[mature] like dreams that turn to dust,

[atrox]

hangman hooded, softly swinging; don't close the coffin yet, I'm alive

She is the perfect prey and yet does not react like prey at all.

It is the perfect contradiction—a tangled web that traps him within it. She shivers and her pulse spikes and she smiles, and he feels everything within him nearly explode in response. It is violent and everything that he does his best to hide, to bury deep within him, rises quickly to the surface in search of an outlet. The strange emptiness that comes from death and its retreat. The hollow ringing at seeing Twinge and knowing that they would perhaps never find a time and place where they lived side by side ever again.

The fury of knowing that Beqanna has taken from him once again—

and then the strange thrill at knowing, this time, she has given back.

It is decades of living in the shadows and decades of knowing nothing but the natural, predatory feel of the hunt. It is knowing that she is both familiar and yet uncharted territory—that her skin breaks so easily, even with that milky glow, and that she does not move to stop him. It all causes a thrill of excitement to race down his spine, his eyes grow overbright, his smile to widen with the blood smeared across it.

She speaks and although it sounds like a warning, it feels like a promise—like an invitation. His bloodied mouth lifts to press against her cheek, down to her own lips where he nips at the skin, not bothering to be gentle. “Any game worth playing is dangerous,” he says against the velvet of the crimson painted against the white of her, “but I expect that you know that.” He dips his mouth to her throat, teasing at the skin with his teeth, knowing that he could sink his fangs into it and find the blood so close to the surface.

“Doesn’t stop you from wanting to play though,” he pauses, “does it, Ryatah?”

ATROX | THE PANTHER KING