[private] slipping through the cracks of your cold embrace, Atrox

[atrox]

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

Atrox is quite comfortable in the grey of life.

He spent so much of his early years in the black and white of it. Back in the days where lines were drawn so carefully and everyone played the role that they were given. There was Light and there was Dark and there were the weak soul who played somewhere in the middle. He had flourished in those times—driven by the easiness of measuring his own actions. He wore the mantle of General and then King. He became the warmonger that everyone expected he be and he had enjoyed spilling the blood of the innocent.

But life has a way of ripping such clean lines away from you, and he was no different.

Time, as it does, had gone on. He had died and was reborn; he had known the taste of the afterlife more than once and knew what it meant to have your heart ripped from your chest and then watch as the thing you sacrificed yourself turns its cheek. And in the aftermath of giving his all and then having it taken forcefully, he had learned the importance of himself. He had grown increasingly more selfish in the years and learned that the blurred lines were where he truly thrived. Where he didn’t have to think twice about what he felt like doing—regardless of how it would be labeled, perceived, or discussed.

It was simple, to live life by one’s own desires.

It was simple to take what you wanted with no apologies.

This is the thought that lingers as he studies her face, matching her own laugh with the smoke of his own, teeth flashing in humor. “I imagine I could ask quite a few who would give me the answer that I expect,” he teases, lips peeling apart. “Thank goodness at least one of us have an iota of decency.” His lips pull in the corner as he turns his pointed gaze from her back to the lake, trying briefly to think of the number of women whose bed he has enjoyed before giving up. It was a fruitless endeavor. He had no idea.

His blood warms underneath his skin as he remembers their last meeting, that primal desire so natural to him rising to the surface—driving him to simply relinquish any control he might wield over it. He cannot decide if he would prefer to take her now or see just how far her healing can stretch and instead he does nothing, yet, rather enjoying the tension that pulls taut beneath the surface.

“And how would you know it is that I like?” he asks, his voice just a little sharper this time.

ATROX | THE PANTHER KING