there's fire in your blood
 | Mazikeen can think of nothing to say to his comment about liking her better with fire so she ignores it and it soon fades away and out of her mind. When fire first races across her skin she does not stop her grazing. There’s no curiosity that could encourage her to turn her head.
She is idly reaching for more grass when the fire becomes real. When it courses across her back and she is burning in every part of her body and a gasp escapes her as feeling returns. It’s not exactly her emotions that return to her but they are close. That wild, fierce love that had driven so much of her actions is still shattered - it cannot be replicated so easily - and the fire that burns inside of her is smokier than before, obscured by the darkness of the one that has fused her broken pieces back together.
The storm she’s always associated with her thoughts and emotions is now a raging inferno and in its centre, a heart that nearly matches his. Real but not real, there but not.
She turns to him now, eyes dancing as she does. They are a darker orange now than they were before, richer and redder. She reaches to run her muzzle up his neck and sighs at the feel and scent of his golden skin just before she grows canines and bites into it - drinking his blood in a deep greedy gulp before tearing her mouth away in a savage twist. She had never liked the taste of flesh before, had never killed at the end of her hunts, but she does not spit out this piece of him she has taken. An eye for an eye - flesh for flesh.
Some things were not put back together as they should have been, some things are missing entirely. She does not feel revulsion at the piece of meat she swallows or the blood she licks from her lips. She is not afraid as she moves so she might look at him more easily. As she does, she remembers where they are - what had been done here - and the fire on her skin brightens.
But even though she burns, her voice is cold as she levels her gaze at him and points out “You were the one who wanted me pregnant.”
m a z i k e e n . |
Gale
this is going to break me clean in two --
this is going to bring me close to you
Her flaming eyes meet his, and Gale knows in that instant that this creature is no more Mazikeen than the empty shell had been. This Mazikeen is better. Better than the shell, and better even than who she’d been before.
Her flaming eyes are smoke-shadowed, and he feels the lightning in his own gaze flare as she fixes them on him. The breath catches in his throat as she comes closer, as she touches him of her own accord.
The bite catches him off-guard, and he laughs at this one piece of her that has never changed. She will always be able to surprise him. He laughs even as she rips the flesh away, because the pain is temporary. There are other things to focus on, like the way she licks his blood from her lips.
Gale nearly steps forward to help her when they part again, speaking in a voice far different than when she’d thanked him.
Her voice is ice, hard edged but engulfed in flame, and it stills his feet.
“I did.” He replies. The Curse dislikes children, still thinks the world might have benefited from the permanent loss of Sickle, and killing an unborn child is far from the worst atrocity he has committed.
She does not sound anything but cold, and his tone is neutral in return. Neutral, but he is smiling. In a few days, he’ll have mastered the telepathy that he’d taken from the weanling’s mother, and he will not have to wonder what hides behind that fiery gaze.
“But I wanted you in fighting shape.”
And he had wanted her to suffer. He remembers the feeling, much as Mazikeen remembers Love, but he no longers feels it. He’d used it all as fuel to set the Alpha ablaze.
The wound on his neck that her teeth had left healed as soon as his heart blood touches it, just as it always has. This time though, when the fine soft hair had erupted from the fresh new skin, they are a deep and iridescent blue.
@Mazikeen
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there's fire in your blood
| The smile that spreads through her eyes at his explanation is not one she’s made before. It is a dark expression, a cold burn like her words had been. She is angry still, she thinks she will always be angry. Wrath fills all the empty spaces left behind by the emotions she no longer feels, it curls into every corner alongside the darkness his touch has left behind. Every mark he makes on her body is a debt she intends to recall in the future.
Two deaths now, she owes him, but she is obedient and she will not kill him until he begs her to.
And if that thought, that future, is not a reason to smile, what is?
She cannot fault him for his logic, even though she does not believe something like a pregnancy would have stopped her from fighting. But perhaps he does not know her that well.
Perhaps she still has some secrets.
“Makes sense.” She moves forward again to brush her muzzle against the spot where she had bitten. Her lips leave small streaks of his blood as she moves them, as she muses thoughtfully against the soft iridescent blue hair. “The patterns I could make on you with this trick.” She nips him again, but it is a teasing thing done with her dull herbivore teeth.
She moves, not away but further down his body. Her touch isn’t needy, it is light and testing. Testing not just him but herself, seeing how she reacts to him. His presence inflames her, makes her feel murderous - but it is not an unpleasant feeling. It is something she is sure she could get addicted to if she wasn't already.
Mazikeen pauses at his withers, removing her mouth abruptly from his skin so she can turn and look back at him. To those blue eyes she once loved. They still make her heart race but she could not name what it is exactly that is driving her pulse wild.
Her next words contain more fire as she practically purrs them out. “What would you like to do first?”
m a z i k e e n . |
Gale
this is going to break me clean in two --
this is going to bring me close to you
The eyes of his host have seen Mazikeen’s face smiling, but the Curse does not think he has seen this particular smile before. His lightning blue gaze is on her lips, and he sees only the upward turn of her smile, the way that his blood drips down one pointed canine before she steps closer.
His gaze stays level when she does, but his eyes close as she touches the freshly healed bite on his neck. He tenses for another but it doesn’t come, and emits a soft huff of amusement as she toys with him.
The amusement changes to pleasure, a leonine purr emitting from his broad equine chest as she dances across his neck with a touch even more delicate than his lightning. When she stops, asks what he wants, Gale opens his eyes to meet hers.
What would he like to do first?
“You are everything I’ve ever wanted,” he says between laughs, marveling at the creature that stands before him, at how wrong he’d been about Gale’s choice in a mate.
So this is what the brindle stallion had seen in the white mare. The Curse sees it too, pulled free from her weaknesses by the glitter of violence that he swears he can feel shifting just below her skin.
Will she try to kill him, Gale wonders?
He hopes so. But he hopes it is later, after this late afternoon tryst, after he uses his mouth to tell her what he wants without using any words.
@Mazikeen
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there's fire in your blood
| His answer, his laugh, delights her and her smile changes from something cold to something more feline. A huntress who is thrilled with what she has caught, or a warrior who has finally found an opponent worth her time. Like so many things with Gale, both of these feel true. “I like that answer.” She tells him, following it with a whisper that is saturated with sweetness. “I wish I could say the same.” And her growing smile and the way her blood orange eyes glint gives no indication of whether she is teasing him or not.
She doesn’t even know herself. It is both true and a lie. Like the heart in her chest and the love that should be there, it is both real and not real. Mazikeen feels disconnected from everything she had wanted - a peaceful life, a family, a pack to run with and protect. None of those are desires in her now. She wants to burn, to find an outlet for the writhing flames within her. And she wants Gale to burn with her and they have clashed together enough for her to know the way his mouth is moving across her skin tells her he is ready to ignite and she is there with him.
So she chases that last comment with more words. Because she wants him close. Whatever they are doing, whatever happens, she doesn't care so long as it is the two of them together at the centre. “But I am yours.” She tells him, melting into his touch. Becoming a living thing once again as she presses into him with purpose. All the while her eyes burn. The heat leeching into her voice when she finally says what she had thought the other night. “And you. You are mine.”
m a z i k e e n . |
Gale
this is going to break me clean in two --
this is going to bring me close to you
A creature with a heart might have been wounded by her words, but Gale only laughs. He is not what she wants?
The Curse has taken women who do not want it before. He’s enjoyed the act of domination, and the way they wept. It would like to see Mazikeen cry like that, to see if her tears would steam on her fiery cheeks.
But it is equally amenable to the way she twists around him, her well-muscled body sliding against his. Desire dries his mouth, and he is speechless as she melts against him. He tugs her closer, his mouth in her hair and along her shoulder, and then he pulls her under him.
I am yours, she says, and Gale’s breath catches beneath her ear. He’d held her just like this the night before, and then she’d slipped right out of his grasp. It is difficult to think of anything else, but just before he does, he hears the rest of her words.
You are mine.
Is he?
The Curse has never belonged to anyone before. Somewhere, a Warning is sounding, but in this moment there is only want and his hunger for Mazikeen. “Yes,” he agrees. In this moment, there is nothing he would not agree to, not a thing he would not promise her.
@Mazikeen
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there's fire in your blood
| Gale’s breath catching beneath her ear when she tells him she’s his is sweet but his agreement that he is hers is sweeter and a delighted shudder courses through Mazikeen.
She is still burning, her skin glowing bright, but her mind is only focused on this one thing, on him, and this time she holds nothing back. This time her tastes have changed and there is a wilder need in her. When how they begin is not enough, with him above her she moves them through different shapes. One where she can arch her back and press into him more effectively. And then one where he can dig his claws into her as he once did, and pull her as close as he can and then closer still.
It is not kind, that memory, and it makes her glow brighter as wrath bleeds through her. Her vision goes blurry with it as this rage mixes with pleasure until she cannot tell which feeling is which. Her fire aura flickers around them in small bursts. Not enough to truly burn, because she wants to see when she makes more marks on him, but small flickering flames providing heat and kissing his skin while she cannot.
After, though, as she tries to catch her breath and ease her pulse, she finds that blue spot and she presses a kiss there. He is hers, and in that moment she thinks there is nothing she would not give him.
m a z i k e e n . |
@ Gale
Gale
this is going to break me clean in two --
this is going to bring me close to you
Sharing pleasure with this new Mazikeen is like nothing else he has ever experienced. He loses himself in the curves of her body, finds himself again in the reflection of her crimson orange eyes, in the wrath and rage that burns within them. There is nothing in the world but the two of them and the way their fire outshines even the sun.
This is better than killing, better than chaos, better than anything.
It is Wrong too, yet that awareness makes it all the sweeter.
It keeps him from speaking, from telling her these things that race through his mind as she arches up into him, as he draws blood from her pale skin. But nothing can keep him quiet entirely, not when so much flows through him - magic fire rage lust love - and he praises and curses her alternately, his voice thick with desire.
He does not remember using his magic, yet as she leans against him he finds himself drained. Gale’s heart is pounding fast and his breathing is heavy, but he has has still not had his fill of the woman beside him, and he laments his lack of magic only because it cannot aid him in this pursuit.
So rather than Worry, he only lifts his head so she might kiss his healed wound, baring his throat to her without a moment’s hesitation, and purring softly as he does.
This had been the first thing he’d wanted to do this afternoon, but there had been other things as well, other tasks to do. He’d wanted to see Mazikeen kill something, wanted to hunt down Ciri, wanted to set something more satisfying than trees on fire.
Yet as he leans down and smooths the mane that drapes across her well-mouthed neck, Gale finds that those wants shrink and disappear, blown away by the late autumn wind. This is what he wants, and perhaps one more thing.
He wants to know she’d been lying before. He needs to know, without doubt, that she is his in every way that matters, that she will never want anyone more. There’s only one way to do that, and though it contradicts the self-preservation that has given him so many lifetimes, he tells her in a rasping voice:
“No more obedience.” He tastes her blood where he’s clawed her, kisses it gently, and finds that not all his magic is gone as he Heals it. “I will still keep my part of the bargain, but I find I prefer you free.”
@Mazikeen
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there's fire in your blood
| Mazikeen closes her burning eyes to savour the rasping of his voice and the things he says with it, the way he kisses the wounds he had carved into her and then takes away the pain, and a breathy noise of contentment escapes her. It heats her all over again, her hunger for him rising and she wonders if it will ever stop. Not while both of their hearts beat, she imagines. And this does not bother her, there is no worry or guilt over wanting him and the feeling that rises up inside her in his presence. Even coated in wrath, the desire that she feels is better than the hollowness of having no emotions - better than the guilt, the love, and the sadness that had bogged her down for so many years.
She hates him but she knows he’s already set her free, he’s the one responsible for how her emotions have shifted into entirely new animals than what they were before.
Her voice is hoarse when it comes out in reply, making no attempt to hide everything she is feeling. And as she speaks, another feline smile dances through her eyes when they open and seek him out. “I think we’ll find my freedom looks a lot like obedience.” The difference is important to her, though, and she will show him her gratitude in many ways. She can refuse him, she can choose not to listen, but Mazikeen as she is - coated in an intoxicating combination of blood, sweat, and his scent - believes she will still do as he asks. She will choose to be with him and not just for the future where she gets to kill him. Before that happens, she will want to please him and have him do the same for her.
This isn’t love but it is the closest thing to it that she is capable of now.
There’s no brindling on his coat for her to trace with her lips but she moves across the skin where it was on his neck. Will they leave this forest today, she wonders? Will he lead her somewhere else? She has no intention of allowing them to spend so much time apart as they have been.
She could find another outlet for this energy, a hunt perhaps. Maybe she’ll let him choose her prey. Maybe they can hunt it together.
This is an exciting thought but she’s in no hurry to suggest other plans as she makes slow, wandering touches across his gleaming skin. And when she reaches his ear she asks him quietly “Would you like to be my king?”
Alphas, King and Queen, she does not care what they call themselves. They are not truly equals, not with the new powers he possesses, but she’d like to pretend they are a little longer. And she wonders if it will please him to do the same.
m a z i k e e n . |
@ Gale
Gale
this is going to break me clean in two --
this is going to bring me close to you
Her reply is more than satisfying, and he spends some time showing her this. She will have her freedom, but she will belong to him. She will roam, and return, and he thinks of this as her touch travels back along his skin.
Does she hunger still as well, he wonders? Does she feel this insatiable need, this desire that rises when they are together, that is fed by each touch, stoked by every kiss.
He remains still, enjoying the sensation of her touch. She is delicate now, yet that satisfies him as much as her violence, and it is easy to push away the awareness that this is Bad. She is too much for his mind to think of anything else. Everything she does is somehow exactly what he wants, and that is true for what she asks as well.
“I would be your everything,” he replies, drunk on the taste of her skin and the way her breath feels against his ear. He will be her everything. He knows this now, recognizes this new need, this new goal.
It is stronger than his need for chaos, for destruction. Stronger, but complimentary somehow, the way this new Mazikeen is to every dark part of him. He will fit them together the way that he and Mazikeen fit together, he will destroy everything save what she asks him for.
Hyaline is safe, and their families, but the rest of Beqanna?
It will burn, and it will bow to him, and to Mazikeen beside him. The images of fire, of screams, of terror add heat to his touch, and he is suddenly rough and savage. He takes her this way a second time, and afterward he is the one that leans against her, his breathing heavy and his eyes half closed, and the smile that rests upon his weary face is - at last - satisfied.
When his magic returns, he’ll take her again, but his mind is clear now for the first time, and he thinks once more of his other plans.
“I want to see you fight.” He tells her, kissing his way across her bloody withers and feeling the Healing pulled out of him. Gale does not know where this comes from, because when he reaches for the magic it is dry. He does not control this, but he does not allow it to bother him.
He’s only fought her himself, he’s realized, and he’d like to see her in action. Will she burn her opponent, he thinks? Will she kill them?
“We’ll take the last entity.” He continues, pulling gently at her mane as he imagines her fighting the faceless Warden, and then smiles at the image of her battling Wishbone. “I’ll take Warden,” he says, “and you can have Wishbone.”
@Mazikeen
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