[private] with this love like a hole, swallow my soul - Atrox

[atrox]

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

Something sharp flashes across his features at her “I know,” something rippling beneath the surface as he focuses on her face again—and it’s out of habit more than anything that he pulls it from his expression as quickly as he does. She cannot study it, he knows. Cannot pick apart the details that make up his weathered face to find the truth of it underneath, but she did not need her eyesight to do that, truly. She had always been particularly adept at stepping beneath the surface of him and finding the core of him.

Just as he was able to pick up on the spare threads of guilt that bury in the softness of her voice.

He doesn’t comment on it though. Doesn’t ask her to elaborate on what she feels more than what he is already able to discern. If she wanted to share with him, she would—and until then, he would allow her to have her privacy. Keeping whatever fears and worries that she may foster in the depths of her mind.

Instead he watches her touch the children, name them, and he thinks of them for a moment. He had never been truly involved in this part of childbearing (never involved in any of it, to be honest), so he is not sure that is opinion holds much weight. Not certain that he should be given the choice to weigh in on what they would be called for the rest of their lives, but still thinks about it—ponders both.

After a minute has passed, he nudges her neck.

“I like them,” he grins a little, that sardonic curl of his lip. “I prefer the names of today far more than what they had been in my youth.” He tips his head back slightly, exhaling in nostalgia as he thinks about how grateful he is that his mother had given him something so simple. The only gift that she had given him before he had taken life from her, but such a conversation feels heavy for the moment.

“My father was named Mass Murderer,” he comments with a laugh. “Maea and Astin is better.”

He brings his scarred head down quickly when he hears the rustling, the padding of feet.

Without thinking, he shifts into a panther and leaps forward before the children, a growl forming low and deep in his throat—and when it is the familiar form of Breach’s tiger, the growl does not stop.

ATROX | THE PANTHER KING