09-07-2018, 06:20 PM
 Had he known that Pyxis secretly wishes he let his guard down, Daemron might have laughed outright. It had once been his own desire to see her unmasked – from the beginning, he had disliked her practiced exterior for the lie that it was. Yet while the chestnut had been born with a perceptive eye, in his youth he had begrudgingly made allowances for those around him. And what had he gained from it? He’d dismissed Nihlus’ irreverent penchant for mystery until he no longer knew who his brother was. He’d let his sister’s evasiveness slide until Cerva herself had slipped away. He’d put up with Noori’s deceit until he could no longer stand the falseness that spilled from his mother’s lips like sickly honey. He’d never confronted Eight’s ambiguousness in fatherhood until he considered himself fatherless. Still, when he’d first met Pyxis on that fateful day long ago, he had hoped she might reveal herself of her own accord. But now? Now, he finds he can no longer stomach it – not after he’d watched the insidious rifts between his family grow into colossal divides. Not after Pyxis had bared herself to him (a flicker of exposed soul among wolves) only to run in the opposite direction. Not after she’d confided her worst fears (come to life in a nightmare) only to make light of whatever had been between them. Not after she’d left and taken his wolf with her. It was this last that had been the final straw. With Red, he’d never had to guess – not until the day she disappeared alongside the woman who, after all this time, somehow stands before him. And yet he finds himself wondering whether he only imagined the stricken look of her in the split second when he’d first appeared. At present, the spotted mare leans casually on her haunches and flicks her dark tail. Her manner is so affably calm, her words so gratingly flippant, that Daemron’s choked bark of laughter comes out a growl. “I don’t doubt it,” he responds, the steel of his anger clenching like a vice around his chest. “You never needed me.” He refuses to look at Red. “Neither of you did.” Heavy silence falls. Everything he remembers about her is a contradiction. He hates wondering whether there was more truth to those words than he cared to admit. Had she really smiled with him once, unguarded and brilliant with her burning? Had she really leaned into his touch as though it were a lifeline, mere seconds before brushing him off with ‘you’ve been fun’? Had he really glimpsed something else (something more) beneath her poise and composure all those years ago? Perhaps everything he’d thought he’d seen in her was the true fabrication – a masterful ruse, and all to make him look a fool. The thought sends him into fury. “Was any of it real, Pyxis?” Where she cannot bear to speak his name, he weaponizes hers. He is anything but restrained as he pushes closer, piercing her with his stare. Red whines a few feet away, but he pays her no attention (punishment for her desertion). “Tell me you felt nothing for me.” His nerve endings are afire with her proximity, yet her heady scent only serves to incense him further. “This” – he presses a shoulder into the curve of her, runs his mouth hard and demanding along her mahogany skin – “This doesn’t make you feel anything?” “Play me for a fool all you want,” he growls against her neck, “I know you felt something, too.” And in a swift motion he withdraws – the heat of her like a branding iron, seared into his flesh. His chest pounding, Daemron circles, pacing much like the wolf does in his periphery. With a treacherous mixture of wrath and desire coursing through him, he seethes, “You’re just too weak to admit it.” A challenge masquerading as an insult. He could more easily inflict injury than face the painful alternative – that maybe Pyxis had never cared at all. daemronlost to the hunt as I was to you |