EVERYONE

[sochi]

Sochi

darling, you're wild-eyed, empty, and tongue-tied
maybe you need me or maybe you don't

She doesn’t know what exactly she expected when he sees her—when it finally hits him—but she knows enough of predator to be prepared. She watches his face intently as he processes it, the scales that ripple across him and the low growl that builds in the back of his throat. The whisper of violence is enough to stir the storm of it in her own heart, and she feels the fury rise in her throat like the flames would rise in his own. She feels it bitter on her tongue—everything she has suppressed—and she bites down.

But it is only when he apologizes, when he reaches and pulls her toward him, that her shield fractures.

She closes her mercurial eyes and leans into his grasp, letting herself be held for a second. “You don’t ever need to apologize to me,” she says first, letting out a shuddering breath as her lips trace the angular slope of his shoulder. The spice of him is comforting and in a moment, she realizes how much the draconic stallion has begun to feel like home. How much she has been connected with him.

She grows fierce for a moment, a low growl in her own throat. “I hope you made the mutt bleed,” she whispers, her usually husky voice just a touch harsher, more gravelly on the edges. But even this anger slowly dies in the softness that blossoms in her within his embrace. She is quiet, calm, and for the first time in perhaps her entire life, she feels safe enough that she lets herself be comforted by him.

Pinpricks of tears touch the corner of her eyes but don’t fall. She pushes her cheek against him and forces herself to take a deep breath, forces herself to focus on the feel of him against her—the feel of fur and his scales and the familiar feeling. “I can’t keep it,” she whispers, almost afraid to voice it out loud. “I can’t.”

There is a feel of fear that grabs ahold of her for a second and she realizes that her chest is tight. She has never been entirely cruel but she is a predator; she is animalistic and driven by instinct. In her heart, she knows that she cannot raise this offspring that will bear his face, remind her of it every single day.

Maybe that will make him a failure in his eyes.

She doesn’t know and, for the first time, she realizes just how much it matters to her.

playing the slow rooms, howling at half moons
if you are a Queen then, honey, I am a wolf

@[Castile]