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    COTY

    Assailant -- Year 226

    QOTY

    "But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura


    [mature]  don't close the coffin yet; ry
    #1

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

    The months have passed slowly, and Atrox has watched.

    Looking for any sign of shifting—any sign that perhaps beneath those onyx and ivory coats there would be the barest hint of something else. Something feline. Something predatory. Something other.

    But it hadn’t come.

    There was no sign of sharpened teeth. No sign of a growl. No sign of claw and padded foot. It hid away and he was left with the two twins—wondersome as they were—but perfectly and wholly equine.

    And he has known.

    He knew that Ryatah knew too. It went unsaid between them both as they stood and watched the twins find their feed and then find themselves. It went unsaid when the pair of them exchanged glances across their backs, something hidden in the thunderous look of Atrox’s crossed brow and folded mouth.

    And when he saw Breach on the border that day, it went unsaid between them too.

    He saw the blood on her mouth and the fierceness in her eyes.

    And he nodded—because he knew.

    Still, he does not deny that he walks especially slow to go find the grouping of his family. That he takes his time wandering the mountains of Hyaline, taking in the cliffs and the drops, the lakes and the morning fog. Takes his time thinking back on the previous months and the way it felt to be there for a child being born and then raised. He had never done that before—not even with Twinge who had taken their children into the belly of the jungle and then introduced him when they were nearly grown.

    This was different.

    It feels like a stone in his chest when he finally finds them, when he walks up toward her.

    “Ryatah,” he murmurs as he presses scarred lips to her cheek.

    And he hopes that she knows too.

    He’s not sure he can say it.

    ATROX | THE PANTHER KING
    [Image: atrox.png]

    now be defiant, the lion, give them the fight that will open their eyes

    #2
    Things had seemed peaceful on the surface, and sometimes she could let herself pretend that it was true.

    The sound of Maea and Astin laughing as they explored their home and tested their abilities should have been a balm to soothe any unease that she had, and it was, as long as she didn’t think about it. As long as she didn’t think about the fact that Hyaline was not meant to be their home – not permanently. As long as she did not think about the way the days and weeks and months were passing, creeping closer to the deadline that Breach had given them.

    She knew, just as Atrox did, that the twins were not shifters.
    And the idea of taking them somewhere else, or the thought of them having to uproot the foundation they had built here, felt like a fresh bruise spreading inside of her chest.

    She hears him approaching, and recognizes the sound of his footsteps without needing to look – the sure way that he walks, and the certainty of his steps when it’s her that he’s walking towards was something she had committed to memory long ago. “Atrox,” she breathes his name with a turn of her head, her skin simmering where his lips touch her. She returns the gesture, her own smooth lips gently pressing to the familiar curve of his jaw, stepping closer to settle herself near his chest.

    She recognizes the weight of his voice, knows that it matches the weight inside of her own bones, and somehow that both relieves some of it, while also making it heavier.

    The twins were close by, she can hear the way they erratically move – always messing with the clouds, creating their own competitions and trying to outdo the other – but they are far enough away that she knows they will not hear the clear anguish in her voice when she says to him, “Maybe she will let them stay just a few more months. They’ll be almost a year, then, and will have started to go off on their own anyway.” She knows even as she says it that it is not possible; knows that Breach was set in her ways, and that if anything, she would want to use the twins to set an example.

    A trembling sigh, and she shakes her head and whispers, “I know. I know it’s not possible.”
    R y A t A h
    and you can aim for my heart, go for blood
    but you would still miss me in your bones


    #3

    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
    [Image: atrox.png]

    now be defiant, the lion, give them the fight that will open their eyes

    #4
    He surprises her, as he nearly always does.  She has known him for so long that sometimes she reflexively remembers the Atrox from before. The one that would have considered this her problem, the one that would have chosen to pretend to not care even if he secretly did. She had grown so accustomed to doing these things on her own; even with Skellig, who was just as prone to disappearing as she was. Everything she’d ever had that could resemble a family has always been makeshift and flimsy, and always with the notion that it would be short-lived. 

    She is still adjusting to the idea that for once she is not alone.
    And she is still, in moments like this, surprised – in the best way – that he, of everyone, has turned into the least likely to let her down.

    “No,” she rejects both of his offers gently, because she knows they are only for her benefit. He doesn’t want to leave Hyaline, just as much as she does not want to. She knew that they had both struggled to find a place that felt like home in this newer Beqanna; they had both lived in Tephra and had no issues with leaving it behind. Hyaline is what had turned into theirs, and not even Breach had been able to change that.

    Leaning into his touch she reaches just enough to run her nose down his throat, a pensive silence before she says, “I can take them to Tephra, and stay just for a little while. Nightlock and Wonder still live there, and I know they won't mind.” She ushers away the guilt rising in her chest by reminding herself that soon, the twins would be a year old, and they wouldn’t need them, and likely wouldn’t have wanted to stay in Hyaline to begin with –  not when there was so much of the world to see.

    In the wake of the heaviness she smiles, though, a smile that she presses into the curve of his neck where she murmurs, “I don’t deserve you.” She has done nothing to deserve a man like him, and she knows this all too well. And after a lifetime of mistakes and breaking promises she never intended to keep, there is still the fear of karma finally hunting her down to tear him away from her.
    R y A t A h
    and you can aim for my heart, go for blood
    but you would still miss me in your bones


    #5

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

    He can’t decide if he is relieved that she shoots both of his offers down or frustrated that she hasn’t allowed him even in the smallest chance of righting this situation. He thinks about fighting her more on it—on pushing the issue—but she doesn’t seem overly upset and he trusts her parental instincts more than his own. So he settles back, the frown line at the corner of his mouth deepening as he focuses on the way it feels to stand there and hold her, to feel the gentle touch of her ghosting down his throat.

    Had he ever allowed himself quiet moments like this before?

    “You’re right,” he says and he manages an easy laugh, arrogant and breathy as though they had just been relaxing, enjoying the weather. He preens for a moment, stretching out and feeling the way the skin catches on all of his old scars and knotted flesh, before he settles back down beside her. A frown crosses his features for a moment like a storm, hooking at pieces of him he had long ago tried to forget, and he brushes it away. But the rot of it remains. The pain of the memories persist, digging into him.

    He looks back at her, pulling her close again, a little too hungrily, a little too needy. “You definitely don’t deserve me though,” he murmurs as he presses his face into the silken white of her mane. “You don’t deserve a murderous bastard with dozens of children whose name and faces he has never known.” He opens his mouth as though to say more, to confess more of his sins, more of his wrongdoing, but the selfishness of it—the way that it would only hurt her in the end—stops him cold.

    He laughs again, although this is just a ouch more strained as he kisses her cheek.

    And the words that he would say dissolve right away.

    ATROX | THE PANTHER KING
    [Image: atrox.png]

    now be defiant, the lion, give them the fight that will open their eyes

    #6
    Ryatah

    — there's something tragic about you, something so magic about you, don't you agree?

    She can feel that he is not entirely satisfied with the answer that she gives, but she does nothing to show that she knows. She is not one to argue, but she also knows he is not one to ask permission for things. She knows that if he had wanted to maintain control of Hyaline that he would not have relinquished it to Breach to begin with. She knows that if he wanted to leave he would tell her where they were going, much as he had told her to come here. Mostly, she is just afraid of him realizing that she is more trouble than she is worth—that his life had been easier before she insisted on tangling herself into it.

    His silence feels tense and heavy, despite the way he breaks it with a laugh that rings with his signature arrogance. She expects that to be the end of it, as it so often is; his version of a wall against her that a part of her is still too timid to break through. It catches her off guard when he suddenly pulls her closer, with a fierce kind of hunger that is not always there. She eases into him, a slight frown settling on her face at what he says, though it is hidden from where she rests against his neck. “Atrox, you know I don’t care about any of that.”

    Brushing her lips against the scar on his chest she exhales a soft sigh against his dark skin, letting herself feel anchored at the weight of him against her. “You know the names and faces of our children, right?” she breathes with a slight laugh, the question meant to be light-hearted because it was not a question. Though the bar set by the fathers of her other children was incredibly low she considered Atrox to be a good father. He was present, in his own way, which was more than she could say for anyone else.

    His kiss against her cheek sparks a warmth that spreads across her skin, and she responds by pressing needily into him and caressing her lips against his jaw. “And you already know I like your murderous side. I find it charming.” Her touch lingers, her voice softening when she adds more seriously, “I’m not a saint, either. I couldn’t even begin to count all my sins.”
    there's something wretched about this, something so precious about this, oh what a sin —
    #7

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

    Nothing of them is easy, but he has never been the type to truly desire easy. He has never sought the peaceful road—the quiet one. He has instead hurled himself straight into the belly of war and raids and bloodshed. He had followed Twinge into the flood and then woken when calamity rang its bell. He kept track of the only child who had truly spurned him and let that create a deep ache within him. He had loved that child from afar, tracking his movements, helping where he could, and then sacrificing his memories.

    So of course is not surprised that he lets this love take root in him most of all.

    The one he never would have expected. The one that was not easy and yet was completely natural.

    He loves the scars of her, the sins, the darkness. He loves the kind eyes and the longing for the shadows. He loves that which she tells him and that which she does not. He loves it all, without reservation.

    So he smiles when she brushes away his concerns and he gladly lets go of them, releasing them into the darkness without second thought. He had never been one to hold onto such things for long. Instead, he just laughs, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “It’s Aisle, right?” He pauses, chewing on his lip. “And then…Furious and May and Austin.” His eyes spark a little. “And then Echis, of course.”

    It feels good to relax into her presence, to let loose of his concern, and when she touches him in return, he gladly turns his attention to that spark instead—the way his skin shivers beneath her. He skims his mouth over her jaw, teeth gliding against the flesh. “I am very charming,” he admits, pressing a kiss to her throat.

    “I would gladly count them for you,” he bites lightly. “I do like your sins."

    ATROX | THE PANTHER KING
    [Image: atrox.png]

    now be defiant, the lion, give them the fight that will open their eyes

    #8
    Ryatah

    — there's something tragic about you, something so magic about you, don't you agree?

    Over the course of the last several years she had developed a pattern; an endless cycle of dead-end romances and destruction, the kind of things she could indulge in to fill the gaps of boredom and the hollow expanse inside of her chest. They were meant to be fleeting, and it would not be a lie to say that she had assumed Atrox would be the same. She had always known him to be cool and indifferent, and their earlier meetings had proved to be the same.

    She still does not entirely understand how they became so fully intertwined. It happened, seemingly, without either of them knowing until all at once they simply just were. They each had their own past and their own scars; past loves and lives that were entirely separate from what they had begun to build together. It is somehow not easy while simultaneously being as natural as breathing. She cannot remember the last time her heart beat so surely for someone; where not an ounce of doubt could fit into all of her broken cracks because he filled them all. It did not make her faultless; nothing could change the very nature of her, but part of the easiness was never feeling she needed to explain herself to him.

    Her broken pieces didn't cut him the way they had with Skellig; they didn't drive an endless divide between them the way they had with Ashhal. He seemed immune to it all, somehow able to pull her closer no matter all the ways her sharp edges further splintered.

    He inspires a laugh from her, and while she loves every side of him, she loves the things like this—the parts he only shows to her—the most. “Close enough.”

    Instinctively her head tilts at the feel of his lips against her throat, her pulse rising to meet his touch just beneath the porcelain-white of her skin. Something in her tightens and coils when he takes it between his teeth, and she stifles the sound at the back of her tongue. “Every sin with you is my favorite,” she murmurs in response, breathless and quiet from where her mouth rests against his jawline.
    there's something wretched about this, something so precious about this, oh what a sin —
    #9

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

    She blocks out any other thought that he might have.

    Effectively dissolves it, and he would later wonder just how she managed to do that. How she could breathe and disrupt his entire world—tilting it on its axis until she was the very center of it, the gravity that kept him here and not floating off behind death’s veil once more. But, for now, he does not think too much about the phenomenon. Instead, he merely sinks into it, letting it bubble up and over him.

    He feels the way that her pulse jumps beneath his touch and his own breath hitches—makes his vision nearly swim with want. Everything else falls away. The children who have run away to play. The problems that lie ahead of them. The home that they had to fight so hard to stay within.

    It all becomes nothing but white noise that buzzes in his head.

    He growls, low and deep in his throat, as he pushes forward against her, the aggression in him barely reined in—that dark need as he presses teeth to her throat. She is always a heady mixture of submission, of invite, and those cruel pieces of him desperately rise to the surface, warring with the entirely new desire to protect. If he didn’t know her better, perhaps that desire would win out.

    If he didn’t trust himself more, perhaps he could hold out.

    But he does, and he grows drunk on it as he continues to bite and kiss. Breaking the skin in places, lips traveling from her throat to her neck, to her shoulder, and then down her leg. All of the parts of her that he knows so well and yet explores again the same. The places that belong entirely to him in this moment.

    “Ryatah,” he murmurs at some point, his voice tight, a question lingering in it even as his mouth is stained crimson with her. He presses a lingering kiss to her hip, tongue instead of teeth finding the flesh.

    “I need you closer.”

    ATROX | THE PANTHER KING
    [Image: atrox.png]

    now be defiant, the lion, give them the fight that will open their eyes

    #10
    Ryatah

    — there's something tragic about you, something so magic about you, don't you agree?

    She feels the shift in him, and it is like electricity suddenly comes alive in her veins.

    The rest of the world fades away—until the entirety of the world is just them. It has been this way for years now, and still she never grows tired of it. He looks at her in a way that she is certain no one has ever looked at her before, not even Skellig. The way his predator eyes lock on her like she is his favorite prey, with a glint that always makes her heart trip up in her chest, and she never wants it to be anyone besides her fixed at the intersection of those invisible crosshairs.

    He pushes against her, and she lets him. The solid feel of his body pressing into hers steals the breath from her lungs, and the feel of him trying to hold back, to try and tame the way his teeth sink into her skin only leaves her wanting more. Her skin does not immediately heal the way it had the first time they had found themselves entangled like this; she had been a newly made angel then, had not even known she possessed the ability to heal. It is entirely within her control now, and she lets his teeth leave their marks, lets her blood streak across the stark white of her skin.

    She liked the way his mouth left a trail of blood everywhere it went, liked that she could visually map out all the places he has touched.

    Her own lips caress what they can reach—his throat and his neck, the strong slope of his shoulder—but mostly she can do nothing but tremble beneath his needy exploration, her blood blossoming against his lips.

    Until he suddenly softens, his tongue warm against her hip, and her name a murmur from his mouth. In the quiet between them there is only her quickened breath, a shudder of skin when she leans her hip into him, and asks with a coyness she can hardly manage, “How much closer?”
    there's something wretched about this, something so precious about this, oh what a sin —




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