Seriously?” She had tried, at least for the last few weeks, to shake the wolf—to lose her. She woke early in the morning and snuck away from whatever clearing they had rested in the night before. She had increased her pace. She had doubled back and cross across streams to lose her scent. It didn’t matter.
No matter what she did, sooner or later, there’d be Red.
Quiet, watching, steady.
Even after years of the strained companionship (Pyxis could not bear to admit the depth of her love for the shaggy wolf, despite the nightmares she stirred), the spotted mare still could not communicate with her the same way that Daemron could. She could only do her best to interpret the wolf’s long silences and at times animated expression. Not now though. Now, Red’s face was inquisitive, quiet, her eyes sliding away for long periods of time and hunting for the exact thing that Pyxis could not bear to look for.
“He’s not here,” she finally spits out, the words harsher than she intended.
Of course he wasn’t here.
Why would he be?
It had been years since she had fled from him. Years since she had told him her story with bullets, accusing him and falling in love with him, telling him about how in the reality that was not reality he had tore out her throat, how they had embraced in a way both alien and completely natural. It had been years since she had drowned in him, tasting him like it was her first and last drink of water.
It had been years since she had turned on her heel and told him to stop looking for her.
And, seemingly, he had.
Of course he had.
The memories, the reminder, cause Pyxis to grow bitter—to grow angry. It serves as a reminder of everything she has ever thought to be true about love. Everything her father and mother ever showed her. It always ends in flames. It always ends in a knife to the throat and a wildfire that leaves nothing behind.
It wouldn’t have been different with them—not if she had stayed.
So of course she ran.
Of course he didn’t look for her.
Still, there is a churning in her gut, and her eyes linger on the shadows for too long, searching the depths of them for that which she hoped to never see again—that which she ached for.
she'll tear a hole in you, the one you can't repair but I still love her, I don't really care
* just an fyi that the wolf is daemron’s and not pyxis. it’s just with her because of plot reasons.
** also, @[Lydia], sorry but not sorry. i couldn’t help myself.
*** p.s. you can absolutely take control of red again in your next post. <3
He slinks with the wolves – shapes flickering through forest shadows, their going muffled by drifts of snow. His head is low, his breath released from flared nostrils in a huff when one dog nips at another, causing a scuffle. At the sound, the canines fall quiet again. Where he had once invited their obedience, he now commanded it. There had been a time when Daemron had resented control without choice – but that was before. Before his first pack (his family) had disintegrated, picked apart like the frayed edges of a rope. Before he had met Pyxis – before he had burned for her, and she for him – before they had burned out of control.
The image of her leaving is seared in his memories. Her form, mahogany-and-white, dwindling against a dark horizon, never looking back. The maned wolf going after her, never to return. He remembers the cold emptiness that had followed in the wake of incensed rage, gnawing through him while he stood rooted to the place where they had left him. Even still, it grinds and grates, scraping away at the hollow space in his chest where a heart should be.
They had both made their choice – and it hadn’t been him.
In the years since, time and solitude have made sharp edges of him. The sorrel of his body is wire and sinew, the grey of his eyes cut from steel. They glow faintly in the half-dark as the pack moves, and the scent of prey drives them through dawn. The hunt has become his lifeblood – an all-consuming rush that he can drown himself in over and over again. Of course, it can only ever be a vicarious thrill. In those few minutes between the life and death of the kill, Daemron lives and breathes through the wolves – and however temporary it may be, it is enough to forget himself.
So when daylight falls through thick branches to illuminate blood-spattered snow and wolves chewing on gristle and bone, Daemron’s own satiation has come and gone. He stalks the woods in a black mood, his mind ill at ease with the emptiness, his stomach queasy with the almost-taste of coppery blood between tongue and teeth. And so when a sharp pulling sensation tugs at the back of his mind, he dismisses it as part of the recurrent visions that plague him at times such as these (waking flashes of Pyxis’ nightmare, reimagined and relived since the day she’d left, dreams of skin and blood and ruin).
He gives a rough shake of his willowed head, snapping his jaw closed irritably at a grey timberwolf lying nearby – but when the old sense does not fade, Daemron halts abruptly – and then an animalistic growl is ripping upward from lungs to throat, and he leaves the pack (not his, never again his), moving instinctively toward an all-too-familiar pull with a mixture of dread and maddening expectation roiling in his gut.
He doesn’t know how long it takes to find the river, nor how long he follows it as it brings him to where he knows his once-companion will be. All he knows is the way the old anger lashes through his veins until he is vibrating with it – because while he is certain Red will be there, he has no such certainty that she will be, too – and he hates that with every step, the not knowing is slowly killing him.
And so he is nearly in a rage when he comes upon them. He stops some yards away, shaking, and his eyes bore into hers. Yet when the ruddy wolf pads forward as if to greet him (just as she’d done so many times before), he lunges at her with teeth bared, ears pressed back against his skull and the acidity of betrayal in his throat. The she-wolf retreats, though when she doubles back to try again he channels his power and freezes her in her steps. She huffs indignant, unused to the exertion of his control.
He ignores her and instead hisses, “What are you doing here?” It’s almost as if he’s asking himself this question – after all, he was the one who’d come looking for them (for her). He will not let himself believe that his presence was any more welcome than it had been all those years ago. In a cooler voice: “You left.” An accusation. He looks first to Red, whose bright eyes have fixed upon him, and then he lifts his stare to Pyxis. He feels a pounding in his chest as he takes her in, retracing the lines and curves of her, remembering the softness of her lips, hating that she was the reason he could feel his heart beating again.
He masks the pounding with sarcasm. “Tired of the dog yet?” His voice is gravelly with disuse, low and tainted by the anger that still consumes him. “You’ll have to find someone else to take her off your hands if you are, Pyxis.” Her name on his tongue feels reminiscent of the hunt – all-consuming – dangerous. “I was done with her a long time ago.” (A lie.) With that, he releases his hold over the she-wolf. In its place he creates an invisible perimeter which Red would not be able to cross to get to him. Desires are at war in his chest, but for now he stands still upon the riverbank – though after all these years, history should have taught him to turn and run before she does.
daemronlost to the hunt as I was to you
okay so this is like the longest post everrr >_<
feel free to continue to play red out as your muse leads you, it's kind of fun to share!
eeeee daexis <3333
she'll lie and steal and cheat and beg you from her knees make you thinks she means it this time
He comes to her like a vision—too slow, syrupy and underwater, and then all at once. She freezes, and she will later hate herself for it, her muscles turning to stone as the adrenaline spikes in her, the static in her brain growing into a steady roar. He is there, and her tongue is swollen in her mouth. He is there, and the air has been sucked from her lungs. He is there and the world tilts beneath her until she is falling.
Falling, falling, falling —
She doesn’t move.
She doesn’t breathe.
Instead, her icy blue eyes sharpen, her face impossibly blank.
How is he here?
She can feel Red rise and move to him, the motion instinctual and natural, and it’s only when it is rebuffed that Pyxis is able to shake the paralyzing disbelief because he is there but it is not him.
Not the man she had seen last. Not the man she had run from.
He is colder, harsher, angrier, and it twists her stomach to see what the years have done to him. How he has been mangled from time, embittered and furious. (How he is wholly different and yet entirely the same and how, despite the differences, she aches for him as if no time has passed at all.) Red is calm, but she has watched her enough to know the pain underneath the dismissal, the refusal. She can feel the hurt in the wolf who had thought she was only doing what he had wanted, and she suddenly wants to scream. She wants to beat fists against his chest and break through the exterior he has placed up, this facade.
Instead she stays silent, swallowing once and forcing herself to flick her tail against mahogany haunches in a casual display. She draws upon every ounce of willpower and forces her body to relax, cocking a back leg and settling onto a hip, all of the muscles pulling upon her face relaxing. It is an old game between them. An old game, an old defense, and she turns to it blindly in her hurt, in her need.
He can’t see the storm that rages beneath the surface.
He can’t see the way she strains for him, barely restrained from rushing into his embrace.
One corner of her lip rises into a crooked smirk and she shakes her head, the faux laugh spilling from her mouth frothy. “You look terrible,” she cannot bear to say his name. Almost chokes on the thought of it. Instead she wrinkles her nose and looks down to the wolf who paces near them, agitation clear in the way that she growls underneath her throat. Rolling her eyes, she looks back at the stallion, heart in her throat.
“I don’t need anything from you, love,” she hates herself, nearly hits her knees at the cavalier way that she addresses him, but it’s the only way to protect herself—it’s always been the only way. “We’ve been getting along just fine without you.” The cruelty is blatantly untrue, and the wolf glances up at her as if to prove a point, but Pyxis pointedly looks away, avoids the questioning stare that strips away her defenses.
Because the truth is that Pyxis hasn’t been okay. She hasn’t been getting along.
She has been running for years to get away from exactly where she ended up, squaring off with the only person to ever make her feel weak, to ever make her question the distance she kept between herself and others. In this moment, she longs for Malis. She longs for a sister to tell her what to do. To protect her.
To tell her that it’s going to be alright when it feels like the world is collapsing around her.
she'll tear a hole in you, the one you can't repair but I still love her, I don't really care
um, okay, so i underestimated how much i freaking love them and i was already super excited for this. :| :|
Had he known that Pyxis secretly wishes he let his guard down, Daemron might have laughed outright. It had once been his own desire to see her unmasked – from the beginning, he had disliked her practiced exterior for the lie that it was. Yet while the chestnut had been born with a perceptive eye, in his youth he had begrudgingly made allowances for those around him.
And what had he gained from it?
He’d dismissed Nihlus’ irreverent penchant for mystery until he no longer knew who his brother was. He’d let his sister’s evasiveness slide until Cerva herself had slipped away. He’d put up with Noori’s deceit until he could no longer stand the falseness that spilled from his mother’s lips like sickly honey. He’d never confronted Eight’s ambiguousness in fatherhood until he considered himself fatherless. Still, when he’d first met Pyxis on that fateful day long ago, he had hoped she might reveal herself of her own accord.
But now? Now, he finds he can no longer stomach it – not after he’d watched the insidious rifts between his family grow into colossal divides. Not after Pyxis had bared herself to him (a flicker of exposed soul among wolves) only to run in the opposite direction. Not after she’d confided her worst fears (come to life in a nightmare) only to make light of whatever had been between them. Not after she’d left and taken his wolf with her. It was this last that had been the final straw. With Red, he’d never had to guess – not until the day she disappeared alongside the woman who, after all this time, somehow stands before him.
And yet he finds himself wondering whether he only imagined the stricken look of her in the split second when he’d first appeared. At present, the spotted mare leans casually on her haunches and flicks her dark tail. Her manner is so affably calm, her words so gratingly flippant, that Daemron’s choked bark of laughter comes out a growl. “I don’t doubt it,” he responds, the steel of his anger clenching like a vice around his chest. “You never needed me.” He refuses to look at Red. “Neither of you did.”
Heavy silence falls. Everything he remembers about her is a contradiction. He hates wondering whether there was more truth to those words than he cared to admit. Had she really smiled with him once, unguarded and brilliant with her burning? Had she really leaned into his touch as though it were a lifeline, mere seconds before brushing him off with ‘you’ve been fun’? Had he really glimpsed something else (something more) beneath her poise and composure all those years ago? Perhaps everything he’d thought he’d seen in her was the true fabrication – a masterful ruse, and all to make him look a fool.
The thought sends him into fury. “Was any of it real, Pyxis?” Where she cannot bear to speak his name, he weaponizes hers. He is anything but restrained as he pushes closer, piercing her with his stare. Red whines a few feet away, but he pays her no attention (punishment for her desertion). “Tell me you felt nothing for me.” His nerve endings are afire with her proximity, yet her heady scent only serves to incense him further. “This” – he presses a shoulder into the curve of her, runs his mouth hard and demanding along her mahogany skin – “This doesn’t make you feel anything?”
“Play me for a fool all you want,” he growls against her neck, “I know you felt something, too.” And in a swift motion he withdraws – the heat of her like a branding iron, seared into his flesh. His chest pounding, Daemron circles, pacing much like the wolf does in his periphery. With a treacherous mixture of wrath and desire coursing through him, he seethes, “You’re just too weak to admit it.” A challenge masquerading as an insult. He could more easily inflict injury than face the painful alternative – that maybe Pyxis had never cared at all.
she'll lie and steal and cheat and beg you from her knees make you thinks she means it this time
He is masterful in the way that he takes apart, piece by piece. Her stomach flips and her nerves are on fire, but neither are weaknesses that she can admit. She matches the heat of his gaze with her own that is infuriatingly cool. She is not outright cold, cannot let herself slip into hate when it is such a sister emotion to that which truly burns within her, so she instead acts indifferent—she acts flippant. Each moment with her blinking calmly at him is another that causes her stomach to twist, it taking every ounce of her willpower to not rush into him or fling herself away. Even now, she is not sure what she wants more.
At his steely anger, she forces herself to laugh, the sound still bubbling on the edges of her mouth.
“I forgot how dramatic you are,” she rolls her eyes lightly. “We had fun. Wasn’t that enough?”
But of course it wasn’t because what they had was not fun. It had been world-ending. It had taken root in her and spread like wildfire. It had twisted around in her, threatening to rip away all of the careful masks that she had used for all of these years. He was the first to make her fingers tremble on the edges of them, the first to see her discard them, the first to see her for who she truly was underneath it all.
He doesn’t give her anytime to recover though. Because before she knows it, he’s at her side and his flesh is against hers, and she sucks in a breath before she can stop herself. She is dizzy with the suddenness of it, with the feel of him pressed against her, with the touch of his mouth on her.
She growls low and deep in her throat—for a moment, forgetting her mask, forgetting her shield. She casts it aside, wild with her love for him, burning with everything she has denied herself for so long, for forever. She twists into him, her teeth finding him, taking from him as he took from her. She tastes the salt of his flesh and the wildness that lies beneath the surface. She grows drunk on the moment.
When he pulls away, it leaves her aching and even more empty before, and she feels vulnerable in a way that she has rarely felt before. She reaches for whatever rags of dignity she can, but it’s too late to completely replace them. It’s too late to pretend. So she grows angry, matching the heat of his with her own. “Do you need so badly to hear me say it, Daemron?” Her voice has changed, the frothiness of it replaced with a husky growl, stripped bare of pretense, raw in emotions as his name finally escapes her.
“Is that what you want?”
Her eyes are wide and bare and she trembles before him.
“Fine. I love you, and it’ll kill me, Daemron. It’ll kill me.”
she'll tear a hole in you, the one you can't repair but I still love her, I don't really care
Never enough – the thought ensnares his mind and enslaves his body as she veers into his touch. They are a collision of flame and fury, feral with a hunger for one another gone so long unsatiated. Her sudden loss of control is everything he craves from her – everything he needs – and in the calamity of their unleashed emotions, Daemron finds he can no longer consider the earth his gravity.
It was her.
It had always been her.
The pull of her is so strong that the space he creates between them nearly obliterates him. But he must have her answer him now, while she was herself; without artifice and wroth with feeling. A marvel of indocility. ‘Do you need so badly to hear me say it, Daemron?’ His name on soft lips, the vehemence an undercurrent to the wild rage that flares in her ice-blue gaze. ‘Is that what you want?’ He doesn’t feel himself stopping in his tracks, but suddenly he is still as stone. She must know that’s exactly what he wants. It’s all he’s ever wanted from her.
‘I love you, and it’ll kill me.’
His breath flares, lungs raking cold winter air over the coals of his heart. Her confession is delivered alongside a mantra he has come to loathe, for they echo words she’d spoken to him years ago – love does not hurt. It kills. You’ll kill me. In his mind, Daemron has heard them over and over again. You’ll kill me. He loathes it even more now, detesting the way she uses it to minimize the fact that she loves him – barring him from the relief that the former might otherwise have given him.
With a rough shake of his willowed head he stalks nearer again, the sharp edges of him casting imposing shadows across her antlered countenance. “Stop using that bullshit as an excuse,” he demands, the grey of his eyes hard upon her. “All these years – have you felt alive, Pyxis?” His voice comes low and rough. “Because I haven’t.” He laughs humorlessly, the gravity of her making his very bones ache. “So I really couldn’t care less what you think, because trying to live without you is what’s killing me.”
He moves purposefully now, closing the distance between them with a fiery resolve. Reaching for her, he traces the line of her jaw to press a heated murmur against the softness of her cheek. “I’ve never stopped loving you.” Perhaps she would sense the tenderness beneath the tension – surprising in its gentleness and revealed only in his touch – for his voice is still raw with years of frustration. “And I’ll be damned if I stop now.”
she'll lie and steal and cheat and beg you from her knees make you thinks she means it this time
How can he not see the ways that she lies dismantled at his feet?
How can he not see the ways that she is picked apart, bones picked clean, ravaged with a love that has so wholly consumed her that she was burned before she even realized it?
It sears across her belly—his presence and his distance each cleaving into her breast with a sharpness that causes her to suck in her breath between her teeth, the ache spreading through her bones. She has dreamt of him for so long that it is nearly impossible for her to unwind the ghost of him from the reality that stands before her, the reality that burns before her. But she aches for him nevertheless. She wants to reach for him. She wants to run from him. She is as equally in love with him as she is terrified of him.
But before she can make the decision, every muscle within her taut, ready to flee, he closes the distance between them and his words are like separate bullets—shredding through whatever defenses she thought that she had. For the first time in years, she feels tears escape her eyes, falling down her cheeks. “Of course I haven’t felt alive,” the confession is brittle on her tongue, shattering even as she says it. “I have spent years running. Years fleeing from something that strikes fear down to my very marrow.”
Another shuddering breath, her laughter weak and choked.
He touches her, and she doesn’t bother to hide the tremor of need that races through her, the fury that had just seconds ago incinerated her bones slipping into her own fears, into her own terror. She leans into him, knowing that each touch, each embrace is just another thing that she will dream about. This can’t last, she thinks, but she cannot tear herself away. This will end in flames, she thinks, but she reaches out, her mouth tracing the edges of his face, memorizing the slopes and the valleys of his features.
He pleas with her, and she closes her eyes, shaking her head.
“I-I don’t,” her voice catches as she leans against him, forehead pressed to his neck, “I don’t know how.”
she'll tear a hole in you, the one you can't repair but I still love her, I don't really care
09-15-2018, 01:15 PM (This post was last modified: 09-15-2018, 01:17 PM by Daemron.)
Finally, there is truth between them. It glimmers in her tears, trembles through her breath – and though he can see how agonizing it is for Pyxis to bear her fragmented soul to him, she is made exquisite by it. Of course he sees it – her lovely little charade has fallen (collapsing, crumbling, breaking), and yet he has always found her more beautiful in imperfection. And as if it were second nature, he bends almost unconsciously to brush away the dampness of her tears – (salt on his lips, a pang in his chest).
His flesh comes alive even as it burns at the feel of her; her touch both his antidote and his kryptonite. Yet even as she leans in, a part of him senses that she is on the verge of pulling away. Perhaps the hunt has heightened his awareness in this regard – (the predator who senses the quivering prey) – and something deep within lurches treacherously at the thought that she might leave again. Suddenly possessive, his exploration of her becomes increasingly urgent in answer to her quaking, the need to memorize her while he still can too great to ignore.
She whispers into his neck then, her words granting Daemron some semblance of restraint. The chestnut stills, dreading that the slightest movement would scare her off. The absence of motion allows him to notice the subtle scratch of her antlers as they rest against him. He is struck by the idea that he could grow accustomed to the feeling – that is, if she’d only let him.
He clears his throat in order to find his voice again. “I don’t want to be the reason you run anymore. I want to be the reason you stay.” The enraged ferocity that had driven him to assault her defenses has yielded to something quieter (steadier) – though no less fierce in its own way. There is a pause as the last conversation they’d had comes to the forefront of his thoughts.
“I know you’re scared, Pyxis. And as much as I want to put your fears to rest, I can’t promise that I won’t hurt you.” Years earlier, he might have done exactly that – he might have done anything to keep her from leaving. Yet now he knows better than to vow the impossible. With this thought in mind he adds gruffly, “Hell, look at the damage we’ve dealt one another already.” Shifting, he draws back just enough to catch her gaze and hold it with his.
“What I can promise is that I’ll never leave you.” It isn’t said in criticism of her past actions, though he finds himself bracing for some form of retaliation. The truth is that Daemron simply can’t stand to lose her – not again. In one way or another, every person that he’s ever cared for has managed to betray him. His true pack is no more, causing him more pain than happiness in his lifetime. Yet if it meant that he could have someone again, someone that was his – if he could have her – he could bear anything. He would wear the scars she was bound to inflict upon him as badges; permanent marks of her presence, evidence of their calamitous love.
she'll lie and steal and cheat and beg you from her knees make you thinks she means it this time
They are trapped within this moment that is at once impossible in its strength as it is in its fragility. She can feel the steel of him underneath it all along with the spiderweb of her faith, the thing that clings her to him ripping away with the moments, leaving her as breathless as if she had just run for miles.
Her muscles ache and she breathes him in, steadied by his presence even as she remains off-kilter by it. She wants to stay here forever. She wants to run. She wants to be his. She wants to be free. All of these war within her, and her body is taut with the need to make a decision—to do anything but rest in silence.
His expert hands dismantle the last of her defenses though and she is stripped vulnerable before him, her blue eyes raw with emotion, her face scrubbed clean of pretense. “I want to stay,” her voice is hoarse, as if she had spent the last hours screaming—and maybe she has. “But all I know how to do is leave.”
It’s all her family has ever known.
She was raised by a mom who had constantly picked up the pieces in the wake of her father, trailing behind and keeping their family together through sheer willpower alone. Pyxis had been raised in that turmoil, in that heartache. She had watched her mother break and fall apart, and she had learned how love was the greater lie you could tell yourself. She had learned just how dangerous it was—how poisonous.
She had vowed that she would never make the same mistake as her mother; she would never let anyone get close enough to her to detonate in her chest. But now—with him—she wonders if it’s worth it. She wonders if she could trust him, if she could risk it. She reaches out, tentative, her breath billowing out over his jaw and she trembles now, breaking down in front of him. “I want to try, Daemron.”
Pyxis doesn’t know if she will be able to—she doesn't but she knows she can’t keep running.
She is exhausted.
She is hollowed out.
And the only thing that has ever made her alive is standing before her, offering her life.
“Will you teach me how?”
she'll tear a hole in you, the one you can't repair but I still love her, I don't really care
During exchanged words the long-limbed wolf in their midst has stilled. Her keen eyes follow them, watching intently while she remains crouched at the perimeter Daemron had set. Watching; waiting. A silent witness as the years of cold frustration and hard bitterness between the chestnut and the bay begin to fall away. Pyxis admits she wants to stay, wants to try – the wolf’s ears twitch, expectant.
And, finally, the invisible barrier keeping Red at bay is no more.
She senses the change in him and rises. Yet it is not Daemron’s side she goes to – she goes to Pyxis, wending sleekly between the mare’s legs. A low and familiar sound rises from the dog’s belly, and for a brief moment she presses her nose to a white hock as though in reassurance. Then, with a look exchanged between old companions, the maned wolf slips away into a nearby thicket, flecks of snow caught in her ruddy fur.
Red’s departure doesn’t seem to bother the stallion. She hasn’t gone far – not this time (and never again). He can sense her movements in a corner of his mind, though his focus quickly shifts from wolf to woman. Everything she says has him daring to hope. “That’s all I’m asking, love,” he murmurs to her, returning the word she’d tried to use against him with unrestrained feeling. “All I want is for you to give this – us – a chance. A real one.”
In their sudden privacy, Daemron becomes hyperaware of Pyxis’ warm breath on his cool skin. She asks him if he will teach her. The light of serious eyes casts a faint glow against his irregular blaze. There is a dull roar in his ears, a fire burning in his blood. “Come here,” he says, snow whispering underfoot as he moves to wrap her protectively. “To start, you don’t have to hide yourself from me.” His lips find the base of her throat and rest upon her pulse.
Was hers racing, too?
The way she is pressed against the hard lines of his body makes him ache for her, and all he knows is that mere words aren’t enough anymore. “Pyxis,” he breathes then, his need for her too great to ignore – her name on heady lips both a question and a promise. And in the chill of winter, they find each other. In the greying light, they are together at last.
--------
He wakes in a dusky glow, startled by stray nightmares (familiar haunts of blood and death and ruin). Still, he marvels at how quickly these fade when he realizes that Pyxis’ warmth is at his side. The wolf, too, is nearby, keeping guard out of sight. An alarming jolt of fear strikes him when he considers the reality of everything he now stood to lose. All she’d said was that she would try – which meant there was still a chance he could lose her all over again.
Impulsively he bends, pressing his mouth to the sleekness of her side and feeling her stir. “Where have you been all these years, Pyxis?” It is meant to sound light, posed in half-jest, though he remains quite serious about hearing an answer. Though still wary of scaring her off, Daemron worries that if he doesn’t keep asking her to open up to him, she might just decide to shut him out completely (perhaps forever). “When was the last time you saw your family?”
