the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives
His mind is consumed by the night with the wolves – the night with her – and it eats away at him. He thinks of her ocean-eyes, the brilliance of their fire; how they went carefully still. He thinks of her unguarded smile, the light and shadow playing upon her lips; how the rest never did reach her gaze. When he remembers her bared expression (naked and real), desire rips through him until he aches with the memory of how brightly she had burned. Yet when he remembers watching her leave (watching her flee), a cold frustration settles deep into the marrow of his bones.
So Daemron, too, slept little. He stalked the woods, slowly retracing his steps until he found himself heading back toward the Meadow. He searched for her in the faces of passerby, though his mood was black with the suspicion that she did not want to be found – not by him, at least – despite what she’d said about seeing each other again. But it was Red who found her first (who watched her tremble as she dreamed a fitful dream and slipped away before she woke), and when she returned to the chestnut stallion her keen eyes glinted, and he knew.
At first he resists the pull (the need) to go to her, but soon it is too great a thing in his chest – and so the wolf takes him there. He is the first to see her, drenched in dusk’s dying light. The mere shape of her hits him like a fist; and he realizes that whatever this was (whatever they are) is dangerous. But then she turns, and the roaring of his veins grows loud in his ears as she comes toward him, and he can think of nothing else.
Immediately, Daemron takes in the differences about her with a measured gaze, though he finds that her eyes are still blue and her lips still soft. He is no stranger to magic, and so he is not startled to see her newly adorned this way – but he is curious. “Pyxis,” he returns, an undercurrent of electricity just beneath the coolness of his voice. It surprises him that the maned wolf only ruffles her hackles at his side, making no move toward the mare as she’d done before. There was a reason for which Red kept her distance, and a line of tension jumps in his jaw as he wonders what that could be.
Suddenly, he commands a half-grin to his expression. “Something’s different about you.” It is meant to sound light, though it seems to fall excruciatingly short – and then he notices her trembling. “Are you –” a halt as everything within him screams, hold her. Hold her and never let her go. Instead, he lowers his willowed head to search her averted gaze. “Look at me,” he murmurs, his concern both gentle and fierce. He wants to see her. He needs to see her. “What happened?” It’s a guess – but by the look of her and by the way Red reacted, he suspects that something did.