there are wolves in my head and their howling
there was a garden of evil in the palm of my hand

Health once more finds its way into her.

She feels it slowly expanding in her lungs—feels it beginning to spread through her and into the life that has begun to grow within her. She is not particularly maternal, does not fret over becoming a mother, but she is protective over her child, protective over the life of it blossoming into something fully formed. She does not know where Castile has ended up, has not tried to hunt him down after they had come together in the heat of the moment, but she knows that the time is coming now—the beginning of it flooding her. 

She does not fear it as some might. She does not worry for what the future will hold. She simply accepts this as the next chapter in life, the coming birth as natural as breathing. So it is not with any sort of worry that she lies down when the pains of birth hit her. It is with a calmness that surprises the animal within her, a calmness that stems from millennia of women before her experiencing the same pain.

It washes over and through her and she does not fight it.

She rides through each wave, feeling it rise up her spine, the contractions digging into her. The hours pass around her and she does not notice them. The hours pass and she focuses on the task at hand, grunting and growling low in her throat. She can feel the build of it, the ending of it coming, and she leans into it, giving it all of her strength. When the final push arrives, she roars—the sound echoing around her—and it is the sound of the tiger that rips from her as she finally pushes her dragon girl into the world. 

The girl is pale and golden with a surprising shock of blue around her face and Sochi feels something that surprises her: a warmth that spreads low in her belly. She rises to her feet and begins to clean the child, washing her and urging her to her feet. “Reia,” she breathes the name into the child’s forelock, wondering if her mother felt the same protective love when she first looked upon Sochi. “My little Reia.”

now I'm broken and bleeding, I’ll never find my way

there are wolves in my head and their howling
there was a garden of evil in the palm of my hand

She does not expect his love. Does not expect his loyalty. She has asked nothing of him and places no demands on his time, but still, there is a part of her, surprisingly feminine, that is glad when she sees the metallic sheen of him approaching. Her silver eyes flick upward, studying him, the iridescent blue of her face nearly shimmering. “She is,” she says simply, voice of smoke and fog. She notes the sickness that claims him, the way it branches through him, and recognizes it—understands it.

It was not so long ago when such sickness claimed her instead.

“Deep water helps,” her voice is calm, no fear sharpening the edge of her words, no fuss. “Sometimes cold and sometimes hot, if you can find it. It eases the ache and helps provide relief for the cough.” She glances up from where the draconic girl who has risen and latched onto her, feeding quietly.

“I am doing better,” she says quietly, not dwelling on what she has been through. The crimson slashes still stand out as they run jagged across her chest. The sickness has abated but she can feel it still, the cough that sends blood splattered on the ground before her, the aches that run deep in her muscles.

Such things are nothing to what has been awoken inside of her though.

Things she can no longer hide.

Things she can no longer lock up.

“I was the first to his throat,” she says simply, explaining but not apologizing for the role she has played in the disease that now spreads across the land. “I felt his body shred like paper beneath my claws before he fell, before he broke, before what lived inside of him spread so far.” She almost feels regret now, looking at Castile, wondering how she feels about the dragon stallion before her. The emotions are complex, layered, and she doesn’t have much luck in trying to interpret them. All she knows is that she feels something and that in and of itself is enough to want her to ignore it entirely.

Still, the truth of it lies between them—heavy and unmoving.

She wonders if he will rage at her, if he will demand her guilt, if he will simply turn his cheek.

If he will ask her to apologize for what she is—what she has become.

Sochi frowns, the motion flashing across her features, before it wipes away, leaving her face carefully natural again. Their child finishes feeding and stumbles forward, pressing into her chest. She leans down, breathing Reia in deep, the scent familiar and comforting—grounding when so much remains uncertain.

now I'm broken and bleeding, I’ll never find my way

there are wolves in my head and their howling
there was a garden of evil in the palm of my hand

She was never a thing to be owned—to be kept, to be possessed.

She is wild storms and raging oceans and predatory drive, but she quiets around him, stills when he is near and does not feel the familiar need to leave, to run. Perhaps it is the feeling of like being around like, of being near a soul that is at once intimately familiar in its similarity and wholly mysterious. She does not know what lives beneath his skin, cannot tell the monster that erupts from him when given the chance, but perhaps, in time, she will. Perhaps her first hint will be the scales of her daughter, or the fire that will soon find its way to her tongue, or perhaps Castile will show her himself one day.

It is difficult to say.

Still, she appreciates the way he looks at her, looks at their daughter, and she wonders if this is what most women feel when they stand near the sire of their children. What would it be like to have a family? What would it be like to have a feeling of being rooted? Of being a great oak that sprouts in the forest, knowing that its roots can go deep and far without fear? She shakes the thoughts from her head, lets them float like mist into the wind. She is not meant for such things, not meant for such tenderness.

He dismisses her advice after nodding and she nods in return, letting it die.

She knew what it meant to be proud. To lift one’s chin in the face of certain death and she does not begrudge him his own rebellious refusal to bend the knee to his disease. Neither does she fear for him. Whatever he is, he is not weak, and he would not fall beneath the weight of the plague.

Her attention is caught by the daughter before her and she bends down so that Reia can reach her. She doesn’t look at Castile to note whatever he may feel about the role she has played in all of this. She doesn’t expect him to understand, but there is something that nags in the back of her mind, something that tells her he just may. When he finally speaks, she shrugs and then nods, letting the conversation continue with so much said between them without needing to add the unnecessary words to carry it along.

When he touches her, closing the distance between them, she ignores the twinge of her heart, her face carefully passive. “It did,” she says simply. “I don’t know who I am anymore.” Another faint frown as she looks down, the sight of her daughter softening her features. Her mouth remains somber when she finds his eyes again, holding onto it. “I feel an anger that I never felt growing up—a hunger that is becoming more difficult to suppress, more difficult to sate.” She sighs, shaking her head, letting him see a rare conflict within her, a confusion as she tries to pull apart the pieces of her to understand them better.

now I'm broken and bleeding, I’ll never find my way

there are wolves in my head and their howling
there was a garden of evil in the palm of my hand

Sochi watches with pride as Reia reaches for her father, something warm twisting in her belly as the filly touches her father’s nose, as Castile murmurs to her in kind. Her stomach clenches with the emotion, and she nearly snorts with fear from the overwhelming nature of it, something that rises and crashes in her like the tide overtaking the shore. It is immediate and powerful and she averts her silver eyes for a moment, letting herself find some common ground within herself, some moment of calm before she looks for him again. She has not expected to be someone softened by motherhood, someone to be taken by the sight of the father caring so deeply for her daughter, and the fact that she is unsettles her to core.

Still, her muscles relax, her breath loosening when the moment fades and Reia lowers herself to the ground. She leans down, brushing scarred lips over her daughter’s forehead, a moment of tenderness as her daughter slips into sleep—a proactive growl buried deep in her throat. Whatever she has experienced, whatever she has felt during the last few years, she would split herself open before she let such horrors touch her daughter’s life. She would bleed herself dry before one ounce of pain befell her daughter.

The fierceness of the need to protect sharpens her gaze, lingers in the angles of her face when she meets Castile again, and she doesn’t bother to hide this emotion, doesn’t shy away from the smoke that simmers within it. He tells her to embrace it and her laugh is fog in response, deep and low and unfurling between them. “Who is to say I have not already embraced it?” She tilts her head to the side, studying him.

“Some men may not like blood on the hands of their daughter’s mother,” she muses. “But you are not most men,” she says simply. He is not, she thinks. He is something different entirely—something dark and angry and powerful. Something noble beneath it all. Something she doesn’t quite understand and is yet entirely intrigued by. At his offer to hunt, her smile turns wolfish, teeth sharpening, lips peeling back over her suddenly canine ivory teeth. “It has been too long since I’ve hunted with another.”

She thinks back to the first time, when Daye had given her permission to be herself, to hunt without the guilt, to let herself not only shift into her predator form but to fully become it. To, as Castile said, embrace it. She hungers for that sense of companionship, that ease with which the two of them had woven through the forest and, although she had been the larger of the predator that day, she does not think the same will hold true should she hunt next to Castile. Something tells her he is something different entirely.

When he confides in her, she cannot suppress the spark in her eye that rises to meet that of his own, the understanding that blossoms between them. “Good. There are some where you cannot make the death slow enough,” she says quietly, imagining the breaking of bones and the suffering—the necessary affliction of justice through the spilling of blood. Curiosity grows beneath her flesh, but she doesn’t press her questions into him. Instead she just watches him quietly, wondering what the other had done to draw forth such rage from him and wishing, whatever it was, that she had been there to see him sate it.

now I'm broken and bleeding, I’ll never find my way

there are wolves in my head and their howling
there was a garden of evil in the palm of my hand

She does not fear whatever monster lies beneath his skin.

Instead, in her own way, she hungers for it. Her silver eyes study him intently, noting the harsh angles that draw him up, the hard muscle that lies beneath his coat, the confidence that he wears despite all of his own questioning. “She will be a force to be reckoned with,” Sochi breathes, glancing down and smiling at their daughter, feeling a rush of pride as it flows through her. Their daughter will not be prey. She will not bend the knee or look down. She will be a huntress, a predator—and she will apologize for nothing.

At his next confession, she just nods, a corner of her lip barely quirking. “I hunted alone for a long time. I was afraid to let anyone see me like that. To see me when I lost myself to the hunt.” Because that is what happens. She loses control over her more learned behaviors and becomes entirely predator. She hungers and feeds and feels nothing but the desire for more, the blood staining the cream of her fur. “But I no longer feel the need to hide.” She tilts her head to the side. “Hunting alone is powerful, but hunting with a partner,” her voice fades slightly. “It makes all of the difference—to have someone at your side.”

To have someone who understands, who feels the same way.

Part of her leans forward and were it not for the child at her feet, she would close the distance between them, just to feel the heat of him beneath her mouth again, to remind herself of it. Instead she glances down, doing her best to control the flare-ups of emotion and need that lick up the sides of her belly.

“She will learn quickly,” she asserts before flicking her silver eyes up.

“I have never hunted as a pack with three before.”

now I'm broken and bleeding, I’ll never find my way