#winter inbox cleaning | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

hcneymooners · 1 month ago

Text

౨ৎ i am humiliated on your behalf.

a one-act ballet of desire, discipline, and dissolution.

ballet instructor!paige x ballerina!azzi. men & minors dni.

synopsis: in the ruthless crucible of an elite ballet academy, former prodigy paige bueckers is undone by newcomer azzi fudd—a maddeningly brilliant dancer whose every plié feels like a condemnation. what begins as an attempt at friendship spirals into obsession and a bruising, unforeseen intimacy.

cw: psychological manipulation, emotional sadomasochism, obsession, humiliation (verbal + emotional + erotic), self-destructive behavior, toxic/unhealthy relationship dynamics, implied masturbation, obsessive!paige, calculating!azzi, implied age gap (21/24), performance as control, power imbalances, domination/submission, sub!paige, dom!azzi, very explicit sexual content, twisted intimacy, desire as degradation, intense eye contact as warfare, slight codependence, the eroticism of someone being better than you at the sport you were once the best at.

wc: 10.8k

notes: i worked so hard on this, i feel like i spent all ten thousand words bleeding. i hope you enjoy and as always, feel free to let me know your thoughts in my inbox. i love you.

𝄞 FIRST POSITION: THE BODY IS THE SITE OF DESTRUCTION.

paige knew almost immediately that emma’s ankle would fold before the hour was out. she watched it telegraph through the tendons, the strain written in her fifth position like a premonition. she caught the signal in the torque of her knee, the half-second hesitation in her turn.

when it happened, when emma’s foot buckled mid-line and took her down with a gasp, paige didn’t move. she didn’t even flinch.

she was looking at azzi.

azzi, who caught the girl’s weight without staggering, shoulder hitching, jaw clenched, balance unbothered. azzi, whose leotard rode so high it made paige’s teeth itch.

paige should’ve given her up long ago. but frankly, azzi fudd was as dazzling as she was infuriating, and paige felt that she had found something she recognized in azzi’s spine—that tight line of refusal.

azzi fudd had blown into pavane house in the middle of switch week and moved like a scalpel through the company. this wasn’t necessarily new. many of their best dancers seemed to be summoned by the season’s need for carnage.

switch week came twice a year, and it scoured the company clean each time. it was the final window in which casting could shift, the last gasp before roles were locked for the season. on paper, it was democratic. in practice, it was a blood sport.

for seven days, dancers were encouraged to challenge one another, to perform variations for instructors with the silent, ravenous hope of replacing a peer. it wasn’t enough to be perfect. you had to be better than the girl next to you and prove it. again. again. again.

pavane house taught artistry, but it sharpened ambition first. it did not care for you to be modest. if you hid during rehearsal, you would hide on stage, which meant that you were undeserving of having all eyes on you. it was, unfortunately, a very effective practice. it acted as an incubator for a mass hatching; there was something perversely satisfying about seeing the skin these girls shed by the end.

winter brought the most brutal switches, especially in years where swan lake or the nutcracker claimed the season. even at twenty-three, paige understood: no one outgrew the hunger to be cast as a princess.

she hadn’t been prepared for her first. three years ago, a girl named sienna had been ousted from clara midway through a friday rehearsal. instructors had known since wednesday that she would be a switch-out.

sienna hadn’t wept. she’d walked off-stage, past the front mirror, and straight into the studio bathroom. her face had been hard as she passed the glass, her cheekbones rippling with how hard she clenched her jaw.

paige found her three minutes later, an ancient instinct urging her to go check. the leg had sat limply, shattered clean through, white bone pressed to the black-and-tile. blood so bright against that art deco flooring.

sienna had said nothing, even when the ambulance had been called. paige never did ask whether it was on purpose. she’d bitten the question back.

pavan house had only asked after the girl to inquire if any lawsuits were bobbing in the water.

however, azzi had come in the spring. and she took to it instantly. there were no nerves, no reverence. azzi danced like she’d been bred for blood.

they’d cast giselle that spring, a rare seasonal shift, chosen for its difficulty. paige remembered her entrance clear as crystal, pointe shoes milky, scuffed at the tops, and broken-in within an inch of their lives. her hair had been slicked into a perfect planet, the circle tight and dragging her face back with such severity that paige couldn’t help but wonder if it wounded her to smile.

her leotard had been a deceptively sweet, mint green that grew cruel with her movements once she began, spined tightly along her thighs, pressing hard enough to make the small veins there pucker and press forward as if aching to crawl free.

she didn’t want the score from giselle. she danced to a remix of vivaldi’s summer ii that crawled down paige’s spine and stayed there. there was nothing modest about her. nothing cautious.

“she has no room for any other feeling,” an instructor had said after, and with that, the initial giselle had been erased, and azzi fudd had become the newest piece of flesh the other girls strived to tear apart.

technically, paige was supposed to supervise these classes. not choreograph, not critique. only assist. her job was to offer open, pale hands when ankles rolled, count measures, and remind the newer ones how to breathe when their lungs felt crushed.

but pavane house didn't care about the lines between things. instructor. rival. witness. paige had been all of it since she'd aged out of the main company last year.

paige couldn’t help but recall the way the light had caught on the sweat at azzi’s collarbone. how she’d watched and told herself she was only noting form.

paige told herself a lot of things.

the studio offered no refuge from whatever feeling azzi fudd called from her inner recess. its walls, white as milk and just as silent, seemed to watch. lights buzzed cold and clinical from above, casting shadows sharp as a blade point. the floor, obsidian-polished, reflective, and pitiless, mirrored every fumble and fracture. you could never escape your mistake, singular or plural.

there was no softness here. no room for weakness. only the slow, aching scrape of tendon against time. the house had been designed to feel militant. dance, a co-founder had reminded them, is war. ballet is the front line, what it is known for. in some ways, you will die twice.

she thought perhaps, with only two years between them, that they could form a camaraderie no matter how brittle it may be. she foolishly thought of them twisted together, separate from the teenagers and younger girls who watched them, twenty-three and twenty-one, and thought of them here long beyond their time. she was misguided, as she often was in the face of her desire.

azzi had long hair when she arrived. paige told her it suited her when she once saw it down, hands trembling in the large pockets of the pale lavender hoodie she always wore. azzi had looked at her, long and hard, before extending her gratitude for the compliment.

three weeks later, that length of curls was nowhere to be found. her hair sat shorn and curling at her shoulders, just long enough for a bun.

it was then, with a leaden sickness, that paige understood how they would be.

every giselle season twisted into its shape, sculpted by the particular self-mutilation of the dancers in that year’s cast. however, it always arrived with the thick scent of rose and iris swaddled in the dense embrace of baby powder.

the first practice post-switch started as it always did: with the sharp crack of pointe shoes being broken in. the studios were flooded with them, the floors rendered partially invisible underneath a sea of pink ribbon. paige shifted through them to help locate proper sizes and thought of how most of this pink would soon be speckled red.

the first week set her body abuzz, the girls more settled with the outcome of casting now that they understood they could only outperform in the roles that they were given. this meant that paige was being accosted with questions when the main instructors weren’t available, which left her no time to search among the willow bodies for azzi’s stark one. still, she found time and opportunity.

despite azzi’s clear rejection of paige’s offered alliance, she found that they still ended up aligned in some ways. one of them was their penchant for coming into the house to slip into whatever studio was abandoned for a solo warm-up.

stretching the body, coaxing it into malleability, begging it to be agreeable—this all was a private conversation between skin and bone. it was wildly uncomfortable to try to do it in front of the other girls, so full of silent criticism.

paige didn’t know why she still warmed up, why she still pushed and strung her body along the path of that dilapted dream of who she used to be. she managed to delude herself into interpreting her body’s screams as singing, managed to warm her pain into pleasure as her tendons strained and her knee shuddered weakly under her weight.

she wasn’t stupid enough to jump, but she spun as long as she could until she tripped and tumbled. she did this every morning, unfolded herself into mechanism after mechanism until the sun watered her skin with weak light and her sweat was indistinguishable from her tears.

it was here that azzi first found her. they were dressed in complementary colors.

paige had slid all six feet of her body into a tight, black leotard and slicked her blonde hair into a bun full enough to bite into. azzi was draped in a deep navy blue, the pelvic bend of her leotard as high as ever. her inner thighs called to paige, golden-brown and corded with proof of her dedication to her craft.

she had worn leg warmers, the morning still swinging like a pendulum between the frigid touch of winter and the softer breath of summer. it was unsure of itself, as it always was during spring, which meant the girls infested the house in an odd mixture of insulating clothing that was shed by the day’s end.

paige felt something like shame crawl along her back, and it slit her open to climb inside the more she glanced up at azzi from where she lay on the ground. azzi didn’t seem the type to strive to make the world sweeter and probably only saw paige’s body twitching with tension and pathetically forgiving under the lightest of pressure.

paige finally looked away, rolling to her side and curling her legs inward until the muscles relaxed enough to let her rise to shaky feet like a lamb.

azzi said nothing, only stepped around her to lower her bag, navy like her leotard, to sit against the seam where the mirror met the floor. paige caught the edge of her reflection there, warped slightly by the scuffed glass, and realized she was panting like a dog.

she turned her head. bit her tongue. felt it throb.

azzi began her warmup. it was so much more controlled, every motion tighter than paige’s had been and unmarred by violence. every shift deliberate, measured, and entirely internal. her back didn’t waver in its arc; her legs unrolled delicately like a chain uncoiling. she bent at the waist and let her hands dangle toward the floor, not touching it, hovering with all the grace of something dead then resurrected.

paige didn’t mean to watch. she just couldn’t help it.

azzi was stunning in motion, and maybe even more so in stillness. her expression stayed fixed—composed, cool, unreadable—as her body ran through its familiar paces. paige’s limbs felt full of splinters in comparison. she imagined the cracked gears of a clock trying desperately to keep time with a well-oiled metronome.

analog against digital.

the silence hung like a rope around them, rigid and oppressive.

paige’s mouth grew perverted, opening and closing helplessly as if she wanted to speak but then lost all she was meant to say. it was five minutes of this cycle, then azzi was the one to break it. she didn’t look at paige as she did, at least not directly. she lowered her body to the floor, legs split at a perfect angle, twisting her torso with ease as she glanced into the mirror to address paige’s reflection.

“you warm up like you’re performing for pity,” she said flatly.

paige blinked. “excuse me?”

azzi shrugged, rolling one shoulder. “just an observation. it can be easily…misconstrued by the other girls. you don’t want to give them ammunition.”

“i—,” paige began, and azzi’s face slipped briefly into amusement. “i don’t remember asking you about any of this.”

“no?”

“no. you’re just trying to be a bitch, but politely.”

that earned her a glance, a proper twist over the shoulder. azzi’s mouth ticked, not quite a smirk, but something in that lineage.

“no,” she said. “i’m only acknowledging you like you’ve been wanting.”

paige didn’t have anything to say to that. nothing appropriate. only a hot spike of something in her chest. she was unable to identify it as rage or mortification. maybe it was all webbed together.

her throat felt full of glass, so she stood, brushed herself off, and crossed the room as if she had a destination in mind. she didn’t. just wanted to put space between them. she felt azzi’s gaze against her spine like a palm, steady and cold.

“i meant what i said,” she heard azzi say behind her.

paige stopped walking. “what part?”

“that the girls will tear you apart if you give them something to bite. they already disrespect you during classes.”

paige turned then, slowly. “i don’t give them anything.”

azzi was back on her feet now. standing with her arms crossed, head tilted slightly, like she was trying to decipher paige’s body. she wasn’t nearly as heavily coded as she aimed to be.

“yes, you do.” azzi sighed, arms dropping. “you reek of jealousy whenever you watch them dance. it’s understandable, but still, you must get it under control.”

paige’s hands curled, balling into fists. she felt her skin split under the half moons of her nails.

azzi began to walk away, seemingly satisfied.

“what have i done to you?” the words shot out of her, expelled by her humiliation.

“what?” azzi’s voice was low. she stilled, spinning in an elegant half circle so that she could better see paige.

“since you—since you’ve gotten here, you’ve treated me like i’ve done something to you. you’re always talking to the other girls, but you never talk to me. i complemented you and you told me to ‘fuck off’ in your own way. i mean, do we—have i messed up? whatever it is, i—”

azzi cut her off, her voice thin and soft. “i didn’t cut my hair because of you.”

“yes, you did,” paige snapped. “you did it almost immediately after i told you i liked it, even though the other girls said the same thing.”

azzi smiled without warmth. “that wasn’t the reason, despite what you’d like to think.”

paige scoffed. “i think that you don’t like me. that you hate me for some asinine, irrational reason that you made up in your head.”

“ooo, asinine. such big words,” azzi cooed, her voice threaded with sarcasm.

they were toe-to-toe now, close enough that paige could smell the faintest trace of sweat and violets on her skin. azzi’s eyes were impossibly dark, their abyss of brown framed by long lashes that spidered out with an odd grace. they were thick with mascara, but unclumped. paige watched her blink once, slow and decisive.

“i don’t hate you, paige,” she said, voice incredibly even as if every cell in her body was committed to the cause. “i’d have to think about you to do that.”

paige’s cunt began to leak. once again, with an inert nausea, she understood how they would be.

she didn’t move. didn’t speak. just stood there in that terrible, shimmering stillness, shame blooming hot and sudden behind her knees.

azzi tilted her head again. “did i say something wrong?”

paige’s jaw worked, but no sound came out. guilt began to bleed into her. out of her, too, mixing with her sticky-slippery arousal.

azzi leaned in a fraction, her tone suddenly sick and soft. her lips stretched tight against her white teeth, rose pink, the bottom one threatening to burst.

“oh,” she said, “you liked that.”

𝄞 SECOND POSITION: THE EXCHANGE OF POWER IS NOT ALWAYS SEXUAL, BUT IT IS NEVER NOT INTIMATE.

paige flinched. it was slight, only a blink, only a half-step back, but azzi saw it. of course, she saw it. she saw everything.

“i didn’t,” paige said, too fast, too rough. her voice cracked on the second syllable. “don’t flatter yourself.”

azzi’s lashes swept upward, slowly. “i’m not flattering myself. i’m observing.”

she stepped back fully now, leaving the moment behind like a peeled-off skin. the morning had tilted toward gold through the stained studio windows, and paige could see the flecks of dust catching in azzi’s silhouette.

she looked unreal. unburdened by the light, but no less hardened beneath it.

“you always this cruel?” paige asked, her voice hoarse.

azzi considered that. “only when i’m provoked.”

“i didn’t provoke you.”

azzi smiled finally, fully, and viciously. “you exist, paige.”

that shut her up. for only a second.

suddenly swallowed by strength, paige stepped forward, her fists still clenched, arms held a little too stiff at her sides. “you don’t know anything about me,” she said, low and shaking. “you think you’ve figured it all out, but you haven’t. you didn’t even see me until you walked in here this morning.”

azzi’s face didn’t change. but something behind her gaze shifted. less cruelty now, more scrutiny. like she was slicing paige open just to see what color her insides were, to see if her blood flowed with the same shakiness she danced with.

“i see you,” she murmured. “i see right through you. that’s why you’re so upset.”

paige opened her mouth. closed it again.

azzi took another step forward, so close now that the tips of their toes nearly touched. pointe against pointe. her voice, when she spoke, was quieter than ever.

“you want to be pitied,” she said. “you want to be friends, so that you have someone to lament to. you want to be like you were before. because no one has given you that yet. so you flailed in front of me, in front of all of them, hoping someone would notice how close you are to drowning. you were putting yourself on display, paige, and then you got upset when i didn’t look at you the way you wanted.”

“i am not putting myself on display,” paige said, but the words barely made it out of her mouth.

“i said you were. you stopped once i began to look at you, really look at you.”

“bullshit.”

azzi didn’t respond. she didn’t have to.

she only looked at paige, and it was enough.

the air between them was ruinous. paige felt like she might cry or collapse, maybe even claw her skin off until she was shredded to pieces along the floor. anything to make azzi look kinder than she did, just once.

but azzi wasn’t being kind. not to paige. and she didn’t plan to be.

she clearly prided herself on strength, both personal and the kind that belonged to other people. and paige wasn’t strong. at least, not anymore.

so she did what she should’ve done. she stepped back. she turned her face, revealing her side. she didn’t run, but it felt like it.

“i have to teach the second-years in ten,” she said, her voice brittle.

azzi said nothing. she bent again, reaching for her toes, unbothered.

just as paige reached the door, she heard a final offering tossed in the barest tone of amusement:

“next time, warm up like you mean it.”

the memory lingered like heat, drawing paige’s mind to its very edges. she stared at her ceiling, naked chest heaving, her nipples pink and pebbled and bordering on red from the way she had twisted them. her legs were spread, the space between them soaked with the rush of paige’s best attempts—and total failures.

she’d gotten just close enough to cry and then fell into crying completely, forgetting the rest. her pleasure became confetti, but her body was not the party it fell on.

she pressed the heel of her palm to her eyes until she saw color and suffocated the sobs, until her breath felt less likely to stutter out into something ugly. the ceiling above her was cracked with veins of ancient water damage, a bruised map of places she'd never go.

the room was cold now. her body, limp and shivering in the after-storm of its own refusal, looked foreign to her. shiny with sweat. pale like beached wood. spread and gutted open, and still not enough. she curled her fingers, vaguely ashamed of their familiarity with her skin, the way they knew where to press and still couldn't deliver. still couldn't make her feel anything like what azzi made her feel just by looking. just by knowing.

that was what she couldn’t let go: the way azzi so easily established how much she knew, how much she suspected about her that paige herself hadn't even dared to name. never out loud; not even in her head, really.

the problem was that paige had not known how to fill herself after her energy, after she had spun out and off the stage for the foreseeable future. the hole in her had remained empty, unfilled. her blood circulated throughout her veins with no way out. she pushed girls into position, ironed their errors out, then bit back the burn of grief as they perfected it before her, moving forward as she stayed stagnant.

it was a plague; it was the closest she felt to being possessed by the blackest evil the world could offer.

paige bit down on the inside of her cheek until the taste bloomed bitter and metallic. her thighs slid against one another, and she flinched, chafing not from pain, but from the humiliation of her slick cooling in the air.

her failure still clung to her like dust under her breasts.

she hadn’t known she could ache like this. not from absence, but from confrontation. azzi hadn’t touched her, hadn’t kissed her, hadn’t even raised her voice, and still, paige had unraveled with all the grace of thread pulled from a hem.

she rolled onto her side and curled inward, knuckles to mouth. the breath that escaped her came out small and stunned. not a sob. not quite anything.

tomorrow, she’d have to face azzi again. she’d walk into the studio, posture just a little too straight, and pretend she hadn’t tried to get herself off to the memory of someone scolding her. she’d act like she was fine. she’d pretend she didn’t still feel azzi’s verbal lashing under her skin like rising welts.

the thing about a performance, though, was that one always knew when it was fake. especially when becoming someone else was your livelihood.

paige had never been good at being someone else.

the morning after came with no apology. pavane house was bleached within an inch of its life in the sunlight.

light crawled across the floor like it was hunting her, and paige hated how her body flinched at it, still sore, still sore about—. she dressed quickly, hands shaking as she yanked her leotard over damp skin. it was as gray and worn as she felt. her bun came out too tight, punishing.

in the mirror, her reflection looked haunted. her eyes were glassy, collarbones jutting out from under her skin. her thighs were bruised on the surface, and she hoped her self-afflictions wouldn’t seep through her tights. she pressed her palms to the barre, flexed and pointed until her tendons whined, anything to burn the memory out.

azzi arrived late. she slipped in after paige had ample time to stew, time to build scaffolding around herself just for it to be knocked clean through.

“fuck,” she muttered under her breath, her throat growing tight as she almost fell.

no one noticed, though the room was steadfastly becoming crowded as more girls filed in. then she pushed off the barre, gathered herself into some semblance of focus, only to find azzi gazing at her with that full mouth pursed over the plastic ridge of her coffee cup.

she was quiet, bundled in a sleepy lilac sweatshirt that hung off one shoulder, curls damp and gathered at the nape of her neck. no swagger, not today. just softness, almost like an apology. her eyes flickered away and swept the room, then returned to catch paige.

she held. for too long.

paige blinked, eyes burning, and looked away. her stomach flipped.

azzi didn’t say anything at first, only set her bag down and began stretching near the mirror, close, but not too close. respecting paige’s unspoken perimeter. but when the class began, she moved with deliberate lightness, her technique still devastating but her presence muted. there was no heat. no provocation.

paige began to loosen, turning her attention to the younger students who were stumbling through the choreography, including the dancer who, despite his youth, had been selected to play the gamekeeper. the class passed through the hands of time. too slow, too sticky, as if trekking through syrup.

paige’s cues were uneven; some came too softly or too fast. she counted out loud even when no one needed her to. she convinced herself that someone silently found her useful. her throat dried out, but she kept going, like she could pace herself into dignity. her neck burned.

azzi didn’t misstep once. every plié was a dare. every extension of her limbs was a fucking threat.

then the pas de deux segment began.

“fudd, with me,” paige barked, voice hoarse.

azzi’s brows lifted at the use of her surname, amused, but she stepped forward, as obedient as she never truly was. their hands touched briefly in demonstration, and paige hated how her breath snagged. hated the way her ribs contracted underneath the shear of azzi’s fingertips, shaking when azzi’s arm slid behind her waist for support.

her voice was gentle, barely above the ambient breath of the studio.

“are you okay?”

paige flinched.

it was small. a twitch of her jaw. but azzi saw it. of course, she did.

“i’m fine,” paige snapped, too loud, too fast. she distanced herself from azzi as much as she good, left a perfect slice of space.“why wouldn’t i be?”

azzi paused and pressed closer, tilting her head like she was studying something under a microscope. something skittish that threatened to break from the dish. paige was that something.

“you just look…” she hesitated. “not like yourself.”

paige turned fully toward her, halting the exercise. her mouth was twisted, eyebrows drawn so tightly they could’ve snapped.

“and you know this how? despite your arrogance, you have no idea what i typically look like,” she said, venom-soft. “you talked to me once, and now you think you’ve got me mapped?”

azzi’s face didn’t change, but paige swore she saw it: some small tenderness, pulled back like a tide.

“i was just checking in on you, paige.”

“well, don’t.”

a beat.

azzi nodded, slowly. her mouth twitched as if she’d just been handed proof of something she already suspected. she stepped away without a word, back into her space by the mirror, but her reflection wouldn’t stop looking at paige.

paige’s hands shook as she adjusted her top, lacing it into tighter form so that it would better hold her. her throat was so dry, it could’ve burst into flame.

as soon as they were allowed a break, azzi slipped out of the studio.

she walked down the empty hall, smiling falsely at some blushing ingenue, the floorboards sighing under her steps, before she ducked into the stairwell. cool air. brick walls. no mirrors.

finally, she could think without watching herself do it. well, rethink.

paige bueckers was proving to be a collection of missteps so far. azzi may have pushed too soon. she thought of the blonde, how blue her eyes grew when she was degraded by azzi’s mouth.

she’d spent the entire class looking as though she might cry. she hadn’t, which azzi was grateful for. she would’ve been disappointed by that. no, she’d stood stockstill and trembling, nerves too raw to name. her lips had parted, breath inflated with panic. her hands, usually precise despite her obvious desperation to be one of them, were clumsy. her limbs seemed too long for her body all of a sudden.

like a deer that hadn’t realized it was bleeding. or a child just come into its skin.

azzi pressed her forehead against the wall and exhaled. she wasn’t upset.

this was, more or less, what she’d anticipated. paige had always struck her as the type who prized control because she had so little of it inside. the lashing out? inevitable. the defensiveness? childish. but familiar.

the truth of the matter was, paige wasn’t ready to be seen, not the way azzi saw people. she certainly hadn’t asked for it, though her actions seemed to, and maybe azzi had been unnecessarily candid in how she had exposed her: the hollowing. the spectacle of competence with no soul behind it. the ache for recognition was hidden under all that snide little bravado.

azzi swallowed, mouth suddenly dry. she truly hadn’t meant to be cruel.

no, that wasn’t right.

she hadn’t thought she was being cruel. it had felt like truth-telling. a gift. but paige had flinched from it like one would do from a raised hand.

azzi closed her eyes.

she would have to be gentler. not weaker; she didn’t know how to do that. but softer at the edges, more inviting.

that was the thing about dominance. it wasn’t about control, not at the core. it was about knowing when to loosen the reins so your subject reached for them on her own. so that they would turn and hand them to you, assuming that you knew what was best.

paige was toeing the line, testing the waters. azzi had to let her.

azzi smiled, a touch too sharply. she felt her face contort, and she redrew it, settling it into something less sinister. she pushed off the wall, smoothed her sweatshirt, and left the stairwell.

she’d herd paige, leaving her with fewer, better options than to run toward her.

next time, she’d choose her words more carefully.

because there would be a next time.

𝄞 THIRD POSITION: VIOLENCE IS A FORM OF ATTENTION.

paige began to stay late to avoid her. it did nothing. it never was going to.

azzi pushed at every border she had, whether it be physical, mental, or emotional. even at times, spiritual. she was like an invading country, her army of thought stronger than the traditionalist holdings of paige’s own. she knew nothing of how to become one with her, of how to align themselves so that the mess of whatever was beginning to spiral did not spoil the house’s bridge to another world.

though azzi would be the only one on stage during the show’s lineup, any distrust and discord between the cast and staff would stain it. it was inevitable. dance, especially ballet, was easily affected by even the smallest tremor of emotional turbulence.

tell me what you are, paige wanted to scream. she didn’t.

instead, she loitered behind the other girls until she was left alone and then stumbled gracelessly back up the stairs to her favorite studio. it was the oldest, the flooring a bit cracked, but not in a way that warranted true concern. the mirrors were streaked and abandoned after endless attempts to clean them, but paige didn’t mind. she liked that the obstruction made her unknowable, that she couldn’t see herself clearly.

she dumped her backpack on the ground and boxed herself into a dark corner as she stripped herself of her hoodie, the oversized fabric pooling into a smear of cream and camo print. she shrugged off her tights, causing a run through them. she had to pull her leotard down to get them off, and she tried her hardest to ignore the way the cool air against her chest made the guava-pink peaks of her nipples rise to attention.

finally, she was unclothed enough. just her bare body against the white, nylon blend of her dancewear and the matching leg warmers stretched haggardly over the heels of her scuffed shoes. it was an unhealthy form of practice, but she didn’t care. she felt unmoored, so deeply outside of herself that maybe only the threat of pain would bring her back.

still facing the wall, she shoved a pocket of her bag open, scrambling for her phone and hurriedly opening it to her warm-up playlist. she urged the volume to go as high as it could go, shoulders relaxing slightly when the low wail of a cello began to flow out of the speaker. she set it on the floor and turned to walk to the center of the room, eager to begin even without stretching.

the urge died as quickly as it had risen. she stopped.

azzi was on the floor. azzi was here. again.

she glanced idly at paige, legs bent into a butterfly shape with her hands clasped around the front of her toes. paige felt herself go bloodless, remembering her messy disassembling of her clothes in that corner. she’d been turned around; she hadn’t checked for anyone else.

her mistake.

they hadn’t talked in two weeks. the last time they had spoken was when paige had tried to do her job.

azzi had fallen wrong. her partner didn’t catch her center, and her hip hit the sprung wood with a sound that made even the janitor outside the room pause his sweeping.

“you need to hold yourself.” paige’s voice had sliced the silence like a razor. “you’re relying on him too much.”

azzi had refused to look at her. to anyone else, it would read as embarrassment, but paige could see the way she forced herself not to do it. with her breath sharp and her jaw clenched, azzi sat crumpled still on the floor, chest rising like a sail filled with an angry breeze.

“i did hold myself,” she’d snapped. “he just—he fucking missed it.”

paige had stepped closer. she had been able to see the bruise blooming already, purple like ink spilled from a shattered pen.

“that's not the point. you should’ve compensated.”

azzi had finally looked at her then, lashes stuck together with sweat and cheeks bright from exertion, or maybe rage. there had been a slip for a moment, a look of what paige suspected was satisfaction before it was dispelled.

“you don’t even dance anymore,” azzi said quietly. flat. deadly. “you just stand there and watch. you don’t get to talk about what it feels like.”

paige had gone cold, and the other girls in the room had hushed almost immediately. her hand was out before she could stop it.

crack.

azzi’s face had whipped to the side, lolling lazily as she moved it back over. paige felt her jawbone creak, the clench of it so close to becoming an injury. she had fled, ducking out of pavane house and onto the main road, where she sobbed into her hands.

she hadn’t seen azzi watching her from the window, her mouth performing a contortionist act of regret.

now, here they were, and paige still found herself unprepared. azzi extended her legs and bent forward, grabbing the soles of her feet and pulling herself until there was an uncomfortable pop of her spine. she settled backward and then said,

“you have a lovely back.”

paige’s eye twitched.

“what?”

azzi gestured at her body, hand lazily sweeping over its line. “when you took your tights off, it peeked out. you’re stronger than you look.”

there was a cold break behind paige's ribs, a splintering like an egg against the rim of a bowl. a bone-fracture silence. then:

“you don’t get to tell me what i look like. not after what you said to me.”

azzi went still, turned her head to better canvas paige’s expression. “paige.”

“you told me that i don’t know what it feels like to dance anymore. as if i don’t know what it costs.” her voice cracked on the last word, and she felt its vibration along the tissue of her knee.

azzi stood, slow and shaking, toe taped, left ankle weak. it’s then that paige finally registered that azzi’s leotard was half undone at the back, gaping like an open wound.

“i shouldn’t have spoken to you like you didn’t.”

the admittance made paige shudder, and she pressed a hand to her face, her thumb and ring finger making deep indents into her skin. they went pale with the force of her grip.

“why are you being nice to me?” she muttered.

azzi sighed. “because i went about you the wrong way. you’re a lot more delicate than i initially thought.”

something in paige whited out, and then it was heat. it wasn’t a proper fight or even a simple scrap, but a collision. hands at arms, forearms pressed together, azzi shoving, paige grabbing, twisting, rolling. they hit the marble floor hard, breathless, limbs locked.

paige ended up on top, elbows braced, face inches from azzi’s. her hand was rooted far into her curls, nails scratching at the scalp. streaks of dust dirtied her leotard, and the air was thick now. nothing moved. she could hear azzi’s heartbeat, a low, primal tremble between them.

and then—

paige's mouth was at azzi's thigh. her lips, her teeth, brushed the yellowing bruises, and azzi jolted like someone pulled her out of her own body.

but it wasn’t a pain response. it was something else, a version of the same jerking paige had done fruitlessly just nights before.

paige understood she had hurt her, but her body had not moved in a way that begged for mercy. it was similar to the moment right before you start crying. not the tear, the heat behind the eyes.

paige breathed out raggedly as she slid her hand down to confirm. she cupped her hand slightly, as if to hold water. she could feel the moist heat.

azzi was wet.

her spine went taut, her fingers dug into paige's shoulder, and for a second, they were both frozen. paige pulled back as if she’d been burned.

azzi didn’t turn her face away, unashamed. she said nothing.

paige scrambled off of her, chest heaving.

“s—sorry. ‘m sorry.”

azzi stayed splayed out for a moment longer, the edges of her lips arcing in pale amusement. then she sat up, reached over, and dragged a fresh pair of blood-red pointe shoes from behind her.

“i wish you weren’t,” she said, voice rasping with its honesty.

then she began to break the shoes in.

once paige was home, she stumbled through her apartment until she stubbed her toe and fell onto the edge of her bed. the hit speared through her, made her body a prostitute of agony for what felt like years.

as she lay there, she felt her stomach grow warm.

she thought of the sound azzi’s shoes made when she broke them in earlier that evening.

the whip-like crack. the bone-like snap.

the flesh of them giving in, reshaping around her.

paige bit her lip hard enough to taste blood. it was dark; there was no lamp on. her hand found its way between her thighs, slipping between her swollen folds.

she thought again of the breaking, of how each pop and split echoed like cartilage cracking. how the shoe had surrendered to her foot like skin to a blade. pain never seemed to make azzi falter, only bloom.

her fingers pressed into her faster. paige ground down to better reach herself.

when she came, it was with a sob, high and sharp and broken. the kind she used to make when she was smaller and still thought crying fixed something.

paige clutched her stomach, face buried in her pillow. the shame was imminent. she couldn’t think, mind blurred by the onset of an orgasm three weeks delayed.

somehow, through it all, she heard when her phone buzzed.

paige startled like she’d been slapped, face rising from the wet cotton skin of her pillow with a low gasp. she got up, uncaring of her cum dripping down her inner thigh and stumbled around trying to find that goddamn backpack.

when she did, she shouldered her way through the mess of it, hand closing around the sleek, cool metal of her phone.

one new message. no words. just a video. the number was unsaved, but paige knew who it was. had seen it deliver messages in the company group chat.

paige opened it on instinct, her heart vibrating so hard that she fell to one side. the moment it began to play, she went still.

it was grainy, low light. shot from below.

azzi’s hand worked between her thighs, the camera angled to capture the brown arch of her stomach, her mouth slack and eyes lazy with pleasure.

she was moaning wantonly, breath skipping in her chest.

“paige,” azzi said in the video, breathless.

the video cut off.

paige folded over herself, hugged herself so that her fingernails dug into her back. she closed her eyes, bending forward until her forehead was against the tile of her kitchen. the video replayed in her memory.

paige.

she screamed, but kept most of the noise behind the white wall of her gritted teeth.

the world’s plot to dismantle paige bueckers was a relentless one, because not even two days after the video’s delivery, pavane house held a cast dinner to celebrate the first objectively good run-through of giselle.

the table stretched long and dark, its wooden face draped with at least three layers of lace. there were so many candles that paige felt almost like a house on fire, the heat oppressive against her steadily pinkening face.

across from her sat another instructor and, by design, she was sure, the immovable azzi fudd.

azzi had worn a mini dress, her long legs slightly shielded by its sequined hem. the whole thing was a viscose dream, an olive green that darkened toward the end. the sequins bled into a beautiful charcoal sketch of what paige thought to be historical, domed buildings with fronds of palms drawn in between.

old columbia, azzi had said when another dancer had asked.

paige felt shabby in her sleeveless navy blue, pleated issey miyake mockneck and the chicly baggy black slacks she’d tugged on beneath it. she hoped her insecurity wasn’t wafting off of her despite the constant stream of compliments from the other girls, many loosened by the quality alcohol.

your arms, one had gasped, and paige had smiled thinly. god, i’d kill.

thank you.

now, she swung the base of her ponytail over her other shoulder, thumbed at one of the small braids plaited in the front before tugging subconsciously the swarovski diamond hanging from her helix.

“you have good taste.”

paige froze minutely, then slid an olive into her mouth. it was only after she spat out the seed that she made eye contact with azzi.

“i didn’t plan the dinner.”

azzi laughed. paige hated that it was beautiful.

“no, i meant your outfit.” azzi nodded her head, then pointed delicately to paige’s piercings. “and your diamonds. i always wanted a piercing, but i’m terrified of needles. i know it's better to do it that way than with a gun.”

paige nodded in agreement. ate another olive.

“i got a belly piercing, then called it quits.”

paige almost choked, the video reappearing in her mind's eye, before she swallowed down the pit with a healthy swig of white wine.

“that’s…nice,” paige finally settled on, and azzi’s smile grew wider.

paige resisted the urge to place her head in her hands.

instead, she stared down the table and fixed her eyes upon a girl eating voraciously, practically shoveling forkfuls of smoked salmon into her mouth. paige had heard the other dancers whispering, their cutting remarks about their envy over how she refused to deny herself the pleasure of a good meal and still maintained her weight.

paige had once heard the same girl retching from the hallway of the house, on her way out after a rare early end.

her fork scraped porcelain. her appetite had vanished. she felt the lining of her throat burn as more salmon was swallowed.

by the time the table began to dissolve, first in laughter, then in movement, paige’s face was warm enough to sizzle. she was probably red. her skin prickled beneath the wine, the flames, the way azzi had stopped speaking but kept an eye on her as if threatening to expose her.

someone else reached for the bottle beside her. paige barely registered the clink of glass until it was refilled again by a set of unringed fingers.

after a while, she noticed the number of bodies thinning. she turned and saw that azzi was saying goodnight to the others: hugging the senior ballerina beside her, kissing someone’s cheek. the sequins on her dress caught every flicker of candlelight, making her look like a small empire walking.

paige went to leave, too. this would be a good opportunity to disappear without azzi attempting to follow. she didn’t need to linger. she stood, ignoring the call of her name and the note that she hadn’t finished her glass.

“you walking?” azzi’s voice caught her at the coat rack, gentle. lighter than it had been all evening.

“yeah,” paige muttered. she reached for her jacket. her hand was trembling.

azzi didn’t wait for permission. she stepped up to paige’s side like she’d been invited. paige didn’t stop her. she didn’t know if she could.

they walked in silence at first. the wind had teeth tonight, nipping at the space between paige’s blazer and her shoulder blades. she kept her hands in her pockets. azzi didn’t.

for a while, paige tried not to notice the shift, the way azzi steered them gently left when they should’ve gone right. the familiar landmarks of her walk home were missing. or rather, replaced. something in her gut clenched, but not hard enough to make her stop. not yet.

they kept walking, paige testing azzi’s countenance by opposing her natural direction. when azzi pulled left, paige chose the next right ahead. she tried to veer them back along the path to her apartment, but azzi kept pace easily. paige’s throat began to tighten, and she raised a hand to tug anxiously at the ends of her ponytail.

it was only when they turned onto a narrower street, one squeezed with tall brick sides and no street lamps, that paige finally stopped walking. her voice felt like a thing she had to wrench up from her chest, some body she was unearthing from the grave.

“you shouldn’t have sent that.”

azzi didn’t pretend not to know what she meant, though her hands flexed almost imperceptibly. she just tilted her head, eyes vast and endless in the dark. “i wanted you to see it.”

paige almost laughed. her throat was too tight for it. “you wanted me to watch it. to be humiliated.”

“yes,” azzi said. “but you didn’t have to finish it, or rewatch it.”

it was a vague guess, but the shame flooded in like a returning tide. paige wanted to sink her teeth into the vein at azzi’s neck. instead, she looked away.

“you’re not taking me home,” she said after a moment, quietly. less accusation than confession. “this isn’t my street.”

azzi didn’t respond right away. her heels clicked softly against the pavement. she stopped walking when they reached a building paige didn’t recognize by name, but one she must have passed a dozen times before. the light over the entryway was gold and low. a warm bruise against the cold.

“no,” azzi said at last. “it isn’t.”

she stood along the top step, mouth parting. paige thought of a lotus blooming.

“i don’t think you really wanted to go.”

paige didn’t move. azzi didn’t touch her.

she just turned, keyed in the door, and slipped inside.

a beat passed.

then paige followed.

𝄞 FOURTH POSITION: THE BODY KNOWS WHAT THE MIND CANNOT SAY.

the door clicked shut behind her, and paige stepped into warmth.

dark wood gleamed beneath her sneakers, and the further she moved inside, the more rugs softened every footfall. the walls were painted something nearly black, maybe green or oxblood or plum, impossible to pin down in the bleeding light from shaded sconces and candles already lit.

azzi’s home was decadent, something paige knew to be intentional. she closed her eyes, toeing off her shoes and pulling her hair loose as violet and a mature vanilla seeped into her. her head felt heavy, her mind dizzy, and she found that she was much more tired than she realized.

she crawled forward, taking azzi’s world in.

a velvet settee was crouched beneath the window like a sleeping animal. a tray sat on the ottoman with figs and some half-melted chocolate truffles, abandoned like someone had simply forgotten to care that they’d been indulging.

the apartment was unapologetically lush. highly lived in. it made paige feel like a plastic bead in a high-end jewelry box. out of place and not built to last.

azzi moved with easy ownership, pulling her heels off by the door and padding barefoot toward the kitchen. she poured herself a glass of water but didn’t offer one. paige wasn’t sure if that made her feel dismissed or desired.

she still hadn’t spoken. she was watching. waiting.

paige was halfway to saying something brittle, something stupid like “nice place”, when azzi broke the silence.

“you always act like we have more time,” she said, voice low. “we don’t.”

paige furrowed her brow and opened her mouth. closed it.

“you’re wasting this,” azzi continued, stepping forward. she abstained from touching paige, but came close enough that paige could feel the warmth of her body. “all this shame. all this pretending you don’t want me.”

paige’s jaw tightened. she blinked. her chest rose sharply. “you think i—”

“i understand you,” azzi said.

and that—that was worse.

because it wasn’t a guess. it wasn’t a reach. it was soft. it was true.

paige looked at her. another tense twenty seconds fell away, and then paige’s face crumpled and her body shattered like glass.

“i need you to touch me,” she cried, and azzi’s face almost mutilated itself with satisfaction.

“i know.”

azzi kissed her.

her mouth was soft but assured, coaxing rather than claiming. paige let her. then paige gave.

her jaw slackened, and the rest of her followed like a marionette whose strings had been loosened. she stumbled forward into azzi’s heat, catching herself on azzi’s waist with both hands as though some part of her had forgotten how to stand.

azzi made a small sound, somewhere between a gasp and a moan, low in her throat, and it broke paige open further. because the sound was grateful.

azzi kissed her again, deeper this time, her teeth catching purposefully on paige’s bottom lip. paige whimpered, giving azzi just enough space to slip her tongue in and lap around the cavern of her mouth. her hands slid to azzi’s hips, her grip tightening as if she needed to anchor herself there or drown.

she wasn’t even sure when she’d begun to cry.

azzi noticed. of course, she noticed. she broke the kiss, a string of saliva stretching and splitting between them, and pressed her forehead to paige’s.

“look at you,” azzi whispered, stroking her fingers just beneath paige’s jaw. “all that hardness. gone.”

paige shook her head. her lips were red, parted, wet. “i don’t know how to do this.”

“i do,” azzi said.

she leaned back in, kissed the corner of paige’s mouth, her cheek, the salt trail on her skin. her hands moved downward, worked at the button on paige’s slacks. she was so methodical, as if she were redrawing paige from the outside in.

her hand found paige’s cunt, stroking it through the cotton of her boyshorts until she could practically feel a heartbeat. paige kept gasping, her voice giving out the closer it came to revealing the truth of how she felt. azzi paid her no mind, grinding the heel of her palm against her until she felt paige’s pussy drool through the fabric and onto her hand.

she pulled back with a hum of pleasure, recanted her touch, and tugged paige forward. her touch was harder now, more difficult. paige moaned wetly as azzi grasped the base of her neck, then slid a hand up and experimentally tugged a handful of white-gold hair.

azzi watched her, catalogued her every reaction as if she were a scientist collecting data. there was a moment where paige stood painting, pupils blown wide, before azzi moved. she dragged paige, tender but unyielding, until she could arrange her on the couch.

she forced paige down, tugged her blouse over her head to reveal the strapless, navy lace bra that was a touch too small. her tits threatened to spill, pale and smooth like the moon caught by human hands. azzi reached behind her, flooded her lungs with that dark violet spray, and snapped the clasp open.

paige’s chest expanded as she let out a breath, her tits heaving right into azzi’s open hand. azzi thumbed at the nipple, rolling it until paige twitched and tried to spread her legs. her cunt was hot, pink and drizzling and winking and azzi did nothing to quench its thirst.

instead, her mouth parted, and her teeth peeked out as she watched paige writhe. then she dropped her hand, standing overly still before raising it and bringing it down experimentally. the slap caught across her full chest like a lit match, making paige squeal.

she keened, eager for more.

azzi smiled crookedly and didn’t slap her again.

“look at you,” she murmured. “you acted like you were so above this. but your legs are shaking.”

paige didn’t respond. couldn't. her breath caught in her throat.

she wasn’t even fully undressed, her pants shoved halfway down, the fabric twisted tight under the curve of her ass. her spine was pressed against the back of azzi’s couch, knees parted because she made her, and azzi was standing above her with a hand in her hair, and paige’s want by its neck.

the hand came loose, and then paige was watching as azzi knelt.

“you rewatched that video. i know you did. did you finish?”

“i, um,” paige swallowed, blinking to try to clear the haze from her mind. “i couldn’t, but i—but i kept trying.”

“mmm,” azzi said. she took two fingers and slid them underneath the seam of paige’s underwear, tucked them inside the hot pink of paige’s weeping cunt. “i think that you’re so disconnected from how your body is now that you keep hoping it will be something else when you do touch it. probably why you couldn’t get yourself to cum.”

paige clutched the edge of the sofa, nails dragging harshly across its material as azzi began to fuck her. she tried to spread herself further, but her pants prevented her from doing it successfully. “azzi, please.”

“girls like you always think they know everything. even about their own bodies.” azzi said. her fingers are soaking wet already, paige’s arousal spinning down her wrist like cream-colored rain. the duo moved slowly, dragging out shame. “you can never just enjoy it. there’s always a problem somewhere.”

paige gasped, tried to close her legs now, but azzi wouldn’t let her. the girl didn’t even tense. just braced one hand against paige’s inner thigh, gentle, firm, unmovable. she was terrifyingly strong. still in her dress, hair pinned back. she fucked and fucked and fucked paige, breath quickening the more paige struggled in place.

finally, paige came for the first time and azzi abused her clit as the blonde arched backward with a small scream. the bend of her neck was so pale, so open and unprotected. azzi thought of digging in her teeth.

she leaned back, sliding her fingers out with an obscene 'schleck.' it was then that she looked at paige, her brown eyes almost black with greed. carefully, she moved her fingers upward until they were dangling above her mouth. then, she parted them so that paige’s cum could spin frothy and sticky between them, like spider’s silk.

azzi dipped them into her mouth, practically scraping the back of her throat with her nails as she sucked every inch of cum off of them. she gagged, eyes watering and then overflowing, but didn’t stop until she felt her fingers were clean. she pulled them out with a soft ‘pop’ and then reached forward again to tug at one of paige’s nipples.

then she slid downward and fucked her fingers back in again.

“please,” paige choked out.

“please, what?” azzi didn’t stop moving, kept her eyes on the hungry suck of paige’s gummy pussy. she continued to work her fingers with calculated cruelty, curling just right, pressing that awful, perfect spot.

paige was weeping now. there wasn’t a single shred of sadness in her body, only heat. she had never been one for overstimulation, but she found that she felt different now. maybe she was one for azzi.

she could’ve cum alone from the unbearable humiliation of how her hips are bucking into it, how her body was clawing toward something she’d swore she didn’t want.

“naked, weeping, and covered in your own cum and you can’t even tell me what you want. your problem,” azzi said, soft and final, “is that you don’t know yourself, paige.”

and then it happened.

a strike like lightning. a candle wax spill of shame. paige screamed. the sound ripped out of her throat, raw and panicked, and then her body surged, gushed; everything wet, wrecked, and helpless.

her vision blacked out. she clawed at the armrest, at herself. her legs snapped shut around azzi’s hand, but azzi didn't flinch. she barely moved.

when it was over, paige was sobbing. quiet, hiccuping pulses of emotion.

azzi leaned back on her heels; wiped her hand on paige’s stomach. said nothing.

she didn’t need to. she continued to be proven right.

paige was still twitching when azzi finally moved again. not away, but closer. her fingers were still slick and dripping, her breath easy and irritatingly composed. and then, without question or warning, she leaned in.

paige flinched, her realization too late. azzi’s mouth was on her, tongue soft and focused, lapping up what was left of her like a wolf finishing a kill. still so methodical.

it sent paige reeling.

“oh, unh, fuck—” her voice cracked, went high. “no, no, no—fuck—”

she tried to twist away, kicking her way out of both her slacks and underwear, heel catching on the back of the couch, one arm scrambling for leverage like she might climb out of her skin. her hair stuck to her cheeks, sweat streaking down like tears.

but azzi only grabbed her, sighing as if struck with immeasurable disappointment.

her grip wasn't brutal, but it was sure. two hands clutched, one on paige’s hip and the other wrapped firmly around the back of her thigh, and pulled her back down like she weighed nothing.

paige cried out, hand gripping her own throat as she shook.

“fuuuuck. oh, god, please. please,” her voice was dissolving. her legs were trembling. her fingers were grasping now, trying to hold onto something.

and azzi. well, azzi adjusted. mouth still suckling, but slower now, tender in a way that felt just on the border of cruel. then above it all: a name.

whispered. almost sweet.

“i know, baby.”

just that.

it leveled paige.

she whined, hips rocking uncontrollably, a low, ugly moan bubbling out of her chest as her nails dug into the armrest, into her thigh, into anything. she slumped, uninterested in fighting any longer. she only wanted to beg, to plead, and she didn’t even know for what.

azzi continued. this was the lesson.

not the fingering, not the overstimulation, not the squirting. not even the avid sobbing.

it had been this the entire time: paige bueckers could be held down by none other than herself. she needed to be.

so, azzi didn’t stop. she didn’t even pause. she only spread paige apart, drew her wide enough to embarrass her before leaning in and licking a hot strip up the hill of her pussy, slow now, so slow, like she was coaxing something out of the dirt. her hands stroked up and down paige’s thighs, never soothing. claiming.

“can’t believe you’re still so sensitive,” she murmured, almost amused. “you liked that too much, huh?”

paige couldn’t answer. she was soundless. her eyes were wild, wet and wide and unfocused, mouth open in some half-formed word��maybe please, fuck, maybe something new and undiscovered.

her hands flailed, then clutched at azzi’s shoulders, her hair, the edge of the couch, anything to keep her grounded. but she was already falling again, spiraling back into that helpless ache.

“i can’t,” she moaned, but her hips betrayed her, rocking up into azzi’s mouth like she needed it, like she'd die without it. “i can’t, i can’t, i—”

“shh,” azzi breathed against her, flicking the point of her tongue around paige’s swollen clit. “yes, you can, baby. you want to.”

she leaned in more, properly smothering her face into paige’s tight cunt. with one hand she held down her stomach, and with the other she spread the folds of paige’s pussy until that ball of nerves was isolated.

azzi put her teeth around it. she bit down, quick and cautious. the pain was sweet.

that was what did it.

something snapped. paige screamed again, not sharply this time, but hoarse, her whole body tensing so hard it bowed off the couch. her legs kicked, twitched, her hands fisting behind azzi’s neck, and she came.

it was harder than before, wetter, louder, her voice a ragged, desperate sob.

“fuck. fuck, shit—” her throat went raw with it.

she couldn’t stop shaking. she was making only noises now, small, broken ones as if she’d forgotten what language was. her whole body was flushed and red, stretched past its limit, her chest heaving like she’d run miles.

and azzi?

azzi looked beatific.

her face was slick with paige’s pleasure, her hands still holding her open, steady. her eyes were still so dark, but her smile was soft. pleased. she looked high as paige felt, high off control and victory. off the confirmation of who paige really was.

she leaned up, finally, finally, and kissed paige’s thigh. a little reverent, a lot smug. then her cheek, near the bone. then her lips.

it wasn’t demanding, only an intimate deposit of affection. as if to say: this is what you are now.

paige whimpered and reached out.

azzi came to her.

“atta girl,” she whispered.

the words hit her like a needle to the blood. paige pressed her thighs together and let herself drift out.

𝄞 FIFTH POSITION: WE LOVE ONLY THE PERSON WE CAN EAT.

backstage was stained dim and golden, oppressed by light that smudged its edges, softening the world into interchangeable silhouettes. everyone here was about to become someone else.

paige closed her eyes and listened to the rustle of tulle, the distant tuning of strings. the faint chemical sweetness of hairspray and powdered resin floated in the air like incense.

she sat on the chaise near the mirror, blazer unbuttoned, sleeves pushed to her elbows. she looked strange in her body, leaning to the side woozily as if unburdened. it was as if something had been scraped from her ribs in the past few months, and now this was her aftermath to carry as a secret. her hair was pulled back clean, stolen away from the sharp peaks of her face, her lips still bitten pink from where azzi had kissed her in the stairwell minutes before.

her thigh grazed azzi’s when she crossed her legs. she was too close to the vanity, but azzi didn’t move away.

“i think about you constantly,” paige said. her voice was quiet, dry, but not dishonest.

azzi didn’t look at her right away. she was adjusting her bodice in the mirror, slow and sure, the glittering edge of her costume catching the light with each shift. her mouth curved. not surprised.

she raised her gaze, met her eyes through the mirror.

“i know,” she said simply.

she rose and stepped closer—not to paige, but toward the stage.

silence settled across it. paige’s knee twitched, and for a moment, she thought she could hear it calling her name.

the hush beyond the wings coaxed every girl onto their feet, a firing squad of white tulle and pink.

the overture was beginning.

#mine ; 🐎.#pazzi fics #pazzi #paige x azzi #paige bueckers #azzi fudd #paige bueckers x azzi fudd #uconn wbb #uconn huskies #dallas wings #pazzi ballet au.

303 notes · View notes

booliuu · 5 months ago

Text

˗ˏˋToby Headcanons..PT2ˎˊ˗

ꪆৎ 𝙰/𝙽 : this is a continuation of my first headcanons oh him. Here’s the * link* if you haven’t check it out yet, btw thanks for almost 50 likes😭😭 you guys are so sweet!! anyways enjoy of me rambling about this man again :DD🫶🏼

• my inbox is open for ask and requests!!

* pictures i’m using: pinterest 🫶🏼

🪓 . . He’s a taurus baaabies ( b-day April 28th! mark your calendars right now !!) .. may i add something too👉👈 i just know in the bottom of my heart my man def has a sagittarius moon placement or lots of fire signs placements in his birth chart. SCORPIO VENUS TOO 👀👀 he loves so intenselyyy. okok anyways-

🪓 . . He has so many piercings!! I can definitely say on his face he has a septum , nostril , bridge ,and a snake bite 😮‍💨. And for his ears he has industrial, lobes ( thought about stretching his lobes but is too scared lol) and conches done.

➯ went a bit crazy with his piercing bc his parents were so against him getting them done during his high school years. But now that he’s an adult he goes all out.

➯ takes great care of them too! ^^

🪓 . . wears fingerless gloves to mange with his rlly bad hand picking habit. doesn’t have nails bc how bad his habits are :((. the goggles he wears protects his eyes . also wears a restraining mask, it stops him from bitting his hands , nails and….ppl i dare say ifykyk.

🪓 . . Owns a lot of graphic tee’s and most of them are bands that he never heard of before lmao same🥲. Whatever shirt he’s wearing that day , a creep or random ppl ask him what’s his favorite song or album is , he gets all awkward and he’s stands like an idiot like🧍.

➯ all sorts of baggy and ripped jeans as well ! Not a fan of tight clothes. Absolutely despises them.

🪓 . . has LOTS of scars that goes all the way back from his childhood.

🪓 . . Him & Tim before DID NOT get along at all. MAJOR BEEF WITH EACH OTHER 😭. whenever both of them were assigned on missions together, they ALWAYS be arguing about the littlest things.

* this is looong sorry ><i just love the idea that tim cares for toby. so bare with meee🥹🥹

➯ Mainly because tim behavior rubs toby the wrong way. It reminds him of his father in some ways and gets highly defensive whenever tim tells him what to do or criticizes him.

➯ Tim thinks toby as a ruthless teenager ( even though he clearly knows he an adult.) thinks he needs to be told what to do at all times . Even though he a rough exterior … little does toby know he cares about him a lot. But of course there both to stubborn as hell to tell each that 😑.

➯ until one day toby accidentally let a victim loose. when tim found out , he got extremely upset at toby. The yelling definitely brought Toby thoughts of his father, as a defense mechanism toby argued back . Got a bit physical but overall LOTS of yelling, brian ( the savior-) had to step in and tell them to get over it and be nice to each for once.

➯ took a WHILE for them to apologize but they did eventually. was a bit awkward but hey at least there over it :,D . Now of days they almost have a father and son dynamic. Sometimes when both of have free time tim will show toby how to fix up a car, how to cook on a grill , yk bonding.

➯ brings Toby lots of nostalgia and confusion because he never treated like this by a man before bc the only nice people he was surrounded by in his whole life was just his mom and his sister . so surely his inner child is slowly healing. when he actually took a chance and thought about tim’s behavior towards him one night, he had to sit down for bit , beer in hand ( definitely not given by tim-) cry for a bit while tim rubs his back in comforting way while smoking a cigarette ofc.

🪓 . . owns torn up converse and doc martens. TONS of hoodies, leather jackets and winter jackets!

🪓 . . HIS ROOM!! oh good god…it’s so unorganized. mostly because his collection of clothes he picked up over the years that he “borrowed” TvT iykyk… never bothers to clean it. his own words not mine

Toby: “ it’s my man c-cave. my rules.”

Tim: *SIGHS* “ jesus fucking christ….. your a mess.”

🪓 . . Speaking of his room it has lots of band posters and tapestry’s!

🪓 . . Knows so much animals facts.. it’s actually scary but entertaining.he literally bring up in random ways possible. that’s toby for yea..!! :DD

🪓 . . His favorite animals consists of what’s around him in the slender forest. such deers, raccoons, fox & wolf , birds , bears and has a love for reptiles as well.

🪓 . . lol if your scared of bugs i feel sorry for you , reptiles or just any animals i have listed…he’s definitely the type of friend that has it cupped in his hand and shoving it in your face. Lives for your reaction. 🩷

🪓 . . a bit awkward and has a cold front when you first meet him. he likes to observe, doesn’t trust ppl easily. If he likes you, he eventually slowly open up his shell and he shows his true colors such being a little shit, teasing you playful ofc, butting head with you 24/7. eeehh..but if he hates you good luck with this one… he make it known he doesn’t like you . you won’t know but others who know him do.

🪓 . . Growing up he was known for being the shy quiet kid that never speaks up for himself. He thinks about it now and really started changing meaning slowly and eventually he became more confident. like throwing sarcastic comments , knows lots of good clap backs or calling out’s if someone offended him or something. he’s changed man guys nothing like his younger self. proud of him 🥹

🪓 . . I see ppl saying that he’s the kind of friend that wants to be around you 24/7. 100% agree 👍 . yk hanging out in yours or his rooms for like smoke breaks, joining you during missions, watching tiktok’s & sending them to you even though your in the same room as he is , or even just simply pure silent and just basking in each others presence.

Toby: t-t-this is so you…

Toby: * sents you a tiktok*

You: bruh wtfff

* cue him laughing his ass off

🪓 . . Going to the local drug store to grab some slushes and junk food. HE LIVES FOR THOSE HANGS OUTS. TELL ME IM WRONG.

› › › i’ll make sure to be more in depth with this one :3 so be in a look out for some platonic toby headcanons in the future!!! ^^

🪓 . . Everytime someone says toby loves waffles sighs…. man i’m telling you right now an angel loses it wings ☹️ 👎. He has extended food palette than that y’all c’mon.

🪓 . . i mean it’s not the best diet… it literally just energy drinks but at least his friends look out for him and leave him take out because they know he doesn’t feel hunger like we do.

🪓 . . due to that, he has a lean built. Has a bit of a 6 pack ( you have to squint to see em ) and has muscles on his arms . He’s really proud of his arms lol. Has a bit of beard?? Scruff?? idk what’s it’s called going on too ^^ shaves ones in a while. aaaand..hehe has a happy trail situation... ANYWAYSSSS that’s for next time 😉.

🪓 . . yk how how i said he has a collection of phones he… collected *cough🪓🪓 cough*… firm believer he has playlist in each phone of them that consists of western emo music. also.. DAD ROCK .

🪓 . . his favorite weather has to be autumn because the animals around forest comes out more and he hangs out and pets all of them. likes looking at the trees and how each of the leaves are changing colors.

🪓 . . his joints pop loud real bad whenever he stretching , walking , or running . it pisses him so badly lolll.

🪓 . . loves sleeping and taking naps🫶🏼 whenever or whatever. like tree tops , his bed, closet, ect. hates mornings with passion prefers to sleep in. toby 🤞power naps . downside being that he snores like no one business and moves around his sleep.

🪓 . . blind on his left eye and that same eye has a permanent split eyebrow from the car crash.

🪓 . . Even though i want say he smells like vanilla or something sweet naaah …. srry bby😔. he gotta smell like the woods , dirt, bl*od.. sometimes , or even pinewood. From time to time smells like cheap shampoo and conditioner when he remembers to shower.

🪓 . . lastly his hair.. HIS 👏HAIR 😭😭 it’s so soft…he’s rocking shaggy haircut that tim trims once in a while.

𝚍𝚒𝚟𝚒𝚍𝚎𝚛𝚜 𝚌𝚛𝚎𝚍𝚜: @bloodibambiidol & @kodaswrld ✨ there stuff is cool check it out!

ꪆৎ 𝙰/𝙽 : HEEEEY IM BACK, i know posted 2-3?? days ago and honestly im so happy to it has so many likes already. thank you so much 🫶🏼 it means so much to me!! i’ll try to post as consistent as i can but no promises.😣As of right now my wips are a bunch of toby headcanons and one shots i need to finish and post and dw other characters too dww🤍🤍.

* if you like my content please don’t forget to like , reblog , and comment ^^.

liuuboo2025 ♡ﾟ

#₊‧꒰ა🍓 liu's post's #creepypasta #ticci toby headcanons #toby rogers #creepypasta headcanon #creepypasta x reader #ticci toby x reader #ticci toby creepypasta #ticci toby fluff #toby erin rogers #creepypasta fandom #headcanons

205 notes · View notes

deepdarkdelights · 2 years ago

Text

As You Wish | Yoongi x Reader

Pairing: Werewolf Yoongi x Reader

Word Count: 21k

Warnings: 18+, Spice but no Smut, Yandere, Obsession, Fear, Non-Consensual Kissing, Grieving, Passive Suicidality, MC experiences major depression, Non-Consensual Touching, Breaking and Entering, Stalking, Depictions of Gore, Blood, Technically Cannibalism? Loss of Spouse, Loss of Child, Forced Found Family, Hunting, Mass Death, Attempted Burning and the stake, MC is hit by a man (not Yoongi)

I do not condone the acts displayed in this story nor do I believe any members of BTS would actually engage in this type of behavior. This is simply written for entertainment purposes and should not be taken as a reflection of my own values, opinions, or morals.

Preview: You couldn’t even scream when the door was ripped from its hinges, the beast breaking through it like it was wet parchment. You were petrified in place, hyperventilating and trembling at the sight of it.

It was a giant wolf. It was covered from head to toe in midnight black fur although there were spots that seemed thinner than others that were littered in scars - slashes and bite wounds from what you could only imagine were others of its kind. It was larger than a horse with a head so huge it could bite your own clean off in one impressive snap. And then there were the eyes. They were glowing an ice cold silver in the dark with a glare that felt sharp enough to slice through you while a gnarled scar marred the fur and skin of its right eye.

A/N: I’m exhausted and grad school sucks but I really wanted to get this out for your guys. I hope you enjoy it, I spent way more time on it than I wanted to. I really thought it was only going to be 8k yet here we are…21k. Anyway, I miss all of you - sorry this is so long lol, this is SUPER UNEDITED. As usual, I can’t wait to see you in my inbox and comments, I love you and hope you enjoy

The sweet scent of flowers greeted your nose as you cracked open the window for the first time in months.

Despite the warmth of sunshine and the bright green strokes of grass outside, it very well could have still been winter. It felt as if no time had passed since that fateful day. In your heart, winter still raged on. There were gnarled, ice-coated branches there and a torrent of never-ending snow. It had frozen over since then.

You carried this sense of numbness you had never thought you would be capable of, it was as if your very soul had been corroded by frostbite. Any love or passion or warmth had been snuffed out like a match in the dark.

That was the thing about grief, it could change a person into something that was beyond recognition. And your grief was immeasurable.

When you got married, you never imagined your husband would die within the first year.

It truly had been a cruel winter that year. The two of you were making do with what food you had. He had always been so smart, planning out what you could have each day so that it would last until spring. The only problem was the fire wood. No one could have anticipated how cold it was going to be and if you hadn’t burned as much kindling as you did you were certain you would have frozen to death.

You could still remember that gentle look he had given you before he left. The soft touch of his fingers to your cheek, the gentle kiss he left you with. He still had every ounce of charm he had had as a boy. He had always been kind and sweet to you. He was the gentlest man you had ever known. That was why his death hurt even more.

You had been worried the minute he left, but as minutes bled into hours and the winter sun quickly disappeared behind the mountains you were frightened to the bone. He had only an ax and a knife with him. He brought no food and no more clothing than what was on his back. He was planning on making a short trip and if he didn’t come back right away the chances of him surviving the night were slim to none.

His body was found the next day.

Honestly, you didn’t remember that day all too well. Everything was a blur, you could faintly remember hearing the voices of a few men from the village, the feeling of your raw throat after screaming senselessly, and the surplus of food and supplies that were sent your way with small slips of paper that read: “Our condolences.”

They wouldn’t let you see his body and that was something you would never forgive them for. You didn’t care how bad it was, you wanted to see him with your own eyes and you were never afforded that closure. But you had heard enough from hushed whispers outside.

“Pieces,” they had said.

He had been mauled to pieces. They couldn’t even find all of him and what was left of him had huge teeth marks raked through flesh. It was an animal attack. Just like you and your husband, they were hungry.

And now you were all alone. You were a pariah, one that people pitied, but a pariah nonetheless. You would never be able to marry again, not that you wanted to, but no one would want a widow as their wife. That was the way of things, you were meant to live out the rest of your days in solitude. Nothing more than a sad story mother’s would tell their children as you passed through the markets in silence. Your story would become a warning for children not to wander off into the woods. Your tragedy would become a lesson.

The only lesson that you had learned was that love meant pain. You had given yourself to someone entirely, and when they had parted from you, you were left with nothing. That was the danger of love, losing yourself.

After months of wishing you had followed him out of this world, you were hit with the sudden clarity that you were being selfish. He had left to try and save the both of you, but here you were wasting the life he had given you. He had sacrificed himself in order for you to keep living for the both of you.

Choosing to live was so much harder than choosing to die.

You shoved those horrendous thoughts to the back of your mind as you traveled through your small cottage, prying open every stiff window that you passed by. Living meant starting with the little things, like getting your home in order. It didn’t feel the same without him, but at least now that it was warmer out you wouldn’t have to stay inside and constantly be reminded of his absence.

You stripped your bed, gathered up the used linens, and scooped up piles of worn clothes from the floor before depositing them in the basket. You were distracting yourself, that much you were certain of. But any distraction was welcome, you couldn’t bear the silence filled thoughts of him any longer.

You heaved the basket up onto your hip and made for the door, pausing as you were faced with the blooming greenery beyond the threshold. The breeze was cool, the air was fresh. The world was starting over once again, why was it so hard for you?

You shook the troubling thought from your head, squared your shoulders, and took a deep breath. You could at least try. And so, you stepped outside for the first time in months and faced the world. It was almost like nothing changed. The birds still chirped, the insects sang, and the rush of the river called from a distance.

That was the other thing about grief. While it felt like your world ended, in reality, it still rushed onward.

The soft grass sunk beneath your feet and sprung back to life as you walked, your body tense as you approached the forest. You weren’t going in too far, it was just the edge where the trees were still spread out and not too thick. You just needed to get to the river. But you couldn’t deny the sense of paranoia that was set in your bones. This was where he died, where he was mauled and consumed by whatever inhabited the forest. It would make sense that whatever animal that had ended his life was still prowling in the shadows, waiting for its next meal.

“Stop it,” You snapped at yourself, your voice hoarse from lack of use and louder in the soft sounds of nature.

You weren’t going far, you were going to be safe. There was no reason to be so anxious when you wouldn’t be putting yourself in danger. You weren’t walking into the lion's den, you were doing laundry.

Despite your scolding, you still snapped your head in every direction when you finally reached the river. You were unsettled by every little noise, hyper aware of everything that was going on around you. For a task that was so mundane, you felt so on edge.

The rush of icy water against your hands was enough to help you focus on the task at hand. The river had finally unfrozen. While your husband and yourself frequently bathed in the river during the warmer months, you had no plans on doing that anytime soon lest you be chilled to the bone and catch your death. Maybe when you were younger you would have risked it all for a moment of fun. But you were older now, matured by time and tragedy. It was harder to have fun now.

You threw the shirt you were washing on a rock beside you, the force of the toss resulting in a loud, wet slap. Your body bent forward under an oppressive imaginary weight as your icy fingers braced your face, a frustrated sigh leaving your lips causing your body to sink even further.

Living for two people was going to be even harder than you thought. Even these simple, menial tasks felt exhausting. It had been a miracle you had been able to drag yourself out of bed, that you had made it outside, that you had even journeyed to the river. But those things should be easy, so why did they feel so hard?

You felt weak.

Useless.

Helpless.

You couldn’t help but think had the roles been reversed, he would have been stronger than you. He would have mourned but he would have been able to survive. He would have been able to find another wife, he would have had the children he always wanted, and he could have been happy. It was hard to not feel like it should have been you, like you were just wasting the life he had given you. It was hard to not crumble beneath the crashing waves of grief that eroded your resolve.

It was too hard.

A high pitched whimper broke you out of your spiraling thoughts, your hands dropping to your lap and your head snapping to attention. You held your breath and pursed your lips, listening closely to try and hear the sound again.

And there it was again. Although this time it was much louder and much longer. It sounded like something was in pain. And your curiosity got the better of you.

You shifted your basket to the side and stood, gathering your skirts in one hand as you carefully lept from stone to stone as you crossed the river. Your heart raced as you slipped once then twice, the stones slick from the rushing water, but the cries were becoming louder and closer and you felt as if you had no other choice but to find out what they were coming from.

Once you crossed the river, you moved slowly through the grass so as to not startle whatever it was that was frightened. Every now and then you would pause and hold your breath, listening intently for the creature's cries before following them once more. You could just barely make out the shape of the animal, its body concealed by a thick underbrush of branches, leaves, and thorns.

You dropped down to your knees with abandon and blindly reached into the shrubbery. The cries were much louder now as the creature was startled by your invading hands. Thorns raked through your flesh as you grabbed hold of the small furry body and pulled, trying your hardest to gently remove the little animal. A loud cry made you stop, halting all of your progress. It looked like it was tangled up in something.

You quickly moved on to your second plan and softly placed the animal back down before grabbing thorn laced branches and snapping them with your bare hands. You hissed in pain as blood beaded up from the small cuts that now decorated your palms. You couldn’t fathom where this sudden rush of determination came from or why you felt like you so desperately needed to do this. That same rush that came over you to find the animal was present and even stronger with the desire to free it. You felt it on some deeper level, that you just couldn’t leave it behind.

There was a generous pile of branches beside you now and you could very clearly see what you were dealing with. It looked like a puppy. It was very small with soft chocolate brown fur, a short nose, and the cutest pointed ears. Its big brown eyes were welled up with tears, its tail tucked between its legs, and its entire body shook in fright.

Your horror stricken gasp was muffled as you involuntarily covered your mouth in surprise. The poor pup was tangled up in a snare. The wire was cinched tightly around its hind leg, chest, and foreleg, cutting in so tightly that blood was visible on the metal. The poor thing had run right into the trap and was stuck. You could only hope that it wasn’t intended for the puppy, that it had run into some hunter’s trap purely by accident.

Your already lacerated hands went straight back to work trying as you attempted to untangle the snare as gently as you could. You hissed as it sliced your palms but paused only a moment to wipe the blood off on your pinafore before continuing your work. By the time you had finally managed to undo the trap, beads of sweat clung to your neck and the sun had moved a decent way across the sky.

“There you go,” You murmured, “you’re free.”

The puppy, although now free, didn’t move. Its deep brown eyes stared up at you as it continued to whine, its entire body still shaking with unadulterated fright.

“Can you walk?” You asked, sitting back on your calves to get a better look at the animal.

You were shocked when it responded, in a way. The puppy attempted to stand and then walk, but it only made it two steps with a clear limp before it collapsed flat on its belly with a yipe.

“Of course you can’t, I’m sorry,” You cooed as you reached out. Your hand paused in midair, hesitating before trying to touch the puppy. It was probably a wild dog, so it was not a good idea to go touching an animal that very well could bite you, no matter how cute it was.

The puppy, as if it had read your mind, answered for you by leaning forward and sniffing your fingers with a cold, wet nose, before lapping at them with its little tongue. It was like any other puppy then, it wasn’t aggressive yet.

You chewed your lip in thought as you watched the pup. It wasn’t a good idea to take in stray animals, but it was injured and leaving it in the forest would be like ringing a dinner bell for all the predators in the area. All of the blood the pup and yourself had shed was certainly not helping. And then there was the crippling loneliness of your cottage. A dog would be good for that. It would be something to share the space with, something to break up the cacophonous silence. And, when it grows older, it would be good for protection as well. The benefits outweigh the negatives you selfishly refused to think of.

With the pup’s approval, you lifted it up and cradled it into your side much like a mother would her child. You giggled in delight from the feeling of a wet nose burrowing its way into your shoulder and neck, sniffing the cloth of your dress and your skin like it was trying to become accustomed to you.

You crossed the river even slower now on your way back, very aware of the precious animal you were protecting. When you stopped at the river bank, you gathered your abandoned laundry and placed the puppy in the basket. You didn’t really care about the dirt, grass, and blood that would inevitably stain the fabrics - afterall, they still needed to be cleaned and you had much more pressing issues to attend to.

You walked back with a sudden urgency in your steps, a small trill of excitement buzzing in your being. After months of isolation and misery, something so small had brought you joy, something that had been unimaginable a few hours before.

The pup was much calmer now, softly panting instead of crying as it laid in your basket of sheets, eyeing the world that passed by as you brought the two of you back to your cottage. When you made it inside, you shut the bottom half of the door, leaving the top half open to allow fresh air in without the risk of the pup wandering out and falling down the stone steps. When you placed the basket on the ground it nosed at the sheets for a moment before limping out of the basket.

“No, no, no, stay right there,” You chided, gently scooting it back into the sheets, “you’ll hurt yourself worse if you do that.”

You stayed a moment, locking eyes with the pup to ensure that it would stay and understand. When you were certain that it was calmed you finally turned your back and headed into the kitchen. You rummaged through the cabinets, searching for the healing salves and creams you knew had been there months before along with the strips of makeshift bandages.

Within mere moments of turning your back on the puppy you were alerted once more by its cries. It had tried following you again but was now laying in a heap on the floor, tangled up in the sheet and crying from the pressure it applied on its wounds.

You dropped the bandages and rushed to the pup, cooing as you picked it up and cradled it against your chest. The little thing was an escape artist, that was certain.

You let out a deep sigh as an uncomfortable thought brewed in your mind. It was the only option that you could think of, even though it was terribly unpleasant. Before you could dwell too much you headed towards the back of the cottage where a single door was fixed into the frame. It stuck at your first pull but relented on the second, the hinges creaking in defeat as you entered the room.

Any furniture that was in the room was coated with a thin layer of dust having gone undisturbed for months. That old wound in your heart was bleeding around the edges now, the pain of avoided thoughts bubbling back up to the surface.

There was a crib against the far wall of the bedroom.

You swiftly moved to the back of the room and gently placed the pup inside the crib. The sides were high enough that the injured dog would be unable to climb over and you were confident that this was the safest place for the poor thing.

But even that knowledge couldn’t stop tears from pricking at the corner of your eyes as your hands subconsciously cradled your belly. Your pregnancy had been short lived. Losing your husband had been the catalyst to losing your child, but you couldn’t help but blame yourself. Even though the midwife had promised you it wasn’t your fault you couldn’t see how that could be true. If you had been stronger, if you had taken better care of yourself, you would have been able to save that last piece of him.

If you hadn’t been pregnant, maybe things would have been different. Your husband would have stayed and you would have figured out how to make it through the rest of the winter. But you had been pregnant, he had left to find more resources because of that, and even though he sacrificed his life for you and your unborn child you hadn’t been able to save them.

You couldn’t see how any of this wasn’t your fault when you were at the center of it all.

The feeling of cool tears rolling down your cheeks shocked you back to reality. You weakly wiped the tears away, sniffed, and shook your head. You needed to clean yourself and the pup up, you had priorities.

You rushed around the cottage, busying yourself with what needed to be done. You ran to the water pump and wet some rags, retrieved the salves and bandages, and grabbed a bowl of poultry meat for the dog. This was a welcome distraction.

You were greeted by excited, squeaky barks when you returned to the abandoned nursery. The pup eagerly paced back and forth, its little tail wagging so hard its entire backside wiggled. You let out a gentle giggle before releasing it from the crib and sitting the two of you on the floor, pulling the pup into your lap and distracting it with a strip of meat while you assessed its injuries once more.

You blinked once and then twice in confusion. You could have sworn the wounds had been much worse not more than half an hour ago. The slashes were still bloody and in need of tending to, but they were not the deep, gnarled gashes that had once needed stitching. You were either still out of your mind or this animal had the fastest healing time you had ever seen.

It was much easier to believe that your mind was failing you. And so, you got to cleaning and wrapping the wounds. The pup was surprisingly well behaved, only whimpering every now and then as you touched a tender spot but it didn’t jerk away and did its best to stay still as it ate. The more time you spent with it, the more you realized it was much smarter and more aware than you had once thought. Everything about the little creature seemed eerily human when you thought about it too much. It was better to not think about it too hard.

Trapped in your own mind, you hadn’t realized that you had finished your work. Not until you felt the gentle lap of a little tongue against the wounds that decorated your palms, jolting you back into the real world.

You pulled your hands away with a pained hiss before reprimanding the puppy, “No, no, no, I don’t know where that mouth of yours has been. The last thing we need is an infection.”

The puppy whined in earnest and nosed at your palm once more before you pulled your hands away again and scooped the little thing back up into your arms. This way, it wouldn’t be able to mess with the cuts.

After you tended to your palms, applying salve and wrapping them securely, you couldn’t help but notice the odd tingling you felt emanating from them. It was warm and fuzzy and completely unexplainable - your salves had never caused that sensation before.

As time passed and the sun crossed over the sky before dipping beneath the horizon, the feeling became stronger until it was a pulse-like thrum causing your hands to tremble before steadily declining until it was nothing more than a memory. And an odd one at that.

It was when you began to turn in for the night, that everything fell apart.

You didn’t notice that the crickets had fallen silent nor that the wildlife of the forest had completely disappeared. You hadn’t noticed the hollow ringing that came from the wind slipping between the trees. It was the calm before the storm, and you had no idea what was coming.

The candlelight was dim, casting soft ochre colored shadows over the wood and stone of the cottage. The puppy slept soundly in your arms. Everything was calm.

That was of course until a howl fractured the peace. It was so loud you could have sworn you felt the floorboards shake as a rush of fright went down your spine. The soft lull of sleep was suddenly long forgotten.

The pup in your arms stirred at the noise, its ears perking up and its head frozen in place as it recognized the sound. It was on high alert. It knew what was out there.

You shakily stood and approached the door, the top portion of it still unlatched and swung outward. Outside of the lamp affixed to the stone above the door, the forest was pitch black. You could barely make out the twisted shape of the trees and the brooke that had once been in sight was obscured. But, what was even stranger, was that you were certain that the shadows were moving.

You tilted your head to the side, squinting your eyes as you tried to make out what exactly you were looking at. And then, it was close enough that the light bounced off of it and you were met with the horrifying sight of a set of bright silver eyes staring back at you from the dark.

You were frozen in an instant. But once you realized those eyes were steadily coming closer with a hulking form attached, you acted on instinct, slamming the door shut and latching it closed. You could only hope that the door would hold against whatever that thing was.

Your chest rose and fell with heavy pants as you became more and more unsettled. Why was it so quiet? Why couldn’t you hear something so big moving? Where was it? What direction was it coming from? Your back met the wall and your weak knees had you sliding down to the ground.

Your entire body was shaking in pure terror. There was something out there, something massive and monstrous. You held the pup in your arms tighter, bringing it to your chest for comfort as well as protection.

You yelped as a loud bang popped the eerie silence. Whatever it was, it was slamming its body alongside the cottage. But it wasn’t doing it mindlessly, like it thought it could break through the walls. It was purposeful, it was an attempt to frighten you and determine where you were. It was smart.

You curled into yourself as it came closer. You could hear heavy, sharp pants in between the vicious snarls that it was making. It sounded wild, primal, and predatory. It was hunting.

The pup in your arms began whining and wriggling around as it tried to escape your grasp and all it was doing for you was frightening you even more. All it was doing was making more noise, drawing more attention to itself. And you knew it had, the creature outside had gone silent. It was listening.

And then chaos unraveled in seconds.

You couldn’t even scream when the door was ripped from its hinges, the beast breaking through it like it was wet parchment. You were petrified in place, hyperventilating and trembling at the sight of it.

Your body slowly began to slump to the ground, falling weak before the wolf. You looked like the perfect prey, like a rabbit that was so frightened its own heart had stopped. It seemed that the wolf thought similarly. It approached you slowly like it was still on the prowl as angry snarls left its gaping maw. You could feel your blood run cold as you caught sight of its enormous teeth, each one long enough that they could be made into daggers. Whatever this creature was, it was no mere wolf, it was something else entirely.

Your hold on the pup was weakened as your chest and forehead met the ground, bending beneath the invisible weight of the wolf’s presence. From beneath the cover of your hair you could make out its large paws and hooked nails mere inches away from you. It was so close now that you could feel puffs of its hot breath disturb your hair and ghost over your neck. You were breaths away from death.

You couldn’t decide if you wanted to flee or embrace it as you had once desired.

A soft whimper involuntarily escaped you as you waited, feeling the tip of its nose brush over your head as its snarls grew louder. A sudden loud yapping broke the tension.

The pup was frantically barking at the wolf and lunging at it in a playful manner all the while standing in front of you like it was trying to protect you. The sight would have been comical had you not been on the brink of passing out. This tiny puppy was fiercely defending you against this monster.

And, to your surprise, it was working.

Once you gained the courage to raise your head you were met with the sight of the wolf’s intense gaze trained on the puppy. More specifically, its gaze was trained on the bandages covering its wounds. The wolf looked back at you, its hauntingly silver eyes making you flinch. It continued to stare at you for a long moment like it was contemplating something, that of which you were unaware of. But then its gaze hardened and its predatory stance relaxed. It had made its decision.

Without another snarl or howl it nipped the pup by its scruff and began to carry it out of the cottage. It stopped for a moment once it had successfully squeezed out of the broken door frame and looked back at you, this too was a look that you were unable to decipher. It gave you a slow blink and then turned, carrying the pup back to the forest and disappearing into the darkness.

It was in that moment that you finally realized that it had not been a dog you had rescued, but that wolf’s pup.

And with that realization you completely collapsed to the floor and were dragged into a dark, dreamless, restless sleep.

~~~~~~~

Yoongi had come to realize that there wasn’t much that you could do to discipline a two year old, especially a two year old that was a shifter.

His daughter, Binna, had little control over her form and had a knack for slipping away and getting into trouble. That was something he could blame on his other pack members, specifically the youngest three.

He huffed out a sigh as he carefully extracted twigs and leaves from her messy hair, flinging them back into the underbrush. She was the very definition of a wild child. And while it wasn’t uncommon for pups her age to be curious and adventurous, it was uncommon that she so readily welcomed and followed humans.

Humans were dangerous, that was something he had tried his best to get her to understand but she simply couldn’t. She was too young to understand how they could hunt her and hurt her, far too young to realize what that meant, and far too young to understand that it was a human that had taken her mother away from them.

Then again, she hadn’t known her mother all too well. That was evidenced by her clinging to any female shifter she had found and babbling out “mama” to the wrong mothers. She knew her mother was missing, but she couldn’t match the face to the name. He couldn’t really blame her all that much. Her mother had been amongst the best hunters and was oftentimes absent as she hunted for the pack’s survival. Yoongi was a defender, he was there to ensure the safety of everyone that resided within their territory. He was at the front lines. And because of that, his wife was often gone and he was almost always home. To his daughter, her mother was a faceless being.

“Let me see,” He demanded firmly, trying to unwind the bandages that were already slipping from her skin.

She nipped at his fingers playfully, her serrated canines gleaming as she giggled. Yoongi tried his best to suppress his smile, he was supposed to be upset with her. He sighed once more and grabbed the edge of the bandage and began to unwind it.

“No,” She cried in a drawn out whine, “Mama gave me! Mama gave me!”

Yoongi froze, startled as he registered her fractured speech. She thought that human in the cottage was her mother.

He could see why she would think that, you had taken care of her after all. From what he had seen from the wounds he knew they came from a hunter's trap, snares made from silver that were so small they had clearly been designed for pups as no adult shifter would ever be able to be caught in that small a snare. It was clear that you had rescued his daughter and taken care of her in his absence.

And for some reason, Yoongi could only press his lips together in a firm line and failed to correct his daughter. At the end of the day, she wasn’t necessarily wrong.

Yoongi knew you.

He had known you for a while now. He had watched you the day you and your husband had moved in. The two of you had chosen a location that was incredibly close to their territory and so he scouted you out for days to ensure that you wouldn’t stumble too far from your home, to ensure that you weren’t a threat.

He had thought you two were safe, and that was his biggest mistake.

Yoongi would not say that he was enamored with you, but he was definitely interested in you. He had gone his entire life knowing to never trust a human, but as he observed he couldn’t help but be enthralled by your little human quirks.

You were so blissfully unaware of his presence as he silently stalked you. Your husband, like his wife, was often gone during the day and you were left to amuse yourself. For someone of your age, you had this odd youthful aura about you. He would watch as you would jump into the brooke, spinning around and splashing with abandon not unlike his child would.

That version of you that he knew though, that was long gone. Loss has aged you, hardened you. Even though you were completely ensnared by fright he could see the hollowness in your eyes when he had ripped your door from its hinges.

The both of you had been irreparably changed by loss.

And then there was the other problem. He was indebted to you and you were now in his care. While he refused to acknowledge any attachment he felt for you, he couldn’t deny the attraction. It was incredibly wrong considering his own disdain for humans, but he couldn’t help himself. There was something else there, this odd discomfort in his chest that demanded to be felt, a sour feeling in his stomach at the thought of your frightened face.

This was not good.

Contrary to popular belief, wolves do not mate for life. And as a shifter that was even more true. While many chose to bond to one another, it was not horribly uncommon to find a new mate if one were to leave or die. And, very rarely, there were intense bonds that made it so that you did mate for life. In the case of his wife, it was not that type of bond. Of course he was hurt, of course he missed her, but it was not the debilitating grief that you experienced. It was natural for his kind, evolutionary even.

The attachment, this bond he felt for you paired with his daughter’s stubborn belief that you could be her mother made him make a decision far faster than he should have.

You lost a husband, he lost a wife. An even trade. Why could you not fill those roles for each other?

~~~~~~~

The following days were ones where you lived in a state of fright and confusion.

When you awoke the next morning you were greeted by the feeling of the floor against your cheek and a stiff ache in your joints. Apparently, you had spent the night collapsed on the floor.

When you finally mustered up the strength to stand there were several things that were brought to your attention. Firstly, that there was now a gaping hole in the wall from where your door had once stood. Secondly, the events that occurred the night before had not been a grief conjured hallucination. And thirdly, the pain in your hands had completely disappeared.

Upon unwinding the bandages you were met with completely closed wounds and thin scars that looked years old. Your suspicions had been proven correct, that wolf and its pup were certainly not just animals not with the way a few stray licks had healed your palms. Your fingers trembled in fright at the realization before you grabbed another roll of bandages and wrapped them tightly in a panic.

Out of sight, out of mind.

You followed the same thought as you gathered up sheets, a cord, and pins with the intention to cover up the missing door to your cottage.

Out of sight, out of mind.

Unfortunately, that was not possible for you. Before you could even attempt to hang the sheets you were frozen in place a foot away from what was once the threshold. On the cobblestone porch was a carcass. You stared at it, dumb in shock as you tried to understand what you were looking at. It wasn’t a complete animal, it had been skinned and cleaned and left on your porch laying out on a thick piece of brown paper packaging. At first, you considered the possibility that it was another mourning gift from one of your neighbors in town but that was very quickly debunked. For one, they typically cooked the meat or met you at the door. And secondly, there were clear claw marks in the bone and large tooth impressions left behind. You had a sick feeling that you knew where this came from. But it didn’t make any sense, no wolf could clean a carcass like this - this was work done by human hands.

Despite your conclusion, when you raised your head you were once more greeted by the sight of the wolf. He was much closer than he had been the first time you saw him the night before. He laid right by the end of the treeline - half of his body submerged in shade and the other half bathing in the golden glow of the early morning light. Those silver eyes were watching you intently, waiting to see what you would do next.

That only confirmed your suspicions, he had brought it for you. It was a peace offering of sorts, a truce. In spite of that knowledge your hands still trembled when you grabbed a corner of the parchment and dragged the carcass past the threshold. The wolf’s alert and tense body almost immediately relaxed. It was like it was relieved.

It stared after you for a moment longer, gave you a slow blink, and then rose and melted back into the forest - vanishing as if it hadn’t even been there in the first place.

And so you hung your sheet, peeled the flesh from the bone of the carcass, and disposed of the remains.

Out of sight, out of mind.

~~~~~~~

When you woke the next day, the makeshift curtain was pulled to the side and wrapped around a bent hinge that was still mounted to the wall. Another thing you were certain wolves were incapable of.

And there, on the stoop, laid a pile of wild berries and fruit on a small, clean cloth. And, not far away, the wolf was there once more. Although this time it was much closer, so close in fact that you could visibly make out the twisted scar around its eye. It was laying down, much like a dog would, with its large head raised in alert. Those silver eyes flicked slowly from the present and back to you three times, a clear signal that it was waiting for you to take them. It only relaxed when you brought them inside just like the day before.

This pattern between the two of you persisted for several days to follow. And, no matter how you tried to forget what had happened that night, this creature was making it virtually impossible. It was ironic how you had once longed for company and were willing to settle for it from a dog but now that you had someone, well something, watching over you you were incredibly unnerved by the ordeal. But you couldn’t exactly shoo the hulking creature away.

And so each day passed and more presents followed. One day it was bunches of wildflowers, another it was game of varying sizes, and another was a thick pelt that had been handcrafted into a blanket for the cold spring nights. You didn’t know how to exactly decline a gift from a mythical creature. Wouldn’t there be horrible repercussions for that?

The urgency to put a stop to this odd arrangement became even more apparent when a gold pendant was left at your door and the wolf had crept so close that it was less than fifteen feet away. It was beginning to make your home its territory and now it was somehow stealing items you had only dreamed of affording when you were young. It was all too much.

You wound the chain of the pendant around your fingers as you hesitantly crept down the stone steps. The creature perked up in interest, elevating its head again as you slowly approached it, your body shaking in fright in spite of your attempts to school yourself into a false confidence.

“I-” You paused to clear your throat, “I can’t accept this. You’ve done more than enough for me, you’re forgiven.”

It only cocked its head to the side in response. You were just a crazy woman talking to an animal, weren’t you?

“Here, take it,” You tried again, reaching out your palm to it as the chain caught the sun and glistened in the morning light.

It was looking at you like you were dumb.

“Fine,” You sighed, “I’ll just leave it here then and you can take it back to wherever you got it from.”

You lightly tossed it onto the grass and turned your back on the creature before briskly walking back to your cottage. And, despite the haste in which you walked, you were no match for the massive wolf.

A startled shriek left your lips as you felt a large, warm body bump against your side and thick fur rub up against your skin. Another shriek was forced past your lips when its tail wacked you on the backside like it had a mind of its own.

Gold glinted in its teeth before the pendant was unceremoniously dropped on your stone steps, the placement much more haphazard than it had been that morning.

If this had happened a few days before, you were certain you would have been more frightened, but now your patience was far too thin and you were in desperate need for your privacy and a sense of normalcy.

“If you’re going to keep bringing me things, at least let them be useful! Like a door, for instance. You know, that thing you ripped off of my home!”

The wolf huffed in what almost sounded like an amused chuckle before rising and stalking towards you, crowding you up against the side of the cottage. Your heart pounded as you realized you had made a grave error, you were not the one in charge here.

You clenched your eyes shut as you felt a warm puff of air over your face and a wet nose prod your cheek. You shook as you remembered the creature's giant fangs and huge body. You were certain now that it was going to eat you now that you had denied it, these were the repercussions that you feared.

What you hadn’t anticipated though, was the feeling of it pressing its head on top of yours and whining like an overgrown puppy. It was acting like you had hurt its feelings. You hesitantly cracked an eye open only to see this huge, scarred, wolf nuzzling your head and then your hands like it was begging for affection.

A surprised laugh came straight from your chest as you shakily began to pet the wolf. The wolf that had previously been ready to kill you after you had accidentally kidnapped its child.

“Alright, alright, cut it out!” You squealed, laughing hysterically as it began to lick you. You quickly froze when you realized that that was the first time you had laughed in months. It was the first time you had laughed since your husband had died.

You gently pushed against the wolf’s large head as you side stepped around it, a frown now tugging down the corners of your mouth. It felt so wrong to be happy.

Your companion noticed your swift shift in behavior. It ducked its head down and nosed at your back not all that gently as you stumbled forward.

“Don’t you have a child you need to get back to?” You hissed, a sudden wave of irritation rushing over you.

This wasn’t all that uncommon for you. The rapid changes in your emotions. It was easy to feel joy wither away to apathy, to frustration, to anger. Oftentimes you felt like you had no control over how you felt and it left you grasping at straws as you tried to hold yourself together. It was just so hard.

“Go on, go home,” You sighed, flicking your hand in the general direction of the trees, “I don’t doubt that you’ll be back tomorrow anyways.”

The wolf stared at you again, as it tended to, before purposefully bumping its large body against you once more and making for the forest. It hesitated for a moment, looking back over its shoulder to give you one last look, and then it was gone again.

That was what you wanted, wasn't it? But if that were true then why did you hate the loneliness that you were left with so much?

~~~~~~~

That morning, early in the morning, you were awoken by the sound of a hacksaw.

For a brief moment, in the hazy grasp of sleep, you allowed yourself to settle back down when you realized it was just your husband getting an early start on the daily chores.

But your husband was dead.

With that sobering thought you jolted fully awake, gripping your blanket tightly in your hands and pulling it up over your mouth as you struggled to control your breathing. Your neighbors were out of the way and they rarely came to visit anymore outside of the kind supply drops they had provided you with throughout the rest of the winter. So, if it wasn’t them, then who was it?

You rose and with the blanket still wrapped around you, you made for the door as quietly as you could. Once again, the curtain was pulled and fixed to the side like it usually was whenever your companion came to visit you. But the person that stood outside, mere steps away, was very clearly not the massive wolf you had come to know.

You could only see him from the back, but he was very clearly a man. He was a decent height with longer, thick, raven hair that began to curl at the ends. From what you could see of him, you could make out stretches of porcelain skin. He was wearing a loose fit white top and he had rolled the sleeves up past his elbows exposing pale forearms with impressive veins and hands that looked like they had been carved from marble.

Your cheeks grew warm as you realized you were spending far too much time appreciating his appearance rather than worrying about what this stranger's intentions with you and your home were. “What are you doing here?”

The man continued his work, sawing at the wood until the cut was complete before he responded. You then realized that he had been very aware of your presence the entire time, he had not been startled at all.

“You asked for a door, did you not?” He replied, sarcasm tainting his words, as he brushed the sawdust from his hands and turned to look at you.

His face was just as lovely as the rest of him. Dark brows, doll-like lips, and deep brown eyes that had the gentlest slope to them. He was beautiful, that was undeniable.

But what was most apparent and most worrying, was the long scar that ran over his right eye. A scar that you had most definitely seen before. Your body stumbled backwards on instinct, trying its hardest to create more distance between the two of you.

The man raised an eyebrow, a look of pure amusement etched into his features, “You weren’t afraid of me yesterday but you are now? You are a confusing little human, you know that?”

“You - that’s, that’s not possible!” You gasped, tightening your hold on your blanket. “What you’re insinuating is not possible!”

He chuckled to himself, leaning his weight back on his hands as he dropped his chin down, “You want me to prove it to you? I could if you really wanted me to, I do like these clothes though so I’ll only do it if you give me a reason.”

The thought of watching this man, creature, wolf, whatever he was burst out of his flesh and take on a different form was horrifying enough that you were certain you would faint at the very sight. Already you were shaken by the thought of this being possible, you didn’t know if you would be able to handle the sight. Not to mention that subtle innuendo that whenever he decided to take the form of a man again he would be as bare as the day he was born. It was all too much.

“Please don’t!” You cried, “Don’t do that!”

“As you wish,” He nodded with a teasing smile as he turned back to the door in progress. “Perhaps some other time.”

“What is it exactly that you want from me, if you are who you say you are?” You asked.

“I am responsible for you.” He said with a shrug, picking up the saw once more and continuing his work as if what he said made any sense at all.

“No, you are not. No one is responsible for me, you owe me nothing.”

“I don’t? I would think I at least owe you a door, that is what you said after all, remember?”

Heat rushed to your face in pure frustration and embarrassment. He was just as infuriating and insufferable as he was when he was an overgrown dog…that is of course if you were truly willing to believe in that sort of thing. But how else could he have known about your request for the door? Why else would he believe he was responsible for you had you not saved his child’s life? Unless he were some creepy, stalking stranger, he would have no knowledge of these events. This man was the very thing your town hunted and was frightened of.

“Just the door then? That’s all? You will leave after you’ve finished it and your debt will be repaid. You will leave me alone?” You asked.

He paused for a moment, a confused expression taking over his face. He looked at you as if he realized he couldn’t comprehend what you were asking of him. “You confuse me.”

“I confuse you?” You laughed, “I woke up this morning to a strange man outside my home claiming to be something that up until this morning I didn’t believe in, who claims he is responsible for me and owes me when all I want is peace and privacy!”

“That, that confuses me.” He admitted.

“What?!” You cried in exasperation.

“How can someone who so clearly hates being alone also want to keep it that way?”

You wrapped your blanket around yourself tighter, as if that would somehow shield you from the sudden sense of exposure that washed over you. You were feeling vulnerable. You were feeling seen.

“You humans are social creatures, not unlike my kind, yet when you need help, when you’re in distress, you push your pack away. It goes against every natural instinct that you have, it doesn’t make any sense.” He laughed with a shake of his head.

“You are alone here, you have no one to protect you. I can keep you safe in every meaning of the word. Whether that means building you a door, forgive me by the way, or guarding your land. I want to protect you.”

There was a gentle flutter in your heart, one that you desperately wanted to stomp out but were failing to do so. You hadn’t been affected by someone like this since your husband and you didn’t know if you should feel guilty about that. He was supposed to be the one allowed to move on, not you. These feelings weren’t supposed to be for you, they were supposed to pass. It was your job to mourn his loss; he was supposed to be your one and only love. These feelings were supposed to be wrong. So why, deep down, did you enjoy them?

Instead of telling him to leave, to abandon his work and yourself, you made the mistake of giving him a chance. You made the mistake of entertaining him.

“I don’t even know who you are,” You said with a laugh of disbelief.

“Yoongi,” He smiled, a wolfish smile, “And you do know me, I’ve been here longer than you know.”

That wasn’t the comforting sentiment that he was trying to make it be. Just how long had he been watching you? You were reluctant to linger on that thought much longer, so you moved on.

“How long will this take you?” You asked, shuffling closer to his work.

“Not long. Lucky you, you happened to pick a shifter whose trade is in woodworking.”

“A shifter? So, that’s what you are?”

Yoongi pursed his lips, his brows furrowed, he was thinking. It was like he was still deciding if he could trust you or not. He was deciding just how much information he was willing to give up to you despite the fact that you had seen him in his other form.

He nodded.

“Are there…are there more of you?”

“Yes,” He reluctantly admitted, you had already seen his daughter after all.

“Why is it that I have only met one of your kind now?”

“Because, we’re discreet. We have to be. You found my daughter in that hunter’s snare, remember?”

“Your daughter,” You echoed, “is she alright?”

Yoongi practically preened at your concern. All you were doing was giving him validation, you could and would be a good mother to her. You could be a good mate for him.

“Our kind heals fast, she’s already running around causing more trouble,” He chuckled, “but don’t be mistaken, I am grateful for what you did for her. You saved her life and you helped heal her. I owe you much more than you know.”

“I saved her life? You couldn’t mean…”

A grim look descended over his pretty features, a dark gaze settling in his eyes as he paused his work once more, his hands tightly gripping the tools they were holding. “That’s exactly what I mean. We have been hunted since the dawn of time. Woman, man, child, it makes no difference to them. Their entire goal is to eradicate us, they think we are abominations. It wasn’t enough that they took my wife, they tried to take my daughter as well.”

Your heart ached in sympathy for him. You knew that feeling, the overwhelming wave of grief and pain that attempted to drown you in your suffering. You had lost your husband and a child, Yoongi was just as familiar with loss as you were.

You crept closer to him, so close that you could feel the warmth that radiated off of his body like a stove. Hesitantly, you reached out to him and rested your hand on top of his. You could feel his grip go lax, his hand relaxing beneath your touch.

“I know how terrible it can be to hear someone apologize and tell you that they know what you're going through, but I think this is one of those rare moments where it’s true.” You said.

You could feel his gaze on you and the scarred skin of his hands beneath yours. He felt so incredibly close, this was the closest you had been to anyone in a while. You swallowed uncomfortably as you felt his hand turn over and the skin of his palm meet yours as his fingers laced their way in between yours.

“My husband…he was killed this winter. I’ll never know what happened to him, or why it happened, but knowing that he’ll never be here again is the most painful thing I have ever felt. It’s indescribable.”

Yoongi tried his best to suppress the inappropriate smile that wanted to make its appearance known on his lips. You two truly did complete one another. You were two pieces of a puzzle that had not been intended to fit together, but had been carved up and forced together. You were altered, created for one another. He gave your hand a gentle squeeze, stroking his thumb down the curve where your palm met your finger in rhythmic swipes.

“I know that feeling, I understand it well.”

I understand you, he wanted to say.

“People like us, we should stick together. We can trust one another like no one else can.” He murmured, gently brushing up against your side.

That was enough to wake you up from the dreamlike haze he had put you in. You stepped back, breaking your fingers away from his and holding your hand up to your chest.

It was too soon, too much, you couldn’t be that close to someone, to a man nonetheless. You couldn’t trust him, you couldn’t trust anyone.

Yoongi took a step forward and you took three back, retreating from the momentary comfort you had felt. But instead of looking dejected like you assumed he would, he looked determined, he looked sure of himself. And that only made you stumble back even more, stepping up your stone steps and into the house.

“I’ll leave you to your work.”

This is what you did. Despite the entrapment you felt by your loneliness, it was familiar, it was right. The loneliness was easier.

It was the only thing you knew you could hold on to for certain.

~~~~~~~

In the days that followed, you became antsy to get out from beneath your visitor’s presence.

You hurried past your uninvited guest, hoping that he wouldn’t notice you with his back turned to you. Your hopes were quickly dashed.

“Where are you going?” He called over his shoulder.

You came to a halt with an exasperated sigh, “Am I answering to you now?”

He only hummed in response and for a reason that you could not conceive, it lit you alight with agitation. “Where I go, is none of your concern!”

That caught his attention, his head slightly jerking to the side as he watched you from the corner of his eye. “It’s not safe out there, not when you’re alone.”

“I was fully capable of finding my way through the forest before you got here, I seriously doubt that I have lost all sense of direction.”

“It’s not your sense of direction I’m worried about,” He sighed, “There’s more of my kind out there and more of your hunters - both of which would not bat an eye at a human getting caught in the crossfire.”

“It’s never been a problem before,”

“No, but it is now.” He said with a stern glare, his eyes not meeting your curious gaze, but instead staring into the distance. His shoulders were tense, his forearms flexed, he looked as if he was burdened with knowledge that he could not share.

“Yoongi, what is that supposed to mean?”

“Don’t wander off too far,” He deflected.

You stayed for a moment, suddenly unsure as to what you should do. Moments before you were ready to get out from underneath his oppressive stare, but now you were intrigued. Yoongi had told you about the shared hatred between your species. The humans hunted the shifters and the shifters were reactionary killers. They followed an honor code closely and truly believed in an eye for an eye. So what had happened that now made it unsafe for you to traverse the woods when before it had never been a problem. Why would Yoongi’s kind attack you unprovoked?

Despite your stare, Yoongi was blatantly ignoring you, pretending that he didn’t notice you hadn’t left. That was enough to let you know that the conversation was over no matter how much you poked and prodded.

Without another word, you left. Contrary to what Yoongi had believed, you wouldn’t be traveling too far. Your cottage and the shifter would not be in view, but you knew the way like the back of your hand. It was past the brook, and a good walk through the evergreens. What you were searching for was a small clearing.

The trees lined the space in almost a perfect circle, something that appeared somewhat unnatural amidst the organic shapes of the woods. In the middle, there stood one weeping willow - completely out of place and the only one of its kind. And at the base of its gnarled roots was a simple stone with your husband's name carved into it. The earth was still turned, a reminder of just how fresh his death and the wounds they left behind on your heart were.

You gently lowered yourself to the ground, your skirts folding beneath your knees as your fingers pressed into the dirt. You had often thought about crawling back to him, you had dreamed of being wrapped up in his warm embrace again, the two of you entwined and buried beneath a comforter of soil and flowers. In your dreams you were intertwined so tightly that years from now if anyone were to find you they wouldn’t be able to tell where you began and he ended.

“Hello my love,” You whispered despite no one else being in the clearing. And of course, you were met with the silence, the ever present reminder that he had left you and that he was never coming back.

You sniffled as your fingers smoothed down the fluffed dirt before digging into your basket and pulling out the prettiest wildflowers you could find with which you then began to arrange around the stone. You knew it wasn’t right to spend so much time here, you were holding on so dearly to someone that was gone and no matter how much love you held for him it would never be enough to revive him.

When you were satisfied with your arrangement you allowed yourself to empty your eyes of the last of their tears before patting your cheeks dry with the edge of your pinafore. With clear eyes, you were now able to see a few things that you had missed before.

Hanging from the boughs of the tree were several things. There were colored glass stars and moons that were strung up on several branches all of which varied in color and reflected the sun through them, casting brilliant shards of light over the earth. And, amongst those, were small wolves carved masterfully from wood. You slowly stood, your brows furrowed in confusion as you tapped one of the stars with a shaky finger. It swung back and an ethereal ringing sounded from within it.

What were these doing here? At your husband’s grave?

You looked back at the wooden wolves before you began to piece it together. Yoongi, he had a wife. Was this for her? Was this their version of funeral rites? But if that were true then she would have died recently, but why would she be buried here, where your husband had been killed and laid to rest?

Your heart thumped, your palms began to sweat.

No. No, you refused to believe it.

Their words began to rush back to the forefront of your mind, “pieces,” and “consumed.” Your husband had been ripped apart and eaten, there was barely anything of him left behind.

It was her, it had to have been her, she had been the one to kill him. But if that were true, then who had killed her?

“I am responsible for you,” Yoongi’s words echoed through your mind.

They had a code of honor, they believed in an eye for an eye. Or, a spouse for a spouse.

You turned your back on the burial sight and balled your fists up before pressing them against your eyes. Out of sight out of mind. Out of sight out of mind. Out of sight out of mind.

Yoongi wouldn’t, Yoongi couldn’t. He wouldn’t do that to you, he wouldn’t take someone’s spouse from them, he wouldn’t make you feel the same pain that he did.

A rumble pulled you from your panicked thoughts, your breaths still fast and shallow. But what you thought had been the earth shaking, was something far more menacing. Across the clearing stood a wolf, a wolf that was not Yoongi. It was too small to be him and the fur was the wrong color. But the size alone told you that it was clearly a shifter and by the way it was looking at you, you were certain that you were in danger.

You stood still, hoping that if you didn’t make any sudden movements he wouldn’t be provoked but you were sorely mistaken. You could see its muscles tensing up as it crouched low and shifted its weight back towards its hind legs like it was preparing to lunge. No matter what you did, it had already made its decision to kill you right where you stood.

You hadn’t realized you were screaming until you felt the raw pain in your throat, your body acting on its own will to survive as you reeled backwards and hastily began to climb up the tree. If you were lucky, it couldn’t climb, but there was still a human inside of that creature - it was smart, you had seen Yoongi hunt you down before, after all.

You shrieked in fright as you heard the mangy wolf approach, its large paws ripping through the ground as it raced towards you while all you could do was try and climb higher. Unfortunately, you weren’t fast enough. The wolf leaped and its massive teeth tore into your skirt and ripped you from the tree. For a moment, you were completely weightless - you were airborne. And in that brief moment of freedom, you were quickly grounded by reality when you came crashing down to the ground, your forehead just clipping the top of your husband’s headstone as you went rolling down into the grass.

You knew what would come next. This time, the embrace of death would wrap around you. There was no getting around this. But what confused your shock ridden body even more was the pure dread you felt from the realization that you were going to die. You had once welcomed death, begged for her, prayed for her even, but now when you felt her looming over you you realized that you weren’t ready.

You missed your husband, but you weren’t ready to join him.

And, just as you felt the hot breath of the shifter mist over the back of your neck, it was just as quickly ripped away.

There was a symphony of snarls that followed, the sound of flesh being torn, booming growls, then a pitiful whimper, and a loud snap. And then, all fell quiet.

You were still dazed as you felt warm arms slip beneath your own, pulling you up into someone’s lap and pressing your body back against an even warmer, bare chest. Long fingers prodded at the warm blood that slid down your temple and a deep, frantic voice echoed in your ears - the words were unintelligible.

“I told you not to wander off,” Yoongi said, his lips just beside the shell of your ear, the first words he had said that you could finally understand.

“I told you,” He repeated, his voice wavering and full of emotion as he trailed off.

You looked at him wearily, your head feeling much heavier than it had earlier. His eyes were wide, his pupils blown. The look on his face could only be described as haunting. He was cradling your face with both hands. His thumb stroked your cheek, but his eyes were trained on the weeping willow. He looked just as shaken as you had been before.

That sinking feeling was back in your gut. The suspicions you had were coming back to your rattled brain. But still, you turned and wrapped your arms around his neck, collapsing your body against his completely as you felt yourself slipping away.

He was calling your name, his voice panicked as he held you against him even tighter. You rested your chin on the pale stretch of skin of his shoulder and started back into the treeline. You were finding comfort in the man that you were almost certain was involved in your husband’s death. You were embracing the suspected killer of your husband.

And in your delirium you caught sight of something out there, something you weren’t sure was even real. It looked like one of the clerics from town, his white robes reflecting the sun as he hastily retreated back into the cover of the trees.

A bloodied, naked corpse laid where the mangy wolf once stood.

You found comfort in a killer as a man of god ran away from the sight of the worst sin, murder.

~~~~~~~

Yoongi’s watchful gaze never left you, even when you thought that you were away from prying eyes. When he said he wanted to protect you, that you were his responsibility, he meant it.

It wasn’t safe for you to be alone this close to the woods and this far from town. Even though you chose to ignore this, he knew that he was right. He was oftentimes put on edge when he would think about the possibility of someone wandering through the woods and stumbling upon your cottage. And, even worse, he could imagine what someone would do when they found a beautiful woman, alone, in the middle of nowhere with help miles away. His paranoid suspicions had proven to be true with what happened days before.

“Who was he?” You had asked when you had woken up.

When you had slipped into unconsciousness he shifted once more, swinging you onto his back and racing back to your cottage. It would have been comical to try and watch his massive wolf form squeeze into your home while dragging your body inside, but in that moment Yoongi had trouble finding anything remotely amusing. He had been too frantic to switch back into his human skin and it took him several moments of concentration before he was able to do it.

“He was no one,” He plainly said, his brows drawing together as he dabbed at the wound that split open your forehead.

“You didn’t know him?”

“No,” He sighed, “He was just a nomad, a packless wolf. He must have caught your scent and tracked you down.”

“Was he going to eat me?”

You were met with a sickening silence as Yoongi pursed his lips and bandaged your cut. His silence was a clear answer.

“But, I’m not an animal. There’s plenty of deer and rabbits…” You trailed off.

Yoongi set down the roll of gauze and leaned towards you, cradling your face once more in his hands. “Humans and animals are not all that different, you eat, you sleep, you mate, and you both give chase. Many of my kind see yours and animals as one in the same. What only matters is the hunt.”

Human, shifter, or hunter it didn’t matter, he had grown to trust no one outside of his pack. There were nefarious creatures at every corner, whether he was one of them was still to be decided. His behavior certainly appeared to be nefarious, to an outsider.

He could hear the thrum of your heart in your chest and the quickening of your pulse as you digested his words.

“Don’t be afraid of me, I would never hurt you. I just want to take care of you.” He murmured as he leaned in closer to you and pressed his lips to your forehead is a soft kiss that pulled a sharp breath into your chest.

Since that day, Yoongi’s behavior has drastically changed.

During the day he worked, far slower than what was normal or necessary, and he watched you fulfill your mundane tasks for the day. While they should have bored him, they did quite the opposite. Everything you did seemed so curious, enthralling even. He couldn’t explain this odd tether he had to you. The only thing that he did know, was that he had to be near you. Whatever this was, it had become far more than just a sense of duty he felt towards you.

During the night, when the moon emerged, he would shift and watch from the shadows. He would watch you pull your curtain closed and float from room to room. He would sit as still as he possibly could and listen to your heart beat slow and your breathing even out as you fell asleep. He would sit in front of the gaping hole where your door once sat and he would keep watch, pride stirring in his chest as he protected you.

It was during the night when his daughter would come to visit. Some nights he could hear four paws ripping through the earth as she excitedly ran up to him, other nights he would be greeted by the sound of two little human feet running through the grass. And sometimes, she would morph between the two forms, flickering between the two states like the unsteady wave of a flame.

But, there was one constant with her.

“Mama,” She would whisper, crawling on all fours up the steps.

And every time he would nip her by her clothes and settle her back down in between his massive paws.

It was a silent “not yet.”

You were his responsibility, but his daughter wasn’t yours. Not yet at least.

The three of you had unknowingly settled into a routine. And on the day that the door was finished, that pattern was finally disrupted.

You had grown accustomed to Yoongi’s presence. If you were being truly honest, you would admit that you had grown to like him. You would never admit it to anyone but his presence had filled that hole in your heart that your husband had left behind. You knew that his saving you had caused this pivot in your emotions and in all honesty you were incredibly confused by them.

Yoongi was kind and incredibly gentle in spite of how your initial meeting had gone. His voice was soft when he spoke to you, his smile reassuring, and the gentle touches calming. It was hard not to like him, and it was even harder to remember that he wasn’t human.

But the reminders were there. The odd glow in the depths of his eyes, the wolfish smile, the predatory gaze you had caught sight of whenever he thought you weren’t looking and the looming suspicions you had about his implications in your husband’s untimely death. He was still a wolf, there was no denying that. But you approached it all with the same logic you tended to fall back on: out of sight, out of mind. It was simply easier to not think about it. That, as well as your traitorous feelings for him.

The clouds came out of nowhere the day the door was finished.

“No, no, no, no, no!” You cried as you frantically ran outside and towards your clothesline where you had hung all of your linens.

Yoongi watched you dart in between the fluttering clothes and sheets as the rain slowly began to descend and the wind threatened to whip everything away.

“Yoongi!” You called.

The shiver that sent down his spine was strong. That was all it took for you to rattle him, just the mere sound of his name on your lips was world shattering. You didn’t know just how easily you could ruin him.

“Yoongi, help me!” You called again, your voice stern this time. He thought it was cute when you tried to be in charge.

There had been a definite shift in your relationship after he had killed that wolf for you. You had started inviting him inside for dinner, watching him work, and even spending the evenings with him outside, leaning up against the warm side of his wolf form. And in turn he would accompany you wherever you needed to go, keeping a close eye on you, and a firm hand on the small of your back.

You had grown impossibly closer than you had ever thought you would be capable of. Hell, you hadn’t even questioned why he was wearing your husband’s clothes when you woke up - you weren’t even upset. You were beginning to feel alive again.

The two of your hurriedly gathered the linens. Yoongi had turned it into a game, ripping items off of the line right before you could touch it like it was a race. In all honesty, he made you feel like a kid again. The both of you were laughing, stumbling over the laundry and bumping into each other as you raced inside.

“You were supposed to help me, not compete with me!” You scolded him, dropping the sopping wet pile of laundry into your basket.

“I can do both, dearest.”

Dearest. That had been a recent occurrence. It slipped from his lips one day, it had caused your heart to stutter and your blood to rush and ever since then he had not gone a single day without letting the term of endearment grace your ears. He loved seeing how flustered it would make you, the way he practically purred around the word.

“Or, you could just be kind to me for once.”

“I’m always kind to you, have you not enjoyed the gifts I’ve brought you?” He asked, a faux pout on his pretty lips as he slowly stalked towards you. You could almost see the wolf in him when he did that, you could visualize the swing of his tail and the way his massive head would tip down as his glowing eyes locked in on you. It was there, in the swing of his walk and the taunt muscle of his shoulders. It was an ever present reminder that he was not like you.

You backed up, almost coyly, as he approached. His broader steps quickly gain on your short, shuffled ones. The cold, spring breeze rushed over the exposed skin of your neck, the open doorway was now behind you. But, before you could rush outside and back into the rain and allow him to give chase, he reached behind you and jerked his arm back. In that instant you felt solid wood press against your back, the new door settling perfectly into the once empty frame and blocking off your exit.

You let out a shaky breath as he leaned into you, his chest against yours as he raised his arm above your head. With one swift movement there was a click and then his arm settled by your waist and another click followed. He had locked the door behind you. You were trapped in your own home with the wolf.

The silence that followed was deafening.

Short breaths were passed between the two of you, both of you waiting for the other to make a move. Your lashes fluttered as your gaze traced the contours of his face. You often wondered if he knew just how lovely he was, scar and all.

You swallowed harshly as you raised your hand to his face, your fingers trembling with desire before softly grazing the bottom of the scar. Yoongi’s eyes slipped shut as he moved forward allowing his face to lean into your touch, his body pressing impossibly closer to yours.

“Yoongi,” You whispered.

And with that one simple call of his name, he lunged and went in for the kill. His pretty lips collided with your own as his hand moved to cradle your jaw and tilt your head back with the force of his kiss. With your back against the door there was nowhere for you to go, but there was nowhere else that you wanted to be.

You gasped as you felt his free hand slowly trail up your leg and over your hip before settling on your lower back and sharply pulling your hips against his. A pitiful whimper was passed from your lips to his from the sudden desire that was pooling in your lower abdomen.

A moment of clarity came to you, your mind pushing past the haze of desire when you felt your feet leave the ground. Yoongi buried his face in the junction of your neck and shoulder, his lips and teeth making quick work of the skin there, as he walked. It was when you felt the soft cover of your bed beneath you that you realized what was happening.

“Yoongi, wait -” You tried, but his movements did not falter. His fingers were making quick work of the laces at the back of your dress and he showed no sign of stopping any time soon.

He looked desperate, like he was going to die if he could not have you and the only way to relieve himself of his pain was to unveil every inch of skin that you were concealing from him and each stretch that was exposed was just as quickly covered by kisses and nipped by sharp teeth.

You couldn’t deny the attraction you had for him or the lust you were practically dripping with from his touch. But it felt like you were laying on a bed of needles when you were reminded of your late husband’s death as you were willingly laid down in your marriage bed with a man who was not your husband.

“Please,” You gasped, gripping his shoulders, “not here.”

That seemed to catch his attention as he finally stilled himself. From your position it looked like he was trying to gain some control over himself. His breathing was still heavy, but he had stopped touching you. He looked up at you slowly, his chin just barely brushing over your bare sternum. When he finally looked at you, you stopped breathing. His eyes were lit with moonlight, a silver glow emanating from their depths.

He was more wolf than human in that moment, a creature that was acting purely on instinct.

You cupped his cheek once more and while he flinched at first, he slowly relaxed beneath your touch. He was still eerily silent, and in that moment his behavior reminded you almost entirely of the first time you had met him when he was in his other skin, fully shifted into his wolf counterpart. It was those watchful eyes again, those eyes that held so much depth and awareness that it was startling.

“I can’t, not here.” You repeated.

He blinked slowly, once, twice, and then a third time as he cocked his head to the side. You felt a twinge of fear at that gaze and, shamefully, the rush of lust in your veins. Your body went lax as you allowed him to gather you in his arms once more. He was calmer now, his pace slower as he unlocked the front door and carried you into the night. You could see flickers of your Yoongi in him, his touch much softer as he laid you down in a bed of grass that has been permanently laid flat by the giant wolf that guarded your home.

That night the sky was completely open, not a single cloud obscured the stars or the body of the full moon. It was utterly beautiful. Just as beautiful as the feeling of fresh dew on your back and just as beautiful as the sight of your breath crystalizing in the cold, spring air. But nothing was quite as beautiful as Yoongi. The way that his bitten lips parted with soft gasps and deep moans, the way that his porcelain skin shone beneath the moonlight, and the way that he struggled to part from your lips. It was the way that he would rather kiss you than breathe. Everything about him was beautiful.

You had many regrets in your life, but this would never be one of them. Not when he held you like this, like you were the only person in the world that mattered. Everything about this was supposed to be wrong, unholy even, but that was what made it that more enjoyable. That was what made you tense your legs around his waist, curve your hips against his, and wrap your arms around the back of his neck - drawing him towards your pulse point where he had been nosing at, sucking, and kissing almost obsessively.

When your body shook with pleasure, a rush of warmth and tingles spread beneath your skin, your back arched and your neck was bared. And before you could even realize what was to come, his teeth had already sunk into your neck and shoulder without hesitation accompanied by an almost animalistic growl. The pain was there, it forced a scream past your lips, but it mingled deliciously with the rush of pleasure that emanated from your very core. You gasped and shook, your vision blurring as you were assaulted by your senses, your nails digging into his shoulders.

There it was again.

There was a flash of white in the treeline. It was there for a moment before flickering out of sight as you felt yourself barely clinging to consciousness.

You were being watched again, there was something or someone out there that was following you - watching you in your most vulnerable moments.

You tried to get Yoongi’s attention but he was in a similar state, the both of you lazily holding onto one another and barely moving as you began to drift. Your lips moved but no words were spoken, your tongue felt heavy in your mouth, unable to form words.

Yoongi’s lips were stained with your blood, his eyes heavy lidded but now returned to their dark color that you knew and loved. You tried again to speak but found yourself unable to as he pressed his forehead against your own, his fingers brushing back your messy hair.

The heavy lure of sleep was steadily pulling you under. You supposed it could wait until tomorrow.

Out of sight, out of mind.

~~~~~~~

When you woke up you were back in your bed and you were alone.

The cottage was dark, the windows all closed and the curtains drawn tight. When your eyes fluttered open you had almost believed that it was still night, that you were still outside with Yoongi and you had only momentarily dozed off. But the familiar comfort of your blankets and pillows quickly dismissed those thoughts.

Now wide awake with your sheets pooled around your waist, you could only wonder about where your wolf had gone. Had he left you already? Had he taken your words to heart when you told him that he was to leave when his service was finished? Had he abandoned you after you had shared your most intimate moments with him? What had you done?

You felt a sense of shame wash over you as you stumbled from your bed, dull aches throbbing at various points of your body that only reminded you of what had transpired the night before. Once you collected yourself you made your way to the door your wolf had crafted for you and when you grasped the handle and pulled, you were met with a locked door.

Your face scrunched in confusion as you turned the lock the opposite way and moved the bar at the top of the door but when you tried it again it still would not budge.

You had been locked in your own home like a canary in a cage.

Your heart dropped into your stomach and your throat felt impossibly tight as tears began to brim in your eyes. You had trusted him and in turn he had trapped you. How foolish you were to think that you could trust another man and here you were, a betrayer of your husband’s memory.

You sat on the floor curled up by the foot of your bed with a weak grasp on your blanket around your shoulders. There was an unexpected heartbreak that demanded to be felt in your chest, how could you mourn someone who you never really truly knew? Yoongi wouldn’t even tell you about his family, where he came from, or his people. Your relationship, whatever it was, had been an uneven exchange and you had clung to him so quickly because you had been so lonely. It was unfair.

You quickly swept away the tears from beneath your eyes when you heard a lock turn and light began to permeate the darkness as the door swung open. He came back.

The gentle smile he had entered with melted away, a look of concern taking over his face. He crossed the room and you rushed to stand, your arms crossing over your chest to protect and soothe yourself. You flinched away from his touch as he attempted to cup your jaw, the look of hurt and confusion on his face only inspired anger.

“Why are you crying? What’s wrong?” He asked, trying to bridge the distance between the two of you as he moved closer while you took to stepping around the bed. You needed to keep him away, you couldn’t be swayed by those gentle touches and kind looks.

“You locked me up, Yoongi. Why would you do that?” You sniffled as you attempted to keep your voice strong and firm.

“I didn’t lock you up-”

“Then why was the door locked? Why couldn’t I get out?” You asked, before leaning forward and grasping a cord that was strung around his neck and nestled beneath the fabric of his shirt. “Why do you have this?”

When you pulled the necklace out his hand shot out to grip your wrist in warning, but the damage had already been done. There was a key on his necklace, the key to your cage.

“I’m protecting you.” He whispered, his tone deadly and his gaze dark with warning. “You saw what happened, it’s dangerous out there - I can’t trust anyone with you.”

“No, you can’t trust me,” You corrected him before jerking your hand out of his hold, “This is my home, Yoongi, my home! You have no right!”

“I have every right, you are mine!”

“I am not!”

His eyes were burning again, he was having trouble keeping his anger in check and you weren’t helping in the slightest. His chest was heaving with every breath and his jaw was tense. You watched him take one long breath in and then out before his arm shot out as he grabbed you by the wound on your neck forcing a pained gasp from your throat.

“I told you, I am responsible for you, I need to protect you. This means that you’re mine and that I’m yours, this is a bond that goes deeper than marriage, do you understand that?”

Your lips trembled as emotion welled in your chest, that told you everything that you needed to know.

“You killed him, didn’t you?”

The silence you were met with and the empty look in his eyes was more than enough to confirm. Yoongi had been your husband’s killer. You stumbled back and heaved, waving away his hands that tried to steady you as you felt sickness stir in your stomach.

“How could you? Why? Why did you do it?!” You cried, your fingers shaking as they grazed your lips in pure shock.

His hands were raised as he tried to step closer to you, it wasn’t a defensive position, it looked more like he was trying to calm a startled animal.

“He killed my wife,” He said, his voice much gentler than you expected in your state.

“He wouldn’t!”

“No, but he would kill an animal, wouldn’t he?”

He stopped approaching you and you had stopped moving away, your body having locked up in a state of pure shock.Your silence was enough for him to continue.

“By the time I got there he was already taking her pelt, she wasn’t even able to shift back.”

He had skinned her. He didn’t know there was a person inside of the wolf that he had killed, and he had skinned her.

“I took what was owed to me, he killed her so I killed him and I don’t regret it. The only thing I regret is what that did to you and your child, and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. But I tried my best to give back to you what was taken. I can protect you, I can take care of you, I can give you children, and I can love you.”

His pupils were blown out, there was a look of pure desperation in his eyes. It was a look that made your heart shudder in your chest.

There was a horrible ache in behind your ribs, it felt like it was on the verge of collapsing. It was undeniable that you cared for him, but the sickness that churned in your stomach was rivaling those feelings. You had never felt so betrayed before by anyone. You thought that he would have been different.

You couldn’t even bear the thought of looking at him in the moment, it hurt too much and you knew how powerful those eyes of his were. You refused to be swayed at that moment.

You knew that no amount of words you could say would force him to leave, so you did the next best thing and sprinted for the door. You barely made it a few steps before he lunged and grabbed you by your waist, picking you up with ease as you writhed in his hold. You turned into a feral animal, throwing yourself around wildly and scratching at any available skin you could find as you cried in shrill screams.

“Stop fighting me!” He grunted, throwing you down on the mattress and pinning your wrists down at your sides as he pressed his knees into your kicking legs. “Calm down.”

A scream of frustration burned your throat as your muscles strained under his firm grip. There was no use in fighting him, he was far stronger than you could ever hope to be. And so your body eventually tired itself out, your limbs going limp as you shook from a mixture of fatigue, fright, and dimming embers of anger. The skin beneath your eyes felt tight from all the crying you had done and the skin around your nails throbbed from the scratches you had carved into Yoongi’s forearms. But of course, those flesh wounds had already healed.

You flinched as he released one of your wrists and stroked your face, indirectly drying your cheeks of their lingering tears.

“You’re scared, now. Confused. But that’s alright, you’ll learn that I am the only one who can take care of you.”

You stayed silent and stubbornly turned your head to the side when he leant in to kiss you, but your actions did not deter him, he only laid a soft kiss to the corner of your mouth with a contented hum.

“I’ll prove it to you, I can give you everything that you want.” He whispered beside your ear before he finally stood and the blood rushed back to your arms and legs.

You scuttled backwards up the bed as he gave you one last lingering gaze and then he slipped out of the cottage and locked the door shut behind him.

He had trapped you once again.

~~~~~~~

You had laid there for a long time, frozen after what had transpired. Everything you thought that you knew has been completely and utterly wrong. It had all been a lie.

You slowly sat up and slid your palms into your lap. Your nails were stained with dark blood, you had hurt Yoongi afterall, not that it had mattered. To him, it had probably been no more irritating than a kitten’s scratch. You were once again reminded of his incredible inhuman nature.

You needed to leave, now was your chance to escape him. It was an odd feeling that stirred in the back of your mind. The night before, there was nowhere else that you would rather be, and now you wanted to get as far away as possible. You wanted to run.

With that thought in your mind you lept to your feet and made for the window. You knew that Yoongi would be able to find you, tracking you would be more of a game than a challenge. But if you left now, you would give yourself a head start. You would make for town and when you entered its boundaries it would be too risky for him to come after you. He wouldn’t be able to get you in either skin, the hulking form of that wolf far too obvious and the flesh of his human skin far too vulnerable when outnumbered.

You pried open the shutters and undid the latch. You hiked up the skirt of your night dress, baring your skin to the cool breeze, and swung your legs out of the window and allowed your body to drop down. You needed to go, there was no more time for hesitation.

Your dress was held tight in each fist as you began to run, the light fabric brushing over your legs as you moved. In that moment you had wished for a pair of shears to shorten it.

A pitched howl echoed through the trees and your heart thrummed even harder in your chest. Your limbs froze on instinct and your ears rang with the sound of your blood rushing. It was too high of a tone to be him, you had heard the sounds he had made when he tore that other shifter to shreds. It wasn’t him but it was someone else.

A small, dark, furry form shot out from the cover of the trees and darted through the clearing. Its pace was sure yet frantic, like it still didn't have control of its four limbs nor its speed. As it came closer you began to take cautious steps backward. You knew who that was, it was the pup.

You watched in horror as the creature’s gait became wild and the pup began to trip over itself before the fur exploded from its skin and in its place was a little girl sprinting through the grass.

There was no denying the impossibility of what you had seen, after all you had seen it with your own eyes. There was no forgetting this.

“Mama!” She cried as she collided with your legs and displayed an impressive strength that was disproportionate to the size of her body, sending the both of you to the ground. The world turned sideways for a moment, and there it was once more. That flash of white that you had been seeing for weeks now. But it was closer this time, close enough that you recognized what it was. From the shape of the clothes on the fleeing form, you knew it was one of the clerics from the town. Has he been watching you all this time?

“I missed you, mama,” She said, pulling your attention to her as she stared down at you with a pair of dark brown eyes that sent chills through your veins. She looked so much like her father.

“Binna,” His voice shot through the air, “Remember what I said? Be gentle, you don’t want to hurt your mother.”

“Sorry!” She giggled as she pressed her cheek against your collarbone, her eyes fluttering shut and her long lashes casting shadows over the skin beneath her eyes. She wrapped her arms around your neck and hummed, the warmth from her body seeping into your skin.

“Sorry, mama.” She repeated.

You gently laid your hand over her back, your breaths still uneven as you pulled the two of you into a sitting position. “Sweetheart, I’m not your-“

“Binna, do you want to go see your room?” Yoongi asked, dropping down into a squat behind his daughter, his eyes on you as he spoke.

Binna let out an excited hum of agreement, scrambling up onto two legs that still wobbled unsurely beneath her weight. You noticed that she was never completely stable in either skin she wore, it was like she was still trying to figure out how four legs and two legs worked.

“Come on, dearest,” He said, holding his hand out to you. You sat there for a moment, stubbornly, but his gaze was unwavering and his body was as still as a statue. You knew there was no fighting him and he had played dirty by bringing his daughter into the equation. He knew that you wouldn’t want to start anything in front of her, the last thing that you wanted to do was frighten her.

You let out an angry huff and rushed to stand without his help, storming past him and walking a few paces behind his small daughter who would toddle every now and then before bending over and trying to walk on all fours instead.

As frustrated, frightened, and irritated as you were, you couldn’t deny the tug at your heart when you watched Binna crawl up the front steps of your home and scamper inside. You could hear the sound of her bare feet tapping against the wood floors and you couldn’t stop the resulting burn in your eyes. You had always wanted to hear that sound, you had always wanted a daughter of your own.

But Binna wasn’t yours.

But it was hard to long for that when you watched her disappear into the once empty nursery. You didn’t like what Yoongi was doing, he was messing with your head. He knew how badly you had wanted your child, how you had tirelessly grieved your husband, and now he was trying to patch everything together and force your lives to fit with one another.

You knew that he could understand your loss, he had lost a wife after all. He would do anything to avoid that happening again, and if that meant locking you up while he was gone, then he would do that. But that wasn’t what you wanted. You had locked yourself up for months on end, turning your home into a mausoleum as you grieved the loss of the life you had once had. You refused to do that again.

The door shut and the lock clicked.

You heard him approach and then you felt his warmth as your back and his breath disturb the hair on your head. It wasn’t all that different from the first time that you had met.

His fingers grazed your own and your hand twitched in response but you didn’t move. He intertwined your hands and pressed his forehead against the back of your head, breathing in your scent.

“You have to let me go, Yoongi.” You whispered.

He froze and a low, warning growl thrummed in his chest causing the hair on the back of your neck to raise. It didn’t matter what skin he was in, your body recognized him as the predator that he was.

“No.” He simply said.

“You’re not being fair -”

“I’ve been nothing but fair. I broke your door so I fixed it, I killed your husband and I gave you myself, you lost your child and I gave you Binna. I have been more than fair, so much so that I even gave you my love when you did not want it.”

You ignored that last part, the love you felt for him causing a stabbing pain of betrayal in your heart. It wasn’t fair that you still felt the way you did about him after everything that he had done. After he had tricked you.

“I am not Binna’s mother.”

He quickly hushed you, spinning you around by your shoulders and staring into your eyes, “She can hear you, she has very sensitive ears and a gentle heart, you don’t want to hurt her do you?”

You bit your lip in frustration, “It’s not fair to her mother.”

“You are her mother.”

And that conversation was over, he wouldn’t hear any of your protests and you feared hurting Binna too much to continue to broach the subject. You were caught in between a rock and a hard place. And the worst thing was that it was hard not to love Binna.

She was curious, mischievous, and sweet. She had been the same way when you discovered her as a pup, but you adored her even more this way. All she wanted was your attention, she was a little girl that was desperate to be loved by a mother.

“Why did you leave?” She stumbled over the words, her little fingers twisted in the fabric of your skirt as you had started dinner, the light of the sunset cast over her eyes and bursts of silver shined in their reflection.

You didn’t know how to respond.

“Mama’s back now, you don’t have to worry about that baby.” Yoongi answered for you with a gentle smile as he pulled her onto his lap.

“Forever?” She asked, staring at him with wide eyes full of wonder that only a child could possess.

“Forever,” He repeated, his eyes tracing over the profile of your face.

The questions didn’t stop there. It was a full moon that night and Binna demanded to be outside. Yoongi had briefly told you before about their connection with the moon. It was almost religious, but even that wasn’t a good comparison. It was a part of them.

“Shift.” Binna had commanded, tugging at your skirt again as she had quickly grown accustomed to.

“I can’t Binna,” You explained, lowering yourself into the grass so that you were more level with her height. “I’m not like you, or your daddy.”

Yoongi had stayed close to you all day, keeping a watchful eye on you to make sure that you wouldn’t try to leave them.

“But…” She said, her words trailing off as her face furrowed in confusion, “It was white.”

You were confused but a quick look at Yoongi cleared that up. His gaze was glassy like he was remembering something, something that he didn’t want to think about. Binna must have meant her mother, she must have seen her before she left. Her pelt must have been white.

Yoongi cleared his throat after a moment, “I think it’s time for bed.”

Binna, even though she was a shifter, was still a child. She whined in protest and went limp as Yoongi scooped her up in his arms and held onto your hand, guiding the two of you back into the house.

The door shut, the lock clicked.

The both of you cleaned Binna up together, her feet and hands dirty from struggling to crawl in her human form and her hair a mess of twigs and leaves. She had laughed as she watched the pile of leaves grow beside the basin and attempted to jump into it like it were a much bigger leaf pile than it really was.

And when she was clean, fed, and tired, she crawled into the center of the bed and reached her arms out for you. Your heart ached again. As soon as you laid down she was curled into your side, her little arms curled into her chest as she pressed her nose against the bite mark on your shoulder, taking in deep breaths.

The lamps in the room were snuffed out one by one, the room becoming progressively darker until it was completely plunged in darkness and only the gleam of silver eyes at the foot of the bed were visible. The bed dipped beneath Yoongi’s weight as he climbed in, laying on the other side of the bed behind his daughter. When he laid down he rolled over, wrapping his arm around the two of you and pulling you in closer to him.

Binna hummed a happy noise, burrowing deeper into your shoulder and burying herself beneath your blankets.

“What is she doing?” You asked, the first time you had spoken a direct question to Yoongi since that morning.

“You smell like me, it’s how we identify each other. She feels safe with you.” He explained.

“So that’s why you did it.” You said, a bitter edge to your words as you smoothed your hand over Binna’s freshly washed hair. “She doesn’t know any better.”

“That’s not true. She chose you, and so did I. She knew you were safe, that’s why she let you take her that day. And this,” His fingers ghosted over the mark sending chills down your spine, “was purely for my own selfish benefit. I wanted everyone to know that you’re mine.”

“You didn’t even give me the choice.”

“I love you, and I know that you love me.”

You remained quiet, not willing to agree or disagree with him. It was hard to make sense of madness, whether that be Yoongi’s or your own.

“You’ll see it eventually, this is what you wanted.”

~~~~~~~

When you woke the next morning, you immediately knew that something was wrong.

Firstly, Yoongi was gone. The spot on the bed that used to be your husband’s was cold, he had been gone for a while. Secondly, Binna was curled into the corner of the room, hiding beneath a blanket as she shook. And when you looked closer, you could see the tip of a snout and a still tail peeking out from beneath the blanket. She was frightened. Thirdly, there was smoke in the air, something was burning.

You stumbled out of bed when there was a pounding on the door.

“Open the door!” A man yelled, the door knob shaking as he tried to open it himself. Your instincts were screaming at you that something was wrong.

“Open up, and pay for your crimes!” He yelled again, this time throwing his weight against the door.

That couldn’t be right? Crimes?

You crept closer to the front window, the wood shutters were pulled shut but there was a crack that you had peered through, unnoticed, many times before. This time, the sight that you were met with was horrific. There was a large, angry crowd with torches outside - illuminating the pitch black field around your home.

You had heard of these events before, but never had you considered that you would become the victim of one, not when you were so isolated from the town. But it was happening now and you needed to act fast.

You rushed to the corner where Binna hid and scooped her up into your arms blanket and all. Her snout sniffed at your bite wound before she began to settle down. You ran to the nursery and to the very back of the room where the crib sat. You gripped it with one hand and with a strength you didn’t know that you possessed you pulled it aside. Your heart pounded and your breath was coming in harsh pants as you moved to the window.

“Binna,” You whispered, forcing yourself to make your voice as soft and soothing as you could. You had one priority right now and that was to get her safe. You had seen what those hunters were capable of before. “I need you to run as fast as you can, and I need you to find your daddy. Don’t stop running until you're safe, don’t stop no matter what you hear.”

Binna stared back at you, her ears perked up as her glossy silver eyes poured into your very soul. Binna was a little girl, but she was smarter than any human child. You trusted her.

A loud thwack sounded from the front door, a sound that you weren’t all that unfamiliar with - it was the sound of an ax striking the door. Your motions became faster and more panicked than before, your nails ripping at the bottom of the window that groaned as you forced it open. You grunted and with one more hard push, it popped and raised and there was enough room that Binna could slide through.

“Don’t stop running, be very brave.” You whispered before pressing a quick kiss to the space between her ears and lowering her as close to the ground as you could. And then, her body left your hand and her dark fur disappeared into the night. You could only hope that she could find help on time.

You had a terrible feeling that you weren’t going to make it out of this.

A loud crack and sharp splintering sounded from the front door and then the thud of boots entered the kitchen. You stayed as quiet as you could but you knew there was no hiding and you needed to buy Binna time.

You slid an oil lamp off of the dresser and hid by the door, waiting for it to open. The boots approached quickly, they didn’t want to give you time to get away and they were hunting you down. This was nothing like the way Yoongi had hunted you, it was un-practiced, frantic, amateur.

When the door to the nursery slammed open you brought the lamp down on the back of the man’s head and sent him crashing to the ground as blood pooled onto the wood. But when you darted out into the hallway, there was already someone else waiting for you.

You swung the lamp towards him with a scream but he dodged, grabbing your wrists and bending them in such a way that a sharp scream echoed through the cottage as you lost your grip and the lamp shattered upon impact with the ground.

The man from the nursery was up and moving and now he was behind you, pulling rope from his belt.

“You fucking bitch!” He yelled, and before you could move he had punched you clean across your face, sending you sprawling on the ground.

You could taste blood in your mouth as he straddled you from behind, wrapping the rope around your hands.

“Get off of me!” You screamed, wriggling desperately but to no avail. All it earned you was another strike to your head that made your vision blurry and spotted.

When you came to, you were being dragged out of your house. The door that Yoongi had painstakingly crafted was shattered.

And, as soon as the three of you were outside, torches were thrown and the house was lit aflame.

“No!” You screamed, guttural sounds that ripped through your throat. “No, no, no!”

Your husband had built that house. It was the only thing that you had left of him. It was yours, it was where you were supposed to make a family and grow old together. And now that dream, that life, was being burned to the ground.

It was absolute chaos.

The smell of smoke burned in your nose and made your eyes tear up on reflex. When you had thought of all the ways that you could possibly die, you had never considered this as an option. You wriggled violently in your bonds like a wild animal trapped in a snare. The rope was digging into your wrists leaving behind raw, bloody wounds. There was no escape, but you couldn’t help but try. If you didn’t free yourself, then this would be it.

There had been a time where you craved nothing more than to be reunited with your deceased lover, but when faced with the frightening reality of death you wanted nothing more than to live.

Violent, raw screams tore through your throat as you were held down to the ground. There were hands everywhere, gripping your shoulders, your legs, and one in particular that was knotted in your hair.

“Silence, witch!” A man yelled, pressing down on your neck and forcing your face into the dirt.

“Witch? Witch?!” You shrieked, another manic scream breaking up your words as you writhed against the ground.

You could hear the murmurs of the crowd that surrounded you and with a strained eye you could see nearly the entire town gathered around you and the men that held you captive. It was clear what this was, but you didn’t want to believe it. You didn’t want to believe that your own kind would turn on you like this. But that seemed to be your plight, those you tried to trust always turned out to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

The hand that was wound in your hair tightened its grasp spurring a pained gasp from you as they began to drag you. You could only desperately writhe in the dirt as you were pulled closer to the crowd. You were certainly a sight, your hair a deranged mess, filled with leaves and twigs with dirt smeared down your cheeks and staining the tips of your fingers. Their rough treatment of you had only served to make you appear as the very thing they feared. The thing they were accusing you of being.

You finally came to a stop in front of the town elder, the men behind you forcing you into an upright position on your knees, your arms still painfully stretched behind your back.

The elder looked at you in what could only be described as disgust.

“Behold, the witch who has brought a curse upon our village,” He spoke, his voice raspy and low, causing silence to descend over the group in order to hear him.

“I am no witch-“

“Quiet!” The man behind you yelled before delivering a harsh smack to the side of your head, forcing it to snap to the side as you cried in pain.

“The accused has brought death to all of your doors. She who murdered her unborn child in a covenant with the devil and brought those beasts to our home, and she who slayed her husband to feed those wretched demons and seal their bond to her will continue to slaughter us where we stand. What say you, shall we stand by and allow this to happen?” The elder said, opening his arms to the crowd who voiced their agreement.

This was the man who had known you since you were a child, the very man who had approved your courtship with your husband, the same man that married the both of you. This was the man that would ultimately kill you.

Yoongi was right, humans were horrible creatures.

Your body had gone limp, your head rolling forward as if your neck could no longer bear the weight of it. Desperate, wounded cries burst from your lips. You had not killed your baby, you had not killed your husband, but there was nothing you could say to change their minds. They had already made their decision.

“The punishment for these crimes shall be paid by that of which you are familiar,” The elder said, gesturing to a horrifying sight looming behind him, “Hellfire.”

You couldn’t hear the screams that burned your throat, you could only feel them. There was a loud ringing in your ears and the feeling of your feet and shoulders digging into the ground as you were dragged toward the stake and unlit pyre before you.

They were going to burn you alive.

Your cries for help were left unanswered, there was not a single look of empathy on anyone in the crowd. He had truly convinced them all that the deaths that had plagued the town were because of you. They believed you were the one that had brought the shifters upon them even though that didn’t make sense, they had been there long before you and longer than they realized. But there was no getting through to them. What the elder spoke was considered divine nature.

You sounded like a wounded animal, horrific sobs and screams shaking your body as you were tied to the stake. Nausea swirled in your stomach and your heart pounded, the fear that you felt was indescribable.

Vaguely, you understood that you were mumbling something repeatedly under your breath which was not helping your perception with the crowd. It looked like you were trying to cast a curse upon them. And if you could, you would.

But what you were saying was far from that. All you could brokenly whisper was, “I did not kill my baby.”

The scent of smoke became even stronger and from in between layers of your hair, you could see a torch flickering. The flames wavered, almost teasingly in nature, like it was deciding whether or not it would engulf you in its fiery embrace. Ultimately, that would not be its decision.

“Return from whence you came, witch,” The man before you spoke, and with the crook of the elder’s finger, he lit the pyre.

Heat licked at your feet and ankles as the fire slowly but surely crept up the logs and branches piled around you. This would be a long, slow, tortuous end to your life and that was what they wanted. They wanted to put all of their rage, pain, and hatred onto you and they would make certain you experienced the full extent of their wrath.

Tears rolled down your cheeks as you accepted your fate. You cried as you watched the flames lap at the edges of your skirt - eating away at the hem. In a matter of seconds it would eat the fabric away and begin charing flesh and bone.

But it was when you lost all hope, that fate decided to play yet another trick on you.

Frantic cries were coming from the crowd and when you raised your head you were shocked by the sight of six massive wolves emerging from the trees. It took no time for you to realize that they were just like Yoongi. Binna had made it back to them, she had gotten them to come and help you and thankfully she was nowhere in sight.

The crowd pressed in closer to the elder, who’s face had gone gray at the sight of the wolves, as the six shifters surrounded them, corralling them all into one place.

In the midst of the madness, you hadn’t noticed the presence behind you until you felt your ropes loosening.

It was Yoongi.

The fire was searing both of your clothes yet he remained, slicing through your bonds with deft hands. He had come for you, he had saved you.

The moment your bonds slid from your hands he wrapped his arms around your waist and pulled you from the stake and pyre, the two of you sinking down to the ground in each other’s embrace.

“Yoongi,” You choked, your lungs thick with smoke and ash.

“Shh,” he hushed you, “just breathe, breathe for me sweetheart, just like that.”

His hand came to rest on your chest while he guided yours to his, taking in exaggerated breaths so that you could follow him.

Yoongi was many things: your husband's killer, your captor, your protector, and lastly - your savior. It was impossible for you to describe what you felt for him as it was no longer black and white. If there was anything you did believe, it was that nothing was ever that simple. There are many truths and many lies, it all was dependent on what you wanted to believe.

You coughed again, the force of it shaking your entire body as Yoongi pulled you into himself tighter. You were in his lap, chest to chest, with his nose buried in your hair. You could feel him breathing in your scent, a growl radiating through his chest when he realized it had been tainted by smoke and other men.

“I thought I lost you too,” he sighed before pressing a desperate kiss to your temple and then your cheek. He treated you like you were the most precious thing in the world.

“Help us!” That raspy voice called out to you again.

You slowly turned your head to face the elder who had placed himself in the middle of the crowd, using the bodies of his people to shield him from the wolves that were steadily circling them.

Help them.

Help them?

Help them?!

You cocked your head to the side, a look of bewilderment and rage taking over your features. Why should you help them? After what they had done to you? After what they had accused you of?

Humans were horrible. You didn’t need them, after all, you much preferred to be alone.

You didn’t need other humans.

“Yoongi?” You whispered, maintaining eye contact with the elder.

“Yes?” He leaned forward, his lips brushing against the shell of your ear.

“Kill them all.”

You felt his warm finger trace the curve of your jaw before turning your face in his direction. He looked down at you in a mix of adoration and excitement before leaning in and pressing his lips against yours in a hard kiss.

“As you wish,” He murmured before setting you down on the ground and joining his brothers.

In a matter of seconds he burst free from his skin, a giant wolf in his place alongside the tattered remains of his clothes. The crowd screamed in fright from the sight of his transformation and then from the massive fangs of seven wolves.

You sat there, knees drawn into your chest as you watched Yoongi carve his way through the crowd and toward the elder. And, with great ease, he forced the man to the ground and ripped his head clean from his shoulders. A large spurt of blood soared through the smoggy air, painting the grass a vibrant color.

You watched on as several more people were felled by the shifters, their gruesome screams quieted by large jaws and hooked claws.

You were numb, you couldn’t find it in yourself to care about their lives that were swiftly ended - their souls ripped from their bodies.

You craned your neck back and stared up at the full moon, eyes dull, red, and finally dry as more gurgled screams were silenced.

Out of sight, out of mind.

#bts x reader #min yoongi x reader #yandere #yandere bts #yandere yoongi #bts fanfic #yandere yoongi x reader #yandere kpop #yandere bts x reader #werewolf yoongi #werewolf yoongi x reader #yandere werewolf yoongi #yandere werewolf yoongi x reader #yoongi x reader #yandere werewolf #werewolf bts #werewolf bts x reader

2K notes · View notes

on-a-lucky-tide · 6 months ago

Note

woke up out of a cold sweat to run to your inbox. Free spirited Omega Nik + upstanding, clean cut Alpha John who's so used to Omegas hiding their scents behind suppressants. Then he watches Nik fly through a dog fight with ease in the middle of one of his heats and has NO idea what do to with him.

Not that he thinks he needs some form of intervention, but how do you even court an Omega like Nik? Does he want to be courted?? What could Price get him when Nik already gets himself what ever he wants?? And that's when he notices, WAIT- is nik trying to court him??????

Nik goes into heat. Price wants to help.

cw: omegaverse; omega Nik, alpha Price.

Price had been quietly harbouring a romantic attachment to Nikolai for many years. It was difficult to pursue such a thing in their line of work and, if Price was honest with himself, he was too much of a coward. He had talked himself out of it by assessing the “risk”; losing Nikolai by fuckin’ up a romantic entanglement would do irreperable harm to the 141, Coalition and Allegiance in general. The reality was that losing Nikolai would fuck up Price more than anything else; the 141 would continue to tick over, but Price wasn’t sure he would.

It was far safer to exist in the liminal space of friendship and desire. Nik wasn’t stupid and Price was surprised he was permitting it to continue, but either way, they had settled into a comfortable friendship that often bordered on something else, but never progressed it into anything official. It was like they went through all the motions without actually… consummating it.

They regularly went out for dinner, sharing bottles of scotch late into the night. Nik bought Price expensive cigars and always ensured he had his most favoured kit on operations. Price made sure any stray arrest warrants or unwanted chatter swerved Nik when he could; he gifted Nik with a TF141 patch for his jacket one winter and something unspoken had shifted between them.

Nik went into heat while operating alongside Gaz in Khorramshahr. They had split into two teams with Price as the eyes in a central base of operations. Soap and Ghost had covered from a sniper’s nest on a nearby building, while Nik and Gaz had extracted the target from the military compound—a stolen laptop containing CIA codes for hundreds of covert operations. Laswell wasn’t sure how it had fallen into enemy hands, but she was pissed enough with her own to send in the 141 instead.

Unfortunately, the base hadn’t been empty. With Ghost’s help, they had managed to progress their way to the hanger they had already earmarked for a quick escape should the situation turn to shit. There were three Sea Cobras parked up. Liberated from occupying American forces over the border, no doubt.

Nik crooned gleefully through the Comms as they ran into the hanger. “Ona prekrasna.”

”Gaz, any luck?” Price asked, watching their flickering green outlines on the screen in front of him. Nik’s flickered as he climbed into the helo.

”Nik’s working on it.”

”Soap, got eyes?”

”Aye, sir. Ghost layin’ doon cover. Hostiles headin’ in from th’ east.”

”Spotted. Hurry it along, Nik. You’ve got minutes.”

“Pomurchi diya menya, kotonok,” Nik growled. Even through the Comms, the silky rumble of it did something to every alpha listening in. Price’s legs spread in his seat, arse lifting a little as his Carhartts became suddenly a little tighter at the crotch. He recognised that voice—that tone—on an omega. He’d had a handful of partners in his lifetime with only one progressing to the point there had been discussions about mating and marriage, but that soft, sultry purr could only mean one thing.

”Gaz, is Nik—?”

”Yeah, sir.”

”Stay focused, son.”

”I’m under control.”

”It is fine, captain,” Nik said, and Price heard the whine of rotary blades spinning up in the background. “We are good to go. Gaz, load up."

Price lifted his eyes from the screens and watched as their heli appeared over the rooftops. Nik spun her around to face the hanger and made sure that neither of the other two would be taking off with a quick burst of fire from the Sea Cobra’s 40mm grenade launcher. The plume of smoke and from the explosion that followed mushrooming high into the dull grey of the sky. Unfortunately, their escape was further complicated by a new arrival.

Price growled as another blip appeared on his radar. “Nik, you’ve got company. Westbound,” Price looked through the window as it came within naked eyeline, “Soap, you got visual on the pilot?”

”Negative, sir. Movin’ too quick, heavy armour.”

”Nik, ya gonna ‘ave t’ outfly it.” Price glanced back down at the monitors.

”Copy, captain.”

And Nik fuckin’ well did. Price knew of only one conflict where helicopters had been involved in dogfights—Iran-Iraq war—and Nik was flying one of the main participants. It might not be his Black Hawk, but Nik controlled that Sea Cobra around the sky like she was another appendage, turning her on a pence piece, with targeted bursts of turret fire whenever he secured an opening. It was quick, brutal, the rat-ta-ta of gunfire against concrete echoing over the buildings, and all Price could do was monitor incoming traffic.

It felt like a lifetime, but the reality was that the exchange was over in under ten minutes. The enemy helo went down when Nik took out its secondary rotary engine, and it spun out into a nearby building, sending a fireball outwards into the townsquare.

”Sitrep,” Price barked through the Comms.

“A few holes, but stable. Disengaging. Meet at rendezvous. Out.” Nik said, his voice somehow deeper than it had been before. Ghost and Soap provided their updates. All was fine. Mission success… so far. They still needed to get to safety.

Price packed up in record time, leaving no trace of his presence. He caught up with Soap on the exfil—an old Jeep with the keys in on the outskirts of the city—and drove off into the damn sunset. Price followed the Shatt Al Arab south to the Persian Gulf, where they picked up a light craft waiting for them with a member of Laswell’s team on board.

Their final destination was an American-owned cruise ship currently sitting stationary off the coast of Saudi Arabia. Laswell had co-opted their ‘service’, citing it as an issue of ‘national security’. It was a little more covert than having an aircraft carrier lurking in the gulf following an incursion into Iranian territory. Risky though, involving civilians at any stage of the operation. Price hadn’t been particularly happy with the arrangement.

By the time they arrived, it was late, with several floors of loud, drunk parties currently in full swing, but Price was unable to settle.

He needed to see Nikolai.

Once Laswell had been debriefed via satellite phone, and he’d caught up with the rest of the 141 to check on injuries—none but for a few of the usual scrapes and bruises—Price returned to the small room on the ship he’d been assigned to scrub himself clean. Nik was a few floors up. He’d booked himself something a little plusher for the occasion, because of course he fucking had. As the cruise ship sailed onwards, heading towards Dubai where they were due to pick up a flight home, Price took the stairs two at a time.

He wasn’t sure what he was going to do. For some reason, he stopped off at the hotel bar and bought an exorbitantly expensive bottle of vodka and two only moderately less eye-wateringly expensive cigars. Was he expecting to court Nikolai on an accelerated time scale with cigars and bloody vodka?

How did someone even begin to court an omega like Nik? He could have anything and everything he wanted at the snap of his fingers and the flash of some plastic. Why was Price even considering it now? He had never seen Nik in heat. Not in their twenty-or-so years of friendship. Sure, he had smelled pre-heat on him, knew Nik’s scent well, and had often been comforted by it in the past.

Nik didn’t use suppressants. He never had. His secondary sex was a point of pride and Price had always liked how it seemed to calm the 141 when he was around; Ghost’s shoulders relaxed, Soap’s hyperactive energy calmed and Gaz found an outlet for his affectionate nature.

They hugged him, scented him, and often fell asleep around him when the operation was over. Price too always felt less stressed, less… like the world was about to explode at any minute. Nik had adopted them as his. That was no secret. Why else would he fly into danger to rescue them at a moment’s notice? An omega would tear the world apart to defend their pack.

His mind was buzzing with all this when he arrived outside Nikolai’s door, his knuckles white around the bottle of vodka in his hands. There was a way to do these things. His old man, for all his sins, had certainly beaten that into Price for the day dot. He definitely hadn’t had a man like Nikolai in mind for his runty, underfed alpha son though. The thought of his face now would have been amusing if Price’s heart wasn’t currently sitting in his throat, trying to suffocate him.

He managed to extract one clammy palm from the vodka bottle and knocked. There was the sound of shuffling from the inside, the slide of the lock, and the door swung open. The sweet, overpowering scent of heat hit Price full in the face and, if that wasn’t enough to make him weak at the knees, the sight of Nik certainly finished him off.

Nik leaned against the doorframe, his head tilted against his forearm as it slanted across it, cigarette dangling from his broad mouth. His hair was ruffled, more curls forming around his ears and neck than his usual regime of gel would allow. Price’s eyes raked down the length of him, his full tits with their dark pelt of fur, his dusky nipples peaked and hard, his solid core revealing the hint of definition every time he drew in a deep breath, the elastic of the sweats he’d pulled on clinging to his hips, the v-slant of muscle disappearing beneath the line of fleece along with the thick happy trail of hair down his belly, begging for Price’s mouth to follow their lead.

”My eyes are up here, captain,” Nik said softly, lips tilted in a wry smirk. He took his cigarette from his mouth and placed his other arm high up on the door frame. Posed like this, even so nonchalant, he struck an imposing sight, spread out, so bloody confident, but with his armpits, the sides of his tits, the curve of his waist, all exposed, begging for an alpha’s hands just to—

“Nik, I…” Price’s eyes snapped up as he spoke, his voice cloying in his throat. Every breath he drew in fogged his brain with scent. He needed to behave his-bloody-self. With a restrained cough, Price offered out the bottle. “I brought ya some vodka t’ see ya through.”

”I have vodka, John,” Nik said dryly. Tilting his head back and up to take a drag of his cigarette without having to drop his arm, and it only served to show off the slope of his neck and throat, completely unblemished, his glands just below the skin.

“Ah, yeah, ‘course you do,” Price croaked, his eyes lingering on the spot where he knew Nik’s gland would be. His mouth watered. “That was… some amazing flyin’, with the�� the Sea Cobra.”

”Mmm,” Nik groaned, flexing his back, rolling his shoulders. A subtle wave of cramp. “The Hinds were better armed, but the AH1 is a more agile aircraft… it took down a Mig 21 during the Gulf War.” He watched Price with dark eyes as he spoke, scrutinising his face and, slowly, the rest of his body. Price knew he was being sized up and felt his shoulder square despite knowing he was being bloody stupid. “Why are you here, John?”

”I…” Price swallowed. “I want t’ help, Nik. An’… uh… I wanna do this right, I—“

If any of the 141 had heard the yelp that followed Nik’s gruff “finally” as he took the front of Price’s belt and dragged him into the room, Price would have silenced them under threat of a damn court martial, because it was the most undignified sound he’d ever made. The bottle of vodka thumped on the carpeted floor as Nik shoved him into the room and the door clicked shut. The cigars followed, because Price’s hands were soon occupied by Nik’s chest as Nik closed in.

#cod nikolai #captain john price #nikprice #prikolai #tbc?#can't decide whether price would claim nik during this or ask him again without heatbrain #thoughts #want the smut?

159 notes · View notes

th3mrskory · 4 months ago

Text

Chapter 9: Across the Divide

Pairing: Original fem!Reader x Origins!Logan Warning: angst, fluff, 18+ MDNI, SMUT, explicit language, loss of virginity, handjob, fingering, oral (female receiving), unprotected p in v, missionary, creampie.

A/N: If Chapter 8 was a punch to the gut, this one is… well, let’s call it an attempt at first aid. Sort of. Have you ever watched two people try to fix something in the worst possible way, only for it to somehow work because they don’t know any other language but this? Yeah. That.

Consider this a little Valentine’s Day treat. Twisted, messy, and completely them. Read when you’re ready. And yes, my inbox is still open for any and all reactions.

Word count: 7 k

© th3mrskory. don’t copy, translate, or use my works in any form with AI, ChatGPT or any other automated tools. I only share my stories here, so if you see them posted elsewhere, i’d appreciate it if you let me know.

The yard had grown quiet as the other workers moved further into the forest, leaving Logan to finish stacking the last of the wood alone. The sharp bite of winter hung in the air, his breath clouding in front of him with every exhale. The solitude was welcome—at least, that’s what he told himself.

But the silence didn’t stop the memories.

“You don’t owe me anything.”

Logan clenched his fists, the words circling in his mind like a relentless echo. He grabbed a log from the pile and slammed it onto the stump, the impact reverberating through his arms. The ax swung down, splitting the wood clean in two.

“I’m sorry for coming unannounced.”

He knew better than to hope for steady ground, better than to let himself believe he could hold onto something good. With Evelyn, it had felt different—like maybe, just maybe, he could carve out a life that didn’t feel like running or regret.

Now, it felt like a mistake.

The kiss he’d seen replayed over and over in his head, each time cutting deeper. It wasn’t just her ex he was angry at, though the smugness on the bastard’s face made Logan’s blood boil. No, most of the anger was for himself—for being stupid enough to think he could be enough for her.

The crunch of boots on gravel pulled him from his thoughts. Pete and Rick approached from the truck, their faces drawn with concern.

“You alright, Howlett?” Pete asked, his voice cautious but probing.

Logan didn’t look up, hefting another log onto the stump. “I’m fine.”

Pete and Rick exchanged a glance, the kind that said he’s definitely not fine.

“Look,” Pete began, leaning on the tailgate. “You don’t want to talk about it. But you’ve been going at this woodpile like it owes you money. Maybe take a second to breathe?”

“I don’t need a breather,” Logan said flatly, his tone daring them to push further.

Rick, quieter but no less perceptive, stepped up beside Pete. “You don’t have to talk,” he said after a pause, his voice measured. “But if you keep bottling it up, it’s gonna come out sideways.”

Logan didn’t respond, his focus locked on the ax as he brought it down with enough force to split the log cleanly.

Pete let out a low whistle. “Man, whatever’s eating at you must be big. I’ve never seen you like this before.”

Logan finally stopped, leaning on the ax handle and leveling Pete with a glare. “I said I’m fine.”

“Sure, sure,” Pete said, raising his hands in mock surrender. “But if you keep this up, there won’t be any wood left in the yard for the rest of us.”

Rick sighed, folding his arms across his chest. “Look, Logan. I don��t know what happened with Evelyn, but if she’s got you this twisted up, maybe she’s worth hearing out.”

Logan’s grip on the ax tightened, his jaw clenching as he stared at the ground. The truth in Rick’s words cut deeper than he cared to admit.

“Not my place to butt in,” Pete added, though his grin said otherwise. “But if you’re spending this much time stewing over it, she’s probably thinking about you, too.”

Logan shot them both a sharp look, then yanked the ax from the stump and turned toward the forest. “Leave it alone,” he muttered, stalking off into the trees without another word.

Pete waited until Logan was out of earshot before muttering, “Yeah, that went well.”

Rick shrugged, grabbing the thermos from the truck bed. “He’ll figure it out. He always does.”

During the course of the next couple of days the rhythm of the yard was the same, but Logan’s presence felt heavier. He worked harder than usual, his focus razor-sharp, but the tension in his frame was impossible to ignore.

Pete and Rick kept their distance this time, their occasional glances filled with concern.

By midday, Logan had thrown himself into another project, replacing a broken tool rack near the shed. His movements were precise, his jaw set in determination. But even as he worked, his mind wandered—back to the driveway, to Evelyn’s face when she saw him, and to the kiss that had shattered something inside him.

The guys noticed, but they didn’t say a word. Pete started a fire near the edge of the clearing, his usual jokes subdued. Rick passed by with a nod but left Logan to his thoughts.

By the time dusk fell, Logan was still at it, the hammer in his hand swinging with a force that bordered on reckless.

Tension seemed to follow him wherever he went, and his coworkers gave him a wide berth, exchanging knowing glances but keeping their distance.

The others gave him a wide berth, the tension in the yard thick enough to cut with a blade. Midday, the office phone rang, its shrill tone breaking the monotony of the worksite. Rick wiped his hands on a rag as he stepped inside to answer.

“Yeah, this is Rick,” he said, leaning against the desk.

“Hey, it’s Mary,” his wife’s voice came through the line, light but concerned. “Thought you’d want to know—I saw Evelyn back in town. She was at the general store this morning.”

Rick raised an eyebrow, glancing out the window toward Logan. “That right?”

“She looked... well, not great. Like she’s been through it. Thought Logan might want to know.”

Rick thanked her and hung up, stepping back outside with a purposeful stride. Pete caught his eye as he walked toward Logan, who was hunched over another stack of wood.

“What’s the news?” Pete asked.

Rick ignored him, stopping a few feet from Logan. “Hey, Howlett,” he called out, his tone even.

Logan didn’t look up. “What?”

Rick hesitated, then said, “Mary saw Evelyn in town this morning. Thought you’d want to know.”

Logan froze, his hands stilling on the axe handle. For a moment, it looked like he might respond, but then he shook his head and resumed working.

“Good for her,” he muttered, his voice flat.

Pete stepped forward, frustration evident in his expression. “Don’t be an idiot. You’re hurting, and so is she. Go talk to her.”

Logan’s grip on the axe tightened, his knuckles white. “I said I don’t care,” he snapped.

Pete sighed, throwing up his hands. “Alright, fine. Be stubborn. But don’t come crying to us when it’s too late.”

Rick shot Pete a warning look, but Logan didn’t seem to hear them anymore. He swung the axe down with a force that sent the wood flying, the conversation over.

When the day finally ended, Logan climbed into his truck, his body aching from the nonstop work. The drive home was quiet, the hum of the engine the only sound to fill the cab.

As he pulled onto the dirt road leading to his cottage, his headlights illuminated a familiar vehicle parked in his driveway. Logan’s chest tightened, his hands gripping the steering wheel as he slowed to a stop.

It was Evelyn’s truck.

For a long moment, he sat there, staring at it, his mind racing. A part of him wanted to get out, to see her, to hear whatever explanation she had to offer. But the memory of that kiss, of her ex standing so close to her, was a wound that hadn’t stopped bleeding.

With a sharp exhale, Logan put the truck in reverse and backed down the road.

He didn’t look back.

The next day Logan was halfway to the kitchen when he noticed the Polaroid resting on the mantle—the one Evelyn had taken of herself.

He stared at it for a long moment, his chest tightening as he reached out to pick it up. The sight of her smile—the carefree warmth in her eyes—brought a lump to his throat he couldn’t swallow.

A sudden knock at the door jolted him from his thoughts. He hesitated, his grip on the Polaroid tightening as he listened.

“I know you’re there, Logan,” Evelyn’s voice called softly from the other side. “Are you done running away from me? Please... let me explain.”

Logan’s jaw clenched, his gaze fixed on the photo in his hand. He didn’t move.

“Logan,” she tried again, her voice trembling. “I’m not leaving until you hear me out.”

Still, he didn’t answer.

The minutes stretched on, the silence heavy and suffocating. Eventually, Evelyn exhaled shakily, her voice breaking. “I’m sorry. For everything. For not stopping him, for not calling you first. I never wanted to hurt you. Please believe me.”

When the sound of her footsteps receded, Logan finally let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. He sat down heavily, the Polaroid still in his hand as the weight of the past few days pressed down on him like a boulder.

They didn’t speak for a week after Evelyn’s return. The silence between them was deafening, but neither seemed willing to bridge the gap.

The logging yard was alive with the rhythmic sound of axes striking wood, the hum of engines, and the occasional crack of a tree falling in the distance. Evelyn’s truck rolled into the gravel lot, its tires crunching softly against the frozen ground. Her heart pounded as she parked near the edge of the clearing, unsure if she had made the right decision by coming here.

As she stepped out, the cold air nipped at her cheeks, her breath visible in the chill. Her gaze scanned the bustling yard until it landed on two familiar figures standing near the truck bed—Rick and Pete. They noticed her almost instantly, exchanging a quick glance before Pete raised a hand in greeting.

“Miss Evelyn!” Pete called, his tone warm but tinged with curiosity. He closed the distance between them, wiping his hands on his flannel shirt. “Didn’t expect to see you here. Everything alright?”

She hesitated, shifting on her feet as Rick joined them, his expression more reserved but just as welcoming.

“Is Logan here?” she asked, her voice quieter than she intended.

Pete and Rick exchanged another look, this one heavier.

“He’s around,” Rick said carefully, his arms folding across his chest. “But this probably isn’t the place for whatever conversation you’re looking to have.”

Evelyn’s shoulders sagged slightly, the weight of the last few days catching up to her. “I’ve been trying to talk to him,” she admitted, her voice cracking. “I went to his cabin, but... he wouldn’t see me.”

Pete winced, rubbing the back of his neck. “He’s been... well, let’s just say he’s not exactly himself lately.”

“He’s hurt,” Rick added bluntly, his gaze steady on her. “You can see it in the way he’s working—pushing himself harder than he should. Whatever happened between you two, it’s eating him alive.”

Evelyn swallowed hard, her hands clenching into fists at her sides. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. I didn’t even—” She stopped, her breath hitching as she tried to gather her thoughts. “I never wanted to hurt him.”

Rick’s expression softened slightly, and he nodded. “I believe you. But he’s got his walls up right now. It’s going to take more than just words to get through to him.”

Pete stepped closer, resting a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “We’ll talk to him. Try to get him to see reason. But you’ve got to give him a little time, alright? Let us handle it.”

Evelyn nodded reluctantly, the knot in her stomach tightening. “I don’t want him to think I don’t care,” she said softly.

“He knows,” Pete assured her, his voice surprisingly gentle. “He’s just too damn stubborn to admit it right now.”

The drive back to the cottage felt longer than usual, the winter landscape passing by in a blur. Evelyn’s mind raced, replaying her conversation with Pete and Rick. Their words had given her a small measure of hope, but the weight of uncertainty hung heavy in her chest.

By the time she reached home, the familiar sight of the cozy cottage brought a semblance of comfort. She slipped inside, the warmth of the woodstove embracing her as she shed her coat and boots. Her gaze drifted to the basket of unfinished crochet pieces sitting by the couch.

With a deep breath, Evelyn settled herself down, picking up the half-finished sweater she had started weeks ago. Her hands moved methodically, the repetitive motion of the hook and yarn soothing her frayed nerves.

Hours turned into days, and the rhythm of her life resumed, though it felt emptier than before. She spent her mornings tending to small chores around the cottage, her afternoons lost in her crafts, and her evenings staring at the quiet phone, willing it to ring.

She wanted to give Logan space, to let him come to her when he was ready, but the silence was agonizing. The weight of waiting gnawed at her, and though she tried to keep herself busy, the ache of missing him lingered.

“He knows,” Pete assured her, his voice surprisingly gentle. “He’s just too damn stubborn to admit it right now.”

It wasn’t until a rainy evening, as Evelyn was driving home from a fair out of town, that their paths crossed again. Logan’s truck was idling at an intersection, his expression unreadable as their eyes met through the windshield. Without thinking, she pulled over, her tires skidding slightly in the mud. She threw her truck into park and jumped out, the cold rain immediately soaking through her coat as she ran toward him.

“Logan,” she called, her voice barely audible over the downpour.

Logan slammed on the brakes, his truck skidding slightly before halting. He stepped out, his gaze finally meeting hers, his eyes shadowed with a mix of anger and hurt. Rain plastered his hair to his forehead, drops clinging to his lashes as he looked at her.

“What the hell are you doing?” he growled, his voice low and sharp.

“I’m trying to fix this,” she said, her voice trembling. “I can’t stand how things are between us right now.”

Logan’s jaw tightened, and he looked away, his hands clenching at his sides. “Maybe things are better this way.”

“No,” she said firmly. “They’re not. I know you’re angry, and you have every right to be. I’m not letting you leave again. Not without hearing me out.”

“I’ve heard enough.”, he spits out.

Evelyn steps closer, her voice rising over the rain.“No, you haven’t! You think you know what happened, but you don’t! That kiss—it wasn’t me. I didn’t ask for it. I didn’t want it.”

Logan’s jaw tightens, his eyes narrowing.“Didn’t look like you were pulling away, either.”

“I froze! I didn’t know how to react. But the second I saw you, it was over. I didn’t care about him—I care about you.”, she said looking at him.

He let out a harsh breath, looking away. “Doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change what I saw.”

“No, it doesn’t,” she admitted, tears mixing with the rain. “But it doesn’t mean I didn’t care about how it would hurt you. I love you, Logan. Do you hear me? I love you. And I’m not letting you push me away because of one stupid mistake.”

Logan’s breath catches, his usual walls crumbling under the weight of her words. For a moment, he just stares at her, the rain streaming down his face, a flicker of something raw crossing his face. “Don’t say that,” he muttered. “Don’t say it if you don’t mean it.”

“I mean it,” she said, her voice breaking as tears mixed with the rain streaming down her face. “I love you, and I’m sorry for everything. For not stopping him, for not calling you first. I never wanted to hurt you, Logan. Please believe me.”

For a long moment, they stood there in the rain, the tension between them crackling like a live wire. Finally, Logan closed the distance, his hands cupping her face as he kissed her—desperate, hungry, and filled with all the emotions he’d kept bottled up.

When they finally broke apart, their foreheads resting together, Logan exhaled softly. “I love you tooI’ve been alone a long time,” he murmured. “I don’t know if I know how to do this... but I can’t lose you.”

Evelyn smiled through her tears, her hands still cradling his face. “You’re not going to lose me, Logan. We’ll figure it out together.”

The rain continued to pour around them, but in that moment, it felt like the storm had finally passed.

Logan’s eyes searched hers, and without another word, he leaned in again, capturing her lips in a kiss that was deeper, hotter, and filled with all the longing he had tried to suppress. His hands moved to her waist, pulling her closer until there was no space left between them.

Evelyn responded with equal fervor, her fingers threading through his rain-soaked hair, her lips parting to meet his urgency. The rain continued to pour around them, but neither seemed to care. Each kiss was hungrier than the last, the heat between them undeniable despite the cold storm.

Logan’s hands slid up her back, strong and steady, anchoring her as their kiss deepened. When she pressed against him, he let out a low, guttural sound, his restraint slipping. His lips left hers, trailing along her jaw and down her neck, his breath hot against her skin as her head tilted back, exposing more of her to him.

“Maybe we should—” Logan murmured against her neck, his voice rough and uneven.

“Get out of the rain?” she finished breathlessly, her chest rising and falling rapidly.

He pulled back just enough to meet her eyes, a faint smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth despite the tension crackling between them. “Yeah. Before we end up with pneumonia.”

They broke apart reluctantly, the air charged as they hurried to his truck. Once inside, the doors slammed shut, the rain pounding against the roof providing a steady rhythm to the silence that followed.

But the moment was far from over. As soon as the doors were locked, Logan reached for her again, pulling her onto his lap. Their lips collided once more, this time with an unrestrained passion that made her shiver. Her hands roamed over his chest, the damp flannel clinging to his broad frame as he held her tightly, his fingers gripping her hips as if he couldn’t bear to let her go.

Their movements grew more heated, her hips grinding down against him instinctively as their breathing quickened. Logan groaned, his head falling back against the seat as she moved again, the friction sending jolts of pleasure through both of them.

“Evelyn,” he rasped, his voice thick with desire. “If we don’t stop now…”

She paused, her forehead pressing to his as they both struggled to catch their breath. The weight of his words hung between them, but neither made a move to pull away.

“Then let’s go,” she whispered, her voice steady despite the flush rising to her cheeks.

Logan’s hands tightened on her waist, his amber eyes dark with emotion and something deeper. “You sure?”

She nodded, brushing her lips against his once more, softer this time but no less certain. “I’ve never been more sure.”

Without another word, Logan gently lifted her off his lap, his touch lingering as they adjusted themselves. He started the truck, his hand finding hers as they drove through the rain, the tension between them simmering and unresolved—but not for much longer.

The rain hadn’t let up by the time Logan pulled the truck into the clearing by his cabin. The headlights cut through the downpour, illuminating the weathered wood of the small structure nestled among the trees.

Logan killed the engine, turning to glance at Evelyn. Her cheeks were flushed, her damp hair sticking to her neck and temples, but she was staring at him with an intensity that sent a pang through his chest.

“Come on,” he muttered, stepping out of the truck. The cold rain hit him immediately, but he barely noticed as he rounded the vehicle to her side.

Evelyn climbed out, wrapping her arms around herself as the chill seeped through her already soaked clothes. Logan’s hand pressed gently against her back, guiding her toward the cabin. The touch was firm but protective, his warmth cutting through the cold.

Inside, the air was heavy with the scent of pine and faint smoke. Logan flicked on a single lamp, its amber glow softening the shadows in the small space.

“Go shower,” he said gruffly, already shrugging off his wet flannel and hanging it on a hook near the door. His voice softened as he added, “Don’t want you catching a cold.”

Evelyn hesitated, watching as he bent to stoke the fireplace. The orange flames roared to life under his practiced touch, casting flickering light over his broad shoulders and damp hair.

“What about you?” she asked quietly.

“I’ll dry off,” he replied without looking at her. “Go on. Bathroom’s down the hall.”

She lingered for a moment longer, the warmth of his care sinking into her even if his tone was brusque. Then she nodded and disappeared down the hall.

By the time she returned, the cabin was bathed in a cozy glow. Logan had shed his wet clothes, now dressed in a clean pair of jeans and white t-shirt. He was seated on the couch, his head resting against the back, eyes half-closed as he warmed himself by the fire.

Evelyn paused in the doorway, her heart stuttering at the sight of him. He looked so unguarded, so human, a stark contrast to the stormy, gruff exterior he so often wore.

She was wearing one of his shirts—soft and slightly oversized, the sleeves pushed up over her elbows. Her hair was still damp, and her cheeks held a faint blush.

Logan’s eyes opened as she stepped into the room, and they darkened when they landed on her. For a moment, neither of them spoke, the quiet between them carrying all the weight of what had happened that night.

She crossed the room and climbed onto his lap, straddling him without hesitation. Logan stiffened slightly, his hands instinctively resting on her thighs, but he didn’t pull away.

“Evelyn…” he began, his voice low, almost a warning.

“I just want to be close to you,” she whispered, her hands finding his shoulders. “Is that okay?”

Logan’s eyes softened, the tension in his body easing as he exhaled. “Yeah,” he murmured, his hands sliding up to rest on her waist.

She leaned forward, her forehead pressing gently to his. They sat like that for a moment, the crackling fire filling the silence. Logan’s hands moved to the small of her back, pulling her closer, and she sighed softly, her fingers trailing along the curve of his jaw.

“You don’t have to do anything,” he said, his voice rough but sincere.

“I know,” she replied, brushing her lips lightly against his. “But I want this. I want you.”

Logan’s breath hitched as her hands slid beneath his shirt, her fingers grazing his skin with the kind of deliberate, maddening slowness that made his muscles tighten. He caught her wrists, holding them still against his chest as his amber eyes locked onto hers, dark with a mixture of frustration and desire.

“Evelyn,” he rasped, his voice low, like gravel, as though her name alone was enough to unravel him. “Don’t push me unless you mean it.”

Her lips curved—not into a smile, but something softer, something steeped in the kind of certainty he wasn’t sure how to face. “I mean it,” she whispered, her words quiet but carrying the weight of all the times she hadn’t said them before.

Logan’s grip on her wrists loosened, his hands sliding up her arms and pulling her closer as if he couldn’t help himself. He lowered his head, his forehead pressing to hers, their breaths mingling in the stillness of the room. The only sounds were the crackle of the fire and the faint storm still raging outside.

“Do you know what you’re asking for?” he murmured, his voice raw, thick with the effort it took to hold himself back.

Her response was immediate, her fingers curling into his shoulders as she tugged him closer. “I’ve waited long enough,” she said, her voice steady despite the way her heart was racing. “Haven’t you?”

The question landed like a punch to his chest. Of course he had. Every glance, every touch, every moment she’d been close enough to feel but not touch—it had all been building to this, wearing him down piece by piece. And now, here she was, not just asking but demanding, her presence overwhelming in a way that left him powerless to resist.

“Damn it, Evelyn,” he growled, his voice barely a whisper as his hands slid to her waist, pulling her flush against him. His lips captured hers with a ferocity that surprised even him, the kiss deep and unrelenting, years of restraint and denial crumbling in an instant.

She responded in kind, her hands threading into his hair as if she couldn’t get him close enough. Her hips shifted instinctively against his, drawing a low groan from deep in his chest that sent a shiver racing through her.

When he pulled back, it was only far enough to press his forehead to hers, his breath ragged as his hands tightened on her waist. “If we keep going…” His voice was strained, his words a warning that came too late.

Her gaze locked onto his, unwavering. “Then we keep going,” she said simply, her voice soft but resolute. Her hands drifted down to the hem of his shirt, tugging it upward in one fluid motion.

Logan let her strip it away, his chest rising and falling heavily as he studied her. His hands hovered at her sides, hesitant, even now. “You sure?” he asked, the question a bare whisper, almost lost in the space between them.

Her answer was to close the gap, her lips brushing his with a gentleness that sent his control spiraling. “I’ve never been more sure,” she murmured, her voice steady even as her fingers traced the faint scars across his chest.

Logan groaned softly, his hands finally moving, sliding up her sides with a reverence that made her heart ache. When he kissed her again, it wasn’t hurried—it was slow, deliberate, as if he was trying to commit every second to memory.

Without a word, he shifted, lifting her effortlessly and carrying her the short distance to the bedroom. He set her down carefully, his hands lingering at her hips as he stood over her, his chest rising and falling with the effort of restraint.

Her hands reached for him again, pulling him down until he was hovering above her, the weight of him grounding her as much as it electrified her. His lips found hers, his kiss deepening as his hands explored her body with a mix of hunger and care.

When her hips rolled against him again, drawing another guttural sound from his throat, Logan pulled back just enough to meet her gaze. “If we’re doing this,” he said, his voice a growl softened by something deeper, “I’m not letting you go.”

Her lips curved, her fingers threading into his hair and tugging just enough to make him groan. “Good,” she whispered, her voice thick with emotion and desire. “Because I don’t want you to.”

Logan’s eyes locked onto hers, the raw heat in his gaze making her pulse race. He crushed his lips to hers, the kiss no longer gentle but searing, desperate, as though he couldn’t get enough of her.

Her hands gripped his shoulders, nails digging into his skin as he pressed her back into the bed. The weight of him was intoxicating, his strength overwhelming yet controlled, as if he were holding himself back by sheer will alone. She wasn’t having it. Her fingers slid down his chest, nails skimming the taut muscles before finding the button of his jeans. With a flick of her wrist, she popped it open, dragging the zipper down with deliberate slowness, savoring the sharp inhale he couldn’t suppress.

Logan growled against her mouth, his breath hot and uneven as he broke the kiss to bury his face in her neck. His teeth scraped against the sensitive skin, a teasing bite that made her gasp and arch into him.

Logan’s hands, large and rough, gripped the hem of her shirt and yanked it upward, pulling it over her head in one fluid motion. The garment fluttered to the floor, forgotten, as his eyes roamed over her, dark with hunger.

“You okay?” he asked, his voice a low, gravelly murmur, tempered with a tenderness that made her chest tighten.

Her cheeks burned, her nerves tangling with her desire. “I… I want to,” she whispered, her fingers gripping the edge of his waistband, but her voice trembled despite her conviction. “I just—”

Logan silenced her with a kiss, this one slower, deliberate, as if he were savoring her. When he pulled away, his thumb brushed over her cheek, his expression a mixture of hunger and restraint. “You don’t have to rush anything,” he said softly, his forehead pressing against hers.

Her heart thudded at his words, and she nodded, her fingers trailing up to his chest, where his heartbeat was steady and strong beneath her touch.

Logan’s lips curved into the faintest of smiles, his hands moving to her waist, steady and sure.

Her hands trembled as she reached for him, sliding over his chest and down to the waistband of his jeans. “I want to see you,” she admitted, her voice barely above a whisper.

Logan grinned, the expression almost feral, but there was a softness in his gaze as he stood to strip off his jeans and boxers in one smooth motion. When he returned to her, he moved slower, his body warm and solid as he pressed against her.

“Touch me,” he encouraged, his hand guiding hers to explore the ridges of his chest and the lines of his muscles. The heat in his voice was laced with reassurance, and the way he watched her, patient and unhurried, made her boldness grow.

Her fingers mapped his skin, her touch tentative at first, but when he groaned, low and deep, she felt a thrill she couldn’t ignore. “Like that,” he murmured, his hand sliding down her thigh to pull her closer, his touch igniting sparks along her skin.

She tentatively grabbed hold of his thick and veiny penis, wrapping her fingers around him. Logan inhaled sharply at her touch, his jaw tightening momentarily before his expression softened. He placed his hand gently over hers, guiding her movements with slow precision.

"Just like that," he murmured, his voice low and husky.

Evelyn’s blush deepened, but she didn’t pull away, her curiosity outweighing her hesitation. She watched his face, captivated by the way his brows furrowed slightly, his lips parting as she followed his lead. Her movements were clumsy at first, uncertain, but Logan’s patience never wavered.

"Good," he whispered, his voice laced with encouragement. "You're perfect."

The praise sent a shiver through her, and she felt a growing confidence in her actions. Logan leaned down, kissing her deeply, his hand sliding from hers to cup her cheek once more, anchoring her in the moment.

“Logan,” she breathed, her voice shaky but filled with trust.

"May I?" he asked, his fingers toying with the delicate fabric of her panties.

Evelyn nodded, her breath catching as he began to slide the garment down her legs. His eyes never left hers, even as he rid her of the last barrier between them. Once she was bare beneath him, Logan took a moment to simply look at her, his gaze reverent.

Logan let his hands smooth over her thighs slowly opening them up, her arousal glistening in the low light of the room.

“Don’t be scared”, he whispered as he lowered himself coming face to face with her sex. “You smell so good.”, he said, nuzzling the skin of her inner thigh.

Logan peppered kisses over her mound and inner thigh’s, whie his hand snaked up to grab hold of her right breast and gave it a good squeeze.

Logan gave a kiss to her clit eliciting a moan to erupt from deep within. He took that as a sign to keep going, the hand that was on her breast trailed down her belly and stopped when it came in contact with her pussy. His index and pointer finger lowered down to her glistening hole collecting her arousal and spreading it around. Evelyn gasped and his tongue ran a single long line across her slit to her bud,making her shiver at the foreigner feeling.

“Logan…” she moaned.

“Tell me what you want.” he answered, his breath fanning over her hole.

“More of that, please.”

He took her plea as an incentive to keep going. His tongue replaced his thumb, slowly circling her clit and occasionally dipping it to her hole.

Evelyn's legs closed instinctively around his head as her moans became incrinsingly louder.

“Feel good?” he asked rhetorically.

She nodded looking down at him and biting her lip.

His index finger started to circle her hole as his tongue remained focused on her clit, carefully dipping it in, until his hand came in full contact with her pussy.

Evelyn moaned at the intrusion but welcomed it. Logan started to slowly pump it in and out, creating a steady rhythm.

Evelyn started to moan softly, and at that Logan decided to add another finger.

“Oh God…”she moaned as his fingers pumped easily in and out of her.

Her hand clasped around his arm as he began opening her hole “Logan…”

He positioned himself above her, continuing to pump his fingers. He licked her lips and gently bit her bottom lip pulling it slowly.

Evelyn, taken over by the overwhelming feeling, grabbed hold of his arm.”Logan…”, she moaned.

Logan could feel her walls tightening around his fingers and incresead the spead,making sure to stimulate her clit with his thumb.

A loud moan erupted from Evelyn as she came hard.

Content with this work, Logan retrieved his fingers from her hole and, staring at her eyes, sucked his fingers clean.

“So good,” he said as he laid between her legs.

Evelyn blushed at his words and pulled him in for a kiss. Logan laid his hips over hers, allowing for his manhood to come in direct contact with her pussy. As the kiss grew hungrier, their hips started to move, creating friction, allowing for moans to erupt on both ends.

Logan, without breaking the kiss, pulled his hips back, allowing for him to line himself with Evelyn's entry. He began to slowly push in, feeling the resistance slowly ease.

Evelyn gasped in his mouth, as she felt him bottom out.

Logan rested his forehead on hers and intertwined their fingers above her head.

“How are you feeling?”he asked, looking for any sign of discomfort.

“Full,” she said breathlessly.

He shifted his hips slightly, giving her time to adjust, his hand caressing the curve of her waist to steady her. Evelyn gasped again, her legs instinctively wrapping around his hips as her body adjusted to the stretch and fullness.

“Let me know if it’s too much,” Logan said softly, his voice carrying both reassurance and patience.

“I just… I need a moment.”she replied breathlessly, her cheeks flushed.

Logan nodded, leaning down to kiss her forehead, his lips lingering there. He stayed still, allowing her to acclimate to the new sensation. His fingers remained intertwined with hers, their grip grounding her in the moment.

When Evelyn shifted her hips experimentally, a soft sigh escaping her lips, Logan took it as a sign to move. Slowly, he began to withdraw before easing back in, his movements controlled and deliberate. He watched her face closely, his sharp eyes scanning for any trace of discomfort, but all he found was awe and the growing haze of pleasure.

Evelyn’s breaths came in short gasps, her lips parting as she met his thrusts tentatively at first, then with increasing confidence. The connection between them deepened with every movement, the air heavy with shared vulnerability and trust.

“You’re doing so good,” Logan praised, his voice rough yet tender as he buried his face in the crook of her neck, his lips brushing her skin.

Her hands tightened around his, her head tilting back into the pillows as soft moans spilled from her lips. “Logan… oh, Logan…” she whispered, her voice carrying a mix of astonishment and need.

He groaned at the sound of his name on her lips, his pace quickening slightly as he felt her relax around him. Their bodies moved together, finding a rhythm that felt as natural as breathing. The heat between them built steadily, the tension mounting as every thrust brought them closer to the edge.

“You're so tight and wet- Fuck” he rasped, his voice thick as he pressed his forehead to hers once more.

Logan's hand left hers to brush a strand of damp hair from her face, his fingers lingering on her flushed cheek. “I got you baby,” he whispered, his tone reverent.

One of his hands made its way down, and Logan began circling her bundle of nerves.

“Yes! Oh, my God, yes!” Evelyn cried as her arms wrapped tightly around his shoulders for stability, as she felt herself overwhelmed by the intensity of the moment.

He smiled looking at her. “Look… Look at how good we fit together - shit” he moaned.

Evelyn looked down, and was amazed at the sight, his thick and veiny member covered in her slick going in and out of her, the motion creacting a creamy white ring at the base of his manhood.

“Logan,” she said moaned.

Logan speed up, the sound of slapping skin feeling the room.

“It's okay baby, let it happen.” He leaned down and kissed her with a bruising force.

Evelyn moans filled the room.

She looked deep in his eyes and took hold of his hair.

She tugged on his hair as she came hard around him, the bed beneath her shaking.

Logan growled as his tip bumped into her cervix, the extra lubrication helped him dive even deeper.

“Sh-it!” He cursed as he felt her walls contracting around him urging his release.

Logan moaned deeply as his penis throbbed, spilling his seed deep inside of Evelyn’s velvety walls.

The new sensation made her eyes roll to the back of her head. It was something so deeply intimate and messy.

Logan collapsed on top of her. They were still both breathless as he lifted his head and looked at her.

“You okay?” He asked breathlessly as placed a soft kiss on her lips.

Evelyn smiled against his mouth, her arms still wrapped loosely around his shoulders. “More than okay,” she murmured, her voice carrying a mix of awe and teasing.

He smiled gently, lifting himself off her, to pull out his member from her. He growled at the sight of their conjoined release coming out of her achy hole.

Logan laid beside her, his chest rising and falling in time with her soft breaths. Evelyn rested her head against him, her hand splayed over his heart as though it belonged there. The warmth of her body pressed into his, and he tightened his arm around her, pulling her impossibly closer.

Her eyes fluttered shut, her breathing evening out as sleep began to claim her. Logan let his fingers trail lightly along her back, his touch lingering, savoring the moment.

For a long while, he simply stayed there, listening to her breathe, feeling the steady rhythm of her heartbeat.

Eventually, his own eyes began to grow heavy, his mind and body at ease in a way he’d never thought possible. With Evelyn tucked safely against him, he let himself give in, falling into the pull of sleep.

Together, they drifted into a deep, dreamless slumber, tangled in each other’s arms, exactly where they were meant to be.

Chapter 8

______________________________________________________________--tagging some amazing people that showed interest on my previous post (if you don't want to be tagged please let me know):

@coocoocachewgotscrewed @latinapiscess @littlebunnybigheartfics @themareverine @pandapetals @logansbaby @the-quick-red-fox @throwmethroughawindow @ifyouseethisnoyoudont22 @galacticglitterglue @whos-nin1

@thisismajortom21 @may-vol-6 @Oh-basic @sarahbarbosa22 @luvpalepinkjazz @irish-pooka @yologans @equilight @lxrxvsp @h4nluv @uncannywolverine @thesecretlifeofmo @mystifiesjdmtcw @socisse @thickynicky547 @peculiarpiscess @tezooks @greenturtlegirl @greenbearplaidbow @eummm @benispunk @th8mz @jounal3sports @alsoprettyinpink @softepiloguemylove @manicandobsessive @b-y-3-n @blahkateisdone @karencaribou @sidkneeeee @theworstwolvie @dis-plus-fanfic-reblog-writes @lunellas-library @pedroscurls @britttzy267 @aliensfeltmyjoy @steviebbboi

59 notes · View notes