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#werewolf recovery
sliebman10 · 10 months
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Wrap
Sirius made sure Remus was resting comfortably before getting up and padding down to the kitchen. He put the kettle on and fried up some eggs. Arranging everything on a tray, he levitated it and followed the floating tray up to their room.
Remus was still asleep, wrapped in their knitted blanket. Sirius laid a hand on his forehead. Finding it wasn't any warmer than usual, he shook Remus's shoulder gently. "Moony…" he said. Remus didn't move. "C'mon, darling…even werewolves need breakfast." Remus groaned softly as his eyes fluttered open. Sirius ran his hand through Remus's curls. "How're you feeling?"
Remus shrugged. "You know… like usual."
"Here, have some eggs and a cuppa. You'll feel better."
Word count: 116
@wolfstarmicrofic
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Recovery
Pairing: Remus Lupin x F!OC (Hadley, featuring Poly!Wolfstar)
Warnings: Polyamory, mentions of physical pain and illness/fatigue
Word Count: 838
Summary: After a particularly rough full moon, Remus needs the two things that will help him heal most -- hot chocolate and snuggles from someone he loves.
A/N: Fluffcember Day 8, I hope you all like it!
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Sirius called Hadley; he had to leave on a mission for the Order and last night’s full moon was particularly rough on Remus, with it being the longest night of the year. Sirius had done the best he could to help his boyfriend’s recovery, but time was running short. He had to meet Kingsley Shacklebolt all the way across London in forty minutes. So he called in backup.
She arrived shortly after Sirius left and let herself into the flat. “Remy?” she called, only receiving a groan from the bedroom in response. She set to work right away, emptying her bag onto the kitchen counter before finding a pot and pouring in the milk she brought. Lighting the stove with her wand, Hadley made her way toward the bedroom.
It was dark, the only light creeping in from around the blackout curtain on the window on the opposite wall. The room smelled of wet dogs due to its two inhabitants and their activities last night, romping through the freshly fallen snow. On the bed, a large pile of blankets and sodden clothing moved as Remus shuffled around to look at her.
He breathed out her name, as if her presence alone was sweet relief. A pale, lanky forearm stretched out from under the pile and she cradled it in her own. She traced over the lines on his palm, down each one of his fingers and planted kisses at the tips of each one.
“How are you, love?” she asked, crouching down to his eye level and holding his hand against her chest.
“Fucking wretched,” he grunted, voice muffled slightly from the blanket draped over half his face.
“Any new cuts? Bruises?”
“Naw, Sirius patched me up ‘fore he left.”
She nodded and placed a gentle kiss on the back of his hand over one of his scars. “I’ll be right back.”
The milk on the stove was at the perfect temperature when she made her way back to the kitchen. She fixed up two mugs of hot chocolate and made sure they were well mixed, then cast a warming charm over them. Making her way back to the bedroom, she put one mug on Remus’s nightstand and the other on Sirius’s before she crawled into the other side of the bed, scooting as close to Remus as she could get. 
When he felt her weight dipping the other side of the mattress he flipped over, the blanket mound nearly toppling onto her. Hadley shuffled under it, seeking the feel of his skin. He sought her out as well and they met in the middle, his arms winding around her shoulders and hers around his waist, keeping her touch as gentle as possible. He was sensitive after a transformation but also needed to know that he was cared for, that he was loved. A physical reminder of those things helped speed his healing, hence the cuddling.
“Will Sirius be gone for Christmas?” she asked quietly. His eyes were closed tight, fighting against the pain that had dulled from a ferocious roar to a low growl with her presence. Still it radiated through his bones and muscles, the familiar, detestable ache of lycanthropy.
“He said he should be back by then,” he answered, “but who knows these days.” 
“Shh,” she soothed, “Don’t talk like that. We both know he will do everything he can to get back to you…back to us.”
The last few months she had spent more nights at their flat than her own, often ending with the three of them tangled together on the very bed she and Remus lay on now. The three of them hadn’t talked about it in depth, but they were all three in love. They had been since their last year at Hogwarts, after a drunken experiment in the Room of Requirement. 
“I know…I just worry.”
“There’s hot chocolate on the nightstand. It’ll make you feel better.” She was moving to reach it before she finished her sentence, knowing he was too weak and tired to reach for it himself. Slowly, she helped him sip from the mug. The creases between his brow eased at the taste, his body relaxing slightly.
“Mmm, perfect as ever,” he praised, raising his hand to stroke her cheek. She leaned into the touch but put the hot chocolate back and snuggled back down into the blankets with him. Leaning back, she encouraged him to rest his head on her chest while she wrapped an arm around his shoulders. His arm draped over his stomach and his legs entwined with hers. With a comforted sigh, he closed his eyes while she stroked his messy hair in order to lull him to sleep.
When Sirius came back later that day — the mission hadn’t taken nearly as long as originally thought — he found the two loves of his life cuddled on their bed. His heart swelled with love and he thought about joining them, but instead decided to clean up the cold mugs of cocoa and start dinner.
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Okay, I’m really going to try and get back into doing the daily @wolfstarmicrofic because I miss it so much. So new week - new prompts. Today it’s bath. Let’s have some First War Angst.
The fireplace roars to life, green flames exploding and Sirius starts so violently he drops the cigarette that had been dangling between his fingers. He’s on his feet in no time, dropping his fag into the ashtray without stubbing it out, catching Remus with an arm around the waist as he staggers forward.
”Got you, Moons,” he mumbles, his chest tightening with worry as he takes in his boyfriend’s paleness, the muck streaking his face, the specks of dirt and what looks like blood staining his clothes. ”C’mon then,” he continues even as Remus doesn’t reply, slowly guiding him straight towards the bathroom. 
Remus had been gone a month, spending two full moons and the time between with a pack somewhere that Dumbledore had refused to tell Sirius. It wasn’t the first time, but Sirius never found it got any easier. He tried to keep himself busy so that he wouldn’t worry too much, spending as much time as possible with Prongs, Lily and Peter. It never really worked.
He steers Remus to sit down on the loo while he fills the tub up with the help of his wand. He slowly strips Moony of his clothes, carefully checking him over for new cuts and bruises, healing what he finds, before helping him into the bath. 
Moony still hasn’t said a word, his eyes sliding shut as Sirius starts cleaning him. He washes Remus’ hair carefully, fingers sliding through curls, massaging his scalp gently before slipping his hands lower, rubbing carefully at the grime. 
They don’t speak much that evening. Sirius puts Moony to bed after their bath, bringing him some tea but by the time he comes back to the bedroom the other man is already fast asleep. Sirius sets the cup down on the bedside table before climbing into bed next to him, curling his body around Remus’ as much as he can without hurting him. 
He presses his nose against the crook of Remus’ neck, finally feeling something unlock inside of him. His soft and warm body, the familiar scent, and Sirius finally allows himself to believe that Remus is home.
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puppetmaster13u · 4 months
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Blame the Sims for this but-
Poly Bruce/Clark/Lois scenario with Vampire batfamily, save for Tim whose a werewolf, and of course Alien superfamily. Lois is also completely human. Probably. No one knows for sure.
Bonus Danny Phantom crossover of them getting together via them trying to adopt ghost child and ending up coparenting instead.
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writing-whump · 7 months
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Rain, ruin, respite
Follows the events of Isaiah's poisoning. The moving in together arc. Isaiah recovers from the poison, Seline ponders the possibilities and Matthew breathes himself into a panic attack.
Slight emeto, angst, fluff.
***
If Seline thought that spending the night taking care of sick Isaiah and saving him from dying would lead to some new closeness between them, she was wrong.
It took a few days for Isaiah’s fever to break and for him to become coherent. But she knew immediately when he did by the sudden distance that grew between them. Like the flame snuffed out from his eyes, and a blank canvas covered his face. 
He was all sorrys and thank yous, constantly looking for ways to curl up the farthest from both of them as possible and his voice was so cold and devoid of emotions or so fake…she guessed he didn’t have the strength to muster up a convincing disguise. Which made her even sadder, cause it seemed like he didn’t know how to interact with them without one. 
“Can I go home today?” Isaiah asked with a tentative voice, as if trying not to test her patience. He had been asking that a lot lately. But she was adamant about him staying under her care till he could at least walk without shaking.
Seline took over his recovery completely, from monitoring his temperature, amount of sleep and water intake to cooking the light kinds of food that would gradually introduce his sensitive stomach to eating again. Chicken soups, cooked carrots and potatoes, no salt. Healing herbal teas and saline solutions. 
Matthew was another surprise. He became their private errand boy. Picked up Isaiah’s fresh clothes, did the groceries and she actually caught him doing her laundry in the morning, which was embarrassing as hell. But he seemed to want to stay over as long as Isaiah would, so she didn’t complain about the help.
She crossed her hands on her chest, leaning on the wall opposite the table.
The three of them had been huddled up together for the last three days. Not really sure what to make of the new situation, without actually voicing it out loud.
Isaiah was poisoned.
They had all targets on their backs, even before helping him. So this was even worse. If they didn’t become a pack, they would be in danger they couldn’t likely handle on their own. And Seline knew that was not an easy realization for either of them to accept. And Isaiah felt so guilty about the whole thing - about letting them save his life for god’s sake - that she didn’t have the heart to start the topic herself.
Isaiah sat behind it, leaning over the freshly cooked and steaming soup, dark green eyes occasionally flickering to her.
Matthew was sprawled on the couch reading a newspaper he picked up in front of the post. He was reading it upside down, so she doubted his investment. 
“Seriously, Seline. I’m grateful beyond words for your help and care, but this is entirely unnecessary-”
Her patience likely didn’t have much room to be tested to begin with. 
“You will not,” she hissed at him, stepping closer, “spit on our effort to keep you alive, alright? You are in danger. We knew that and still took the risk. We already chose.”
“Yes! And by staying, I’m making it worse for you.”
“It can hardly be any worse.”
Isaiah winced at that and she regretted her words immediately. She heard the rustling of paper as Matthew put the news down. 
Isaiah glared at the soup sullenly and took a few spoons before grumbling. “Then maybe we should just move in together.” 
Seline shook her head and leaned back against the wall. She felt too antsy to actually sit down and relax, when the fight seemed far from over. “Yeah, like that was an option”
Isaiah looked up at her with furrowed eyebrows. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
Seline scoffed at him. “You just came up with that! You can’t be serious.”
“It’s a spontaneous idea, yes,” Isaiah nodded solemnly. “But that doesn’t make it worthless. Think about it. You would have access to unlimited magic through contact with wolves. Me and Matthew would have an apartment with witch protections. We could all synch our schedules so that you wouldn’t have to go alone anywhere. And each one of us would have people at home that would be suspicious if someone doesn’t show up. That makes a lot of difference to random attackers. Or to organized ones.” 
The tension filled the room like a heavy smell of hyacinths. Full and intense it made her eyes water. She noted Matthew shifting uneasily on the couch from the corner of her eye.
There goes the hard part. 
Seline swallowed. “I have a life, you know? I can’t just-”
“You wouldn’t be giving up your life. This is a way to preserve it," Isaiah said.
“You are serious?” Seline checked.
“Yes. I realize it’s my fault, so we can move to mine. Or I’ll get us a new one. I will pay you back, you know? They are not scared of me for nothing. I have resources.”
Like perfect control, a powerful shadow, rich parents, a well-paying internship for a psychological research agency for the government, a well-respected diplomatic position among the packs and contacts all over the city? Seline had to admit that wasn’t little. 
Seline looked at Matthew. A long look in which she hoped to ask a lot of things. What do you think? Will you accept? Do you believe him? Do you like the idea?
Matthew shrugged and looked away. “Fine by me.” 
Seline pressed her lips into a tight line. “Give me some time to think this over,” she said quietly into the wall. 
“Of course,” Isaiah said, returning to his soup with a grievous expression. “Same for you, Matt. Take some time and think about it”
“What is there to think about?” Matthew said gruffly and stood up, shoving his hands deep into his pockets. “I’ll go take a walk.” 
Seline wondered if that meant it affected him too much or not at all. 
***
Isaiah did give her space. 
She spent the rest of the day on the balcony, huddled up in a blanket.
First, she went through the rational reasons - a steady source of magic, protection for her. Matthew had been hanging out a lot around her place anyway, so she was pretty used to his presence.
Isaiah was…evasive, mysterious, distant? But also reliable and she could tell he cared. He cared about her even though he didn’t have a pack to invite her to, which gave her comfort.
It felt like he talked for her and not for what she could do for him, like he was seeing her - Seline the cultural scientist, the passionate student, the writer behind the songs, the one studying writing theory, the one tutoring younger students and giving her own classes as university assistant - not just the witch. 
Then she examined it from an emotional perspective. 
She loved that the city offered her the asisstant job alongside her studies. That she could help with writing, the thing she loved. Plus commuting for 10 years prior had been enough, she liked the location, the independency, the feeling like she could make it on her own.
Seline was lonely.
That’s why she waited so long. To enjoy her parents, her family. Because of the close relationship with her mother and grandfather and dad and brother. Because despite being an introvert and writer in need of space and alone time, she loved the noises made in the living room. The smells coming from the kitchen, the sympathy when someone got sick, the reassurance someone would come for her if it rained. 
Honestly she didn’t expect the packs to be such a problem. But they were much more forceful in the city about having your place among them than when she lived at home. 
Isaiah was her only ally here. He was civil, respectful and impressive - not just for a wolf, but for a guy.
And she yearned for that freedom. From watching your mouth, from being subdued and nice and hiding your mood, because your little brother had a wolf temper to go with his teenage hormones.
She was tired of her dad raising his voice whenever he felt a bit emotional and it being okay, cause wolf stuff. The perfect excuse.
It felt like she couldn’t express her anger at all, like her dissatisfaction didn’t matter, cause her role was predefined. Witches compensate for the wolf temper. They are the light to the shadow, the water to their hellfire, the song to their growls. 
It’s all about them and the witches take it, cause they love their magic. How could you not love the magic, once you tasted it? Commanding air with your voice? The droplets of water twisting around your fingertips like a ribbon?
They would pay the price and be happy about it. Just like you didn’t mouth off a boss or tell the professor her sense of organization sucks or tell the group project people to just not do anything, cause you would do it better yourself. And the more she felt pressed down, the more things she noticed, the more sensitive she became. Injustice, ignorance, stupidity, laziness. Not changing your course for fear of losing the effort put in until then, even though it was wrong. 
It drove her crazy to see the mistakes and all the reasons why people wouldn’t correct them. 
So maybe Isaiah was right. Exactly right. She wanted what she felt like she couldn’t have.
And he handed it over, without asking, like it was natural, like he didn’t need a reason to forgive her. To have emotions, to protest, to stand up for herself. 
With Matthew, it was different. He had to get used to her anger, to her expressing herself and standing behind doing so. No apologies, no submission, not making it easier on your precious violent wolf temper. If he expected concessions for having a big shadow, he wouldn’t get them from her. 
So yes, maybe she was more provocative and straightforward than she needed to be. She liked it. She liked seeing the reactions of people, what they did when she challenged their expectations, when she cared about herself first. Let them call her selfish, she was happier. Comfortable.
But Matthew did come to accept how she was. Despite the anger and complaints and the banter, he did and she felt seen too. It wasn’t just cause of the guaranteed niceness he came for, when she wasn’t being nice. 
Could she imagine living with them both, though?
“Care for some tea?” Isaiah interrupted her thoughts, joining her on the balcony with a tray. Black tea with milk and sugar cubes, just like she liked it. He was so attentive about such details, she didn’t know how he did it.
Isaiah sat down beside her in the chair. He looked pale and gaunt, coat neatly buttoned up to the chin. When he didn’t comb his hair back, all slick and smooth, he had bangs hanging on the sides reaching under his eyes. There was a slight wave to them she found endearing. 
She watched him from the side as he drank his cup of tea - without milk or sugar, just as she instructed.
Not looking at her, not pressing her for answers, but offering an ear if she had any to discuss. 
“I would like to sleep on it,” she warned.
Isaiah’s green eyes immediately snapped to her. They were a pure sea green in the sunset light coming through the cloudy sky. 
“And I have conditions. If we do this and Matthew agrees, we would all rent a place together. I’m not letting you or anyone else pay for me. We will all put the same amount in that new place. I want my own room and bathroom if possible. Also, if you expect household services, I will disappoint you, cause I’m a pretty bad cook…”
Isaiah waved it away with a wide smile, eyebrows raising. “I wouldn’t expect something like that. Am I allowed to use my contacts at least to find us a place with a good location?” 
Seline scoffed at him. “You may.” 
He grinned at her. 
She bit her lip, wondering how to address the last thing that made her antsy about the situation. 
Isaiah studied her face. “Would you be open to the idea, even if it wasn’t for the safety reasons?” 
Yep, that one. 
Because she realized during her pondering that maybe she would be. Because they have somehow become the two closest people in this overwhelming big city of strangers. Because living alone wasn’t quite as cut out for her. 
Seline looked away with a slight lift of the corner of her mouth. 
Isaiah chuckled and looked ahead at the sunset with the happiest expression she had seen in the last few days. He looked so relaxed and unguarded like this, with wavy hair, sparkly eyes, showing genuine contentment over something. It was a new side of him. 
Made her wonder about all the other sides there were to Isaiah Wolfson.
***
Matthew wandered the streets through the rain. It was nice, cause no one interrupted him. No crowds in bad weather and every passerby was hurrying up, not paying him any attention.
He craved space. Open space of a field or the steepness of a high hill. Or healthy-looking thickness of trees in a forest. The buildings, the stoney streets smelling of gas and cars and sameness was opressing in moods like these.
Isaiah suggested living together so nonchalantly. Spur of the moment idea. Here is a solution: why not, take it.
As if he didn’t know how much he would change Matthew’s life.
He had been alone for the last 10 years, since he was 14. Before, he had a room alone, farthest from the center of the house. And then he lived in packs with big buildings, in sort of dorms.
Always alone.
Everyone keeping away from his temper, from his shadow, his anger with said shadow and those tempers. Frustration from training that didn’t help and unsympathetic looks as he struggled with it. 
You had to keep away from the walking ticking bomb, the fiery redhead with a crazy powerful shadow who couldn’t handle himself. No one would want to bunk with him, be a roommate. 
Affording his own place was a relief. Finally, he didn’t have to keep being rejected. 
There were hardly any regular people in his life. Provisory pack leaders. Professors at school. It got lost in the swarm of faces. 
And then Isaiah came, not deterred by his bad moods nor by his failings in training. Cheerful and carefree, always expecting the best, never complaining about the worst. With all his caring touches and encouraging back pats. They were a sign of dominance from a wolf or something reserved for close pack members. But Isaiah wasn’t afraid of him and he didn’t like rules and when he wasn’t currently pulling away, surprisingly affectionate. 
Introducing Seline, the temperamental witch. He liked her despite the irony of it. Never before was he worth a witch’s effort. They never wanted to waste any calming effects on a lost cause. He didn’t realize how much he missed it, how much he missed out on, until he couldn’t stop hanging out around her. Didn’t realize what it felt like to be welcome, when someone doesn’t expect you but won’t chase you away. 
He didn’t acknowledge the care, the favor they were doing him, cause if he did, there would be an ocean of feelings and loneliness to acknowledge in contrast. And he didn’t know how to deal with it. 
But now the dam was breaking. One flick of Isaiah’s hands, an innocent suggestion, one sentence, rocking his world. 
Seline needed to think it over. Ha. This was a gift, a gift that shouldn’t have been strange or mean so much. Except it did.
And now Matthew wandered the streets and couldn’t catch his breath. It came in rapid little gasps, with needly pain to his right side. Was breathing supposed to hurt? 
He pulled his shadow up, quick and carefully emotionless, to take away the injury. 
Nothing changed. 
Matthew leaned against the wall of a historical building of vanilla colour. Breathing felt like swallowing a bunch of metal splinters. 
Maybe he should go back. 
Matthew stumbled his way back, half by memory, half by scent. Forcing his body through the motions until he found the familiar entrance, the old elevator. 
When he dragged himself to the door, he couldn’t make himself open it. What was he going to do? Shout for help? Explain that for a mystical, not physically related reason, he couldn’t breathe by the mention of a dream he didn’t know he had forbidden himself to think about, getting fulfilled? 
Matthew slid down to the floor and pressed his back against the wall under the window in the hallway, legs stretched out in front of him. Tipping his head back, right hand pressing to his chest, he tried to force oxygen to the invisible obstruction. He felt panicky tears down his face. But it was going numb anyway.
By some miracle, though, Isaiah appeared in the doorway. Went to his knees by Matthew’s side immediately, hands gripping his shoulder. There was alarm and intensity on his pale face, still visibly thinner after the ordeal with the poison.
Matthew didn’t hear the words spoken, just that Isaiah’s mouth opened and closed. The frantic concern twisting his features somehow calmed him. 
Someone was worried. Isaiah was worried. Isaiah solved everything. It was okay. 
His throat eased up suddenly and he took a beautiful deep breath, before bursting into a coughing fit. His chest, throat and nose burned with exertion, but Isaiah’s hand on his arm felt steady and warm. He focused on the sensation, letting it ground him. 
The cough turned into gags, his stomach muscles painfully constricting. Isaiah leaned him forward as he heaved emptily over his side. That hurt, but when it was over, he could finally breathe easily. He was panting, enjoying the flow of air. Isaiah still held his shoulder in an iron grip and Matthew felt tired, like his head weighed a ton from all the oxygen. He leaned against Isaiah, who caught him against his side, arm circling around his back gingerly.
Matthew lost track of time, only focusing on his senses. The cold of the floor, the hardness of the wall against his back. Isaiah’s chest under his ear, rising and falling rhythmically. 
He didn’t remember when Seline found them. 
The world still felt numb and soundless, out of character. He only felt relief as she ushered them inside. 
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zoethehead · 10 months
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a Rannulf and a Nightwing
if you're wondering, the Rannulf lineage is something i kinda came up with, the Nightwing lineage though is in reference to the roblox role playing game; "Vampire Kingdom" with Daisy being based on one of the oc's in that game that I have seen around.
also; I chose Salem, MA due to it's supernatural connections and history
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Ray had trudged on for days, trying so hard to stay awake; fever surging through his body from the untreated wounds, and the wolfsbane that he had been tranquilized with. If he didn’t find safety; he would die….
He didn’t want to die…
Eventually, through his blurry sight; he saw what looked like a house. It could have just been his delirium, but his mind was just begging to sleep; it had been up for 5 days and his legs started to feel like yarn. He went up to the house, knocking at the door; when it opened, he heard a voice ask;
“hello?”
His mind gave way and he collapsed; everything went black……
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Daisy opened the door; she wasn’t expecting anyone to be here, she looked up---seeing a tall man with red glowing eyes who was covered in dirt and blood; his wounds seemed to be infected, and before Daisy could ask anything else-- the man collapsed. Daisy let out a shriek at the unexpected horror of a man covered in blood and dirt collapsing onto the hardwood floor of the home. The shriek startled Delilah; who ran out into the living room area;
“Daisy! Are you alright?” she asked, noticing that the worm girl seemed pale and scared; trembling as the worm girl pointed to an unconscious heap; a man covered in blood and looked to just be a mess.
Delilah sighed; “Alright, call the doc to help this guy out, I'll get this stranger inside and cleaned off.”
-
It would be quite a lot of minutes; but the unconscious man was eventually cleaned off of the dried blood and dirt caking his body, The doctor showed up and tended to the wounds; he noticed the pentagram shaped scar on the man’s neck, and after researching the info of that scar; It turns out this guy was a part of the Rannulf bloodline; a bloodline of werewolves who keep guard over the island of briar. The doctor then gave some wolfsbane antidote to the unconscious man; applying the ointment over where he had been hit with darts; and some even over the open and infected wounds that had been cleaned out, drained of pus, and disinfected. The doctor gave Delilah some stuff to help with the man’s injuries over the course of his recovery; before he headed back up to his office/room.
-
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Ray came to, his body felt dizzy and unwilling to move. His brows furrowed and he let out a grunt of pain, shifting onto his side, lapsing back into slumber….
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-
Ray woke up again, regaining consciousness and energy, his eyes opened to a blurred ceiling light; he squinted, closing his eyes to this light, he opened his eyes again, noticing a shadow with bright red eyes looming over him.
“Theeere we go, good morning, sir.” the shadow said, brushing some bangs away from Ray’s forehead, leaning a hand against it. 
Ray jolted up, shielding himself with his injured--yet bandaged arm.
“Hey! Easy there, you’re not in any danger, sir.”  the woman said, backing away slightly, holding both hands up in a signal of apprehension. 
Ray’s vision cleared up, now seeing that this person looked to be a vampire with long ginger hair and red eyes.
“W-where am I?” Ray rasped, now easing himself onto the sofa and pillow that he was resting against earlier.
“You’re at my house, you showed up here and ended up scaring my roommate, her shrieking is what alerted me to you; as for location-wise, you’re in an area of Salem, Massachusetts. It’s honestly a miracle that you didn’t die; considering the amount of blood that you lost, alongside the wolfsbane that you had in your system, and how badly infected the wounds were.” the woman said.
Ray winced as the pain soon increased slightly. The werewolf wrapped the blanket around himself, trying to subside the pain with warmth. Ray pondered how in his nearly half-dead state he was able to make it miles away from where he was after nearly being killed, trudging on for days like a mysterious ghost; or a cryptid that’s not meant to be viewed by the public eye. The man soon grew exhausted again as he thought of how he could have made it this far; possibly when he was near death; a force pushed his body on to keep going near safety… he chose not to think for now; and laid back down--drifting back into a peaceful slumber.
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system-of-a-feather · 2 years
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God damn I fucking love my system and I don’t care if it is like “sad” if you look at it, but we never had a sense of family growing up or really anyone who would watch out for us or support us without also using, abusing, or hurting us growing up, and I am so fucking thankful for the found family I found in myself because jesus christ I love these guys so much and I am so thankful to have parts that I can trust at this point to positively contribute their disordered, traumatized, problematic and sometimes toxic asses to make our collective life better and more amazing.
God damn it I love them so fucking much and god damn it we are going to GET THIS BREAD.
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pigeonwhumps · 2 years
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Sam and Lucan masterlist
Sam rescues Lucan, a pet-class faerie slave belonging to Caroline Jones, famous actress and prominent supporter of the continued slavery of non-humans. They're not sure what they're doing, only that it needs to be done, and Lucan's trust in both them and Amanda is hard-earned, his eventual friendship even more so.
But nothing lasts forever.
Contains pet whump, whumpee thinks caretaker is their new master, found family, recovery whump, non-human whumpee, fae whumpee (Lucan), disabled characters (Lucan, Sam)
General CWs: Slavery, BBU-adjacent I guess, pet whump, non-human whumpees, fantasy racism, PTSD.
Character intros (including art):
Sam Johnson
Lucan
Dr Amanda Burke
Caroline Jones
Works:
NB: Rough chronological order, not posting order. The most recent pieces in each section are bolded. Characters included are in brackets. Mini text is WIPs.
Swift Auction House
Escape attempt pt 1 (Lucan)
Escape attempt pt 2 (Lucan, Edith)
Auction (Lucan)
Surgery (Lucan)
Enslaved
Caroline's Instagram: At the café (art/fake Instagram post) (Lucan, Caroline)
With Sam
The interview (Lucan, Sam, Caroline)
Rescued (Lucan, Sam)
First day part 1 (Lucan, Sam, Amanda)
First day part 2 (Lucan, Sam, Amanda)
Punishment (Lucan, Sam, Amanda)
Shopping (Lucan, Sam, Amanda)
Recapture
Arrested (Sam, Lucan)
Extras:
Lucan pre-slavery: glamour vs no glamour (art)
Height comparisons
Your Pet-Class Faerie: Tips for Care and Punishment (booklet extract)
Incorrect quotes
Kara and Edith hug (art)
AUs
Kara and Edith medieval fantasy reverse au (Kara, Edith, Sam, Amanda)
Tattoo artist x park ranger (Edith, Kara)
Awesome stuff by other people
Art of Lucan by @haro-whumps (Lucan)
A Small Breakthrough (Kara, Edith, Molly)
Asks
The cause of Lucan's mutism
Character asks
Mark
📦 Have you ever thought about returning your pet?
Kara
🤫 If you could say anything to your owner with a guarantee of zero consequences, what would it be?
💀 If she was one of the 7 sins, what sin would she be?
△ Kara, do you think you deserve what happened to you?
♦ - quirks/hobbies headcanon
Edith
9. What is, or would be, Edith's favorite video game?
☆ - happy headcanon
Taglist: @whump-for-all-and-all-for-whump @onlybadendings @whumpofdory @haro-whumps @flowersarefreetherapy
Kara and Edith have their own masterlist (also feat Amanda) here.
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purposefully-lost · 10 months
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I used to rely on self-medication
I guess I still do that from time to time
But I'm getting better at fighting the future
"Someday you'll be fine..." Yes, I'll be just fine
Tell me that you're alright
Yeah, everything is alright
Oh, please tell me that you're alright
Yeah, everything is alright
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jlz7 · 7 months
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We are currently under Werewolf Protocol.
Werewolf Protocol means that I have observed warning signs in my behavior that indicate I'm about to have a significant mental health episode. As a result, I have employed several means of keeping myself in the house and away from talking to people. It's the behavioral equivalent of chaining myself to a beam. I'm definitely still watching myself cause problems, but it's limited.
0 notes
sliebman10 · 1 year
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Mating
Remus blinked and shifted. All of his bones ached. He looked over and saw Sirius asleep in the chair next to his bed in the hospital wing. His fingers were holding Remus's lightly as he slept.
Sirius sighed in his sleep and turned his head to the other side. Remus felt a surge of affection for him. He had to go through this, but Sirius didn't. He just chose to month after month.
"How're you feeling, Moony?"
"Getting better," Remus said, squeezing his fingers. Sirius stood and slid into bed next to Remus. He was careful not to jostle him too much.
"Moony was very possessive of Padfoot," Sirius said, running his hand through Remus's hair.
"Maybe Moony was mating with him," Remus said with a smile."
"I…wouldn't rule it out," Sirius said with a grin.
@wolfstarmicrofic
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ao3feed-todoroki · 1 year
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Fiery Moon
Fiery Moon by Weaselwolf
After a villain attack, Endeavor has been off. The cravings to hunt and run bother him as he develops into his new body. His normal human senses now wanting to do more than just sit there and do work. He wanted to run free, break through anything that hurts him or his family. Attack and kill to protect his pack. Going through these changes, he wonders what will happen to him. Why does he have the same dream over and over again? Why won't the voices leave him alone? Is there a cure?
Words: 1312, Chapters: 2/2, Language: English
Fandoms: 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia (Anime & Manga)
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Categories: Other
Characters: Todoroki Enji | Endeavor, Shuuzenji Chiyo | Recovery Girl, Todoroki Shouto, Todoroki Fuyumi, Dabi | Todoroki Touya, Takami Keigo | Hawks, Yagi Toshinori | All Might, Usagiyama Rumi | Miruko
Additional Tags: Werewolf, Biteing, Injury, Transforming, hurting, Killing, Hunting, Pack, Protectiveness, Possesion, Family Bonding, Forgive and forget, Pain, lose, wanting, scratch marks, this will be a long ass book, you better enjoy this!
Read Here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/46303240
0 notes
peachdues · 6 months
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IN THE NETHERWOOD
PART I
KINKTOBER 2023 ♤ WEREWOLF!SANEMI X RED RIDING HOOD! READER
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A/N: did I get carried away? Yes. Do I care? No.
Part I is plot + smut. Part II is minimal plot and a lot of smut. Like a concerning amount.
Forgive the pace/editing errors. This was supposed to be a one shot that turned into a two part fic lmao.
CW: violence/some description of gore • mating • knotting/discussions of knotting • biting/mating • feral/protective Sanemi • virgin!Reader who is a big time monsterfucker • oral sex (F!receiving) • Sanemi makes a mess of his breeches • implied murder/other violence by Douma, but left purposefully ambiguous • brief description of another human being eaten
This honestly could be a multi-part fic that continues after Part II, given how much I leave open — but I’ll let you all decide if you want that. For now, enjoy the ride, monster-fuckers. Happy Kinktober!
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You’d known Douma’s band of acolytes had been pursuing you for at least a quarter of a mile through the dark wood, and you’d only grown more and more desperate as the excited titter of their voices drew nearer.
You were panicking; with every moment that passed, your legs grew heavier as the weariness of the last day and a half of your journey became a weight you could no longer ignore.
Find the huntsman of the Netherwood! Your grandmother had pled as she’d fastened the thick, scarlet cloak around your shoulders. He guides those in need to far-away villages. He will take you somewhere safe — where Douma cannot find you.
Grandmother did not dare let any of the tears sparkling in her eyes fall as she looped her hands behind you and pulled the hood of your cloak up over your head, concealing your hair from sight. Head north until you come to the river and then head west. You will find his cabin. Go!
Granny had all but pushed you out of her small cottage — the cottage you had come to regard as your home — and off into the chilly, autumn night.
You hadn’t questioned the urgency, though the realization that you would likely never again return to your grandmother — or even see her alive — hadn’t stung any less. But you knew, as well as the old woman who’d raised you after your parents disappeared in the Netherwood, that if Douma got his hands on you, you would never be seen or heard from again.
Just like his four other previous wives.
The last woman he’d taken as his bride had been a dear friend of yours — Kotoha — and she’s arguably lasted the longest, though perhaps that was because she’d been pregnant when the frost lotus containing his marriage demand arrived at her parents’ hut.
The eclectic village worship leader hadn’t apparently minded that Kotoha had been pregnant with another man’s child — she was unmarried, young, and beautiful; it was all Douma required.
The tension among the village women had dissipated once Kotoha had survived the first week of her union with the rainbow-eyed monster. After all, the other three wives had barely lived to see the next morning, never mind seven.
Kotoha had lived several more months — even giving birth to a beautiful, healthy baby boy whom she’d doted over, and even you thought that perhaps the rumors swirling through the village had been wrong. Perhaps those other three women truly had run off into the night with various lovers, leaving Douma alone in his mansion in the eastern wing of the village.
The last you’d seen her, your friend had been smiling and bright, happily making her way back to her marital home, baby Inosuke happily snuggled against her chest, as she’d cheerfully waved you goodbye.
Kotoha was never heard from again. Though the village elders had dispatched a recovery team to search for her, no trace of either her, nor the precious baby boy whom she’d loved so dearly, could be found.
A week later, your grandmother opened the front door of her homely cottage to find a single frost lotus resting on her doorstep.
No one turned down Douma’s marriage proposals; but neither did anyone survive them.
And so, your grandmother had packed a small satchel with what meager provisions she could scrounge, wrapped you in her heirloomed scarlet cloak, and pushed you out the door, begging you to find the mysterious huntsman of the Netherwood so that you would not become the village’s newest ghost.
Douma had surely slaughtered your beloved grandmother by now, having learned of her insolence.
You clamped down on the mournful sob building in your throat, knowing if you allowed yourself to give into your grief, it would only slow you down even further, and make it more likely that her sacrifice for your life would be in vain.
Though, in fairness, it might all be for naught anyways; the Netherwood was not a humble forest with only the occasional gray wolf or hungry bear to fear.
For centuries, your village had stood on the outskirts of the dark, ancient wood which divided it from the nervous system of villages and bustling little towns that made up the region. That isolation meant your village had become largely self-sustaining, though a few brave souls managed to make a yearly sojourn across the Wood to trade with establishments on the other side. The forest stretched for miles, encompassing small mountains and rocking ravines that were difficult enough to navigate on their own, especially in disagreeable weather.
But rugged and often temperamental terrain was child’s play compared to the horrors which lurked within the shadows of the Wood.
To start, as you’d come to realize over the last day and a half of your trek, the Netherwood was nothing but shadow. Though you’d surely traveled through the night and well into the following day, not a trace of daylight had pierced the thick canopy of leaves and twisted vines which loomed overhead. Your only indicator that day had, in fact, arrived, had been your sighting of a few songbirds quietly fluttering from tree to tree, as their songs swallowed by the deafening silence of the forest.
But the eerie quiet of the Wood was nothing compared to what you knew prowled within its depths.
You’d grown up hearing tales of the various beasts and cryptids that made the Netherwood their home – and made any unsuspecting traveler their meal. Your own parents had embarked on a dangerous trek into the Netherwood, seeking out a village on the other side rumored to have much-needed medication for your ailing grandfather, only to never be seen or heard from again. Your grandfather had succumbed to his illness not long after, though you’d often wondered whether his guilt and heartbreak hadn’t hastened his demise.
And so the Netherwood had taken your parents and your grandfather, leaving you with only your cherished grandmother as your family. Over the years, those who dared venture into the Wood often did not return, the dark of the forest swallowing them whole and leaving no trace of them behind.
Now, it was through this very Wood that you found yourself running, clinging to the desperate hope that perhaps you’d find this mysterious Huntsman and be saved, though the sluggishness that had entered your exhausted limbs seemed to suggest that you were more likely to be caught by your pursuers. And that was assuming you didn’t end up as something dinner’s before then.
You continued to stumble through the trees, ducking under various branches and batting away stringy spiderwebs, trying not to allow your frustration to get the better of you. After a while, the voices tracking you grew more and more silent, before the walls of the forest swallowed them completely, leaving you utterly alone. 
As you shoved brush and thorns out of your way, the forest opened to give way to a small river, though it was barely more than a creek. It bubbled merrily, as though completely unaware of the horrors lurking behind the shadows of the ancient grove of trees. 
Several lengths ahead, you spotted something crouched beside the water. Your first instinct was panic, thinking you’d stumbled across one of the nefarious creatures of the Wood, a meal being offered to it on a silver platter, but as your vision adjusted, you realized it was only a man, splashing his face with the creek’s cool reserve.
“A-are you the Huntsman?” You hated how timid your voice was, but truthfully, you’d been running for what felt like an eternity, and each snap of a twig in the Woods around had you on edge. You deserved to be frightened, dammit. 
The man snorted before rising to his feet. “I am a Huntsman; whether I am the one you seek, I cannot say.”
 He was taller than you and well-built. His tunic boasted a deep v at the chest exposing a vast swath of the man’s sculpted chest, the skin as scarred as his broad forearms. His breeches were by no means skintight, but it was clear his legs were also made from the same, sinewy muscle that covered the rest of him.
Idly, you wondered whether he was as scarred beneath his clothing as he was out of it. 
He was handsome, there was no doubt, but his appearance was striking. He had a mop of silvery-white hair, parted slightly to cover the criss-cross of scars etched into the right side of his forehead. Below a pair of startling lilac eyes, you could just make out another jagged scar that extended from his right ear to the bridge of his nose. 
He turned back to you, mouth pulled down in an annoyed grimace. “What is your business in the Wood, girl?” 
His eyes roamed the crimson cloak draped around your shoulders, and you swore for a moment there was something akin to amusement glinting in his eyes, despite the severe set of his mouth. 
You shuddered at the sharp intensity of his lilac gaze. “I seek a guide through the Wood — I need to get to one of the villages on the other side.”
Something in the forest snapped and you flinched, though it did not bother the Huntsman, who only narrowed his eyes at you. 
“Are you being pursued?” 
You nodded, your fingers tightening around the folds of your cloak and wrapping it tighter around your shivering frame. “I do not know how many, but they have dogs.”
The Huntsman nodded, stroking his chin in contemplation. “I can get you to the other side in two days; three at most, should your followers pose a problem.” 
You were floored at how easily he accepted your request, even with the additional threat of being hunted like animals by Douma’s men, but you were grateful all the same. 
“I have payment,” you started, hands shooting to dig through the small pouch fastened around your waist, but the wild Huntsman only shook his head. 
“I do not take payment. I will escort you and then I won’t have to worry about any creatures of the Wood sniffing out your bones and getting too close.”
Charming, you groused in your head, though the implication nestled in his words sent another shudder down your spine. 
“What is your name, girl?” The Huntsman’s voice pulled you back to him and the forest, his face expectant. 
You gave him your name and felt a warmth spread through you as he repeated it, mouth mulling over each syllable like it was wrapped with velvet.
“You can call me Sanemi,” the Huntsman said, reaching for the hand-axe lying on its side by the riverbank. “Follow me.” 
---
The Hunstman led you through a winding path that would have been untraceable had you not been watching the way Sanemi’s eyes marked certain landmarks — an errant tree branch here, a particular thorn bush there. 
“Since you are being tracked, we need to move right away,” Sanemi had explained as you stumbled after him, your feet snaring over the various bumps and snarls of tree roots that jutted out from the forest floor. “But I need to gather a few things from my cabin. It’s just a little ways off, and then we will leave.”
Sanemi had largely ignored you for the rest of the trek, though he’d only cut his eyes back to you to ask a single question. 
“Where did you get that cloak?”
You fingered the heavy edge of the ruby wool that your grandmother had fastened snug around your shoulders, its thick folds providing you protection against the biting chill of the autumn wind. “It is an heirloom. My grandmother said it would keep me safe.” 
The Huntsman hummed quietly to himself. “That is one word for it, I suppose.” 
“How do you mean?” 
Sanemi slowed his pace so that you could catch up and walk beside him as he spoke. 
“That cloak is enchanted. Have you not noticed the strange stitching along the hood?” 
Your hands flew to grip the edge of the hood drawn over your head. Sure enough, beneath the pads of your fingertips, you could feel the odd swirls of thread forming some indiscernible shapes along the outermost portion of the cape’s top. 
“I’d not; this was not my cloak to begin with. It was my Grandmother’s.” You did not know why the Huntsman’s tone made you feel self-conscious, as though you’d been too stupid to notice such an obvious variation in the cape snugly fastened around you. It wasn’t as though you’d been afforded a great deal to time to look over it, in those hurried moments before Grandmother had shoved you through her front door and into the Wood beyond. 
Sanemi only shrugged as he continued on ahead, putting distance between you once more, but he called back one final time. “Red is a symbol for many things, girl. I hope your Grandmother at least warned you of that.”
----
Sanemi's cabin was small, but homely. You'd been waiting uneasily near the unlit fireplace at the center of the single-room cabin, unsure whether it would be considered ill-mannered for you to drape yourself across one of the overstuffed armchairs pointed towards the hearth, as the Huntsman milled about, gathering various supplies.
"Have you any preference for which village I take you to?" He called as he rifled through a sparsely-stocked cabinet, scooping up dried provisions into a small leather pouch.
You shook your head. "No, I wish only to get as far away from the Wood as possible."
Sanemi nodded, stalking past you to open another cupboard. Glinting against the dimming light outside, you saw the curved blade of an axe, sharp and polished.
"I can make do with that," the Huntsman said simply. "Though should we run into any weather, it may take longer than three days to reach the other side of the Wood."
You picked nervously at your nails. Any response you could have given him was cut off by the faint cacophany of voices somewhere in the distance.
Brow furrowed, Sanemi crossed the floor of his cabin to a small window and squinted through the fogged glass. Over his shoulder, you could spy the faint glow of fire making its way towards the cabin.
Torches.
You did not need to guess whose torches they were; there was only one reason for a band of men to be in the Netherwood at this hour.
"It's them," you whispered in horror, your heart sinking to your stomach. "The man who is after me -- they're his -- followers. I hesitate to call them men."
Sanemi's eyes narrowed as he glanced back out the window, and you swore you saw his nostrils flare, as though scenting the air.
He gripped you by your forearm, tugging you further into his cabin. “We don’t have much time until they come knocking. I think I can hold them off — but you have to trust me.” 
You looked over the wild man, from the thick, silvery scars seared into the rippled muscles of his forearms to the thinner, more delicate scars which crossed half his face, swallowing down any fear you’d had of the huntsman upon first stumbling upon him by the river. 
You’d been scared of him, but you feared the fate awaiting you at the hands of Douma and his cronies far more; and so, you were desperate enough to place your life in Sanemi’s rough, calloused hands. 
“I trust you,” you vowed, though your voice trembled slightly. “Please just don’t let them take me.”
Something in Sanemi’s eyes tightened as he looked over you, but he nodded, hands reaching for the small pouch strapped to his upper thigh. 
“I’m sure you’re going to protest what I’m about to do,” he said quickly, producing a small hunting knife from the pocket. “But I need you to believe me when I say this is the only way.” 
“Take off your cloak.” Sanemi ordered, standing tall before you, hand out in waiting. 
Your hands flew hesitantly to the metal clasp resting just below the hollow of your throat. “But my grandmother said —“ 
“I know what your grandmother said, girl, but I’m telling you, that cloak will do you no good indoors. It is only effective out in the Wood.” 
You could tell the huntsman’s patience was wearing thin, but still, you hesitated. 
Sanemi huffed impatiently. “I swear to you I will return it the moment they leave, but you must remove it now. They will use it to track your scent.” 
You shuddered as your fingers quickly freed the small latch, and the crimson wool draped around your shoulders loosened. With some hesitancy, you held your cloak out to the huntsman, who balled the fabric up tight before crossing the floor of his cabin, shoving it into a small armoire and behind several hung pelts and well-worn leathers. 
Sanemi was before you once more before you could blink. “Turn around,” he ordered, twirling the knife in his hand to motion you to spin and put your back to him. 
You complied without protest, hands twiddling nervously before you, until you heard the unmistakeable sound of fabric tearing at your back. 
The corset worn over the cotton layers of your dress loosened and fell to the cabin floor, it’s ribboned ties neatly severed where they’d been laced at your back. 
“What in the devil —,” you began hotly, arms jumping to cross over your unsupported chest as you twisted to glare at the huntsman. 
A warm hand firmly pushed your shoulder, keeping you facing forward. “Hold still, woman,” Sanemi barked, and the heat at your back disappeared for a moment as you felt him kneel behind you. 
To your horror, you felt the outermost layer of your dress lift up and away from you as Sanemi rose, bringing the garment up over your head. 
“I asked you to help me, you dog!” You squealed, your attempts to squirm away from the mannerless huntsman at your back futile. “Not strip me bare to do with as you please!” 
Behind you, Sanemi gave a great snort. “Helpin’ you is exactly what I’m doing, if you’d shut up for one second.” 
Left in nothing but your thin, cotton shift, you silently wondered whether you should’ve taken your chances and continued your trek through the Wood. Surely, being eaten by one of the Netherwood’s more nefarious creatures of horror was preferable to being stripped nude by a half-wild brute in his isolated cabin. 
Your musings were cut short, however, as a firm hand wrapped around your forearm and tugged you towards the back of the cabin, where a small doorway closed off the hut’s only other room. 
Sanemi kicked the door open revealing a surprisingly large bed, draped in blankets made of the furs of several different animals. 
“N-no —mmph!” Your protest was cut off by Sanemi’s free hand as it clamped over your mouth as he hissed at you to shush. 
Over the sound of your thudding heart and hard breath as you planted against the huntsman’s palm, you heard the faint but unmistakable sound of male laughter and jeers, cruel and cold. 
“They will be here any moment,” Sanemi said lowly, and he removed the hand from your mouth in favor of shoving you none too gently into the small bedroom. Before you could speak, the huntsman gripped you around the waist and tossed you effortlessly onto the bed, your body bouncing slightly against the soft plush. 
“Get under the covers and lay face-down in the pillows. Let your hair cover you.” 
Scrambling up against the headboard, you looked back to your savior or your villain — you’d not yet decided under which category he fell — but saw that he was already standing back in the doorway, jaw tense and his eyes trained on the front door of his cabin. 
He glanced back to you only once. “And move that thing off to your shoulders. Make yourself appear as though you’re indecent.” 
With that, the huntsman quickly shut the door to his bedroom, just as a fist pounded against the wood of the door outside. 
You kicked your way under the many pelts adorning the bed, savoring their warmth against your chilled skin. Remembering Sanemi’s final warning, you tugged the sleeves of your shift off your shoulders, concealing it and the rest of your body below the soft fur blankets. 
The front door of the cabin opened, and you buried your face into one of the pillows resting against the headboard, begging the comforting scent of forest pine and cedar to calm your raging pulse. 
“How can I help you gentlemen this evening?” Sanemi called, and you almost laughed at how cordial he sounded, as though he hadn’t just cut your dress from you like a brute. 
Any smile you had was immediately wiped from your face at the cold, steely voice which answered him. “We’re searching for a woman. She belongs to someone who is eager to get her back.” 
You balled the pelts below you in your fists, teeth grinding. Of course, you’d never actually agreed to marrying Douma, and yet the beast felt entitled to claim ownership over you, as though you were no better than a piece of furniture. 
Though, you supposed that wasn’t quite an accurate comparison. Furniture survived Douma; women did not. 
“Is that so?” Sanemi’s hardened tone sent shivers down your spine, and you wondered whether his face matched the stony, scathing cadence of his voice. “Well unfortunately for you boys, it’s just me and the wife here. And you’ve interrupted us.” 
“Our apologies,” the scout said, though it did not sound as though he was sorry at all. “But you won’t mind us taking a peak? Just t make sure you and your wife don’t have a visitor.” 
Sanemi’s answering snarl was soft, but it did not conceal the deadly threat contained within. “Surely you understand why I cannot let a number of strange men into my home, while my wife is indisposed.” 
You had to give him credit; Sanemi sounded every bit the dominating, over-protective husband he was pretending to be. 
There was a beat before Sanemi sighed, his irritation almost convincing. “Make it quick. And do not enter the bedroom.” 
There was a shuffle of feet, heavy and booted, that crossed the threshold of the cabin, and the hair on your skin rose at the charge of violence which filled the air. Breath caught in your throat, you buried your face deeper into the huntsman’s mattress and prayed his ruse would be successful. 
The door to the bedroom banged open, startling you with a squeal as you ruched deeper below the pelts. 
“I told you to stay out of the bedroom,” Sanemi’s voice almost sounded bored, but it was thankfully close. Your eyes slid closed as you willed your heart to slow its drumbeat against your sternum as the resulting silence hung thick in the air. 
“Our apologies,” the apparent leader of Douma’s band of henchmen bit out, his tone acerbic, and his frustration evident. The bedroom door slammed shut once more, and the heavy footsteps quickly made their way back through the cabin and out the front door. 
All remained silent in the huntsman’s cabin for several, long moments, and you did not dare to rise from the bed that had become your sanctuary. 
After what felt like an eternity, the door to Sanemi’s sleeping chamber pushed open, the light from the main room of the cabin flooding in. 
“They are gone,” the huntsman said simply. “It is safe for you to come back out.” 
You turned over and rose from his bed, quickly tugging the sleeves of your thin shift back up over your bare shoulders, if not to preserve the last shred of your modesty that the huntsman before you hadn’t cut away. 
You were startled by his appearance in the doorway. Though his eyes remained fixed on the wood floor of the cabin, you saw that the man before you was nearly as stripped as you were. 
Somehow, in the few precious seconds between him throwing you onto his bed and Douma’s men barging through the cabin door, Sanemi had discarded his lined shirt, leaving everything from the waist-up bare. The only garment which remained on him were his deerskin breeches, and Sanemi had somehow undone its front laces, loosening their fit around his hips. Between the undone cords, you spied a thin trail of silver hair that begun just below his navel and disappeared below the seam of his pants.
It was admirable the dedication Sanemi had shown in perfecting your ruse. To the untrained eye, it truly looked as though Douma’s men had indeed interrupted a husband and his wife as they’d been engaged in acts you’d been told were reserved for the marital bed, the disheveled state of Sanemi’s breeches giving the distinct appearance of having been just barely tugged over naked hips. 
The thought made your mouth run dry, and something hot flared in your belly.
Sanemi ignored your apparent ogling of him, as he produced his discarded tunic from the floor where he'd tossed it and shrugged it back over his head.
Wordlessly, he gathered the shredded remains of your corset and handed it to you, keeping his gaze averted to allow you to redress. You managed to pull on your outer skirts back over your shirt, but you fingered the torn strap of your corset.
“You ruined it,” you said, nose wrinkling as you punched it between your thumb and index finger. “I cannot lace it when you’ve torn the stays.”
Sanemi frowned, and if you hadn’t known better, you would have thought he looked slightly apologetic for the state of your outer-corset.
“Corset woes aside, we need to go now, if we are to have any chance of getting you to another village before your fiancé’s men catch up to us.” Sanemi grabbed the leather satchel he'd been packing before Douma's men had interrupted and began filling it once more. 
You scowled. “He is not my fiancé,” 
“Your keeper, then.” Sanemi amended. The Huntsman stalked back over to the armoire in his sitting room and wrenched the worn doors open, pulling out several pieces of cloth.
“Here,” he said gruffly, tossing you a balled wad of crimson wool. “As promised.” 
You accepted the cloak with a small, uttered thanks, and fastened it quickly around your shoulders. The Huntsman then turned to dig through a small cabinet, returning before you with a small spool of sturdy, leather cord.
He held it out to you. “For your corset,” he said gruffly, his cheeks slightly pink. Feeling your own blush creep up your neck, you accepted the offering. Picking the torn garment up once more, you slid it over your shoulders and used Sanemi’s cords to lace the front together.
Truthfully, the finished product wasn’t half bad; the cord was long enough to cross all the way up to the top of the corset, with enough leftover to allow you to pull it and secure it in place around your bust. You tied off the cord with a pleased nod, before looking back to Sanemi in gratitude. Before you could properly thank him, the Huntsman thrust a small basket into your newly freed hand.
"Provisions. For the journey." He said by way of explanation, and you nodded, nestling the handle into the crook of your arm.
Without so much as a glance around the cabin, Sanemi wrenched the door open and allowed you to pass through the entryway first, pausing behind you only to tightly latch the door shut.
And the two of you set off into the Netherwood.
———
You were no time-keeper by any means, especially in a place like the Wood where daylight was hard enough to find; but it felt like hours had passed since you last spoke to the Huntsman, and the silence was pressing heavily upon you — especially the deeper you ventured into the dark of the Wood.
Though Sanemi had been walking ahead of you, you took it upon yourself to increase your pace, until you walked astride with him.
“How long have you been guiding others through the Netherwood?” You asked lightly, hoping that some — any — conversation you could have with the stoic woodsman would distract you from the odd growls and noises concealed within the forest’s shadows.
“A while.” Sanemi’s answer was as brisk as his pace, and you struggled to match it. 
“Have you lived here your whole life, or are you from one of the villages nearby?” You pressed, scanning your memory as you tried to recall whether there had ever been a boy with white hair and a scarred face in your village. 
“No.” 
You waited for him to elaborate, but Sanemi offered no further explanation. You sighed and fell back behind him; if this was to be his attitude the entire journey, you were in for a long few days. 
The pair of you had traveled for what felt like several more hours without a word before the silence began to irritate you. You sped up your pace until your stride matched the Huntsman’s, walking with him side by side. 
“Why do you live alone in the Netherwood?” You twirled the basket around your hand as the pair of you walked, the nerves you’d felt upon first starting the journey through the Wood having long since abated, in no short part due to the presence of the Huntsman and his axe by your side. 
Sanemi did not turn towards you, his eyes remaining fixed on the bramble ahead. “Why did you venture into the Wood alone?” 
You groaned. “Is this how our entire journey is to go? Either you give me mono-syllable answers, or every time I ask a question, you avoid answering by responding with your own?” 
“That depends, do you intend to keep asking me questions?”
You barely resisted the urge to whack the sullen Huntsman with your basket. “Unbelievable,” you grumbled. “Your time here in the Wood has turned you into a curmudgeonly hermit.” 
Sanemi snorted. “You assume I wasn’t  one to begin with.” 
“I can’t imagine someone who helps travelers cross the Wood was always so  churlish and miserable.” You shot back. 
The Huntsman remained quiet for a moment, though his air did not carry the same cold standoffishness that you’d come to understand meant he was ignoring you. Rather, Sanemi seemed to be in thought. 
“It has been nearly four years,” he said after a long while. “Since I began helping travelers cross the Wood.” 
Your eyes widened. “Four years?” That was an awfully long time to risk one’s neck for the sake of strangers — some of whom, you realized, may not have been all that good. 
Sanemi nodded and you whistled. “I’m sure you’ve seen many kinds of people attempting to traverse through the Wood.”
“There are only two types of travelers,” Sanemi disagreed. “Those who live to make it to my door, and those who do not. I try not to pry into the privacies of those who do manage to find me.” He cut his eyes at you, accusingly. “And usually, they aren’t so eager to pry into mine.”
You ignored the jab, though it bruised your ego more than you wanted to admit. “You don’t like people, yet you’ve crafted your entire existence around serving them.” You could not stop the amused edge in your words. “It is quite ironic, you have to admit.”
Sanemi refused to dignify you with a response, and so the first leg of your journey continued in relative silence.
The stifling quiet that extended between the Huntsman and you finally subsided once Sanemi announced you’d be stopping for the night and making camp. He’d been quick to notice your unease as you’d cast your eyes nervously around the shadowed trees of the Wood, assuring you that you all were in an area less-frequented by the various terrors that called the forest home.
“I will sit and keep watch,” Sanemi said as you’d curled up against the leaves of the forest floor, your red cloak pulled tight around your frame to block out the autumn night’s chill. “So try and sleep.”
“You are asking me to put a great deal of trust in you, Huntsman,” you said softly, but in truth, you did not feel nearly as afraid of him as you perhaps had earlier in the day.
He snorted, dismissively. “I’ve had you in my bed already, have I not? If I was going to harm you, girl, I would’ve already done so.”
Something tightened in his eyes as he dropped your gaze. “And I would never do such a thing to a woman.”
There was a quiet pain in his vow, such that you did not think his words were entirely meant for your ears. But they comforted you nonetheless, and so, still facing the handsome and mysterious Huntsman, you allowed yourself to relax enough to drift off into a dreamless sleep.
---
The journey was taking longer than Sanemi originally believed.
Three days into your travels with the Huntsman, and you’d barely reached the halfway point in the Wood. Though, that was not due to any fault of Sanemi’s; there’d been a few times when he’d stopped mid-stride, eyes narrowed on some unseen thing deep within the forest that you could not see, but concerned him enough to change course. When you asked, the Huntsman had only grumbled that he’d heard suspicious movement ahead, and that he knew whatever it was, it likely wasn’t human.
You didn’t bother to question his judgment. After all, it was Sanemi who was the expert in traversing through the Wood. You, however, had spent the better part of three days understanding how utterly helpless you were without him.
You hadn’t meant to stumble across it. 
You’d only meant to go relieve yourself behind a tree — a simple evergreen, that had looked innocent and unassuming enough. 
As you’d quickly learned, however, upon squatting near the tree’s base, it was anything but innocent. For no sooner had you moved to pull your skirts out of the way had you felt a spiny hand close around your forearm, its knife-sharp fingers digging into your flesh.
The withered, bony had was connected to a sinewy arm, covered in ridged, black skin that made up the panting, salivating bat-like creature that had managed to camouflage itself against the bark of the tree.
You’d taken one look at the rows of sharp, yellow teeth and screamed loud enough to startle the dead.
Loud enough to bring a certain Huntsman crashing through the brush, axe clutched tightly in hand, his eyes wild and bright.
“Duck,” he’d barked once, and somehow you’d managed to wrench yourself to the side of the devil as Sanemi’s weapon buried deep into the creature’s face, the beast releasing your arm and stumbling back with a pitiful gurgle before it dropped to the floor.
You’d hardly had the chance to collect yourself before the Huntsman was stomping over to you, yanking you up by your bicep and dragging you away from the nefarious little tree.
“A goddamned hidebehind,” he furiously spat. “Of all things to provoke, you choose a fucking hidebehind.”
Sanemi ignored your slight protests at being manhandled back to the path he’d identified as leading out of the Wood, too lost in his own raging assessment of you.
“How the devil a pretty little thing like you managed to make it to my door in one piece is the only thing that makes me consider there may be a higher power, given how foolishly reckless you act in the Woods where there’s no shortage of creatures that would want to devour you —“ 
The Huntsman continued his rant, but your ears only picked up on a single fragment of his ramblings.
“You think me pretty?” It was silly, yet the notion that the devilishly handsome Huntsman accompanying you found you worth looking at made something in your stomach flutter. 
Sanemi shot you a withering glare. “You may think me a miserable recluse, girl, but even I have eyes.”
You didn’t know why, but the comment made you smile for the rest of the night, a curious warmth blooming in your chest.
----
You settled for the night among a small circle of trees. Sanemi had helped you shake down a bed of pine needles from a nearby tree, allowing the fragrant nettles to form a soft bed for you against the forest floor.
You watched him repeat the process to make his own bed, your eyes curious. "You seem to have a great deal of experience with this," you mused.
Sanemi produced a single apple from his pouch and sliced it in half with a small hunting knife he kept strapped to his hip. He tossed you one half before he stretched out on his pine needle bed, propping up one cheek on his fist as he faced you. "I s'ppose sleeping outdoors is something of a family trait."
That piqued your curiosity. Though Sanemi had not divulged any details of his personal life with you, you'd assumed he'd been a true loner in his cabin in the Wood.
“You speak as though you still have family,” You bit into your half of the fruit, chewing slowly as you thought. “Do you?” 
Sanemi nodded. “No parents to speak of, but a younger brother — a few years younger than you. Still a boy, though in a man’s body.” He scowled. “The little brat has outgrown me.” 
You smiled at the obvious fondness belying the irritation on his face. “A boy bigger than you? I find that hard to believe.”
Your gentle praise had the intended effect of making the Huntsman look slightly smug, before the same sour look passed his face. “He has grown slightly taller than I, and by all accounts is still growing. I have a feeling he will try and hold it over my head the next time I see him.”
You wondered if Sanemi’s younger brother would literally do so, and the thought made you smile. 
“You said the next time you see him, but you’ve said you have no parents — where does he live, if not with you?” 
Sanemi grimaced, chucking the last of his apple core behind his shoulders. He remained quiet for a long moment before answering. 
“He lives with a friend; he can take better care of him than I can right now.” 
Something about the Huntsman’s tone made it clear the topic was a sensitive subject for the young Huntsman, and so you elected not to press the matter further.
“And what of you?” Sanemi said gruffly, surprising you with his willingness to engage in conversation as the two of you continued your trek. “I know you said you had a Grandmother, as she was the one to give you that.”
He nodded pointedly at your cloak, and you saw that curious heat enter his eyes once more at they combed over the scarlet wool draped around your frame. But the mention of your grandmother caused a lump to form in your throat that took you several moments to work around, the damning prickle of tears stinging your eyes. 
“I do,” you said hoarsely after a moment. “Though I do not know if she survived after helping me escape Douma. Even if she did, I know I shall never see her again.”
Though your vision had become blurred by your tears, you could have sworn you saw Sanemi’s hand twitched towards you at the sound of the wobble in your voice. 
“Douma,” he repeated. “Is that the person you’re fleeing from?” 
You nodded, exhaling a shaky sigh. “He claims to be my fiancé but I accepted no such proposal.” 
Sanemi leaned against the wood of a tree opposite from you, arms folding across his chest. “Then he does not know what it means to be a fiancé,”
You gave a watery chuckle. “No, I suppose he does not.” You chewed on your lip for a moment. “But Douma does not ask; he demands and he expects. His offer was not really a request for my hand — it was a warning that he would collect me to do with as he pleased.”
Sanemi tensed. “What do you mean by that?” 
You combed your fingers through the tangled tresses of your hair, and anxious habit you’d had for as long as you could remember. “In the last three years, Douma has taken four young women from the village to be his wife; every one of them has since disappeared.” 
The Huntsman sucked in a shocked breath. “What has happened to them? Has anyone searched?” 
You smiled ruefully. “I do not know; no one does. Search parties were dispensed each time, but those who looked came back empty-handed.” Your eyes remained fixed on the small, flickering flame of the campfire. “He claimed the first three ran away into the Wood; said they’d left him to be with a lover.” 
You wrapped your arms tighter around yourself, seeking comfort in your grandmother’s cloak. “Quite the coincidence, is it not?” 
“Quite nefarious,” Sanemi remarked darkly, shaking his head. “And what of the fourth wife?” 
Your head dropped. “My dear friend, Kotoha,” you felt the tears begin to gather in your eyes once more. “She was pregnant when Douma demanded her hand, but he did not appear to care. She gave birth a few months later — a beautiful baby boy named Inosuke.” 
“She seemed happy for a while after that, and I thought perhaps Douma had been telling the truth; by all accounts, he was kind towards her,” you continued, fighting the shiver trying to lick its way up your spine. “But then Kotoha disappeared, and Inosuke, too.” 
Sanemi stiffened at that. “When was this?” He asked suddenly, his tone urgent.
You looked up at him, startled. “Just a week before I found you.” 
Sanemi swore lowly, his hand dragging over his face. At your questioning look, he continued.
“A few days before we met, I was leaving to check on a series of caves that I frequent in the east,” he began. “I was half a kilometer from your village when I —,” he hesitated. “Spotted a few men, dragging something through the trees. They seemed to come from your village.” 
Your heart dropped to your stomach. “Did you see —?” Your question choked off as your voice cracked. 
Sanemi shook his head. “All that was left was a pile of bones. Just one person’s. But there were shreds of cloths mixed in,” Sanemi’s mouth twisted down in a snarl. “Clothes belonging to a young child. But no sign of their bones among the adult’s.” 
A cold, clammy sweat broke out across your forehead. “But Kotoha was hardly missing a week — surely that’s not enough time for her to be reduced to bones?” 
Sanemi opened his mouth but closed it before he spoke, his eyebrows knitting together as he struggled for words. 
“I have seen things in the Wood that are  capable of stripping flesh in a matter of minutes,” he said carefully, eyes trained on your face. “It would not be unheard of.” 
You felt the blood drain from your face as nausea wracked through you. “Oh gods,” you moaned, arms shakily coming to rest upon your knees to brace your head as it fell into your hands. “Oh gods — Kotoha.” 
You remained like that for several moments, viciously fighting against the roiling of your stomach, desperate to keep down what meager rations you’d managed to eat. 
Sanemi called your name, soft and gentle. You waited a moment, focusing on taking several, steadying breaths before you lifted your head to meet his gaze.
“So that is to be my fate once he catches me,” you whispered in horror. “To be reduced to nothing more than a pile of bones and tossed into the Wood like garbage.” You shuddered as another wave of nauseous dread sluiced through you. “And I cannot even fathom what will be done to me before then.” 
“It will not,” Sanemi’s answering snarl was soft but vicious, and it broke through the cold terror threatening to knock you off your axis. “I will get you out of this forest and you will be free. Mark my words.” 
“Do not make promises you cannot keep, Sanemi.” You warned, your eyes still wide, haunted. “If he catches me, he will do worse to you; death will be a kindness he will withhold.”
Despite the solemnity of your words, Sanemi only scoffed. “I assure you, he would do no such thing.” He looked to you, eyes serious. “And I would kill him before he had the chance to so much as look your direction.”
You wanted to dismiss his words as nothing more than the bragging of an overconfident, idiotic man. But something in both Sanemi’s tone and the way he was leaning against the tree — one foot resting causally against the bark, the other stretched out before him, supporting his weight, with his arms folded across his chest — made you think perhaps Sanemi’s confidence was more than mere bravado. 
Even though you knew you shouldn't, you took comfort in it; in him.
"You're a good man, Sanemi," you said quietly. "Better than most."
Sanemi scoffed, shaking his head, but the shadow over his face betrayed his own internal turmoil. "I am not half the man you'd like me to be."
You quirked an eyebrow at him, head tilting in question. “Do you care what I think of you?” When the Huntsman did not answer, you pressed. “You worry that I think ill of you — why?”
Sanemi, at best, was confusing. Maddening. He spoke to you gruffly, as though his years in the Wood had made him forget all semblance of decorum and basic human decency.
Yet, there was something else, too; though you hadn’t much experience being desired by men, Sanemi had shown you a particular level of care. He always handed you your dried rations first, ensuring you’d eat your fill before he; he always offered a hand to help you over a particularly tricky stretch of terrain, carrying your basket for you without so much as you having to ask. 
Then, there’d been the way he’d cradled you close earlier in the day, when you stumbled upon the poor man whose body had been mangled and half-eaten by one of the Wood’s inhabitants. He hadn’t needed to tuck your head against his chest like he did, holding you tight as he spun the two of you out of range, to avoid joining the lost soul whose entrails were strewn across the forest floor; he hadn’t needed to comfort you and wipe your frightened tears.
But he had. 
The realization hit you like a boulder. “You feel protective of me,” you murmured in awe, your eyes locked onto him even as he shifted under the weight of your stare. 
Sanemi tried to scowl, but it came off as more a wince. “I feel protective towards any woman who is being treated as something to abuse. What your fake-fiancé has done is abhorrent.”
His voice quieted. “You do not deserve that fate. You deserve to find something good — something that will make you happy.”
You hummed, pretending you were in thought as you began to slowly close the distance between you. “I would like to be happy,” you conceded. 
“You should be,” Sanemi answered. 
“I have felt happy here in the Wood,” you continued. “Have you, Huntsman? Felt happy here in the Netherwood, I mean?”
Sanemi swallowed hard. “Perhaps.” 
You took another step. “Recently?”
“Recent enough,” Sanemi watched you warily, his voice like gravel. 
You clicked your tongue. “Have you enjoyed our time together? However brief?” 
At this, Sanemi rolled his eyes. “You have certainly kept things interesting, when you’re not desperately trying to become a meal for some hungry beast.” 
When you did not answer, Sanemi looked nervously back to you, and his voice softened. “Yes. I have enjoyed it.”
You felt like you were stripping him back, peeling back layers of sarcasm and steel that he’d carefully erected to keep himself from getting close — from caring.
But you were doing it; and he was letting you.
“And you think I’m pretty,” you added, taking another step towards him.
“Aye,” Sanemi croaked, his eyes fixed on your face, the the flicker of the small fire only adding to the heat blazing in his lilac gaze. 
You drew up before him, the toes of your boots just touching his. “I find you quite pretty as well, Huntsman.” 
Sanemi’s eyes closed, his shoulders tense. “I am to deliver you safely to the nearest village.” Lilac irises opened to meet yours and he looked at you gently; apologetically. “We cannot do this.” 
You did not balk. “And if I wanted to stay with you?” You whispered, fingers coming to toy with the folds of his tunic. “What would you say then?” 
Sanemi breathed out a soft sigh of your name, the syllables dripping like honey from his lips. “It is not possible, I’m afraid.” 
You looked up at him through lowered eyelashes and noted how his gaze flicked down to your lips before back to your eyes. “Why?” 
Sanemi’s hand gently brushed a few loose strands of hair back from your face, tucking them behind your ear, and you leaned into the warmth of his touch. “Because you are a beautiful, little lamb, and I am a wolf in a forest of beasts. You do not wish to spend your days here, in the darkness.” 
“You cannot speak to what I want,” you challenged, your fingers rising to clench around his wrist, to hold his hand in place against the side of your head. “My life is my own now; I have no set path.”
“But I would like to travel down yours,” you added quietly, after a moment. 
“It is not one open to transients,” Sanemi warned, though his other hand rose to rest against the dip in your waist, holding you against him.
You only shook your head. “I do not intend to be temporary, Sanemi. I wish to stay with you. I wish to help others as you have helped me.” 
“I’ve yet to help you,” Sanemi said wryly. “Our bargain was that I deliver you to one of the villages on the other side of the Wood. We are still making that journey.”
You stretched up on your toes and boldly pressed your lips against the hollow of his throat, savoring the skipping pace of his heart beneath your mouth. 
“A new bargain, then,” you offered. Sanemi said your name once, as though in warning, but when he did not levy any threat, you only continued, moving your lips up under his jaw.
“You get me to the other side of the Wood. If I still want to stay with you, then you will let me. If I don’t, we will part ways at the first village we come to.”
You’d kissed your way to his lips, but held back, allowing that final line to remain in place between you even as your resolve wavered against the force of your desire for him — for this Huntsman of the Netherwood. 
Sanemi’s eyes fell to your lips, hovering so very closely to his own. “You assume I want you to stay,” he murmured, though he made no move to push you away. “You assume I want to look after a lamb forever.” 
You smiled softly. “Even a lamb can help take care of a wolf.”
Sanemi’s eyes were full of a wariness edged by the faintest trace of hope. “Aye, I suppose that’s true.” The hand against the side of your head fell to caress your cheek. “And as infuriating as I find you to be,” he leaned in close, his lips just barely touching yours. “I do think you quite beautiful, little Lamb.”
You surged forward with a breathy gasp, lips feverishly meeting his as you begged the Huntsman to consume you whole. 
Sanemi responded with equal fervor, his arm locking tightly around your waist as the hand against your face tilted your head slightly to the right, allowing him to deepen the kiss. 
You’d shared a few stolen kisses here and there in your youth with some of the village boys, but never before had you been kissed like this. Never before had you known the passion and all-consuming vigor that the Huntsman poured into you, as he walked the two of you back over roots and loose stones to press you against the roughened bark of a nearby tree. 
No, those kisses had been child’s play. For the way Sanemi’s mouth moved against yours was enough to make you feel as though you’d been dipped in lantern oil and set aflame, and yet you could not find it within yourself to care that you were burning. Not when he molded you against the rigid planes of his body as though to absorb you into his being; not when his thigh slotted between yours, its muscle brushing against a sensitive spot between your legs that had you gasping and Sanemi groaning into your mouth. 
As quickly as it began, it ended, Sanemi breaking away from your lips with a strangled pant as he leapt back, as though scalded by the inferno he’d lit within you. 
There was something untamed in his gaze as he regarded you, his breath choppy as he collected himself. Still stunned by the ferocity with which he’d kissed you, your fingers jumped to your lips, noting the slight swelling now there. 
“I was wrong about you,” Sanemi said breathlessly, his cheeks tinged an alluring shade of pink. “You may not be a lamb after all.” 
Your fingers dropped from your lips as you raised an eyebrow. “Are you saying I am a wolf?” 
Sanemi shook his head, that wildness still blazing in his eyes. “No, not a wolf.” His voice dropped to a purr as he regarded you with a look that made your thighs clench. “You are temptation given physical form.” 
——-
 Neither of you spoke of what transpired against the tree for several hours, though you’d managed to brush aside any lingering awkwardness with light conversation about Sanemi’s time in the Netherwood.
And, despite any lingering doubt as to the sincerity of your words he may have had, Sanemi seemed to naturally gravitate towards you, his hands never straying far from your form as you walked. 
Truthfully, it made you giddy. You’d never experienced the thrill of another man’s touch while in the village, though Kotoha certainly hadn’t spared you any details. Vivid descriptions furtively whispered behind hands, however, were nothing compared to reality. Even Kotoha’s most blush-inducing tales paled in comparison to the electric flash you felt each time Sanemi’s warm hand gripped yours to steer you back from a particularly darkened corner of the woods, or the flutter in your stomach when he lifted you easily up and over unsteady ground, his hands always lingering for a spare second on your waist or the small of your back as you settled. 
It became harder to imagine leaving him once you reached the end of the Wood. With each passing hour, your conviction that you would remain alongside the mysterious Huntsman grew all the stronger. 
The pair of you were resting near a blackberry bush, you perched on a small boulder while Sanemi sharpened his axe, his hand running the small whetting stone against the curve of the blade with precision.
“Have you ever been in love?” The question broke the comfortable silence before you could think better of it.
Sanemi’s sharpening stone paused briefly before continuing along the curve of his axe. “Once,” he said, gruffly.  “Though we were so young, I don’t know if you could properly call it that.” 
You sat up, your curiosity piqued. “Where are they now?” 
The Huntsman hesitated. “She is long-gone. Died here, in the Wood.” 
Your heart clenched. “I’m sorry. I cannot imagine that grief.”
Sanemi did not respond, instead refocusing his attention back to his blade. “It was around four years ago, now.” 
Four years ago. Around the time Sanemi  had begun escorting lost souls through the Netherwood.
“Have you been in the Wood since?” You asked gently, trying to focus on a loose thread handing from your cloak so that he would not feel pressured by your stare. 
Sanemi nodded. “I think,” he cleared his throat. “I think I started helping others as a way to honor her. She was kind that way.”
You smiled at that. “She sounds wonderful; and you do right by her memory.” 
The Huntsman said nothing more, his silence more contemplative as he finished sharpening his weapon. 
By the time the pair of you set back off on your path through the Wood, the morning fog had somewhat subsided, though it’s mist lingered in the denser sections of the forest. 
“Is it normal to not have encountered many of the Wood’s creatures?” You bit down on the shudder you felt at the memory of the partially-eaten corpse you’d encountered a few days prior. “I feel as though we only see the aftermath of the beasts, rather than the monsters themselves.” 
Sanemi smirked quietly to himself, though you did not know what he found amusing about your question. “I suppose that cloak is keeping them at bay, Lamb.” 
You rolled your eyes, knocking your shoulder playfully against his. “Perhaps they’re frightened of the big bad Huntsman,” 
“Perhaps. I’m quite scary.” 
Your hand found his. “Not at all. In fact, I find you quite —“
Your thought was cut off, however, as Sanemi tore his hand from yours to hold an arm out before you, stilling you. You’d traveled with the Huntsman long enough to know he was telling you to be quiet while he listened, his ears far more discerning amidst the silent noise of the forest than yours.
Only it was not silent; in the distance, you could hear raised voices, yelling, and the distinct howls of several hounds.
Your eyes found Sanemi’s, and you were certain yours were as wide as his, as your heart began to thunder against your chest. 
There was a strange melodic chant rising above the cluster of voices some distance through the trees, and you both turned back and strained to listen.
As the jeering voices and barking of dogs drew nearer, it became clearer what was being said — what thing those voices were loudly whooping and mocking amidst the excited titter undercutting their bloodlust.
Your name.
Douma’s men had picked up your trail, and they’d caught up.
“Run.” Sanemi ordered, tearing the leather satchel from his shoulders and looping the strap around yours. “Do you remember which direction north is?” 
Eyes wide and limbs trembling, you nodded, your breath hitched in your throat as every instinct within you was overtaken by sheer terror. Sanemi placed his hands on your shoulders, squeezing firmly to get your attention back on him. 
“Run north,” he repeated. “Follow the river and do not stop. It is against the wind, so it should be harder to track your scent,” Sanemi’s eyes darted up over your shoulder, narrowing as the unseen force drew nearer. “I will catch up to you. Do not drop that satchel.” 
Your mouth opened and closed several times as you gaped at him, fear, so deep and primal, engrained in your every nerve as you realized he intended to send you deeper into the Netherwood. Alone. 
“I cannot — Sanemi,” you begged, your hand gripping his forearm in a desperate attempt to stay close to him, your protector. 
Gently, Sanemi removed your hand from him. “Y/N, I promise I will find you soon. I need to get them,” he jerkily nodded backwards to the voices and dog howls drawing closer and closer to you in the distance. “Off our trail. 
You shook your head, only trembling harder. To separate surely would mean one, if not both of you would die, and you could not bear to leave him to deal with the onslaught of Douma’s men alone. 
“I promise,” you’d not realized Sanemi’s hands had cupped your face until you felt the press of his forehead against yours. “I will find you. Now go.” He urged, and with a slight shove, Sanemi sent you stumbling in the direction you assumed was North. 
With a great deal of reluctance, your legs began to move as you hurried over fallen branches and twisted roots, every pump of your legs growing stronger as your fear intensified. 
You hadn’t known how many men were in pursuit of you, and you’d left Sanemi alone with only an axe to protect himself. 
You’d as good as doomed him. 
But you kept running in the direction you thought was north, eyes frantically trying to track the watery sunlight filtering through the trees. 
The moment you’d chances scanning for the sun meant you did not see the thick, twisting root that had broken across the forest floor, not until your foot became entangled and you were sent sprawling across the dirt. 
Moaning slightly, you scrambled up, refusing to acknowledge the faint bruising pain you felt in your ankle as you moved to keep running. 
A snap of a tree branch froze you in your tracks. As stupid as you were, you turned towards the source of the sound, dread coiling in your gut. A shadow emerged from behind one of the ancient trees of the Wood, clutching something shiny.
A sword; long, wicked and cruelly sharp, and yet somehow, the blade frightened you far less than its wielder, for his face was familiar.
You’d grown up alongside it, after all.
“Well, well,” the boy — man — cooed at you. “We’ve been looking for you for quite sometime, you know?”
You took a step back, eager to put whatever distance you could between yourself and the smirking village boy who looked at you like you were his next meal. 
“K-Kaigaku,” you stuttered in disbelief. “What are you doing? We were — we were friends.”
The boy’s laugh made your blood curdle. “Don’t mock me,” he shifted his sword to rest against his other shoulder as his free hand twirled a small dagger. “I only align myself with the strong, and you are nothing but a weak and pathetic little mouse.” 
“But Lord Douma,” Kaigaku mused, his grin offset by the malice alighting his eyes. “Lord Douma is strong; powerful. I am loyal to him, not you.” 
“Lord Douma?” You repeated, your voice as sharp as the blade glinting in the faint daylight as the boy before you tilted it back and forth. “Is that what he’s told you to call him? What, pray tell, is he lord of — being an egomaniacal, fatuous, greedy murderer?” 
Kaigaku’s smirk unfurled into an ugly sneer as he shifted to point his sword at you. “Watch your mouth, girl.” 
“And what of Kotoha?” You demanded, your anger an untamable fire that burned in your veins. “You were sweet on her once — did she deserve her fate?”
There was no sign of that fondness in the cruelty which lined Kaigaku’s face as he spat, “She spread her legs for some man like a whore and bore his bastard. Lord Douma only made sure she met an end befitting of her filth.” 
“You vile, wretched creature,” you swore. “Damn you! Damn him!” 
That hair-raising smirk reappeared as Kaigaku stepped towards you. “I cannot wait to see what Lord Douma has planned for you. You should’ve seen what he did to your beloved Granny, the hag.”
Your blood turned cold and a stone like lead settled in the pit of your stomach. You’d assumed, of course, that your grandmother had paid with her life in helping you escape, but you could not bear to hear the ways she’d suffered in exchange for your life. 
Somewhere, in the depths of the Netherwood, a wolf howled. 
“Shall I tell you all about it, Y/N?” Kaigaku taunted. “Shall I tell you how your dear Granny screamed as Lord Douma flayed her alive, piece by piece? How she sobbed for your grandfather? For you?” 
Tears burned, as hot as acid in your eyes as you shook. “Stop,”
“It was quite pathetic, really,” Kaigaku sighed. “She went rather quickly. I suppose that’s what happens when you play with old crones — their pathetic little hearts can’t withstand the fun.” 
You were at a loss; part of you wanted to lunge for the boy, to sink your nails into his eyes and rip, to tear him limb from limb as you screamed with rage until even the beasts of the Netherwood could not tell whether you were human or kin. 
But on the other hand, you were just a woman, who’d spent the last five days in the Netherwood and didn’t have so much as a dagger with which to defend yourself. 
And Sanemi told you to run.
You remembered as a boy, Kaigaku had been slow; always the last person to finish a race or outrun the seeker in hide and seek. 
You, on the other hand, had always been faster; you could outrun him.
You had to. You would.
There was a roaring in your head as your mind disconnected from your body and you turned to flee. 
“Don’t you run from me, bitch!” Kaigaku thundered after you, but you did not slow; you hurtled over root and rubble, adrenaline pumping hot and fast to your legs as you ran. 
You’d thought, for one blissful moment, that perhaps you had a chance of evading him, when a silent whirring cut through the silent forest air. 
Pain, blinding pain, exploded somewhere from the side of your thigh, bringing you to your knees as you cried out. Rolling over, your stomach dropped at the unmistakable sensation of blood dripping down your leg, hot and fast. 
Behind you, you heard the thud of Kaigaku’s knife cluttering to the forest floor. 
“Hn, I missed,” the boy scoffed, eyes roaming over you as you bled. “No matter, you can’t run on a wounded leg, can you little girl?” 
Ignoring the dizzying lash of pain that flared in your leg, you scrambled backwards in a crawl, desperate to put some — any — distance between you and your captor. 
“Lord Douma only said to bring you back alive,” Kaigaku hummed, drawing his sword once more. “He did not say to bring you back unscathed.” 
Kaigaku put the tip of his blade right at your chin, tilting your head up to meet his eyes. You glared defiantly up at him, though your show of courage was a mere facade as you beheld the salacious glint reflected in his beady eyes. 
“I think I shall take my time with you,” Kaigaku decided, using his blade to tilt your head back and forth. “After all there is no one here who shall care if you scream; in fact, I prefer you do.” 
Your eyes widened, what remaining fight you still had wavering. 
Alone. You were completely and utterly alone. 
Sanemi had not come; either he was still fighting the other men sent by your cursed fiancé, or he’d been slain, and now the others were making their way to you, to take you back to Douma and let him do as he pleased. 
You were going to die; but you would not die by his hands. Your eyes lowered to the blade still pressed under your chin, its tip grazing against the delicate skin of your throat, teasingly.
Kaigaku’s blade was sharp, even if it’s wielder not; it would not take much effort to slit your own throat on its edge, and it would take even less to bleed out upon the Netherwood’s earthen floor. 
Before you could move, however, Kaigaku’s sword lowered, its tip teasingly tracing along the front seams of your dress. 
“Perhaps we could make this interesting,” Kaigaku smirked, tracing up the valley between your breasts. “He said only to ensure you were untainted for him; he did not say we couldn’t have a taste.” 
Your stomach churned with a toxic mixture of both rage and dread as the sword cut through the first stitch of your bodice. You tried to gather your feet beneath you, enough so that you could launch yourself forward and impale yourself on his blade, when a low growl sounded from behind your assailant.
Kaigaku, too enthralled by his slow torture of you, did not see the mass of white fur and bloodstained teeth leap from the shadows of the Wood; not until it was too late. 
You looked on in horror as a large beast lunged for the boy from your village, tackling him to the side, his sword arm severed at his shoulder from a single swipe of the monster’s mighty claw. Kaigaku only had time to scream once before the nightmare’s massive maw clamped around his neck and tore, spraying his blood and bits of gore across the forest floor. 
Your breath caught and died in your throat, helpless from where you were still splayed pathetically across the dirt as you watched the animal paint the Netherwood with remnants of Kaigaku. 
The monster turned on its haunches towards you, its maw dripping with blood and bits of sinew and flesh, its lip curled back in a snarl. You whimpered as the creature’s silver-lilac eyes settled on you, every inch trembling in abject terror. 
Though overcome by your fear, your brain was able to put together the sight before you that was sure to be your last. The beast slowly advancing towards you was a wolf, though it was much larger than any wolf you’d ever seen, and its brawn rivaled that of an ox’s. 
The wolf boasted a thick coating of silvery-white fur that seemed to glow, as though it bore the essence of a full moon, though its brilliance was dampened somewhat by the smears of crimson saturating it. Under the dim light of the forest, you could not tell whether the blood was that of the wolf or another. 
One colossal paw stepped hesitantly toward you again, and you felt yourself nearly go faint. Weakly, you tried to scramble back further into the wood, but your left leg had gone slightly numb from its wound, and the blood loss was starting to make you feel dizzy. 
It seemed the Netherwood had answered your silent plea to not be sent back to be killed by Douma; instead, you would serve as the next meal for one of its monstrous residents. 
The wolf drew short of you and watched you closely for a moment. With a great shudder, the wolf began to tremble and shake, and your horror melted into wide-eyed disbelief as you watched the wolf shrink and contort until all that was left was a man, blood-stained, naked, and panting on his hands and knees, fingers dug deeply into the dirt below. The man convulsed as began heaving up bile stained with blood and gore.
The sight of scarred forearms and snowy-white hair broke you out into a cold sweat. 
“S-Sanemi?” You croaked, equal parts relieved and terrified, even if another part of you desperately hoped that you were simply hallucinating the image of the nude man wretching up blood before you.
“Aye,” Sanemi grit out between great, shuddering breaths as he spat one final time at the dirt. “It is me.”
He rose, bloodied and naked, from the forest floor and looked to you, his eyes back to their familiar, lavender hue, though they still retained an otherworldly glow. 
There was a loud ringing in your ears as you stared at him, though you weren’t sure if it was from your panic or your blood loss. Sanemi took a cautious step towards you and it sent you scurrying back, a whimper of fright building in your throat.
He faltered, something like pain crossing his face. “Perhaps you should be afraid,” he said quietly. “And you can be — but I need you to throw me that satchel.”
It took you a moment to recollect yourself long enough to register what he was asking. With shaky hands, you unlatched the leather bag from your shoulders and weakly tossed it towards the Huntsman. 
Sanemi was quiet as he dug through the bag, producing a fresh pair of breeches and a clean tunic. With a deftness that seemed as supernatural as his wolf form, Sanemi dressed, concealing his muscular, scarred form from sight once more. 
He said your name once, quietly. “Are you alright?” 
You trembled, hand clutching weakly at the front clasp of your cape. “He killed my grandmother,” you whispered. “H-he tortured her.”
Sanemi approached you slowly, and when you did not flinch away from him once more, he knelt down beside you. His hand came up to gently stroke your hair, and the touch startled you out of your trance, blinking back fat tears as you looked up at him. 
“We need to go,” he said gently and you closed your eyes, nodding.
You’d known, of course, that your Grandmother had been killed; made peace with it, even. But you had not foreseen that she would be tortured for trying to secure your freedom, and the very thought made something inside your heart wither and die. 
“I know,” you murmured quietly. Sanemi straightened, extending a hand to you to help you up when your fingers closed around his wrist, your eyes urgent.
“Did you kill them?” 
Sanemi grimaced. “Yes, Lamb. I killed them all.” 
You nodded. “Good.” You released his wrist and slid your hand into his. “Good.”
Your shock had dulled the sharp, burning throb in your leg while you’d processed the fact that Sanemi was not a mere huntsman, but a wolf of the Wood. But now that the shock had worn off, the pain slammed back into you with full force as you tried to stand, your leg collapsing uselessly under you as you cried out. 
Sanemi’s nostrils flared and there was a murderous glint in his eyes as he crouched down beside you, eyes locked onto your left side, fingers clenching around the torn folds of your dress and lifting it up. 
“S-Sanemi!” You squeaked, batting his hand away but no to avail. The huntsman — the wolf — managed to pull back the skirts of your dress to reveal the torn flesh of your thigh. 
“Was it him?” Sanemi’s voice was low, his head jerking back over his shoulder in the vague direction where he’d left Kaigaku in pieces. 
You nodded, eyes wide as you watched him inspect the wound. “A knife. He threw it.” 
The huntsman exhaled harshly through his nose. “We’re too vulnerable in the open like this — especially because you’re bleeding.” 
Sanemi sat back on his haunches and pulled his small hunting knife from the leather satchel strewn on the ground. Silently, he leaned forward and wound some of the bottom fabric of your dress around the blade and wrenched, tearing a sizeable scrap cloth from the skirt in one clean stroke. 
Sanemi then reached under your skirt and tugged the shorter end of your linen shift down. “It’s not ideal but it’s cleaner than your outer skirt,” he said by way of explanation at your raised eyebrows and hitched breath. “It’ll do until I can get you somewhere safer. We’re sitting ducks out here. Your scent is bound to attract something.” 
You nodded, gulping. Words were still far too difficult to come by, so you settled for watching your handsome guide as he worked, mouth set in a firm, hard line. 
Sanemi tore another strip of linen from your shift and laid it delicately over his knee. His eyes flicked to yours, once, and you felt slightly ashamed at the way your breath hitched, as though waiting for those lilac irises to bleed silver once more. 
“May I?” His hands were stilled above the exposed flesh of your shin, and you knew he’d need to lift more to bandage your thigh. You nodded after a moment, though your hesitation did not stem from any fear you held for the scarred man delicately sliding his hands up the length of your wounded leg; rather, the heat that crept up your neck came from the way goose flesh erupted over the skin beneath his roughened yet gentle touch. 
Sanemi’s fingers were steady as he gently guided your leg to the side, rotating it in his palm so that the gash was perpendicular to the forest floor. 
At the sight of your bloodied, torn flesh, Sanemi growled. “I should’ve made the little bastard suffer far more.” He said darkly, reaching into his satchel to pull a small skien of water to clean off the wound as much as possible. 
At the first splash of water against your ragged skin, you flinched, hissing through clenched teeth as the cold fluid chased away the spare bit of blood. For a moment, you could see that the cut left behind the blade was deeper than you’d thought, though not so much so that it required more than a good bandaging and perhaps some stitching.  
At least it had not been entirely flayed open. 
The hand Sanemi had braced on your knee to keep your leg steady rubbed soothingly at your skin as he repeated the motion once more, letting the water cleanse the wound once more. “Atta girl,” he praised softly. “It’s done. I just need to wrap it.” 
It amazed you that such a hardened, rough Huntsman — Wolf — had such a gentle touch. His hands were like feathers as he wound the clean strip of linen around your thigh, the only pressure stemming from the knot he’d fastened to keep it secure around your leg. Sanemi then wrapped the other torn fabric from your outer skirt around the makeshift bandage, knotting it in a similar fashion to the one beneath. 
“To keep the one below from becoming dirty,” he offered plainly at your raised eyebrow. “Can you stand?” 
Now that the adrenaline of yojr earlier encounter had worn off, the throb in your leg had become all the more pronounced. Teeth clenched, you gripped the Huntsman’s hands tightly as you rose from your seat on the tree stump, eyebrows furrowed in determination. Sanemi did not remove his hands from you, but kept them out and ready as you tentatively shifted your weight to test your wounded leg.
It was no good; the pain shot through you like an arrow and nearly buckled the knee on your good leg. With a cry of frustration, you  stumbled back against Sanemi, the Huntsman’s arm looping easily around your waist to help lower you back down against the stump upon which he’s sat you. 
“Damn it all,” you cursed, wincing at the angry throb in your leg. “It cannot bear weight.” 
Sanemi pursed his lips as he looked over you, considering. “Allow me,” he said after a moment, squatting down next to you, motioning for you to wrap your arm around his shoulders.
You hesitated; you were not scared of the Huntsman, even after witnessing his terrifying true form, but your apprehension lingered, a primal fear baked deep within your core that told you you should be scared of the predator beside you. That, mixed with your blood loss, made you pause, even though you’re traveled alongside the fearless Huntsman for nearly a week. 
And Sanemi noticed.
“You’re shaking,” he murmured, his arm locked steadily around your waist as he lifted you to your feet, your weight pressed against his chest.
You did not trust your words so you only nodded. Despite the remaining wariness you felt, you longed for his comfort more. You lifted your hand to cup the side of his jaw so you could tilt his face down, bringing his forehead against yours. 
Sanemi whispered your name and your eyes lifted up to meet the smoldering heat of his gaze. 
A knuckle brushed against the curve of your cheek. “Are you frightened of me now, little Lamb?” 
Your fingers gripped the collar of his tunic, a desperation wracking through you at the thought he might pull away and remove the steadying warmth of his arms from around your frame.  
“No. It is not you that frightens me; it is him.”
The arm around your waist tightened. “He will not get to you; I swear it. I will not allow him to lay a finger on you.” 
Your breath shuddered and your eyes squeezed tight. You felt the discomforting press of panic building in your lungs, threatening to choke the air from your throat until a warm finger curled under your chin, followed only by a rugged whisper of your name. 
You opened your eyes and there he was; the only person left alive who you could count on; who had proven, time and again, that your welfare mattered to him. Who treated you like you meant something.
You craved that feeling — craved him. 
“Kiss me, Sanemi.” You murmured, your lips separated by a breath. “Please.” 
Sanemi did not hesitate as he gently brought his lips against yours, the hand under your chin moving to cup the back of your head, holding you steady against him like he was the only real, solid thing in the world. 
Your hands, no longer shaking, unclenched from where they’d been locked around the collar of his tunic and slid behind his neck, fingers tangling in his hair. 
Sanemi sighed against your lips, allowing himself to get lost in the way they moved against his, just as you did. Against the solid rock of his body and under the spell of his soft mouth, it was easy to allow yourself to forget the danger that threatened to creep in from the shadows.  
Lost in your kiss, you made the mistake of trying to shift your weight from your good leg to the bad, causing both knees to buckle. At your small whimper of pain, Sanemi broke away.
“You’re too injured to walk,” He murmured against your lips. “So I shall carry you.” 
He broke away with a final peck, stepping back and reaching behind him to haul his tunic over his head. “Unless you would like to see all of me, little Lamb,” Sanemi’s smirk was devilish. “Then I suggest you close your eyes for a moment.”
The heat his words sparked in your veins dulled the throb of your wounded leg. “And if I desire to see you?” 
Sanemi only shrugged. “Then I suppose I shall have to put on a show.” 
The huntsman held your eyes as his hands went to the hastily tied laces of his breeches, tugging the strings open with ease. 
You fidgeted against the broken stump he’d perched you on, just as Sanemi shrugged down the soft suede of his breeches, revealing that damnable v-line that made your head spin. A few more inches lower, and there was his manhood, hanging thick and heavy between his muscular and scar-speckled thighs. 
He was a sight to behold. 
“Is this your first time seeing a man, Lamb?” Sanemi’s voice broke you out of the reverent trance you’d been in whilst admiring every rocky plane of his body. 
Your mouth had turned dryer than a summer drought, and so you only nodded your head, unable to tear your eyes from the immaculate form that made up the huntsman of the Netherwood. 
To your dismay, Sanemi stepped back from where you sat, again and again until he was several lengths back. You opened your mouth in protest, but he only shook his head. 
“Don’t want you to be too close, my sweet.” He called from a distance.
You frowned. “Too close for what —“
Your question was cut off by a small scream as Sanemi leapt forward, that silver fur exploding forth from him as a large wolf landed only feet from where he’d once stood. 
Now it was clear why he’d put such distance between you; had Sanemi been any closer when he shifted, one of those mighty claws embedded in his law — nearly as long as your hand — would have surely ripped you clean in half. 
Your heart hammered in your chest as Sanemi’s wolf form drew closer. Now, without the weight of terror and the pressing conviction that you were about to die, you allowed yourself to fully appreciate the wolf before you. 
His scars were still visible, though less so in contrast to his human form, his thick fur providing a fair degree of cover.  In this form, you could see that were you to stand, your head would barely reach his shoulder. 
Sanemi grunted as he crouched out, the puff of air from his considerable snout warming over your legs. He looked up at you expectantly, an amused twinkle in his wolffish eyes. 
You gaped at him. “You want me to ride you?” 
Another amused chuff. 
“And how, great and mighty wolf, do you suggest I climb onto your back with a half-severed leg?” You dramatized. “Shall I flop?” 
You couldn’t be sure, but it seemed that the Wolf rolled his eyes. Sanemi pressed his large body against your good side, nudging you with his great shoulder to signal for you to grab his fur.
You took a handful of the silvery coat, surprised at its softness. “Do not bite me just because you think I pull too hard,” you warned, half serious, and Sanemi huffed in annoyance. 
Using the wolf as leverage, you heaved yourself up, Sanemi pressing steadily into your side as you found your footing against him. Slowly, and with less grace than you were willing to admit, you managed to climb atop Sanemi’s back, awkwardly swinging your injured leg over the opposite side.
Once settled, Sanemi rose beneath you, rising to his full height. Sat atop him, you were willing to bet he was taller than most horses back in the village. 
The great wolf sniffed at the air once before lowering himself into a crouch, and springing forth into the Wood.
————
Riding atop Sanemi had been the most exhilarating experience of your life. 
Though, you also could not recall the last time such a ride had left you more frightened, given that you’d spent a great deal of it crouched low against his neck, fearing that if you rose your head even a fraction of an inch, some low-hanging tree would embed itself in your face. 
You supposed you would have kept riding longer, had your stomach not given a great gurgle after an hour or so atop the wolf. With a growl that you thought sounded suspiciously like a laugh, Sanemi paused in a small clearing near a rocky, moss-covered cliff, disappearing behind the lip of the rock once he’d situated you upon a felled log.
A few moments later, human Sanemi emerged, re-dressed, but his face was severe.
“They will keep coming,” Sanemi’s frustration was clear as he shrugged the fresh tunic over his head, the delectable ridges of his abdomen and the alluring dip of his hips concealed from your sight once more. “So long as they can track your scent, they will keep pursuing you.” 
You did not need to ask to whom he referred; the very same fear had gnawed at you even despite the exhilaration of riding Sanemi’s wolf form.
Your appreciation of the huntsman’s physique stalled as fear bubbled again in your gut. “What can I do?” Your whisper was shaky and it made Sanemi pause, his hand twitching towards you. “I cannot change my scent in the middle of the damn Wood—“
“You can,” Sanemi said quickly, and to your surprise, the tips of his ears turned pink. “Or— rather, I can help.”
You raised an eyebrow. “Because you are a wolf? Should I call you that now, instead of ‘Huntsman,’ or ‘Sanemi?’”
“You can call me whatever you desire, so long as you allow me to protect you.” Sanemi retorted evenly.
You tried to keep your voice steady even as you blushed. “And how would you do that, Wolf?” 
There was a dark glint in Sanemi’s eyes at your new nickname for him. “A bite from a wolf can change your scent.”
You balked at him. “A bite?” 
“Aye,” the Huntsman said casually, as though he was merely discussing the weather. “It would leave a small mark, but that mark would alter your scent enough to make you harder to track.”
You thought for a moment, the blush on your cheeks deepening. “Where would you bite me?” 
It was Sanemi’s turn to turn pink. “Likely your neck,” he fidgeted with a stick he used to poke the dying campfire. 
You gulped. “Would you have to transform?” 
Sanemi’s small smile was handsome, even if it looked a little feral. “No, Lamb. I can stay in this form.” 
You watched your protector for a moment, weighing your options. “Come here, Sanemi.”
His eyes snapped to yours, a bottomless heat turning his lilac gaze molten. Slowly, with the grace of a predator silently stalking its prey, Sanemi made his way over to where you sat, drawing short once the tips of his boots grazed yours. 
“Do you swear it? It will keep them from being able to track me?” You asked, voice trembling slightly as you peered up at the Huntsman. 
He nodded, slowly. A hand reached out to caress your cheek, and your breath lodged in your throat as you found yourself leaning into his warmth. 
You managed to exhale around the lump that had formed in your throat. “Then I will allow it.”
Your heart skipped like a rabbit’s against your sternum as Sanemi leaned in close, the warmth of his breath chasing away the chill of the Wood’s air.
“So delicate,” Sanemi murmured, his nose skimming along the slope between your neck and shoulder. “So soft.”
“W-wolf?” Your voice was high, your hands trembling as they jumped to clutch at Sanemi’s forearms, nails digging into his skin in anticipation. “Will it hurt?”
He huffed a laugh against your skin, the gentle tickle of his warm air sending goosebumps along your exposed skin. “No, little Lamb,” his lips danced along your shoulder, back towards the sensitive spot connecting with your neck. “You will feel a prick and then you will feel warm.” 
You nodded, the ends of Sanemi’s cornsilk hair tickling your throat. “I’m ready. Bite me — please.”
Sanemi’s groan was followed by a cold, sharp sting that sunk into the tender flesh between your shoulder and neck that was quickly chased away by a soothing warmth. The huntsman’s mouth latched to your neck as he buried his teeth in you, his tongue stroking soothingly around where he now bit.
It felt like someone had poured warmed honey into your veins. It spread, thick and sweet from your neck throughout your body, making you feel like you’d sunk into a hot bath on a cold day. That warmth coiled in your belly and ignited something fluttery and pleasurable between your legs as you tilted your head to the side, exposing more of your neck to the wolf caging you in against the tree.
Your submission evoked a low growl from his chest, deep and rumbling as Sanemi pressed harder into you, his hands bunching your dress at your sides as he continued to suck at your neck. The feeling of his body molded tightly against yours and the way his mouth worked at that delicate spot made you moan out, the sound finally jolting something within the huntsman as he gave you one final kick, before tearing himself away. 
“Dear gods, woman,” he heaved, breath coarse. “Are you trying to drive me wild?”
You flushed as you panted, staring at him with wide eyes. Whatever you’d been expecting, it hadn’t been that; you’d not foreseen that the act of Sanemi biting you could feel so intimate, could make you long for him to run his hands under your dress, to touch you in your most sacred places until you begged for him.
He was dangerous; it was thrilling.
“Kiss me again,” you breathed, and Sanemi obeyed, his mouth moving fervently against yours as his tongue caressed your lower lip. Sensing the silent request, you opened for him, and Sanemi’s tongue swept into your mouth, licking at yours as his teeth nipped along your lower lip. 
You thought he might devour you; you wanted to let him. 
But Sanemi suddenly pulled away from you as though he’d been burned, eyes wide and breath hard. 
You blinked in surprise. “Sanemi, what —,”
“We need to go,” he said firmly, his cheeks flushed red. At his sides, his hands curled tightly into fists.
—-
The rest of your journey was oddly strained. Despite having grown closer with enigmatic Huntsman over the last several days of your travels, you suddenly felt as though you’d been catapulted back to square one.
Though he still allowed you ride upon his back in wolf form, gone were the amused chuffs and snorts that he used to signal he was listening to your mindless chatter. Instead, the wolf below you remained tense, a cord pulled tight that was liable to snap at the drop of a hat.
As much as you wished it made you angry so that you could snipe at him, Sanemi’s sudden introversion stoked an uncomfortable self-consciousness within you, and you found yourself desperately grappling for an explanation.
Had you tasted badly, when he’d bit you? Did he suddenly no longer find himself drawn to you, now that your scent was different?
Or, even worse, had he realized that perhaps he did not want you to stay with him in the Wood after all, and was now attempting to put distance between you so that you would be more willing to leave him once you reached the edge of the forest?
The thought made your stomach clench painfully.
Sanemi’s distance did not abate even by the time he slowed to a stop for the night. He’d brought the two of you to a clearing in the Wood that bordered alongside a winding river, crested by a waterfall. Sanemi finally lowered himself to the pebbled ground of the riverbank, muscles twitching as though to hasten you along in sliding off him to balance yourself against a mid-sized boulder, before he stalked back towards the trees, his leather satchel in his mouth.
He avoided even your gaze as he stalked into the shallows of the river, spearing two fish with a sharpened stick he’d fashioned. Sanemi hadn’t so much as thrown a word your way as he’d started a small fire, apparently relying on dusk to conceal the small smoke billowing up.
Despite the coolness of the evening air, you noted Sanemi was sweating as he’d flung out the stick bearing your flame-cooked fish dinner towards you.
In accepting the spear, your fingers accidentally brushed against his and Sanemi recoiled — hard.
“What is wrong with you?” You snapped. “Why will you not touch me? Why do you flinch whenever I am near?”
“I do not,” Sanemi answered hotly through clenched teeth, though the muscle that ticked in his jaw betrayed his frustration. “Am I suddenly required to touch you?”
You folded your arms across your chest, eyes narrowed. “You certainly had no objection to it earlier — especially not when you threw me up against a tree.”
“Threw you —“ Sanemi choked off, his returning glare both indignant and enraged. “As I recall it was you who kissed me.”
“And as I recall, it was you who started doing that — that thing with your tongue,” you accused lamely, though any bite in your words was tempered by the blush creeping up your face.
Sanemi scoffed. “You cannot even speak of it without blushing like a little girl, and yet I am the one acting strange?” He leaned back on the piece of driftwood he’d claimed as his seat, arms folded across his chest, head turned pointedly away from you.
As you mulled over a number of insults to call the temperamental Huntsman sitting across front you, the last remnants of the sun faded from the night sky, and overhanging clouds briefly parted to reveal the moon — nearly full, its silvery glow illuminating the riverbank.
The moon’s rays reached where you and the Huntsman had set up camp when suddenly your hand jumped to your shoulder as you cried out.
Sanemi startled forward with a worried growl of your name. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
You grit your teeth, fingers digging harshly into your shoulder as you winced. “Something is — is burning, but I do not know what.”
You were certain the only injury your sustained had been the wound to your thigh by Kaigaku’s knife. But you’d spent enough time in and around flame to know what a burn felt like, and it felt as though something had been branded into you, its throb almost crippling.
You cried out again and Sanemi quickly crossed the dirt and took you into his arms, though you felt him flinch as he did so. “Where?”
You gestured wildly to your shoulder, too distracted by the way his presence made the burn now pulse, sending lashes of heat throughout your body, though there was a maddening edge of pleasure blooming from every part of you that was pressed against him.
Sanemi’s fingers grasped the collar of your dress and wrenched it to the side, swearing softly as he beheld whatever it was he saw.
“What is it?” You managed to grind out, your fingers digging into the muscles of his forearms to keep him anchored to you, as though he were capable of keeping the flames licking at your skin at bay. “Kaigaku did not touch me there — at least, I don’t think —,”
“It was not that boy who did this,” Sanemi said severely, his finger gingerly caressing the spot where your neck met your shoulder. You moaned as his touch extinguished some of the burning fire which had ignited your skin, too lost in the temporary relief to note the way Sanemi’s hands tightened around you. “It was I.”
That stilled you. “What do you mean?” You turned your head, peering up at the Wolf with wide eyes. “From when you changed my scent?”
Sanemi, for once, looked discomforted. “I think —,” he swallowed once, avoiding your gaze as he stepped back. You almost cried out at the loss of his body against yours, as the burn returned once more.
“I think I marked you; but I-“ Sanemi stuttered, his eyebrows drawing together in confusion as he stared at the ground, his weight shifting uneasily from foot to foot. “But it shouldn’t be affecting you — not like this.”
“You marked me?” Your hand fluttered to the fleshy juncture between your shoulder and neck. You gasped as your fingers brushed against a curious raise in your skin that hadn’t been there before, the strange curvature burning a few degrees warmer than the area around it.
The huntsman’s eyes remained resolutely fixed on the ground of the forest. “I told you I would cover your scent.”
You stroked the the mark, fingers tracing the odd curve, like that of a crescent moon. “What does the mark mean?”
Sanemi hesitated.
“Wolf?”
“It is a mating mark.” Sanemi admitted after a long moment, hand jumping to his hair as he ran his fingers anxiously through his silvery-white locks.
A stunned breath blew past your lips, your eyes wide. “M-mating mark?” You repeated, hand freezing where the telling crescent was emblazoned upon your skin.
Sanemi looked equal parts apologetic and scared. “I swear, I did not know it would affect you — wolves have to accept the mating mark to feel it, so I did not think —.” He ran a frazzled hand through his hair, his anguish apparent. “I thought I would be the only one to feel its call. I swear it.”
In the back of your mind, it registered that the mark perhaps was the reason for Sanemi’s sudden change towards you, but the incessant burning you felt would not allow you to question him on it.
“What does this mean?” You cried out again as the mark surged, the pain reaching all the way down between your legs, making you gasp. “Are we — are we m-mated?”
Sanemi’s eyes flashed. “No,” his voice was firm, urgent. “You still have to accept the mark for us to be mated — that’s why I thought it was safe. It was supposed to change your scent enough for us to avoid those men.”
“I swear to you I do not plan on acting on it; I meant only to help protect you. I fully intend on escorting you to the nearest village, as promised, and then I will leave. That mark does not have to mean anything to you.”
You believed him. The slight panic in his eyes as you winced at the mark’s repetitive flare once more could not be faked. Furthermore, you knew Sanemi would have no reason to bind you to him; not when you’d already made it clear that you wanted to stay.
You still did.
Sanemi’s earlier words echoed in your mind. That mark does not have to mean anything to you.
“But it will mean something to you, yes?” You demanded, drawing yourself up tall even as you sat perched upon the driftwood. “The mark?”
Sanemi hesitated again. “Wolves only mark once.”
He did not offer any further explanation, nor did he need to; you understood well enough.
The Huntsman had marked you, knowing full well he’d never be able to claim another as his mate. He’d done that, knowing that if another came along that won his heart, he could not be with them completely — not in the way his nature would desire.
And he’d done it nonetheless; all for the sake of giving her a chance to escape Douma’s clutches and to be free.
He’d put you first.
You hadn’t doubted the sincerity of your offer to him earlier, but now, there was no way he’d get rid of you. You would not allow it.
“And what would you do if I said I accepted it — accepted the mating bond?” You asked, voice as soft as a feather.
Sanemi snorted, pulling away from you to busy himself with stoking the small campfire. “I would say that you are an innocent, little lamb who does not understand what it means to be claimed by a wolf.”
“I understand well enough,” you replied, indignant. “I know what it means for people to give into their carnal desires.”
“You know nothing, you’ve never even seen a man before today.” The huntsman shot back, tossing another piece of kindling into the small fire. “You have never laid with another, much less a wolf.”
“It cannot be all that different,” you pouted. “You appear before me man enough.”
Sanemi closed the gap between your bodies then, coming to sit beside you on the rock, fingers curling under your chin to tilt your head up.
His eyes glinted with a sudden predatory heat. “It is quite different, little lamb.” He murmured. “I may now stand before you a man, but I am very much still a wolf. I would not take you like an ordinary human.”
There it was again — that heat, so foreign and yet so enticing, flickered to life once more in the depths of your belly, and the urge to rub your thighs together suddenly became overwhelming. With bated breath, you watched as Sanemi’s nostrils flared softly, his pupils dilating as the grip under your chin tightened ever so slightly.
“Then how would you take me, wolf?” You whispered, eyes not wavering from his. “How would I accept the mating bond?”
Sanemi’s eyes fluttered shut for a moment, opening only after a shaky exhale of his breath. “You would have to take my knot.”
Your gaze dropped to his lips, the warmth from your mark spreading across your skin along with the sudden urge to feel them move against your own. “Your knot?”
“My knot,” Sanemi repeated, “and that is precisely why I cannot mate you, little lamb.”
You tugged your bottom lip between your teeth, a movement Sanemi’s eyes followed, his tongue flicking out to wet his own lips.
You pressed your chest flush against his front, hands seeking out his in the dark. “And what if I wanted it?”
Sabemi groaned, fingers latching onto your waist, though whether he sought to push you away or keep you anchored in place, you could not say. “Christ, woman. One would almost think you enjoyed torturing this poor wolf.”
You leaned into him, head tilting as you sought the knowledge of his soft lips against yours. “Not torturing,” you whispered, a hair’s breath separating your mouth from his. “Willingly offering myself to him.”
Your lips brushed against his and Sanemi moaned, his hands reaching to snare in your hair as he moved his mouth desperately against yours, teeth nipping and sucking on your lower lip, like he was hungry to consume you. But before he could, your pulled your head back, breaking the kiss.
“Do it, wolf,” you whispered. “Take me. Claim me as your mate.”
Sanemi grabbed you by your jaw, cheeks squishing beneath his firm grip. “Do you know what that would mean?” His voice was rough, his eyes burning with his desire. “If I did, we would be bonded. Permanently. For life.”
He said it as if you had not guessed it to be true; as if you weren’t prepared.
You gazed up at him through your eyelashes, eyes round and full of the innocence he claimed he could not taint. “Would you have it be another?”
Sanemi took the bait, a feral growl tearing from his chest as he crushed your body against his.
“No,” he snarled, and his mouth descended upon yours once more, his hot tongue sweeping into your mouth to swallow your breathy gasp as you threaded your fingers through his soft, moon-kissed hair.
You moaned into his mouth, hands greedily roaming the rocky planes of his chest, nails scratching lightly along his skin.
“You will be the death of me,” the Huntsman breathed against your lips. “You truly want to accept the bond?”
You moaned, nodding vigorously as Sanemi trailed his lips across your jaw and down your neck, his hands beginning to roam up your sides, tugging you down with him against the boulder so that you straddled his sides.
“Very well,” he murmured. “But I will not claim you here,” Sanemi said gruffly against the delicate skin of your throat, lips pressed against where your pulse fluttered. “I cannot.”
You whined and ground your hips down against his thighs, savoring the way the steely firmness of them pressed against something between your legs that made you feel electric.
“I must take you to my den,” the huntsman clarified, pulling back slightly in spite of your small whine. “When wolves like me claim a mate, we…do not like to be disturbed.”
Sanemi’s fingered the front laces of the stay secured around your bust, slowly undoing the careful lacing as he spoke, though his eyes did not leave yours. “And because it will be a full moon when I mate you, I will go into heat. It will last a very long time.”
“How long?” You fought to keep your head from falling back as you watched Sanemi work, the warmth of his hands seeping through the cotton and linen layers of your dress, making your breasts pebble with every loosened tie of your corset.
Sanemi hummed as he leaned forward, tracing his lips over the exposed skin just below your collarbone as his fingers worked the last of your stays. “At least a day; perhaps two. Other wolves have claimed it lasts shorter when one has a mate, as opposed to having to weather it alone.”
The top swells of your breasts were exposed as Sanemi finally freed you from your outer corset, allowing it to fall to the ground beside you.
The huntsman skimmed his nose over the top of your shift where the tops of your soft mounds peaked over, letting his tongue peek out to follow the trail. The feeling of the hot wetness of his mouth made you fidget in his lap, a whine building in your throat, desperate to have him touch more.
“A-and will you — ah,” you moaned as Sanemi tugged the bodice of your dress and shift down your shoulders, exposing your peaked breasts to the night air. “Will y-you mate m-me the whole t-time — oh god, Sanemi,”
“I could get used to you saying my name like that,” The huntsman chuckled, bending to take one of your breasts fully in his mouth, sucking and rolling his tongue over your stiffened nipple. The contact made the mark on your shoulder burn with a sensual heat that you felt shoot straight down between your legs, and you ground against his thigh, mewling for more.
Sanemi looked up at you as he swirled his tongue over the fleshy skin of your mound, his pupils blown wide. “Perhaps,” he muttered in response to your question, in between light sucks. “It depends on how well you take my knot, you sweet thing.”
You moaned again as Sanemi moved his mouth across the valley between your breasts, taking the other mound between his lips and teeth, his hand rising to keep the other warm. He suckled at you for a moment until you were a whimpering, trembling mess atop him, before he pulled off with a lewd pop!
“But no matter,” You shivered as Sanemi’s teeth grazed your ear. “I promise I will make you feel so good, little Lamb.”
“Why must we wait,” you asked impatiently. “I am ready to be your mate now — I promise I can take your knot right here.”
Sanemi snarled against your skin, but it was not in warning. Rather, your words seemed to stir something deep within him, as the bulge between his legs hardened even more, and the building friction between it and demanding ache in your core intensified.
Sanemi shifted your hips in his lap so the apex of your thighs was no longer pressed flush against his hardness.
“You, my flower, smell far too tempting for me to risk having you in such a vulnerable way in the middle of the damn Wood, without any cover.”
Sanemi, lips traipsed along your jaw as he hummed. “There are many creatures lurking in the shadows that would see my mating you as an opportunity to take a bite for themselves.”
You tugged on his hair, trying to get him to meet your eyes. “I thought my scent was alluring only to you?”
“You don’t just appeal to me, little Lamb,” Sanemi said pointedly. “You have a rare scent that attracts all sorts of creatures here in the Wood.”
“But it is different now?” You pondered, fidgeting in the Huntsman’s lap until the ridge of his thigh pressed against that spot between your legs that made you want to sing.
You hummed and used your grip in his hair as leverage to tilt his head to the side, your lips caressing down the side of Sanemi’s neck, savoring the faint, salty taste of him on your tongue as his fingers dug into your hips.
“Yes,” he said hoarsely. “Your scent has changed, thanks to your mark.”
You pulled away from your assault on his neck to pout at him, lower lip jutting out in a way that made Sanemi’s eyes darken. “So I do not smell as good anymore? To you, that is?”
With a low growl, Sanemi stood, hands gripping under your thighs as he lifted you before he laid you out against the river stone. “Quite the opposite, Lamb,” he quipped, voice low and heady. “To me, there is no finer perfume. Your scent calls to me; it nearly sends me into a frenzy.”
You found yourself incapable of coherent thought — much less speech — as Sanemi’s hands slid up your legs, bunching the skirts of your dress with every inch of skin he passed over until you felt the night air delicately brushing the heat between your legs.
Your legs spread and supported between his grip and the smooth of the rock, Sanemi leaned forward and kissed you, his tongue sliding past your lips to lick teasingly at the roof of your mouth before he broke away, imprinting his kiss down your exposed torso.
You watched him, enthralled by the way your body seemed to come alive under his touch. Even in the dark of the Wood, you could make out the lilac swirls of Sanemi’s eyes as he watched you, noting every gasp and sigh he pulled from you as his hands and mouth explored the planes of your body.
“What curious eyes you have, Wolf.” Your breath was short, choppy as Sanemi’s lips descended past your breasts, caressing the soft of your belly.
“The better to see your pretty face, my sweet,” Sanemi murmured, pressing a sweet kiss right below your belly button, the fire within your gut leaping like oil in a hot pan.
“W-what — oh,” you moaned as you felt his lips press against your hip, the broad expanse of his hands smoothing down over your thighs, pushing the last of your skirts up, and allowing the searing heat of his hands to meet your untouched skin. “What large hands you have.”
“The better to feel you — to caress every inch of you,” Sanemi’s voice was husky as his fingers trailed up the sensitive skin of your inner thighs, spreading them wider so he could kneel. One hand gripped the back of your knee and gently tugged your injured leg over his shoulder, so your foot rest against the middle of his back.
His hot breath danced teasingly along your inner thigh as Sanemi’s mouth drew closer an closer to where you ached for him, the night air cool as it licked at your tender, heated flesh.
The feel of his mouth drawing nearer to to the most intimate part of your body made you feel as though you’d been set alight. “Such soft lips you have, Wolf.”
Sanemi chuckled, the sound so dark and rich it sent a shiver up your spine. “The better to taste you with, little Lamb.”
Your breath hitched as you felt something warm and hot flatten against your folds and drag up, Sanemi groaning into you as he repeated the movement, again and again.
His tongue, you realized as a strangled cry fell from your lips, your head falling back against the creek stone. He was exploring you with his tongue.
“Sweet,” Sanemi groaned in between wet, sticky laps against your folds. “So fuckin’ sweet.”
Every nerve in your body felt as though it had been set alight, the mark between your shoulder and neck burning deliciously.
Sanemi’s tongue flattened against your core, his nose pressing sharply against the pearl between your legs as he rocked his face from side to side, smearing your juices all over his maw.
“O-oh gods,” you cried out, hips bucking against his ministrations.
Sanemi’s hot tongue circled your entrance once before dipping inside, his teeth grazing your most sensitive spot as he buried the wet appendage inside your core.
His name fell in a breathy scream from your lips as you bowed up off the creek rock, hands shooting to anchor themselves in his hair as Sanemi began moving his tongue in and out of your fluttering core, his nose bumping and pressing against that delicate pearl at the apex of your thighs as he moved.
“My gods,” Sanemi grunted into your folds. “You are heaven on earth.”
You bucked against him once more, though you could not tell whether you sought more of his tongue or whether your body was trying to squirm away, too overcome by the pleasurable sensations Sanemi bestowed upon you as he worked his mouth against you. It did not matter either way, however, for every time you twitched away from him, the Huntsman’s hot, silky mouth only followed you, your cunt this predator’s dinner.
And apparently, he enjoyed playing with his food.
The frequency of your moans increased as the sounds of Sanemi feasting between your legs grew louder and ever more lewd, his own sounds of pleasure muffled by the repeated wet smacks of his mouth against your dripping folds as he sucked you between his lips and teeth and continued fucking you with his tongue.
“S-Sanemi! Oh — oh gods,” you cried as something coiled tightly behind your navel, making your thighs clench around the Wolf’s head as he worked.
Sanemi only responded with another groan, his hand leaving the supple flesh of your inner thigh to stroke against your folds, making you buck all the more against the stone as his roughened fingers brushed delicately against the spot that made you see stars.
His tongue pulled out of you in favor of flicking the bead at the apex of your legs, his fingers moving to your entrance and deftly pushing in, the wetness leaking from your core ensuring that they slid in without much resistance.
You cried out then, utterly overwhelmed by the way Sanemi’s finger began to work inside you, curling and pumping and stroking along your innermost walls until your entire body vibrated below him.
The hand supporting your thigh over his shoulder tightened as Sanemi resumed his oral assault on that small nub above your entrance, sucking and licking at it until the only sound leaving your throat were feverish cries of his name, your hips involuntarily jerking against him. With each passing moment that Sanemi spent feasting between your legs, something began to mount behind your navel, like a coil being steadily wound tighter and tighter.
You thought it should concern you, this foreign feeling, but as that feeling intensified, so too did your desire to see what would happen when it — you — came undone.
You left one hand gripping harshly at the Wolf’s hair, in some pathetic attempt to keep his face locked against your core, and lifted the other to pinch and roll your breast. You jolted at the stimulation, feeling yourself grow even wetter despite the fervor with which Sanemi lapped and suckled at you.
This appeared to please him, as Sanemi’s free hand moved from your thought to grip at your hip, pressing you even closer to his face until you wondered whether he could breathe. If he could not, the Huntsman did not seem to mind; his groans and growls against your cunt only intensified.
Sanemi slid a second finger into you, and then a third, and the resulting stretch made you see stars, your toes curling in your boots.
That thing in your stomach seized even tighter and your entire body tensed, as though you were on a precipice merely awaiting a slight force to tip you over and sending you hurtling to the depths below.
Whatever was happening to you, the Wolf seemed to anticipate it; for the moment that tight coil within your belly unwound, Sanemi’s fingers pulled hurriedly out of your opening only to be replaced by his tongue, his teeth pressed against your pearl. He lapped up every drop of release that spilled forth, humming and growling as you rode his tongue through the waves of crippling pleasure coursing through you.
As you came down from your high with a breathy sigh of his name, Sanemi shuddered beneath you, a strangled groan lilting out from his mouth between lazy slurps at your cunt. Though your vision was hazy, you could see the faint whites of his eyes peeking through his lids as they rolled back into his head, his fingers tightening their grip on your thighs until it was painful, before releasing once more.
The mark on your neck burned but it was no longer in agony; instead, it felt warm, like a part of your body left too long in the summer sun. but the heat was not entirely unwelcome, especially as Sanemi untangled himself from you, allowing the chill of the late autumn wind to sweep in and lick at your exposed skin.
“That should hold us both over until tomorrow,” Sanemi said after a moment with a throaty chuckle. “Though I will be hard pressed to keep my hands off you, little Lamb.”
Sanemi’s hands eased your skirts back down over your legs. Once your nether region was covered, he helped you sit up, allowing you to cling to him for warmth as he refastened your stays and helped you lace your corset back up the front.
Gingerly, Sanemi brushed your hair back from the shoulder bearing his claim on you. You followed his line of sight, twisting slightly and saw what he did: the crescent-shaped mark, which had burned a violent lavender only minutes prior, had faded back to a pale silver, its ache apparently soothed for the time being.
Sanemi leaned forward and brushed his lips against your mark, his tongue flicking out to caress it as you felt that warmth flood your veins once more. With a moan, you tilted your head, exposing more of your neck again to him, begging him to repeat the action again and again, but Sanemi only drew back.
“Apologies, Lamb,” his eyes were dark once more, and his hands fidgeted at his sides. “Seeing that mark pulls at something within me.”
You allowed your hair to fall back over the crescent bite mark and in an instant, Sanemi’s eyes lightened and a sheepish grin spread across his face. “Wolves are territorial. Seeing your mark makes me want to claim you, even without regard to the danger surrounding us.”
You frowned for a moment. “Are you only drawn to me because you’ve marked me?”
Sanemi’s gaze softened. “I am drawn to you, you vexatious woman, because I find you brave, kind, and at times, even a little charming.”
His hand lifted to caress your cheek, tilting your head down to meet his for a gentle kiss. “The mark is only a physical manifestation of what I already feel towards you. It is simply a way to display our bond to the world.”
Sanemi’s face turned grave and the way he said your name was serious. “You do not have to accept the bond if you’ve changed your mind.”
You shook your head hurriedly. “I want the bond — I want you,” the sincerity of your words resonated with Sanemi, as he pulled your hand to his lips, pressing soft kisses against your fingers. “This is all new to me; I just wanted to know you were sure.”
Sanemi’s soft laugh made your heart thrum, and a blush spread across your cheeks. “I am certain, Lamb, that I would not want anyone else to cause me stress apart from you.”
With a quick peck against your lips, Sanemi rose, stretching his arms high above his head. The moonlight, coupled with the residual flames of the small campfire allowed you to rake your eyes over his lithe form, appreciating every scar and swell of muscle dotting his mouthwatering physique.
But your eyes snagged on a dark stain that had spread across the front of Sanemi’s breeches. “What —?”
Sanemi did not look embarrassed, but he did turn away from you nonetheless. “I told you, Lamb,” he said causually as he dug through the satchel, pulling out a spare pair of pants. “The mark affects me far more than it affects you; at least, for now.”
“That is because of me?” Your eyes trailed his form in wonder, and the sight of the stain made your thighs clench together though you knew not why. “Is that — is that your pleasure?”
Sanemi’s lopsided grin widened, a faint snicker on his lips as he regarded you once more, spread out atop his own traveling cloak. “Yes, Lamb. It is my pleasure.”
You looked up at him, head slightly cocked in question. “But I did nothing to you — not like you did to me.”
Sanemi removed his soiled breeches and re-dressed before returning to your side. “You did not need to; as I said, the mark affects me more than you right now. My body knows I have marked you as my mate, and it is eager to make you mine.”
You shivered at the possessiveness in the words and sat up as he leaned against the small boulder, reaching up over his shoulders to tug his tunic up over his head.
“So it was only the mark?” You asked slowly, eyes dropping down to where you knew his manhood lay under his clothing. “The mark brought you pleasure?”
Warm fingers gripped gently under your chin, forcing you to look back up and meet his piercing stare.
“No, sweetling,” Sanemi said, a low growl tinting his words. “It was not merely the mark. I took pleasure from giving you pleasure.” His thumb stroked the underside of your jaw. “A great deal of it, it seems.”
You shifted until you were on your knees before him, and even the dark of the night could not conceal the way Sanemi’s eyes darkened at the sight.
“Shall I give it back to you, my Wolf?” You whispered, leaning forward to graze your lips against the crotch of his breeches. “I should like to taste you as well.”
To your surprise, neither growl nor groan rumbled from the depths of Sanemi’s chest as you poked your tongue out between your lips and gently dragged it up the seam of his pants, just as he’d done to you. Instead, what fell from Sanemi’s lips was a low, breathy whine, the wolf’s head tipping back slightly as his eyes squeezed shut.
Below the barrier of his clothing, something between his legs began to stir. Curious, you brought your hand against it, palming him slightly through the material.
“Fuck,” Sanemi hissed, and the hand around your jaw tightened, forcing you to rise to your feet.
Sanemi cracked an eye open to glare at you, but he melted at your answering pout, his thumb running over the bottom lip you’d jutted out.
“I promise you, Lamb,” he said gruffly. “I will give you plenty of my pleasure once the full moon rises; so much so, you will not know what to do with it.”
Your curiosity disrupted your self-pity. “From your knot?”
“Aye,” Sanemi confirmed, his voice like gravel. “Speaking of which,” Sanemi then tapped your rear, eliciting a small yelp from you as you separated from him.
“If you’re truly committed to taking my knot, you will need your rest, you tempestuous woman,” Sanemi scolded, and before you could protest, he bent low, wrapping his formidable hands around the backs of your thighs and hoisted you up, forcing you to lock your legs around his waist with a small gasp.
Gently, Sanemi laid you out atop his traveling cloak, bracing himself on one steely arm next to your head as he lowered himself down, allowing one quick press of his lips against yours before he pulled away, stretching out on his side.
“We have a long day ahead of us tomorrow, and an even longer night.” There was a wicked gleam in his eyes that made you rub your thighs together, even as you scowled at him.
“I don’t suppose you will give me another taste of what to expect,” you sighed, resigned as Sanemi moved his head so that he could lazily dance his lips down the side of your neck.
“I’m afraid not,” his answering smirk was smug as you began to squirm beneath the hand idly fondling your breast. “But I shall make the wait worth your while.”
Your breath lodged in your throat as Sanemi leaned in close, his breath tickling your ear. “When we get to my den,” he promised, tone mischievous, yet you knew he meant every word that followed. “I am going to fucking devour you, little Lamb.”
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Devour he will. Part II is fucking filthy. Stay tuned if you want to see her take his knot (again and again).
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astr0exe · 12 days
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werewolf soap with puppy trans masc reader? maybe like breeding or something? something along those lines—
i feel like i wrote this really weirdly cause there is no dialogue BUt actually rlly enjoyed writing this.. like so much. Hope you have a good day / night ml !! <3
// CW ; tm!reader (cock used like once) , puppy reader (lil guy has me in a choke hold) , werewolf Soap , breeding , creampie , hybrid AU i guess
Puppy!Reader whose ears twitch and tail wags just from the scent of Werewolf!Soap walking in the room, your excited whines floating through the air as Soap’s tail wags, his grin stretched wide across his face as he makes his way towards you. Your tail whacking against the soft bed you are laying on, huffing and yelping happy to see your boyfriend.
Werewolf!Soap who laughs at the sight of his excited puppy all whiny and needy for him. He reaches the bed and lays down next to you, stroking your ears and playing with the fur softly, your bodies touching, his thigh between your legs, hitting your swollen cock softly. Your whimpers change in volume, not just excited but now also needy, just a needy puppy who needs his Johnny.
Werewolf!Johnny who can’t help but pounce on you once you start moaning, his hand down your pants as your tongues entwine. His fingers hammering into your hole loosening you enough for his fat cock.:(
Puppy!Reader who grinds against Soap’s fingers, moaning like a bitch in heat as your whines get louder. The smell of your juices filling Johnny's nose as you, gripping his fingers with your hole tightly.
Puppy!Reader who BEGS werewolf!Johnny to fill them up. Begging the poor man for his pups, you want his kids so bad don’t you pup? Want him to breed you. Knock you up. And a Werewolf!Johnny who can’t help but want to fuck his kids into you as well. His cock actually hurting with how hard he gets at the thought of you being round with his kids. Wanting to make you a dad so fucking bad.
Werewolf!Johnny whos cock pounds into your soaking cunt, your pussy so tight it's as if it's trying to milk all the cum from his poor cock, but shit if that doesn’t make him nearly cum.. (I digress) Johnny thanking the stars for his stamina and short recovery period, knowing he could cum in you four five times in just a single night, and knowing you would happily let him use your pretty body to do whatever he likes with it.
Puppy!Reader who cums at least seven times in the night, completely tired out even whilst Soap is still assaulting your poor pussy.:( Even blacking out a few times from the overstimulation and pure exhaustion. But when you do wake up, you smile feeling Johnny beside you, your stomach bulging with his cum, his cock still inside you half hard and one of his hands softly rubbing your tummy protectively
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whumperfultime · 3 months
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Tarot-Inspired Whump Prompts
I'm enthusiastic about both whump and tarot and those interests were bound to collide at some point. So I wrote a list of writing prompts inspired by the Major Arcana! Five prompts for each card, so there should be something for everyone. Enjoy!
(Also, if you happen to write anything based on any of these, feel free to tag me! I'd be honored to read it.)
The Fool: Accidental whump. Misplaced trust. Leap of faith. Taking a risk. Falling from a high place.
The Magician: Magical whump. Manipulation. Mind control. A charismatic and confident character. A table full of tools for inflicting pain.
The High Priestess: Keeping secrets. Blindfolded whumpee relying on their other senses. Guarding something or someone. Intuitively noticing when something or someone has changed. Cult setting/dynamics.
The Empress: Gilded cage. Lady whump (if you're into that). Comfort in material things. Gentle caretaker. Whumpee not used to experiencing abundance and safety.
The Emperor: Strict whumper and/or strict rules. Royal whump. Wartime. Stoic leader trying to remain calm for the sake of their team. High security.
The Hierophant: Religious whump. Institutionalized whump. Punished for questioning authority. Pressure to conform. Power leading to corruption.
The Lovers: Yandere whump. Sadistic choice. Forced to watch. Protectiveness. Multiple whumpees, whumpers, caretakers, etc.
The Chariot: Car crash. On the run. Kidnapped and forced into a vehicle. Lost and stranded. Unwanted and distressing thoughts.
Strength: Whumpee turned caretaker or whumper. Monster character. Patient caretaker. Animal attack. Emotional support animal.
The Hermit: Isolation. Sensory deprivation. Neglect. Feeling like an outcast. Going into hiding.
Wheel of Fortune: Bad luck. Time heals all wounds. Long-term captivity. Painful anniversaries. Wrong place, wrong time.
Justice: Whumper being arrested. Detached/indifferent whumper or caretaker. Wrongful imprisonment. Privileges vs. punishments. Shutting off emotions so logic can take over.
The Hanged Man: Stress position. Caught in a net. Restrained and abandoned. Hanging. Standing cuffs.
Death: Grief. Recovery milestones. Immortal whumpee dying over and over. Left behind. Visiting a grave.
Temperance: Drugged whumpee. Personality changes due to trauma. Angel character. Poisoning. Mad scientist whumper.
The Devil: Demon character. Sadistic whumper. Addiction and unhealthy coping mechanisms. Pet whump. Collared.
The Tower: Building collapse. Struck by lightning. Drastic change. A character being overpowered. Shocking revelation or betrayal.
The Star: Bathing (whether this is peaceful or whumpy is up to you). Drowning. Finally being able to rest. Anything having to do with recovery. Dehydration.
The Moon: Nightmares. Lost in the woods. Werewolf character. Illusions or hallucinations. Running on pure survival instinct.
The Sun: Sunburn. Public figure whumpee. Forced to perform. First time outside after being held captive. Heatstroke.
Judgement: Revenge. Sound torture. Deity character. Punishment. Resurrected from the dead.
The World: Endings (positive or negative). Breaking the cycle of abuse. Overwhelmed by choices. Regaining personal autonomy. Closure and acceptance (or lack thereof).
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darkdemeter · 3 months
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HABITS OF MOTHER NATURE'S WILL II
The DARK DEMETER WRITING CATALOGUE, WANDA MAXIMOFF COLUMN #2 —
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—- not my gifs, credit to original posters! -—
Wanda Maximoff x Werewolf! GN/Female/Male Reader, (Platonic) Avengers x Werewolf! GN/Female/Male Reader
A/N — Here it is, werewolf readers! Been a little busy raccoon with writing this behemoth. Quite the read as you can tell by the word count. Please take care in reading the discretion list because this column is quite graphic and may be potentially triggering for readers.
WORD COUNT — 13.8k
READER DISCRETION — High levels of angst — hurt/comfort — minor sexual interaction, unspecified genitals but use of "groin". (making out. slight dry humping) — high level gore and violence (werewolves are fighting, and that is never clean) — sprouts of fluff moments — trauma/ptsd — mentions of violence and death (WARNING: Unspecified ages, but implied deaths of children and teenagers) — protective reader — aggressive werewolf! reader — reader begins recovery from trauma — some adult language — brief alcohol consumption — minor name calling feat. Tony calling reader "pup" — use of Y/N
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SUMMARY — Habits are not easy to let go and neither is the past. The team and yourself are sent to Alaska for an undercover op, but it becomes clear to the team that you’re more guard than guide on this mission. Mother Nature herself vouches that you will put your new wisdom to her intended use when the once distant howls have grown close. You will do everything in your nature to protect your pack and your mate. Instinct will take over; and instinct shall turn into habit.
You can’t change what cannot be undone. She wants you to embrace this, yet you fight it,  tooth and claw.
There came this new and sole desire that occurred during the excruciating ordeal of your shift on the full moon last night. 
Only such an experience meant Mother Nature was granting you a new wisdom, that which altered your previous nature, no matter how complicated the human biology was.
By her law, instinct was instinct. 
You splashed cold water onto your face and absorbed the sight of yourself in the mirror. Often you caught sight of the beast beneath your eyes in the reflective surface. And many times it scared you how close it always lingered. Ever watchful and biding its time.
How could Wanda see you as more than you realise? 
You caught the shine of amber as it shimmered across your eyes in your reflection. Right below the surface of your own skin, a predator resided with unbridled force. You shook your head to rid the intrusive need to let it out. 
‘It is done now. She’s preparing me for something.’
Your hands gripped the sides of your sink, your white, strained knuckles ached with the pressure that threatened to crack the ceramic basin. 
‘They wouldn’t understand it. Wanda wouldn’t understand it.’ 
A knock on your room’s door caught you off guard. That rarely happened with your keen senses. Your hands released their hold on the sink.
“Y/N?” Your ears pricked at the accented tongue of her voice, “you finished packing?”
You don’t even think about your actions because it felt natural to approach her. To be close to her. You’ve already opened your door when you came to your senses 
when a pair of bright eyes blink up at you. Fuck, you can’t control your racing heart whenever she smiled. 
You’re almost afraid she’ll read your mind again and discover what she’d be better off never knowing. 
She saw you as more than you realised but could she possibly understand the idea that you saw her anymore differently than you did before?
‘Mate.’
“I came to let you know everyone is waiting for us. Can’t leave our guide behind now.” 
Her eyes momentarily fluttered down before they lifted to stare into the captivity of yours. 
“Y-yeah,” you bit back a snarl at the stutter of your response, “I’m ready.”
“Good. Could you help me with my bags?” Her eyes looked hopeful for the short moment you left her unanswered before you nodded, perhaps a little too enthusiastically.
“Of course!”
And that’s why you now fought so hard against Mother Nature. She instilled within your agonised cries, broken bones and reformed muscle what every werewolf anticipated: a soulmate tie. 
When many were overcome with a pure and primal feeling of joy, you were consumed by trepidation. 
Nevertheless, you walked Wanda to her room and retrieved her bags - much to her protest, you gave a wolfish smirk to hide the near breathlessness in your lungs and rapid beating of your heart - and joined the others on the Quinjet for your mission in Alaska.
Where a wolf calls home.
“So tell us, Wolfie. What’s the whole story with you and Alaska?” Natasha spoke up from the co-pilot's seat, Steve sat next to her, his focus on flying the jet though her question piqued his interest. “Did you grow up there?”
A few hours into the flight and all was smooth sailing until her question made the hair on the back of your neck stand. 
When you mentally prepared yourself, you turned your eyes in her direction.
She’d turned to peer over her shoulder at you with a quirk in her brow, curious to Fury’s designation as the team’s guide.
“Ah,” you huffed and scratched at your neck haphazardly, another habit you shared with disdain, “something Fury left out of my file, I take it?”
“Well, yeah. Your file has barely anything regarding background. Only when you moved to the city and your skill set mainly.” Your lips pulled into a thin line with Sam’s deliverance of this news. 
Your nose wrinkled at the scent that tinged the air like ash and smoke. A dark tone to their concern. Were they worried you were hiding something?
You simply shrugged to ease some of the tension that built around you and your teammates. “Just spent some years there before I moved on to live in the city. As a werewolf, you tend to learn terrain quickly, no matter how long it’s been.” 
Natasha nodded but something in the way she pursed her lips made the tight coil in your chest grow, almost to the point it strangled out a whimper from you. 
“Alaska is a really beautiful place,” you sighed and your lips stretch to form a smile, “if we have enough time, I’ll happily show you guys around. 
“I’d like that very much,” Wanda said from her seat across from yours. Your smile turned shy under her gaze, a flutter of her glowing red magic used to merely entertain herself made your heart warm. 
An odd sensation as if her very magic was tied to your heart. 
Steve hummed out from his place, his eyes wandered to Tony as if to hear out his thoughts on the matter. Tony shrugged. 
“Just don’t forget we’re here for a mission, not a ‘walk-with-nature’ getaway trip.”
The small assembled team nodded and mumbled amongst themselves. 
“Alright, Stark. But I am personally not leaving Alaska without playing a proper game of fetch with Y/N.”
Your chin tilted down to conceal the smirk on your lips. Wanda was surely determined with a tone like that. You briefly caught her eyes and the wide grin plastered on her face.
If Mother Nature gave you one chance to change yours and Wanda’s - unbeknownst to her - new fate, would you truly want to?
The Quinjet landed without trouble thanks to Steve’s impeccable piloting skills, though you could tell Sam and Tony may have had a few hundred pointers for the captain. 
The engine was turned off and everyone gathered their bags together. You reached into your suit pocket for the small pill case, taking two of them. When Sam gave you a questioning look, you mumbled something about it being medicine for your headache. 
The ramp lowered and the frozen breeze brought most of your teammates to a shiver. You and the super soldiers hadn’t so much as flinched. 
You were the first to step down the ramp and greet the snow with your feet, the deep crunch beneath you a welcomed whirlwind of contentment.
‘Home.’
The others followed behind you, bags adorned, they took in the marvel of their new surroundings. Below a blue and sunny sky littered with clouds, the platform was mostly covered by the ensuing white that covered the landscape. 
Down the trail that led alongside the woods, a large house laid vacant in the distance right near the edge of the frozen lake. 
“Quite the walk,” Tony huffed with a cluster of windy ice before his mouth. Snow already littered in his dark hair. 
Your gaze followed the span of the ice until it reached the far off cluster of trees on the other side. Beyond that, the mountain peaks contrasted against the sky.
“See that mountain up there?” You pointed at the tallest one and your team all turned their sights to where your hand directed. 
“I’ve been up there. A sort of tradition to race up to the top just as the sun grazed the horizon.” 
The memories were distant when you moved to the city. But now they flooded back like an avalanche. 
“All the way up there, huh?” Steve asked, mouth agape as he assessed the frosty white peak. “By yourself?”
“No, with my siblings.” You answered that too quickly and too honestly. The frosted mist faded before your lips into the air with your words, unable to take them back. 
“Wait, you never mentioned you have siblings,” said Bucky with a furrowed brow. 
“Oh, I guess I never did…” Your once smile faded from your face and your eyes were overcome with that pain that stained the snow you walked upon. You felt the stares against your back and you huffed aloud, shoulders sagged.
“Come on, we should get settled in,” you said with a forced smile, the cold for once stung harshly against your face. It burnt your skin.
The others nodded and you led the way down the trail. The sun would set soon, and it was unwise to wander around after sun down. But that sole purpose that fuelled your soul burned deep within you like a campfire amidst a snow storm. 
You wouldn’t allow any harm to befall your team. You’d sooner die than let anything happen to them. To her. 
As you walked with a determined stride towards the lodge, Wanda’s warm fingers swept across your knuckles.
‘I’m here for you, if you want to talk.’
You swallowed thickly and the inkling of your head nodding seemed to answer her as her eyes scanned you.
“So how did Fury get this safe house?” Clint asked with a deep, and huffy breath, his hand adjusted the bag on his shoulder. 
“It belonged to a family many years ago. But it’s been vacant for some time and Fury gained ownership of it.” 
“You seem very familiar with the safe house.” 
Shit. Was she reading your mind as you spoke? 
You walked up the steps onto the front porch, key in hand but your hand lingered on the door handle with an iron grip. 
You stood locked in place for what felt like an eternity, eyes scornful as they glared daggers into the wooden and glass panelled door. 
“I’d worked alongside the family. Did some odd jobs here and there, kind of became a family friend.” 
you unlocked the front door and promptly  stood aside with a gesture to the others before you, the door held open. You offered them all a kind smile the moment your eyes found Wanda’s, the sharp lines in your brows eased even when in hers, you saw the glimmer of concern.
“Come on in.” 
It was safe to say the majority of your party were relieved to step inside the lodge and turn on the thermostat. Not that it was ever much in use back in the day, you were a little surprised that it still managed after all this time. 
While the others took in their temporary residence, you couldn’t help but let your eyes rake over the emptiness that took place. A shadow of its former self.
Your hands ran over the hearth’s sill, clean of any dust but once, it held the memories of a past you left behind. Each frame a moment in time which you treasured beyond belief with the passed family.
Now you stared at the unlit hearth. Barren of those memories. You thought it was for the best. Fury did well with the clean up.
‘Are you okay?’ 
You looked towards where Wanda stood by the L shaped lounge, arms folded over her front and fingers knitted together; her nails dragged across her knuckles and it made you cringe from the thought of her discomfort.
‘Yeah, I’m alright.’ 
“So how are we doing the rooms?” Natasha asked after she finished her investigation of the kitchen right across from the lounge room. 
“We will do pairs,” you answered curtly, yet you still feigned a smile even if they could tell it was fake. 
“Follow me.”
You only hoped they wouldn’t say anything that delved deeper than the surface. Only the wolf awaited them there.
You hadn’t expected the return to Alaska to hit you in such a way. And to add atop of it all, your senses were at an all time high, dialled up to eleven. You felt far more sensitive than usual. 
More easy to falter. Easier to piss off.
Everyone followed you up the flight of stairs to the second floor. 
The hallway was less narrower than you remembered, it could fit two people shoulder to shoulder fairly well. Rooms lined the hallway down towards the singular pair of double doors at the end.
“These are the rooms, take your pick. This is the bathroom here, the master bedroom has an ensuite,” you explained to them, your tone rapid fire. 
“Wanda and Natasha, you can take the master bedroom.” You opened the double doors and it took everything in you to prevent the tears. And yet a sad smile pulled at the corners on your lips.
You could still smell them after all this time. It was like they never left. 
“Are you sure?” Natasha asked rather sharply, almost offended you offered it up so casually, given your relationship with the family.
“I don’t mind bunking with Clint is all, if that’s your concern. You and Wanda can take the master.”
Natasha’s tone was one you knew well enough for your months with the Avengers. Firm. Bossy. She wasn’t asking, she was telling. Your breath goes still in your lungs and your face became heated, a red hue bloomed in your cheeks and the tip of your nose.
You and Wanda together in a room? By yourselves?
“I— er, I don’t—“ you’re a fucking stuttering mess again and you clear your throat, the sound more of a growl than anything. 
“I don’t mind bunking with you, Wolfie!” Wanda assured with a light and gentle smile, you could see easily she was holding back a flustered giggle given the faint colour in her cheeks.
Though you wished to chalk that up to the cold still settled in her bones beneath the layers. 
“Then that’s settled!” Natasha flashed you both a wink and you whined lowly, involuntarily on your part but no less made Wanda giggle freely this time.
“I’m not sleeping in the same room as Tony,” Bucky grumbled, his eyes found Steve’s to indicate he’d chosen his roommate. 
Tony huffed with a roll of his eyes. “Likewise, cyborg.”
“Okay, boys. Keep the peace. Everyone settle in and come downstairs for dinner in fifteen minutes. That’s an order!”
“I thought I was in charge!” Tony called after Natasha down the hallway, Sam patted his shoulder. “Yeah, only on report. We know who’s really directing this mission.” 
Steve and Bucky took the room that belonged to the second eldest sibling, further down the hall, Natasha and Clint claimed the room next to theirs; the twin’s old room and Sam and Tony chose the room opposite Bucky and Steve’s, the third eldest’s room. 
When you looked down that hallway, you could see the kids in that hallway again, their feet pattering against the wooden planks in their rush of excitement. 
The last bedroom, however, was off limits. Under lock and key. It didn’t take a genius to put two and two together. Fury put everything in there and put a lock on it. 
It was for the best. 
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Wanda asked after everyone had gone to their chosen rooms to unpack and settle in. 
You closed the doors with a heavy sigh, forehead pressed into the cool, wooden surface.
“Yeah,” you managed to breathe out, “yeah, I’m just… not feeling too good. Feel different…” 
Wanda took a few steps forward but was paused in place by the command in your voice. “Don’t…” 
Your vocals were contorted into a deep, husky drawl as the wolf shined through enough to reflect in your eyes with an ominous glow. Your claws dug into the skin of your palms to the point they almost drew blood. 
Her eyes drifted down to see your balled fists and her hands nervously fiddled together once more, you waited to see the red hue of her magic.
Was she trying to read your mind again?
“I-I’m sorry, I didn’t—“ you retracted yourself, getting a grip of the wolfish desire to let go. You had to keep it together. 
Your heart rapped hard in your chest, your claws sank back and the amber glow faded from your eyes. “I’m sorry, Wanda.”
‘I’m sorry, Mate.’
“It’s fine, really, Y/N. Don’t worry about it. Just know I’m here for you if you want to talk. We all are.” 
There was too much on your mind to simply talk. No. You needed action. Talking about it would only lead to tears and a breakdown. 
“Hey,” Wanda closed the gap between you both and you fought between doing the same and taking a retreating step. You were locked in place a second time.
Her hand was delicate as she placed it on your arm to give an assuring squeeze. 
“Don’t fight it. Whatever it is that’s troubling you. I want to help you.”
‘I want your help. I want you.’
You feel like you can only nod in reply. Your words all jumped in the back of your throat, a knot ready to burst the moment you try to utter a single one of those words.
She took the daring leap and wrapped her arms around your torso.
The instinct Mother Nature had sewn into your wisdom made your arms wrap around Wanda, and you tugged her in until she was flush against you. 
Her scent filled your nose and your eyes softened with a rumble reverberating against her chest, the glisten of tears not long to follow as your eyes became coated. How you wished you had the courage to tell her this new desire. This need to protect her; claim her.
But she wouldn’t understand it. Those who did not share their very soul with the wolf couldn’t possibly grasp the identity of such serious and sacred matters that kept your species alive and the old ways honoured. 
Not often were humans and werewolves bound together by Mother Nature’s soulmate tie. Often the wolf was spurned because their mate didn’t understand that their rejection held far greater consequences than hurt feelings.
Perhaps that was why you wanted to protect Wanda so much. Not because she was your destiny or to protect yourself from getting hurt.
You were no stranger to getting hurt.
It was to protect her from what you would become and the guilt she would harbour on herself. 
“Thank you, Wanda. For being here,” you sighed after a long moment, time having felt dragged on for years as you held her in a tight hug. You didn’t want to let her go. Not now or ever. 
“Of course, Wolfie. You’re my friend.” 
You whined softly but the corner of your lips turned up into a faint smile, conflicted between pain and relief. “I like that…”
‘Mate…’ 
You and Wanda had been the last to join everyone downstairs for dinner. Natasha and Clint mostly tutted and bickered with each other as they slaved away with dinner, Wanda opted to help out when she had a taste test.
Tony and Bucky had helped themselves to one of the finely aged whiskey bottles in the cabinet near the dining table and Steve took interest in the small collection of books arranged by volume, while Sam took in the terrain from the wide, floor to ceiling windows that looked out into the growing dark woods.
Everyone was growing accustomed to their surroundings in the house. This was good, it meant they felt comfortable. That’s what you wanted, had hoped for. You couldn’t exactly say the same for you, but there was that feeling of home.
You joined Sam by the window, a cold bottle of beer curled into the palm of your hand. It didn’t taste the best, you’d never liked the brand, but it was what was on hand.
Alcohol had a weird effect on werewolves anyway so you opted to stay away from it as much as possible. 
You took a swig with a grunt from your unsettled gut and Sam smirked at you. “You doing alright, Wolfie?” He asked and you rolled your eyes.
“Just fine. Beer’s shit though, I don’t know how you guys like it.”
The sneer on your face as you glared down at the bottle only made Sam chuckle. “Honestly, it does taste bad, but I don’t fancy myself the connoisseur.” Sam, subtly as he might, gestured towards Tony and Bucky. “Unlike them.”
You huffed at that, a small grin on your lips. Sam was a good man to talk to whenever you felt like the world around you was caving in with a purpose to destroy you. 
Even more, when he’d talk about his family, you got immersed in his stories; as though you were there too. 
“I wouldn’t trust Tony to drink a shot of dyed bleach and tell the difference.”
Sam’s fist was brought to his face, a mouthful of his drink chuffed back when he snorted so he wouldn’t choke. 
You grin impossibly more and clapped his shoulder. “Hey, I’m not the best at jokes, how did you even find that funny?” 
“Something funny, pup?” Tony asked over the rim of his glass. Your eyes met his and you shook your head. “Just told a dull joke,” you replied, “like your taste buds…” 
Only Sam heard your muttering and once he was free of his mouthful of beer, he laughed loudly. The sound faded after a moment and you both stared out into the woodland.
“It’s really peaceful out here,” Sam said finally. You nodded but you feared something in you couldn’t entirely agree with him. 
It had been peaceful once. But now there lingered something eerie. It made you too alert to easily relax as the others did. Even if they too could sense the same thing as you, their scent gave nothing away. “I thought the same as you once.”
Sam looked at you with a troubled, confused furrow in his brow. His lips pulled down into a frown. Sam opened his mouth, no doubt to ask the question you already saw in his eyes, but Natasha’s announcement cut him off.
“Dinner’s ready!” 
Clint and Wanda served up everyone’s plates with the spaghetti bolognaise. The food was good on account of Wanda adding just a little bit more spice and salt to the sauce, and of course what was dinner without conversation.
Talk about smaller topics were easier to digest with your food. How you didn’t expect it to take a turn that made your hand halt before you could take another bite of your food.
“Is there anything dangerous out here, Y/N?”
“It’s Alaska and we’re in the middle of unsettled territory. Of course there are dangers out here,” you answered Sam with a casual shrug. 
Not many predators roamed so close to the house when you were here with the family. Just the odd bear once or twice. You glanced up to meet Sam’s unsure stare.
He didn’t believe you. 
“Just as a safety precaution, when we’re not on a mission, stay within the border of the property,” you began, “I’ll show you guys around tomorrow. At night, I ask that you stay inside. If you do go outside, let me know so I can come with you.” 
“We’re capable of holding our own against a drifter moose or yogi bear, pup,” Tony snarked lightly with another gulp of his whiskey. 
“I know,” you bite with a tone a little too harshly, the beds of your fingernails felt bruised and ached as your eyes burnt. “But just… please, just do that for me, yeah?”
You looked around the table and you let out a relieved sigh when you saw heads nod. “Of course, Y/N,” Natasha assured. 
“Good. Other than that, you have free roam of the house, minus the locked room upstairs. Just the family’s old belongings.” 
The others nodded again and your eyes met Wanda’s. she could see something deeply troubled you. You were usually so calm and collected on missions, barely flinching when bullets fired at you in a frenzied spray. Sure, your aggression was a feat unmatched in the heat of battle but it was what made you strong.
Deadly.
Effective. 
You were Mother Nature’s definition of safety and danger. An apex predator. 
But now, something in you had visibly switched. Gone was the fearsome animal that could maul and maim without restraint but one. Your confident smirk and wicked disregard for your life - despite your actions to protect your teammates - had contorted into a concerning frown and a strained, husk of a drawl. An underlying threat to unleash the wolf if steps were not taken carefully. 
Dinner resumed, albeit, a little less talking and a lot more tension. You finally excused yourself after you promptly thanked Natasha, Clint and Wanda for the food. 
You knew everyone watched you leave but Wanda’s eyes pierced through you like nothing else ever could. 
The wind swept across your back and through your hair with a hollow whisper in the night. The pier was a spot you went to to think when you felt troubled. The Northern Lights danced across the black canvas littered with stars and a bright, fading full moon. 
The frozen lake offered a different ambience with the rest of nature. A deep, echoing boom across the frozen surface could be heard from the water beneath the layer of ice. 
Boots intruded on the wooden boards of the pier as they gently - calmly - thundered towards you.
“Wolfie,” one accented tongue said so beautifully you thought for a moment an angel greeted you. Startled with a gasp, you spun your head to look in the direction of her voice.
“Wanda,” you greeted with a rumble.
‘Mate.’
“What are you doing out here?” 
She rolled her shoulders back and stepped closer. Then another step. The post behind you greeted your back then. 
“I came out here to find you. May I join you?”
You nodded, the action more of a nervous quiver than anything, Wanda smiled and stood by your side. Her shoulder brushed along your arm and you felt the air in your lungs dissipate. 
“You left dinner so abruptly. I wanted to make sure you’re okay.” 
“I’m alright.” You stared off into the distance to keep your eyes away from Wanda’s who you knew analysed you now. Her scent filled you and smothered out all the rest. You couldn’t smell the fresh wetness of the snow, the rich, earthly smell of the pines, nor the herd of the elk that traversed the wilderness across the vast lake. 
You could only smell her. That intoxicating scent of rose and vanilla that her shampoo couldn’t conceal from you.
The vanilla was stronger. She was in a state of unease. Worry. 
Your eyes slowly drifted from the mountains to her. Her gaze must have left you to also see where it was your sights wandered off to. 
“You don’t believe me?” You asked and she sighed, unable to meet your eyes. “Not really. I know something is wrong, you’re encumbered by this fear and it’s driving me crazy that I can’t— that I can’t…”
Your brows were pulled into a hard formation and your mouth fell agape. The struggle within her to voice her thoughts made your heart wrench and break. “Hey…” 
That instinct took over again, your arm  wrapped around her waist and you didn’t hesitate to pull her to you. 
It felt nice for Wanda to be held like this. The cold slithered beneath the layers used to keep it out, only to find the heat of your body to immediately nullify the chill. 
“It’s hard to explain, Wanda. I’m in a very difficult position right now and I fear what might happen to those around me.” 
“I told you that I’m here to talk, Y/N. I won’t judge, I promise. Please just… tell me.” 
Her head rested under your chin, her hands rested against your chest. It all felt so intimate. You wanted to cave and tell her everything on your mind. She was your mate and she had a right to know.
But would she understand?
“Wanda, you’re…,” you trailed off as something thick coated the back of your throat, “you’re…”
‘My mate. Just say it, tell her she is your mate!’
Your chest expanded with a deep breath, Wanda’s head lifting with it. Her cheek nuzzled against you. This was your chance. It was now or never. 
“Wanda, you’re my m—“
An announcing howl reverberated in the far distance like wind moved through a hollow. 
Your blood turned ice cold. The searing burn in your eyes returned with that striking, animalistic glow of amber. 
“What is it?” Wanda had asked but you didn’t answer. You glared off in the direction where the howl came from. That sounded haunted you; hunted you. 
“Get inside and don’t come out. No matter what,” you commanded beneath a baritone growl. Wanda looked at you, jaw dropped and eyes wide. You could smell it on her. Vanilla. 
Confusion. Fear. 
“But—“
“Now.”
You left no room for argument. Not when it came to her safety. Not when the wolf shone through the amber that danced ferociously in your eyes. There she could see a semblance of that old you. 
Protective. Dangerous. 
She made her way back towards the house but she stopped at the end of the pier and turned to look at you once more. Her bright, glossy eyes pleaded with you to follow her. You watched her and nodded for her to go on, that you wouldn’t be too far behind.
‘Promise you’re right behind me.’
‘I promise. Now go.’
She rushed off towards the front porch and entered the house as the wind was bitter against your back again; harsher than before.
You wanted nothing more than to end this. Your arm rested against the post, claws digging deep into your palm. You’d make it painful but to strike now would only invite conflict so early into your mission.
It would complicate things all because you couldn’t keep yourself in check.
A confirmation that even with your positives there came your negatives; unpredictable, bloodthirsty and dangerous to the team.
Dangerous to Wanda. 
You lowered your arm and drove your fist hard into the post with a pained grunt. You promised Wanda you were right behind her and what you planned on doing was only going to do the opposite. 
You saw the fear in her eyes. You couldn’t put her through anything else if you came out of this fight scathed and bruised. No less, the team would be suspicious.
You’d have to wait. 
Wanda waited up for you, no matter the hour it was now, she wouldn’t rest until she knew you were safe. The red hue of her magic glowed in the darkness of the room, the only other source of light was one of the twin lamps on the bedside table. 
Her head shot up and her magic ceased when she heard the doors open to your shared room, your form emerged from the dark hallway and promptly closed the doors behind you.
“Y/N,” she gasped your name and sat up on her knees, mattress dipping beneath her.
Your eyes met hers, amber flickering just faintly behind your pupils. With a growl, your face goes flush. Wanda was dressed down into nothing but an oversized shirt and what you chalked up to be her underwear. 
“H-hey,” you choked out as your hand rubbed the back of your neck. Your eyes darted elsewhere to keep your gaze - that now festered with a hunger - away from Wanda.
‘Fucking hell!’
“What?”
“What?” Your eyes widened as they stared into hers, you fought the tempting urge to let your gaze travel down her body.
Was this the work of your soulmate tie or your little crush? 
Wanda tilted her head curiously, her nose scrunched a little as the corner of her lips turned up. You appeared less troubled by whatever it was before. Now you were… you.
That you, whenever she would walk into the same room you occupied. That you, that often asked her how she was doing and complimented her. 
Her flustered wolf with the red ball. 
“I’m good, I just er—“ you glanced towards the ensuite bathroom with a wave of your hand. “I’m just gonna, ya know, get ready for bed.”
“Okay.” Wanda let out a light giggle. You were quick to gather your change of clothes and hurried into the bathroom. You may have taken a little longer than you’d have liked, but you had to get your bearings together before you re-entered that bedroom. 
‘To have her and mark her right now— no, no, none of that! She’s your friend…
Mate…
Fuck.’
You face-palmed yourself with another growl. The faint glimmer of the wolf behind your eyes had now brightened once more but with a newfound interest.
‘I was so close to telling her. I missed my chance.
Could tell her now…
No. Ain’t doing that.’ 
You walked out of the bathroom to find Wanda settled in bed and under the covers much to the conflict of your relief and disappointment. You climbed into bed beside her, being sure to leave a good amount of space between you both. 
Was she really happy to share a room with you for the duration of your mission? 
You flicked off the lamp and laid back against the pillow with a heavy, tired sigh. Both your arms rested underneath your head. 
“Wolfie?” Wanda’s voice whispered into the darkness. You hum in response. “I’m a little cold…”
You lifted your head slightly to look at her, able to see every detail on her face in the dark. A fine trait to have until you woke up first thing with the fucking sun in your eyes. 
It’s why you opted to always have the curtains drawn closed.
“The thermostat is a bit rusty, but I could get you an extra blanket if you’d like?”
She shook her head, fiery hair and cheek nuzzling into her pillow. A faint, shy smile on her plump lips. Lips you wanted so badly to kiss.
“I don’t want to trouble you with that.” 
You raised a brow at that. Why did she bring it up if she didn’t want you to resolve it?
Before you could say anything, she moved closer into your side, her arm curled over your stomach. 
Your muscles tensed as her cheek laid where your shoulder and neck met. Anything you did want to say completely went out the window of your thought process. 
“Much better,” she sighed almost silently, her breath even and slow. Your arm wrapped over her shoulder and Wanda relaxed more against your side.
“You good?” You asked, albeit hesitantly. She softly hummed in return and you couldn’t restrain your smile. 
By the soft thump of her heartbeat and her quiet breaths, she’d fallen asleep quickly. The warmth of your body must have really helped her.
You turned your head and your nose brushed against her scalp, lips hovering over the crown of her hairline. “Good night…”
‘Mate.’
You awoke to the sound of voices coming from downstairs. New voices that didn’t belong to anyone on your team. You grumbled as you sat up, arms pulled up to stretch your muscles. 
That’s when you realised the bed was vacant beside you. A piece of paper sat on Wanda’s pillow and you plucked it, reading the delicate handwriting.
‘Didn’t want to wake you. Come downstairs when you’re awake, Wolfie! P.S you were really warm and comfy’
You huffed at that, a smirk plastered on your tired features. For a moment you’d forgotten about the strange voices until you put the letter aside.
You frowned and your glare landed on the closed doors.
You stood up and silently, you opened the doors. You moved equally as quietly down the hallway until you reached the top of the stairs, thankfully you were obscured from sight on the first floor.
“What a wonderful place you have here. So, you lot just moved in?”
“Yep,” Steve said with a chuckle, “we all pitched in together to start fresh from the city. We’d heard good things about Alaska, stunning views and a lot of opportunities.” 
You applauded Steve’s skill to act like a civilian. A true and natural actor when it came to undercover ops.
Too bad your rather aggressive nature tended to give you a bad impression on people. It’s why you were often a background actor. Someone who was passing through, someone who wasn’t a permanent fixture to the attention of your targets.
Exactly the reason why you hid upstairs and eavesdropped. 
The man downstairs gave an amused hum. “And a lot of game,” he mused, you could hear the test in his voice.
Yes, you knew that voice. 
“Oh yeah, quite the trophies hunters claim up here. We’re quite the group ourselves, James particularly.”
‘Oh, Steve.’
You could smell the sudden change in Bucky’s scent. You rolled your eyes. 
“Oh?”
“Mm, when I’m up to it. I only go after the best game when it’s trophy season.”
“Then why don’t we go hunting together this weekend, huh? It is game season and I think it’d help break the ice as neighbours.“
You stiffened in your place, back rigid against the wall. You smelt it in the air. Each one of your teammates had a sense of unease. They must’ve known something was up, this man - these people - were undoubtedly your targets; drawn in just as Fury had predicted.
Only, he didn’t disclose what they were with the others. Only you knew. 
“Neighbour?” Sam asked and the man laughed. 
“That’s right! Over the mountain ridge out that way. A lodge like this one, you can’t miss it.”
“Sure, we might come by. Any particular spots for good game?” Tony asked, he’d actually fooled you for a second there with how invested he sounded in the idea of hunt and game.
“This valley is quite the place for hunting, actually. The best.”
Your eyes screwed shut, your mind slowly slipping away into that dark space you’d purposefully left behind. 
You wished they’d just leave.
“So it’s just you seven here? Nobody else?” He asked and your breath froze. 
“Nope, just us,” Wanda answered. 
“I see… hmm,” he replied, his response slow before a second silence befell him. You heard him clear his nasal before he shyly said, “Apologies, the cold season tends to make my nose sensitive. Well then, I’d best be going before the wife hangs my head over the hearth. Be seeing you, neighbours and welcome to Alaska.” 
You breathed out a sigh of relief when he and the men with him left. Your team bid their farewells to your neighbours and the front door closed behind your departing guests.
Your team was in danger.
‘And it’s my fucking fault!’
Werewolves don’t get sensitive to the cold. You lot were basically self-established heating machines to withstand the cold climates.
No. He’d sniffed you out and your pills to hide your wolf scent had worn off from yesterday. 
Your scent was known and he knew that his new neighbours had a little secret of their own. The muscles around your mouth and nose twitch, teeth clenched hard together as a rumble vibrates in your chest. 
How could you be so careless? You could smell them before you even opened your bedroom door and yet you failed to keep your own scent hidden. 
“Well, that was something,” Natasha huffed and you heard Clint grunt in an agreeable fashion. 
“You can say that again. The guy had a weird look in his eye when he spoke about the whole hunting thing.”
“I don’t think he hunts ordinary animals,” Bucky drawled, voice laced with his deep-rooted suspicion. He was right to be and you were glad he - or anyone on your team - didn’t fall for the facade.
They hunted animals to keep people off their scents but elk, bears and beavers weren’t their preferred quarry.
They prided themselves in hunting their own kind. A sick, perverted desire to slaughter other packs. Not only that, they had a sickening obsession with hunting humans. To do things no person should be subjected to.
Mother Nature scorned such vile behaviour with hatred beyond words. 
And this pack had connections to a Hydra resurgence group that intended to operate within Alaska. 
They had to be stopped and your temper was running short. Sooner or later you were gonna wolf out and you wanted the snow to be stained red with that pack’s blood. 
You should have done so last night, keeping your cover be damned.
You finally decided to head downstairs, the necessity to conceal your footsteps no longer mattered. 
All eyes fell to you and you waved in response to the uttered good mornings and greetings. 
“I take it you heard all that upstairs?” Tony asked you, doing you the courtesy of getting a cup of coffee ready for you. You nodded with a snarl, “yeah, and we’re gonna need a new plan.”
“Why?” Steve asked, brows knitted together as he leaned against the wall. Tony passed you the cup of steaming coffee. 
You took a gulp of it before your eyes looked to Steve and the others. You were silent, gaze elsewhere as your thumb massaged the handle of your mug. 
“What aren’t you telling us, Y/N?” Natasha asked from her place at the dining table, her own mug nestled against her palm. Still, you didn’t answer. 
“Because they know I’m here.” That’s all you said. What you intended to say. Did they truly need to know that they were dealing with werewolves? Probably, but you had other plans. 
“How? We told them it was just us,” Sam argued. You only shook your head. “They know I’m here. We need a new plan quickly. They’re not gonna wait until the weekend now.”
They didn’t like your answer, or rather, lack of answers. 
“You’re still hiding something from us.” You growled over the rim of your cup. Steve was pushing it. “If there is something about these guys that you know about, you need to tell us.” 
You placed your cup down on the countertop, hunched over on your stool. “Werewolves don’t get sick little noses because of the cold, Captain. The only thing that makes us sick are infections from wounds and poisons engineered from wolfsbane and silver. To which, Hydra has been known to have an abundance of.” 
They wanted the truth and you gave it to them on a platter. You allowed them to have their stunned silence, no matter how suffocated it made your nose feel. 
“You mean—“
“He could smell me, Tony.” Your eyes slowly rolled to meet his and for the first time since you met the billionaire, you saw the colour drain from his face as he stared into your eyes. 
“He’s the same damn thing I am and because of that, that leaves us in a very compromised position.” 
Another wave of silence filled the open space. You downed the rest of your coffee in a few gulps. You couldn’t even process the taste. 
“What do we do?” You heard Bucky ask from behind you. You turned to see him stare at you, blue eyes piercing into you to get the answer they needed. Wanda stood next to him.
She’d been quiet this whole time and that fear wedged itself sharply into your heart. To see the uncertainty of the mission because it had already gone sideways. 
“The whole guide shit was only half true. Fury sent me in as a guard,” you began, “but if you’re asking me what I really think we should do is get you guys back to headquarters.”
“What do you mean? Y/N, we’re not going to leave you behind. We’re going to complete this mission together.” Steve was pissed that you’d suggest such a thing. 
“We do have two capable super soldiers, an enhanced witch who can move things with her mind, an ex-spy, two mediocre talents at best and myself: the brilliant genius that I am,” Tony said. How you wanted to slap the arrogance from his head so hard. “And also a werewolf. What could go wrong?”
You shook your head again, tongue running over your teeth with a tsk. “You don’t get it, Stark. This pack has been here for many years. They know the terrain better than any of you. They will use that to their advantage. On top of that, they have ties to the Hydra resurgence. Tony, if I don’t get you guys out of here, there will be no getting out of here.” 
You turned to the others as you stood from your stool, your eyes coated in a hot, watery layer. 
“These werewolves are not your ordinary pack. They are literal hunting dogs for Hydra. You’ve all seen Bucky as the Winter Soldier…”
You didn’t wish to bring it up, not to see the pain in those blue eyes of his. Bucky and you seemed to get along quite well. You both understood each other. His time with Hydra was not something you brought up lightly; you had a point to make. They couldn’t grasp the severity of the situation. They hadn’t experienced what you did. 
You needed to get your team out of Alaska because they were yours to protect. They were your pack.
You take a deep breath in, your eyes scanned each awaiting face until they landed on Wanda. 
“Now imagine that type of scenario, but times it by ten. You have to trust me on this one. If I stay behind, I can fend them off while you guys get home and get reinforcements.” 
“No, Y/N…,” you heard Wanda whisper with a shaken breath. You didn’t want to see the tears in her eyes, but you turned anyway to face her. 
“Wanda, you have no idea what you’re getting yourselves into with this pack… but I do. What they did to the family that lived here is something I will not see happen again. Not to you.”
What remained of that day all felt like a blur. You’d all discussed the new plan and now, after two days of waiting, you were going to execute the escape plan. 
The howls from the woods had gotten closer each night. Their arrival was just as you had said. They weren’t going to wait until the weekend. 
“I don’t like this plan, Y/N,” Wanda said, voice quivering in her throat, “what if something bad happens to you while we’re gone? What if they kill you?” 
You shook your head. “They won’t kill me. I won’t make it easy for them.”
Wanda scowled at this and she rounded the bed to where you were. She placed a hand over yours, clenched together between your thighs. 
“This isn’t about making it difficult for them, this is about your survival. You said it yourself, these werewolves aren’t like any other. They’re different because of what Hydra did to them.”
Your jaw clenched tightly at her words. Her soft skin against yours made your hand tingle, her breath so close to beating along the apple of your cheek. 
“But so am I,” you said lowly. You turned your chin towards Wanda, her eyes searched your face and your uttered words for some semblance of understanding. 
“I… I still don’t like this idea. Just come back with us, please…” Tears wept down her cheeks and she didn’t hide the small sniffle. 
“It has to be this way, Wanda.” You stood up and pulled her into your chest without hesitation, her arms immediately encircled around your torso. 
“This is personal. What they did to—“ you grimaced at the memory. The blood that splattered the walls and the snow alike. Carnage like no other you’d seen stained the house secretly. The clean-up may have hidden the history but your memory did not let it go.
It couldn’t. The only way the nightmares would stop is if you uprooted it from the source. 
“What they did to this family - and more - is unforgivable. I have to be the one to do this. I can’t stand the thought of losing you, you’re my—“
This fucking soulmate tie. Why was it so difficult for you to tell her? Maybe she was right, you could possibly get killed and she would never know the truth because you were too scared to tell her.
Your arms squeezed around her a little tighter, hands quivering as they balled into fists until your knuckles were white and your claws unsheathed from your nail beds. 
“I’m what?” 
“I-I’m just…”
‘Scared.’
“Scared of what?” Her words made the air gasp from your lungs. You blanked your mind to shield it from her reading anything more. You just held her close. It was all what you felt capable of. With her head resting against your chest, she was able to hear the bombardment of your heartbeat. 
“I can’t say it,” you answered but Wanda shook her head. She was done letting this fear eat away at you from the inside.
“Tell me, or I’m going in there,” she ordered firmly, her hand reached out to grab your chin and hold it so she could rest her forehead against yours. You heard the smirk in her voice. 
You chuffed at her light attempt at humour, to make the currently dark moment a little brighter than it was. 
“I am scared that I will lose a second time. And I won’t survive that agony again.” 
Wanda nodded, her nose bumped against yours and your lips danced so close to one another. It was a struggle to not close the slight distance between you to kiss her. 
“You still haven’t told me what I am to you.” 
“I’ll tell you when this is all over,” you sighed, voice hesitant as you slightly withdraw your face from hers. Wanda’s hands slid to your cheeks and held you so you couldn’t pull away anymore.
“Promise?”
The corners of your lips tug into a smirk. “I promise.” 
You caught the way her eyes flickered down slightly to your lips and out of habit, your tongue darted along your bottom to wet it. Your eyes did the same to hers, plump and soft looking. Always tempting. 
“Kiss me, Wolfie.” Her voice called to you softly, the plea of your mate making you cave as you brushed your lips against hers. 
If you did this, you weren’t just friends. You saw her as more than a friend. Whatever she saw more than you realised, was it more than a friend for her?
Did she see a companion in you? A mate?
Your lips pressed into hers and your chest relaxed as the air was drawn from you, a deep growl resounded in the back of your throat. 
Wanda tilted her head to deepen the kiss with a breathless moan.
Your hunger consumed you. Your hands drifted down the length of her back until they reached her thighs, you knocked her knees and she gasped. Your tongue darted through her parted lips as her legs wrapped around your waist, your strength supporting her as if she were a feather. 
Her hands ran through the length of your hair with another moan and that unmistakable swell of arousal pooled in your groin. 
Fuck, how you wanted to claim her right now. That wolfish hunger, selfish in want, desired to make the bite now. 
But you would wait. You’d wait for Wanda and you’d wait for the rest of eternity for her. You couldn’t say she’d do the same, but you damn well hoped. 
You fell forward to lay Wanda down on the bed, your arms supported your weight like pillars on either side of her head. Her hands pulled you closer to her, even if the fight for air was growing too much to bear. 
You smelt it on her, the sweet aroma of rose tinged by an even sweeter scent; her arousal. Your hips bucked against hers and she gasped out, her fingers dug into you with a whimper of your name. 
Oh, how you wanted to hear that sound again. Her hips in turn began to grind against you, the friction of your pants made her legs quiver around your waist. 
You growled against her open mouth, her tongue submitted to you long before her back met the mattress. Her hand flew to your belt to loosen it but you captured her wrist and she stopped, you pulled away from her lips with a deep breath. 
“We don’t have to rush this, Sweetheart,” you pant, head nuzzling against hers. She smiled shyly and a red hue coloured her cheeks and nose.
Not that you blamed her, your own face was a fiery mess of its own.
“Sorry, I got a little wild,” she giggled and you flashed her a wolfish grin, chuckling deeply. 
“Says the witch with the literal wolf on top of her.” 
You brushed your nose along the curve of her jaw, inhaling her intoxicating scent. It made you feel how you presumed people felt when they got drunk. 
You lifted your head so you could see her now. Her eyes stared up at you and that smile that scared away the darkness was there.
How you adored her. What you wouldn’t do for the woman beneath you, you could not name.
You’d do anything for your mate.
Your hand caressed her cheek, thumb running over her chin. “What do you see in me, Wanda?” 
You were curious. She always looked at you with a sense that she saw something in you nobody else could. 
“I see many things within you.”
“Name one,” you urged. Silence ensued as 
her lips thinned in thought. Her gaze softened, perhaps you misread it because of the lighting in the room. You thought for a moment you saw love. 
Her mouth opened to finally give you her answer when a knock pounded against the door - and also your sharpened hearing. A grimace twisted your features.
Wanda offered a sad smile when the realisation that the small world you and Wanda were in had come to an end. 
There was a darkness out in the world that needed to be rid of. That temporary light had to withdraw for the time being. 
You rolled off of Wanda and she stood up quickly as the door opened, after you’d beckoned whoever it was to enter. 
“We’re ready to head off,” Natasha said from the doorway, eyes suspiciously squinted between you and Wanda with a smirk.
You cleared your throat when her knowing eyes landed on you. “Alright. Thank you, Natasha,” you bit down the bark in your words. 
When you two were left alone again, you looked to Wanda. “Don’t go getting yourself killed now. Promise me, Wolf.”
“I promise…”
‘… Mate.’
The sun was setting over the valley, the last rays of light quick to fade as night encroached. You would have to hurry to get everyone on the Quinjet safely. 
“Everyone ready?” You asked as you opened the front door and your team nodded. There was no time to drag their bags along. You’d all suited up and gathered your necessities. 
“Let’s go,” Steve said behind you. 
You exited the house first, a quick assessment of your surroundings, you signalled to your team to follow. 
“Keep together and in front of me. Go!” You urged, letting Steve take the lead to the Quinjet while you covered the team’s rear. It’d allow you to see any oncoming attacks. 
Wanda kept glancing back at you, to make sure you weren’t too far behind, her own fear that you’d be targeted first evident in her eyes. 
Twigs and branches snapped in the woods around you, the scent of your team polluted the air with their growing anxiety of an impending attack. 
“There it is, get going!” You called out, relief flooding the entire team in a shroud when the ramp was already lowered. Your hand brushed Wanda’s back as you urged her forward into a sprint, Bucky and Natasha beside her. You knew they would look after her. 
A colossal weight slammed into your side from the thicket of trees up the snowy hillside, your body instinctively shifted to the mass of muscle and fur now laced with snow. A roar tore from your vocals at the beast that’d separated you from the others. 
An expected tactic. 
You charged up the slope you’d been pushed down onto, leaping into the air and shoved your opponent into the ground beneath him. The hillside was crawling with the ambush, they moved swiftly down to join the first attacker. Most charged for you, but the few that ran for the jet didn’t escape your notice.
You bellowed a warning roar, Wanda among the group that guarded the ramp as Tony and Sam went to get the jet fired up. A clawed hand swept across your face hard, slashing you blind for a second and knocked you onto the ground. Your teeth sunk into the flesh of your attacker’s arm, a pained yelp echoed in the frosty wind. Your hind legs kicked at their toned stomach, claws tearing through fur and tissue as you launched them away; a chunk of flesh clenched between your canines. 
A flood of blood wept from the chunk in your mouth, you dropped it with a wet splash to the snow. A roar came from behind as another came at you but an arrow fired into her eye, her attack faltered as you rolled to the side. Wanda’s magic grappled hold of the wolf and flung her further back, her back smashed into a thick trunk with a growl. 
“The jet’s on, let’s get going!” Tony’s voice yelled above the ensuing chaos. You barked in agreement and cocked your head in encouragement for the team to leave.
“Y/N!” Wanda yelled out for you, fingertips touched by the tendrils of her magic as reached out for you; the ramp began to close. She made to run to you. 
“Wanda!” Steve called in his attempt to halt Wanda. One of the werewolves ran at Wanda, clawed hands outstretched to tear at her. 
Just as you went to jump to her defence, teeth clamped a hold of one of your hind legs. You yowled and used your other leg to kick at him but he avoided your defensive kicks.
Wanda screamed when a large, clawed hand grabbed hold of her leg, Steve and Bucky held onto her to keep her from being dragged out. Your leg arched towards your stomach and with another kick, you managed to loosen the jaws around your ligament and you charged at the wolf that tried to drag Wanda out from the jet. 
You ignored the agonised yelp caught in your throat, replaced by a deep growl as you jaws bit down and yanked at the bushy tail that dangled ahead of you; even when two new sets of jaws set their attack on both your legs this time. Flesh and muscle would be torn to shreds but that mattered little to you.
You’d survive it. The one that had a hold of Wanda released her and Steve and Bucky dragged her further back, even when she tried to reach for you again. “Y/N!” 
“Go!” 
Your roar cracked across the valley like a whip.
You snatched hold of the tail again before the werewolf could make a run for it. The two on your legs tried to shake you off your balance, you pulled the tail in closer and with all the strength you could muster, you flung him at a nearby rock side. His skull pelted against the dark stone and fell limp on the ground. 
The jet rose up just as the lip of the ramp closed.
Wanda’s eyes glowed a dangerous aura of scarlet. 
‘Be safe—!”
‘I will.’
The two jaws released your legs as you were hit from the side once again. This one was heavier, with more anger behind it.
You let out whines and growls as you tumbled down the snowy terrain and onto the ice lake. You lifted your head to see him approach down from the tree line. 
The beast that had sniffed you out. That intended to harm your team when he invited them over. 
Who was responsible for killing your family. 
“You’ve grown stronger,” he rumbled with a tilt of his head, his dark lips twisted into a crooked, fanged smile. 
His stare was bloodthirsty. 
“You should have been killed in that lab when Hydra had the chance. A wasted specimen who couldn’t obey a simple order.”
“I… was not going… to kill… innocents!” You ignored the way your ankles threatened to buckle under your weight, you stood on your hind legs to match the alpha’s height.
The remainder of his pack gathered behind him, forming a crescent around you. Car lights flittered through the tree line. 
Hydra agents. Your muzzle wrinkled with a snarl and your teeth bared until the line of your bloodstained gums showed.
“Well. We tried.” 
He surged forward faster than you could perceive to dodge his attack. His teeth sank deep into your shoulder, a high pitched yelp that mirrored a scream travelled across the ice. 
He pushed you down. He had you pinned, the layer of ice cool against your belly. His jaws ripped and shook you, a pawed hand pressed against you as he tore fur, flesh and muscle across your back.
His pack barked and yipped in their sickening cheers for their leader to maim you. Your jaws snapped again and again until you finally had his unguarded limb in your grasp. He snarled as your teeth gnashed down repeatedly, bone splintering until he kicked you aside. 
His ears were pinned against his head with a low, pained whine. His tongue hesitated to lick his wound and his eyes, full of hatred, darted towards you.
“I should have killed you when I had the chance.”
“Yeah…”
Your eyes squeezed shut, the pain from your shoulder down the line of your back stained your coat with dark crimson, the pain excruciating that steam rose from your wounds.
A guttural growl rose from the depths of your chest, anger festering in the old wounds.
“You really should have.” 
You ran at him and he met you halfway. Claws and teeth gnashed and swept at each other. Triumph in your fight with the alpha turned into moments of being overpowered; but you’d find a way to slip out and regain the upper hand.
A series of explosions caught you off guard. You looked up to see the jet had been hit, one of the engines on fire. The jet sputtered and sank. You whimpered out when the Quinjet crashed into the side of the tall mountain peak. 
Thankfully it hadn’t exploded. Everyone had to be alright. You had to hold.
You made an attempt to run for the mountain when something flew towards you and you ducked out of the way, a large harpoon penetrated the ice with a thunderous crack.
Silver.
You could smell the poisonous tinge of it. 
The armoured vehicles circled you, and Hydra agents jumped out, armed with what you only imagined were silver bullets. You roared and snarled at anyone who made a move to shoot at you.
“Nets ready!”
“Get it tied down and back to base!”
The mounted machines on the vehicles fired at you, whipping through the air as one net after another held you down. When you managed to slip out from beneath the nets, agents threw their hands forward, ropes entangled around your limbs as you struggled to break free.
“Get the humans!”
You turned your gaze back to the alpha at his command. His pack and him ran off towards the mountain. 
“Wanda! No!”
You’d heard the commotion from the mountain. Their screams. Your father’s howl. 
You didn’t wait a moment as you almost got yourself killed sliding down the slopes and cliff sides to reach home faster.
Your pack was in trouble. You panted as the wind attacked your fur as your claws cracked the surface of the ice beneath you. 
Your mother was who you heard, followed by your youngest siblings. Your heart felt as if it’d stopped beating. 
Your jaws came around the neck of their attacker and with a jerk of your head you heard the bones of their neck snap.
Your heart broke so very hard. Why did you leave them alone?
The twins laid together side by side, their smaller bodies nestled in the snow. Around them was a halo of their blood.
Blood that could have been avoided if you hadn’t left. You whimpered, your nose pushed into the fur. 
“Wake up, wake up please… no, please…”
Not far from them you glanced up to see your mother’s body. Her fur blended in with the snow. 
A rare white pelt. Now tainted with blood.
It was there your heart grew…
Ice cold. Your maws latched hold of the ropes that constrained you from protecting those who needed you. 
Who you promised yourself you would protect. Even if it killed you. You would not allow that alpha or his pack to massacre your pack again.
Your mate.
The agents stood no chance. They screamed as you shifted your weight to fling them into one another or the vehicles. You rammed and smashed into the armoured cars, destroying most and leaving the rest to burn when you tore the engine apart and flung it into another car. 
The ice cracked beneath you and you moved swiftly. You didn’t allow your wounds to alter your performance, no matter the pain or trail of blood you left behind. 
You pursued the pack that made their way to the cliff side. They jumped and leapt onto any vantage points but they didn’t know this mountain like you did.
You knew the best routes for quick travel up the terrain of the mountain. Whoever was in your way was shown no mercy. Your large hands ripped them off their balance and flung them off the cliff side to whatever fate awaited them below. 
Wanda softly grunted with a hand pressed to her temple. 
“Steve,” she mumbled as he knelt beside her. His hand helped to support her weight while she got her bearings.
“Wanda, are you alright?” 
“I’m fine, what happened?” She asked as her eyes focused on his blue eyes. “The jet’s engine was hit. It’s pretty obvious they wanted to knock us down.”
Wanda didn’t respond, not even as Clint and Natasha joined her and Steve. “Is everyone else ok?” Steve asked Clint and he nodded. 
“Yeah, the crash just took them by surprise is all.” 
“Come on, let’s get to cover.” Natasha’s hand found Wanda’s arm and pulled her to her feet, careful not to startle or aggravate any potential injuries.
Wanda pushed away from the ex-widow. 
“No, I have to see if Y/N is alright!” 
“Wanda, we have to get to safety,” Steve argued back but Wanda would not hear it. 
“They promised me!” She choked out, “you have no idea how I feel about them. The bond we have. This is why I must go to them!”
“They’ll be alright,” Steve assured with a hand pressed to her arm, “this is Y/N we’re talking about. If anyone can fend them off, it’s them.” 
Gunfire fired down the cliff side. “Stay here with her, I’ll help the others.” Natasha and Clint watched as Steve ran off to defend their flank with Sam, Tony and Bucky. 
A series of growls tumbled over the mountain ledge, glowing eyes crept into view as three hulking forms climbed up. 
Clint knocked an arrow to his bow, stance low and ready to perform a rapid fire, Wanda’s hands danced together before her as the glowing scarlet of her magic swarmed about her fingertips. Natasha drew her pistol and took aim at the middle werewolf.
Natasha was the first to fire. Round after round only made the beast grunt as if bitten by a fly as he charged forward. Clint shocked him with his knocked arrow and Wanda thrusted her hands forward with a grunt.
The werewolf was pushed over the cliff side with a howl. 
The werewolf to their right leapt at Clint, barely ducking in time. He rolled to the side and shot another arrow while Natasha took cover from an oncoming blow from the second. Clint was knocked back and used his bow to block the maw of his opponent from mauling him.
“Clint!” Natasha yelled out, Wanda waved her hands and pushed the werewolf off of Clint, granting him the opportunity to overpower it. He and the beast went tumbling down into a crevice in the mountain, having looped its neck between his bow and the drawstring.
The last werewolf swiped at Wanda but Natasha threw herself in front of it, grunting when claws tore at her arm sleeve. A clean gash bled through her suit. The werewolf rose it’s arm to come down at Natasha again when Wanda used her magic to fling it towards the edge. 
It bellowed a distorted roar at Wanda only to whimper when your teeth mashed down into its jugular with a baritone growl. Your amber eyes the bright fire beneath burning coals as you crunched down further. With another whine, you ripped your maw clean from the wolf’s neck and they fell to the bottom of the mountain. 
“Y/N,” Wanda gasped out as she ran to you. You dragged your body over the rocky ledge, Wanda was able to see the blood and wounds that covered you. 
“Good to see you’re alive,” Natasha said as she held her bleeding arm, her attention averted to Clint who was still standing his ground against his opponent.
 “I gotta help Clint!” She said hurriedly and rushed off to Clint’s aid. “Be careful!” Wanda yelled after her, hands attentive as they gently stroked along your neck.
A soft whine wheezed up your throat. Gunfire continued to ring, now having travelled further up the mountain near where you and Wanda were. 
Natasha and Clint climbed back up a short moment later, Wanda tugged Clint to rest as blood trailed down his face.
“Shit, you weren’t kidding about these guys, Wolfie. What exactly did Hydra do to them?”
Your vocal cords strained the rumbling chuff, hot air fanned out of your nostrils. 
“Come on, we should help the others,” said Wanda urgently. You, Clint and Natasha nodded and began to follow her but a blur flew from one of the higher up ledges.
Wanda screamed when she was pinned down, the form having pushed her back some distance from you and the others.
“Wanda!” You roared, you leapt towards her and the alpha without a second thought. The three of you fell over the lip of the mountainside, your body instinctively clawed Wanda out of the alpha’s grasp and encircled around her; caging her from the fall. 
Wanda was tucked between the heat of your body above and the snow against her front,  both of you stared at the alpha in front of you. 
His wolfish face formed into a snarl, saliva and blood dripped from his lips. 
Blood dripped from yours, fangs bared right back at him. 
“Protective, aren’t you? Found yourself a little mate?”
Your jaws stretched open with a protective roar. 
“That struck a nerve.”
The alpha jumped at you but this time you were prepared. You arched your body, arms latched hold of him as you both rolled back and over another lip, this time the fall was more steep and less intruded by any sharp rock edges. Your back collided with wooden blanks as yours and the alphas weight broke through it and crashed into the dusty keep below. 
Wanda shrieked your name. The sound was a fracture to your very soul, the tie to your mate tugged a little too hard for your liking. 
You barely were up on your own four limbs when the alpha continued his barrage of attacks. Each hit was ruthless as his claws swiped and tore at your body. His teeth fractured a number of your bones as you attempted to pry him off. He grappled the scruff of your neck and slammed you face first against anything he could.
He tossed you back and your back smashed into the crumbling bricks behind you. 
The sky of Alaska’s first rays of dawn illuminated through the old, stone archway with a pink and orange hue. Snow bellowed in with the gusts of wind.
For a moment you both stared at each other. Covered in the wounds bred from conflict.
Your shoulders rose and fell with each pant, pain rippled across your body and your fur bristled against the cool breeze. 
His glowing red hues danced in the darkness on his side, and the amber in yours did the same on your side.
If you killed him, it would be over. Without their leader they were hopeless. Defenceless. Weak. 
“Do you really think you are one of them? You’re not. You never will be. Mated to a human. She’ll break your heart and then… then you will become as cruel as I.”
“I am nothing like you. I will never be anything like you.”
Your hackles raised at him. He snarled back at you.
“We are monsters! Just embrace that! You will never be anything but that!”
You averted your gaze for a moment. He was right. You were a monster. You huffed lowly, ears twitching slightly when the breeze tickled against them. Mother Nature thought otherwise.
“I’ve embraced it. But if I’m a monster… then I’m a good one that hunts the bad ones.” 
You ran at each other with teeth bared and claws out. Snarls and growls echoed in the chamber of the ruin as you swiped at one another, biting into the flesh of one another.
Carnage.
Monster against monster. 
Mother Nature was not always as peaceful and beautiful as many thought she was.
She could be cruel.
Heartless. 
And it was all in the name of balance. It was fair.
His elbow drove into your face and knocked you back, he pinned your weight to the ground as his muzzle dug into your stomach and chest. You yelped and kicked your legs against him as the savagery of his mauling tore away at you.
Your claws swiped him upside the head again and again until he pulled his head away. A distorted scream came from the depths of his black and bloody throat. 
His clawed hand swept across your head, slamming it into the stones beneath you repeatedly in rapid repetition. 
Any moment he would smash your skull.
When he figured you’d endured enough, he stared down at the sight of you; ears flopped and a whimper struggling to escape your beaten and half torn apart chest. He raised his hand high. The light bounced off the blood, making it almost shine in the Alaskan morning.
Fairness. 
Was this fair? Perhaps not for you but for Mother Nature? Who were you to fight against her?
You’d been doing it for seven years. You were done.
You had embraced it all. What you were, what you went through, and what you were to become; come what may. 
“You could have been something more. Something great.”
“I already am. They made me something great.”
With a shake of his head, maybe calling you a fool beneath the huff of his breathy exhale, he prepared for his final slash. 
A bright red aura surrounded his arm just as it went to strike against you. Unmoving, the alpha whined when his arm refused to move. Wanda stood just in sight above the ruined keep.
You saw the determined shimmer of scarlet in her eyes. 
He roared at you in his confusion and you arched your neck forward. Your muzzle stained red once more when your teeth crushed bone, minced flesh and punctured his artery. 
He stilled above you and his weight drifted until it rested against yours. The sun finally began its rise over the distant peaks. You grunted as your limbs shoved the corpse, rolling him through the stone archway and down into the depths below. The ice could have him now. 
You didn’t know how long it took for your team to make their descent into the ruins you found yourself in. Your eyes were glazed over, the amber of your fiery hues slowly faded. Each breath you took was stunted from the damage you inflicted. 
Blurred forms moved down towards you, snow danced across your vision when a particular gust of wind blew through the archway. 
Voices beckoned you by your name but you couldn’t respond. 
“What are you doing here, Big Wolf?” You knew that voice. That adorable, innocent voice. “Big Wolf… why are you leaving them behind?” 
‘Hm.’ 
Their voices were inseparable, even in Mother Nature’s light. 
Your vision grew dark but the eyes of your mate were the last thing you saw. 
“Please, Wolfie… you promised.” 
You inhaled deeply as the smell of early stages of rabbit stew filled your nose. 
“Mother?” Your eyes were coated in a blurred layer of sleep. How long had you been out? Your mother was in the kitchen, humming softly as she prepared the freshly skinned rabbits. 
“You’re awake,” she chuckled as she peered at you on the couch from her place at the stove. 
“You’re awake, Big Wolf!” One of the twins shouted, the other not far behind. Their small feet thumped against the floor in their dash to get to you. 
You wheeze when your breath was knocked from your lungs as the twins plop themselves - rather happily as well - on top of you.
“You were asleep for so long!” One of them giggled. You chuckled at the enthusiastic pout on their lips.
“You promised you’d take us up that mountain before dark!”
“I…” you paused for a moment with a furrowed brow. Not long did you sigh and went to move. “I know. We can still go.”
They both jumped off of you as they raced each other to the door. “Yaaaay!”
You shook your head with a chuckle as you walked up to your mother, patting your two other siblings in greeting as they passed. “You guys coming or what?”
“Yeah! We’ll be out front in a second!” Said your second younger sibling. 
You looked to your mother who had chopped some vegetables on the wooden board, expertly. Even still, she never lost her concentration though her skill was unmatched and she could do it blindfolded.
She never overestimated herself. Never pushed herself to prove anything to the sake of being seen or respected. She did what she could with all she had. 
And that was enough for everyone.
She turned to put the chopped vegetables into the pot. Her eyes turned to you finally and she grinned.
You often reflected your father in both demeanour, stature and appearance; but the one thing you prided yourself for was that you had your mother’s eyes. 
It was the one reprieve you had. When you’d stare at yourself - beyond the wolf - you could see your family just from the colour of your eyes. 
“Something the matter?” She asked. You shook your head silently and stepped forward. Your arms wrapped her to you and she guffawed. 
“Finally gotten into the habit of being affectionate, have you?” 
You huffed at her words with a smirk. “Hmph. I guess I have.”
You should have known. A wolf’s memory was good. Often too good. This wasn’t a memory in that old lodge tucked into the valley, nestled near the lakeside. 
You and your mother pulled away to look at each other again. Her eyes were misted over and yours did the same. 
Her hand rose to caress your cheek tenderly. With a mother’s touch.
You leaned into her palm with a rumbling purr. “It’s time to stop running. Let go of that guilt that weighs you down.” 
You opened your eyes to meet her tearful eyes. “We’ve never left you. We have always been here, just know that in your heart.”
“I will, Mother…”
“You have to go now or you’ll be missed,” she said. You knew what she meant.
She looked towards the front door for a moment. “I’ll take them up the mountain for you,” she whispered with a kind smile. 
An understanding smile. She knew you had others waiting for you. 
“Thanks.” You embraced her again. Her warmth comforted you. 
“I love you, Y/N.“
“I love you too.” 
“Vitals are stabilising.”
“Good, that’s really good. Let’s get them on a new drip.”
“Wanda, here you go, Honey. Have some coffee.”
“They’ve been like this for a while. What if… they don’t make it?”
Your eyes peeled open slowly. The bright lights above flooded in. Wanda lurched forward with a hand clasped over her mouth with a sob.
“I beg to differ,” you rasped, your hand outstretched and your fingers combed through her hair.
Your name was said by voices you recognised all at once and many faces greeted you on the other side of that dark tunnel. Relieved smiles and sighs, tearful eyes and many uttering your welcomed return. 
Wanda grasped hold of your hand, the clear, thin tube of your drip made you aware you were in the medic ward.
New York. The compound. 
“Damn, Wolfie,” Tony sighed, “you gave us all quite the scare for the past two weeks.” 
“Two weeks? W-what happened?”
“You were in a really bad way when we found you, Y/N,” said Sam, eyes casted down to conceal the way his eyes glistened.
“We all thought we lost you a couple times there.”
You tried to shuffle your body to sit up more when pain shot through you from all directions.  You laid a hand on the wound that reached over the entirety of your shoulder. You hissed, teeth clenched hard and everyone winced at your reaction. Your memory of the fight came back to you, piece by piece. 
“Your wounds were severe, Y/N. When Cho and Banner saw you… they told us it was likely you wouldn’t pull through…” 
“Moving you back to the compound was a risk we had to take. Even from the ruins.”
You shook your head with a grimace as the pain slowly subsided. “Is everyone else alright?” You asked and the room of your fellow Avengers scoffed in disbelief.
“Minor scratches and bruises were the worst we got,” Steve informed you with a light chuckle, “everyone else is fine. It’s you who everyone is worried about. You took the brunt of that attack.”
“Well… I had to.” You moved again, being more cautious of your wounds. “You guys are my pack. Mine to protect.” 
Your eyes met Wanda’s, a small smile on her lips as she pulled your hand to cup her face. To feel the comfort of your warmth. 
You chuckled as you remembered that night she told you she was cold, only to then cuddle into your side. 
How her body fit just perfectly against you when you both stood on the pier. 
Your eyes lifted up to the rest of your pack.
“So get used to that because that’s a habit you’re not gonna shake from me anytime ever.” 
To be continued in: Habits Of Mother Nature's Will II: Aftermath
Thank you for Reading!
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