[mature] don't close the coffin yet; ry

[atrox]

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

Atrox has never been good at giving false comforts. He had no parents to ever set the example of how to soften the reality of the world around him, and what influences he did have in his young years had been more intent on training him as a bloodthirsty soldier than fostering any kindness in him. When the time had come for him to take on that parental role, it had been one he failed spectacularly at. He had child after child and of the dozens who came forth, he knew only a handful of their names.

And the fact that they knew his was often more a mistake than anything else.

It wasn’t as though Twinge had encouraged any kind of traditional kinship.

So he has no skills with which to navigate this situation outside of his usual apathy and sharp tongue. He has nothing but the hollow humor that would usually alleviate his bad mood, but whatever jest comes to his lips quickly falls from them. He has no appetite for them. No desire to lighten the situation.

Instead he turns his yellow gaze to Ryatah and searches her face, his own scarred mouth pulled taut. There is a weight there, something he does not attempt to push to the side or ignore entirely. Something that he instead faces dead-on, studying the soft curves of her—the angelic beauty and that which lies beneath.

“I would take us somewhere else,” he finally says, although the idea of abandoning Hyaline is more painful of a proposal than he would have thought. Years ago, he had come upon this lake and these mountains and saw it as a poor replacement for the Chamber. He had bargained for them from Ana as a consolation prize more than anything, but it had become more. It had become the place where he had asked Ryatah to come home. It became the place where they settled. The place that became home.

The first place he had called that since the Chamber.

But looking at her now—his empty chest aching, the sound of their children echoing—he knows that he would abandon it for her. “I would challenge Breach,” he follows it up with, knowing that he has years of experience on the young shifter. He has no true desire for the taste of her blood on his tongue—he knows she was ambitious and driven and weighed by ghosts he could not see—and he has no real qualm with her vision for Hyaline. He has no reason to call her to the challenge grounds, but still, he knows he would.

Atrox reaches forward to rest his mouth against Ryatah’s forehead.

“Just tell me what you want,” his husky voice grows quieter.

ATROX | THE PANTHER KING