PREY
PAIRING: Hunter!Simon 'Ghost' Riley x F!Werewolf!Reader
SYNOPSIS: There’s blood on your hands again.
WORDCOUNT: 16.8k
WARNINGS: Intense gore, body horror, death, mutilation, weapons, firearms, knives, intended harm, violence, blood, descriptions of wounds, angst, fluff, protective!Simon, religious mentions, period time standards for men/women (1700s), etc.
A/N: The first of my reverse AUs is finally here! Enjoy!
*I do not give others permission to translate and/or re-publish my works on this or any other platform*
The tale of the Werewolf extends back to around 2100 BC. It was written in The Epic of Gilgamesh, scored into a clay tablet by hands long buried—a corpse forever still in the earth so deep, the bones have yet to be found by greedy eyes. Perhaps the oldest surviving story in human history, and there is still a passage that bleeds into stories hundreds of thousands of years later.
In such, Gilgamesh, a man on the search for immortality, rejects a woman for the reason of turning her previous husband into a wolf.
“You have loved the shepherd of the flock; he made meal-cake for you day after day, he killed kids for your sake. You struck and turned him into a wolf, now his own herd-boys chase him away, his own hounds worry his flanks…”
And then, the tales spread, changed, through history and through spoken words of caution. Like water trickling from a well, down the shape of the wooden bucket delving deeper and deeper into a pit of age—of caution.
“The Beast of Gévaudan. Man-eater.” Through France
“He has a wolf-head, you know? Tall thing—short brown hair all over him.” Through Scotland
“Beware the man that changes shape under the full moon.” England.
Now, in the late seventeenth century, it all comes to a head. Even the people in 2100 BC knew that someone who changes into a wolf, or some bastard-like imitation of one, was very much real; it is very much an affliction that overtakes sense and reason. A curse.
Transferable down to the saliva of one entering your bloodstream.
You must never get within the beast’s sights.
—
There’s blood on your hands again.
Hunched over, your body quivers, and the bareness of your flesh in the moonlight is of little concern to you—trapped in a fetal position while the chilled wind howls.
Howls.
Howls.
“Get out of my head.” Your fingers grasp at your scalp, pulling; ripping. A sob jaggedly slashes your throat open. “Please,” you rattle in a fast breath, the grass snapping as you writhe. “Get out of my head.”
It had happened once more, and you can’t remember any of it.
The forest is deathly still. No birds sing their songs—no breeze moves the long grass, patches trampled down around you as if a beast had staggered into the small clearing you’re lying in. Maybe it had. There are shadows that listen to your quiet panic, the low whines and gasping quivers of your throat; from behind the trees that speak in the way that only they could. The deep night creeps into you, and the moonlight bathing your flesh doesn’t push back the terror in your bloodstream.
Your body burns like you’ve broken every bone twice over, and judging by the blood stuck in between every line and dip of your skin, to anyone walking past, the analogy could be very real. Fingers flexing and bending, you try to force out the venom inside of your head with desperation befitting a dying dog, spine visible out of the skin of your back as you sob all the harder.
You tried to stop it—you had; you always do. But, just like every month when the full moon mocks you with its silver-hued face, it never works.
It never works.
Your eyes stare at nothing as you lay here, in this place of grass, blood, and bile, of corruption as deep as a vile sin of flesh. It came over you like a wave, fingers trapping your throat and bearing it to the caress of fangs. There were different names for it here, miles from your village and the terrified eyes that search the tree line; names coming from the hunters and their black deeds.
Shapeshifter.
Demon spawn.
Werewolf.
“I can’t take it anymore,” you shove the side of your head into the ground, pushing the torn earth away from the cuts of long claws. Tears flood the dirt until it’s wet and muddy, pushing the crimson stains on your skin away in long streaks. “It hurts, God, please, it hurts.”
The sound of your hysterics rises and falls in the stillness—the inactivity of fearful birds and beasts wondering if your fangs would rip from your gums and your claws would tear from your fingertips. Fur along your body the color of which leads to stories of their own spreading far and wide.
The White Wolf. The Specter of St. Francis’ Village. A hound from Hell.
More pale than snow, and sharper seen than a knife or blade through the black trees. Even if the memories of your shifts were fuzzy at best, there were flashes of those who’d seen your gargantuan form from the confines of their stone-cut homes. Those wide eyes. Yelling—screaming; sprays of blood as heads were separated from bodies—
“Stop!” You scream, your legs kicking out as your toes scrape the grass. “It’s not me! It’s not!”
There’s a call of alarm from deep within the woods, the flash of torches and bellow of hunting dogs. They’re running you down, you’d forgotten that in the depths of your breaking mind and body, and by the time your elongated limbs had set themselves back into a more human-like appearance, your spine cracking at every vertebrae, it had slipped your thoughts entirely. It always took you a long time to understand what had happened after…everything.
But even now, the shouts of the hunt are pointless to the visceral breaking of your consciousness, stuck between leaving bloodlust and knowledge of horror. There’s flesh in your teeth, and you wail before your fingers drag down your face, cupping over your ears. In the back of your skull, the panting of dogged breath echoes; running, blood, blood, blood. It’s a dance of fangs, of pale fur, staining every inch and flooding the back of your mouth. Drinking it down like water.
Flesh—lovely, disgusting, flesh rent and torn to the bone with smacking gums belonging to a square snout.
Who had you killed this time?
By the time the dogs had tracked your scent to your curled body, it was already too late.
“Here!” Male voices shift in and out on the backs of crows, hard and cruel. “It’s here!”
“Get the dogs on it!”
“It’s not me,” you mutter incessantly, not truly understanding what you’re saying as hounds burst through the bushes, all snapping teeth and slobbering tongues your eyes widen in an instant. Panting, your jaw clenches; long whines move your throat.
“What…?” Blinking quickly, the dogs surround you—having to be at least ten of them on their nimble legs and thin tails. Everything is distant to you; separated. A knife could be driven through your heart, and you wouldn’t even realize it until minutes later, bleeding out on the grass.
The hounds are afraid of you.
They dart forward and balk back, your scent driving them up a wall until rabid slobber drips from their maws. Torchlight pulls through the trees—quicker now, running. Fangs nick your shoulder and you yell, shoving up to your backside as the world swirls, shuffling away as the dogs snarl. Their eyes are red-huen. Drunk off fear and order.
Your head darts and shifts, blood dripping off your chin to travel down the flesh of your stomach and navel—so much crimson that the whites of your eyes are violent under the moon. Hands slipping over the wet grass, your face pulls and slackens in delirious confusion as you try to stand but fail. You cry out in sharp pain, and the dogs go wild in their kill circle, nearly attacking one another in anticipation.
You glance down and see the black crossbow bolt sticking out of your thigh.
The scent of wolfsbane in the air only then becomes clear to you, and the realization is slow. Wolfsbane—you’d been told about it by the village priest. It makes beasts of the night dumb and weak; minds unclear.
In a moment of clarity, the reason behind your incurable hysteria becomes clear.
Lungs heaving and eyes far-off, the hunting party bursts through to where you stay, and you look up in animalistic fear. Figures dip and slip into one another, faces becoming demons as the visages melt into twos and threes. You yell out, sniffling and sobbing, trying to back up until the hounds grapple onto your shoulder and rip a chuck out of your arm. Screaming, your hand moves back, shoving at its snout before hands staple themselves to your wrist.
“No!” You wail, injured leg dragging as you’re forced back into a heavy chest. Hot breath fans against your neck as multiple grips pull and touch you—shackling you down with rope and chains. Your throat screams itself raw, kicking and struggling futility. “Let go!”
You’re too weak—too drugged off wolfsbane and blood loss. Rotting teeth move across the canvas of a smeared painting, you can’t focus beyond the riot of your heart inside of your ribs.
Grubby hands snap under your chin, digging into your flesh as you cry, not able to move as the restraints are tightened. A silver muzzle is slapped over your jaw. Dark eyes shimmer as you rage—aggravating the bolt wound until fresh blood forms a puddle on the ground, which the dogs lick their lips at.
“Look at that,” a low, lust-filled voice eases out, and hands around your body tightening as you squirm, head spinning. Silver and wolfsbane. Your eyes snap to fight the sudden flood of fuzzy heaviness in your body. “Pretty little Hell-Beast, eh? Almost seems a bit strange to have the Spector be her. Think that hunter shot the right bitch?”
“Course,” another grunt, a hand grabs the top of your head, jerking it up as your head lulls along with the force. You can barely focus on the words being said. “He isn’t a fuckin’ twat. Killed a werewolf in the next village over, too. Heard he skinned the fucker and took its head for his mantlepiece—just like the vampire skull he wears.” A pause. The dogs are still barking—echoing out in the trees. You can’t feel your legs. “Isn’t that right, Hunter?!”
A shout is sent into trees as your panic breeds with the drug, eyelids drooping as your head is snapped and moved by your hair. Your buggy eyes don’t focus on the man until he steps into the torchlight, the crowd parting for him as the metal of your chains drags and clinks together.
It’s as if the very blackness of night takes human form.
The man, the Hunter, is tall—very tall. He looms like an aloof animal over most of the others here with his dark boots and his black hood, and yet, under the fabric, there is no whisper of his face.
Only the upper visage of a pure white skull, and two long, needle-pointed teeth where canines should be.
“Ghost,” one of the men laughs, groping at your bleeding thigh before you shriek, muffled from behind the muzzle, and weakly kicked out. “Good shot, Mate. Right in the meat of the thing. Gave a good trail for the hounds.”
Ghost blinks slowly, grunting under his breath as the large crossbow in his hands is shifted. He stays silent as your visible pulse hurries on as if you were a rabbit and not a wolf, watching from under the cover of his hood. The darkness of his clothes is blue in the moon—silver buttons down the length of a loose shirt and pants stuffed into boots. The hood is attached to a jacket, which itself extends down to his knees and sways lightly with every shift. The silent resting of weapons and tools is not lost to anyone.
Belt of filled vials and large knives; a firearm over his back, and two pistols hidden on either thigh. That crossbow was still in his hands.
Brown eyes openly dig into your soul, dead as a corpse, and your voice whines as your thigh is finally released with a laugh. Your vision blacks and comes back a moment later as you try to breathe from behind the muzzle, gasping. That skull on his face…you don’t like it. It scares you.
And the Hunter only continues to watch numbly as his wide shoulders stay stationary.
“Get the cage!” Someone roars, and you flinch, shrinking until a dog with short fur comes and nips at your ankles, the man holding you grinning sharply as you sob and shake.
“C’mon—expected more of a fight from you, Spector. Getting bullied by dogs, now? Ain’t that a twist of fate, then. Bet this devil’s whore can’t even walk with all that wolfsbane in ‘er, eh?”
A grumble of chuckles as the rattle of metal is in the distance. You grow more fearful, mind flashing to a burning stake and the trials you’d seen in village after village. No—no they can’t put you in a cage; they can’t put you on trial.
They’re going to make it hurt.
“Say we try it out.” A shadow comes closer and grabs you by the arm, ruthlessly shoving you to the ground. You cry out as your spine meets the earth, arms and legs kept under chains that tangle and screech in their metallic way. The rope that holds the muzzle pulls against your neck until you can’t breathe except in ragged wheezes.
“Go on,” they taunt, some holding back the rampaging dogs just to watch you flail and shimmy. Your face grows hot as you struggle to sit up—shaking so violently you can’t focus on anything but the quiver. “Put on a show for us, Beasty!”
Death would be better than this.
Tears hit the ground as the cage is finally brought into view, the men all groaning and annoyed that you hadn’t even attempted a forced shift or a desperate run into the trees.
Ghost’s fingers, you notice from the side of your blurring eye, tighten minutely around the body of his weapon. You do not doubt that he’s wondering if it would be easier to just put a bolt through your eye right now.
“Get it loaded up,” the Hunter’s voice is accented and gravel-like. As if rotting wood is being peeled back and scraped along gravel, he stares at you for a long moment and then glances at the dogs. “And get those fucking mutts under control.”
“Which one?” Is the low-blow joke, and the ruckus of loud amusement that follows makes you want to die.
It’s not your fault, how do you tell them that? It’s not your fault.
Your throat bobs in an attempt to speak, but you can’t move your jaw from behind the restraint of your face—held tight to you as the men come back over and grapple for you again. The priest was right, wolfsbane makes werewolves sluggish.
You can do nothing as you’re ruthlessly dropped into a silver cage, borrowed, no doubt, from the Vatican itself, and christened with holy water. But it was a funny thing, really, and the dark humor wasn’t lost to you even like this. There was nothing godly about this contraption.
Locked in, you shove yourself immediately into a corner and hunch over, grasping at your thigh as the bolt still leaks fluid in a long trail over the ground. The pain is so great in your head, that the physical agony is little—a bullet wound to a sliver.
Your temple slams into the metal, smacking into it as your eyes shove themselves closed.
Head hurts—hurts. I can’t think. Can’t think. It’s humming, my skull is breaking open.
Bile pools in the back of your throat, but the muzzle keeps it in, leaving you gagging as the cage is lifted with a grunt and carried by long poles; back to St. Francis' Village, no doubt, but you can’t…focus.
“Think you might ‘ave given her too much, then, Hunter,” one calls, slapping Ghost on the shoulder as the crowd follows after the panicking quarry. The large man only gives him a look from the side of his eye and the villager pulls away immediately, awkwardly chuckling before hurrying off after the others.
Brown eyes watch your bare body hunch and spasm, pupils wide as you’re carted off.
He’d been generous with the wolfsbane, truth be told. He’d expected you to be…Ghost’s dark brows pull in from behind his grim mask…he’d expected you to be different.
Humming under his breath, the Hunter watches the torches disappear into the trees and lets his gaze linger on you.
There was something…off.
Blinking, he turns, eyes studying the place where they’d found you with sharp attention that misses nothing—not even the birds that come back to settle into the trees again. Large boots shift through the grass, and as he’s re-settling the crossbow in his hands, his eyes find something glinting.
Watching, Ghost takes another step and brings his body to the item in the grass, hidden, before he kneels. Digging with large digits, the Hunter’s hands loop through the chain of a necklace, dragging it through the torn earth until he can gaze at it fully under the light of the moon.
Blinking in slight surprise, Ghost finds the body of a silver bullet hanging from the confines of a leather strap. Brown eyes shifting to look over his shoulder, the man listens to the cheers and merriment of the hunting party mutely. A simmering understanding brews in his gut. It’s only one that you could know from years of experience doing just as he had—hunting and being hunted in turn with a knowledge of all things dark and unholy.
It could never be easy, could it?
A low grunt later, the man sighs out a deep, “Fucking hell,” and moves to slowly stand, slinking back into the darkness.
—
They kept you in the cage and set it on display in the middle of town for days.
Shivering now from the cold more than the wolfsbane, you stay collapsed into yourself as people come past to poke and prod at you—even sticking knives into the slits of the cage and digging them into you like an animal until your flesh was marked and brutalized.
You don’t remember what it’s like to not be bloody.
The bolt wound was festering; infected. You dare not touch it, because the pain only makes you want to vomit, and if you do, you’ll most likely suffocate on your own bile before the trial ever happens.
Yet, on the fourth night of this, as your eyelids flutter and your body grows weaker, a shadow comes to visit.
“You weren’t born one.” It isn’t a question, but the sudden voice makes you startle.
Eyes locking onto Ghosts’, your mind flies with fear—thinking that perhaps there’s more abuse that you’ll be put through. But no…the man has no weapons on him tonight. Only a long knife at his belt. The mask stays.
You stare, unable to speak as your fingers twitch.
Grunting, Ghost’s head tilts, gaze moving up and down as you curl in tighter around yourself. A cold breeze rips through the square, and your eyes clench closed with breaking will. When you open them again, the Hunter is kneeling by the cage, and holding up something in his hand loosely.
“You going to behave if I take that muzzle off?” You nearly gasped at the hanging image of your necklace—a silver bullet on a leather strap; that dark and heavy thing usually kept around your neck. A reminder.
After a moment of wide-eyed staring, you nod quickly to his question, a desperate, pleading thing without the need to utter words. Please, you want to scream at him, take it off.
Ghost’s eyes are as dark as a mound of dirt, sharply intelligent and filled with an unflinching reality. He doesn’t care what you are, and he won’t until you speak to him and let him judge your character far before any courtroom can. The man knows what a lie is better than any priest.
“Good,” he says curtly, accent far more deep as he thinks, re-capturing the bullet in his palm and standing before he shuffles it into his pocket.
You can’t help the anxiety as Ghost moves forward, loping to the side of the cage with the side of his eyes on you incessantly. It’s obvious how his other hand lays limp on the hilt of his blade that, with only one wrong move, you’d feel the chill of the edge with no time at all.
But the temptation of getting this muzzle off was too good to ruin, and so, you stay as still as you’re able as crows call in the distance and the deadness of the town leaks into your blood.
Ghost moves his free hand and orders, blankly, “Closer.”
You hesitate, body tight before you drag your face closer to the bars, angling it parallel with the metal so the tight bind on the back can be taken up. The fear can be smelt the second your eyes have to break contact with his with the turn of your head—neither of you trusts the other.
Ghost hums under his breath at the sight of your broken body coming farther into the open light of the moon, the whites of your eyes all the more visible from under the slathering of blood and tears. He hadn’t been absent to witness the abuse you’d been put through, even if the coin from his successful hunt was feeding him at the inn, a small window allowed the tight view of your torment at the hands of the people you’d once lived around.
But the reality was that you’d killed people—scores of them—and yet the worst part of it was that he wasn’t sure if you even knew that.
It took four nights for him to break his only rule: never get involved after the job’s done.
But the hunch he had was too important to ignore.
Large fingers latch onto the knot at the base of your skull through the cage itself, Ghost grunting at the sight ahead of him. The rope had been gradually chafing over your flesh, peeling back hair and skin until only the bloody meat was left—Simon had to wonder if the people of this village even wanted you alive for the trial or not at this rate. You’d be dead by tomorrow if that infected bolt at your thigh wasn’t taken care of.
Despite himself, a part of his chest tightens at the sight of the thing sticking out of your leg, dripping a yellowish puss. It had been a good shot, and he had overcoated the bolt in wolfsbane.
Ghost hadn’t expected you to be so susceptible to it—most werewolves only got slower, but you…you seemed to have a stronger reaction. He files that fact away and tilts his masked face to the side.
Grasping at his blade, the sound of a knife being slipped out of a sheath makes you startle, jerking your head back and shoving away even as your muffed whine of pain falls out. Ghost momentarily readies himself for an attack, but the way you force your mangled body to the opposite corner has him grumbling out a hard, “Easy.”
The Hunter raises the blade, watching you with unblinking eyes. Your body shakes; panting. It was like calming a feral dog.
“You want the thing off or not? Have to cut it.” Once more, the man rises and walks over, boots almost silent over the small raised platform the cage had been set on like a trophy, you inside are comparable to the golden coins that greedy eyes touch and run their dirty hands over.
Your mind is a troubled thing as you watch this Hunter and his crude knife come closer, kneeling again, and motioning with two fingers to shift your head.
“Out ‘ere,” Ghost says, brown eyes not letting you guess anything about his true motives. “Don’t have time to fuck around. Guards’ll make a round soon and I’d rather not get caught wide-eyed.”
Your brows pull in, hands clenching and unclenching in your lap as goosebumps travel the length of every limb. You were tired—hungry and thirsty; there were open wounds that burned with infection and ones that were crusted over with dirt and grime. You can’t feel your toes, and the tips of your fingers have long since gone numb.
The thought of getting this muzzle off was like the promise of heaven being dangled in front of your nose. Your hesitation this time is far longer than the first, moonlight glinting off the visible blade in Ghost’s hand as he stares. That mask holds death.
The hood is gone from him—only that pale bone left and sewn into dark, dark, fabric. The sharpness of the teeth leaves your throat bobbing in a nervous swallow as your head carefully shifts to rest on the bars. Bending, you present the knot once more and try not to focus on the way Ghost’s attention is fully on your expanding lungs; the pulse that is seen through the meat of your neck.
But he says nothing before his fingers once more grasp the rope and the tip of the knife slips up. You don’t even feel it before the sudden slackening of the muzzle, and then the thing slips from your face before it slaps the bottom of the cage with a dull thump.
The first thing you do is vomit.
Spine pulling in, your body jerks as the bile that had been in the back of your throat rockets out, restrained hands slapping the ground as the acidic concoction leaks from between your torn lips. Face on fire, you choke and retch for what seems like minutes before you can finally breathe in the damp air—the innate shame and disgust rolling through as you cough raggedly.
It’s only after you’d forgotten the man kneeling outside that he seems to remind you of his presence with a grumble.
“Breathe. It’s no use if you can’t speak to me.”
A weak, quivering glare comes across your eyes, saliva dripping off your chin as your tongue moves to lick at your lips. But the brown gaze is as immovable as stone. Finding it pointless, your hands come up and delicately touch the base of your skull, only making you flinch when the fresh blood pools down and over your neck, licking at your shoulders. Tiny droplets fall to hit the metal one at a time.
Ghost’s fingers twitch as he puts the knife away.
“Who bit you?” You stare at him, hands falling before your wrists rub at the aggravated skin of your jaw. He shifts his head, voice slow but heavy. “Speak.”
“...I’m not a dog,” your voice is scratchy, hoarse. You send a small glance his way, mouth open and nostrils flaring in an attempt to bring in the oxygen you’d been lacking.
“Really?” A hidden eyebrow is slowly raised. “Hell, coulda fooled me.”
“Damn you,” you whisper, not meeting his gaze as you shuffle back. The crossbow bolt catches on one of the cage’s bars and you bite on your lip to stop the shrill yell that threatens to exit. Head moving, you lightly slam your skull into the wall in pain.
Breath hitched, you clench your trembling jaw tight.
“Speak or don’t,” Ghost grunts, and he makes a move to stand. “Your funeral.”
A spark of fear stabs you as he begins to shift, and you can’t explain why. Perhaps it was because it was the first conversation you can remember having lately that wasn’t one-sided or on the edge of a blade.
“W-wait,” you stutter, blinking through the blood. The Hunter doesn’t slow, and then he’s on his feet and fixing the gloves over his fingers, flexing his hands before his foot begins to pivot—
“Please, don’t go,” your voice is thin and pleading, echoing through the street. “I’ll answer your questions, any of them you want,” the sentence cracks through a dry throat, tears welling. “Please, don’t leave me here alone.”
Ghost had half of his body turned away before it went rigid; the side of his dead eyes flash to you, swirling with specs of moonlit silver. A hunter and a werewolf lock gazes, great beasts respectively brought together in seconds that seep into slow minutes of delicate need.
Knowledge and company. Understanding and a horrible fellowship.
The Hunter’s eyes twitch in their ever-narrow resting place, glancing away before he mutely moves back to where he was before.
He wastes no time.
“Who bloody bit you?”
You stifle a pathetic sigh of great relief, taking company with a man who had shot you not days before. Yet the ability to speak and be heard was a commodity that was dimming each and every day.
“It was already fully turned,” you speak quickly, tongue tripping. “A big wolf—a gray one with eyes like the sky.”
Ghost glares to the side. Gray? There were no contracts for gray werewolves with blue eyes in the area. Only you—only Specter. The next question is just as stiff.
“When?”
“Three years ago,” your lips move. “Only three years, I promise.” Brown eyes narrow slowly, fingers tapping the fabric of his pants once before he makes a noise in the back of his throat. Ghost’s jaw clenches, mind working through the hoops that need to be jumped.
To you, the questions might seem pointless, but to a hunter, they were important—very important. Werewolves who are born afflicted with this moon-drunkenness are different from those turned by a bite. Not only are shifts from turned werewolves more violent, more deadly, but they rarely know their own actions from that of the frenzy under their skin; those that are born as such are rarely out of control, unlike your faction.
The only question now was if Ghost could condemn you to death when it was obvious your human form was entirely different and you had no semblance of an idea of what was going on. Was it even his problem to care about? Even looking at you now, the man blinked away from cuts and inflicted injuries—the muzzle on the ground.
The blood and the bolt.
He’d known it had been a foolish play to bring all of those townsfolk with him on this hunt but he needed their knowledge of the terrain; he hadn’t passed through St. Francis’ before. At the time, Ghost hadn’t been averse to assistance as long as he got the job done in his own fashion: capture or kill, the contract had stated. Rarely was he known for capture.
Maybe, deep down, he’d known something was already wrong about this.
“Show me it,” the Hunter grunts, staring you down, a deep anticipation growing in his bones. He had to make sure you weren’t lying.
You lick your lips, face pulling with every twitch and sway of your form. The black at the edges of your vision was coming back, and you blinked quickly, chains dragging before you shifted your back with a quivering breath. The punctures were difficult to see through all of the gore, but Ghost made do as he grabbed at the waterskin at his waist and the rag hanging from his belt.
Flooding the fabric in the lukewarm water, he hums out a firm, “Don’t move. Cleanin’ it,” before you feel the press of the rag to your back.
Gasping lightly, you almost jerk away before the sensation becomes a nearly welcomed one—the drag and slight scrape of rough material. Your averted eyes dip lower, staring at nothing as your heart momentarily slows to a normal pace. Ghost cleans the areas where the swell of scar tissue is the most obvious, and, one by one, the violent groves spread out like a slash of paint over canvas. Along the left side of your waist, the blood gives way to a dented ‘v’ shape of healed punctures. Deep, dragging; a point to where your side was almost ripped away before it broke off swiftly.
Ghost’s dark eyes fight the need to widen, and that hidden blankness stays.
A great gray wolf with blue eyes…
His mask tilts, head shifting as his gaze moves slowly. Gloved fingers twitch to touch them, moving in an almost examining way that befits a surgeon and not a decapitator. Your breath is held in the back of your throat, but you sag nearly entirely into the bars of the cage, growing more unsteady by the second.
The scent of infection is so strong it makes your head burn, and you’re overtaken by it as Ghost’s presence suddenly disappears.
You don’t know if it’s minutes or hours before you understand that you’re alone again, but when your limp neck finally turns to wonder where your silent captor is, you are greeted with nothing but moonlight. Blinking through the sludge behind your eyes, the sinking in your gut was stark and sudden—like a knife dragging itself from gullet to navel.
But all you offer is a light whine as more blood moves to cover the places where Ghost’s rag had just cleaned. You were scared of him, no doubt. A hunter through and through down to the vampiric skull on his face and the shroud of death at every inch of his form.
He’d shot you and drugged you with wolfsbane. Found your necklace.
So why had he talked to you?
Your head is too muddled for this, too delicate. Like the crimson under your nails, it dries and flakes off of your brain as the lack of distraction breeds stored agony. There wasn’t anything left to focus on besides the upcoming trial, your death, and the pain that doesn’t let you sleep except for now, on the brink of not rest but unconsciousness.
And at the sound of a key being slotted into the silver of your cage’s door, only then does your body slump with the weight of doom.
You don’t even feel the hand that grasps at your ankle.
—
The sway of the horse makes your teeth clatter with every clop of hooves.
Your conscience mostly comes and goes, only staying in thin seconds where you feel the press of clean bandages on your afflicted flesh and the tipping of warm broth into your mouth. Grass under your head.
Blankets being shuffled over your clothed body when you shiver.
When you’re finally able to speak, when the horse is moving along and hands keep your back stuck to a strong chest, it’s a low, garbled, “Ow.”
Ghost barely blinks down to your head as it slumps to the gait of his horse, glancing before his attention returns to the thin forest trail ahead of him. You’d made noises in your sleep often enough—this was no different except for the fact he felt your shoulders flex.
Slowing the horse with a pull on the reins, the dappled mare settles to a walk.
“You up, then?” Ghost hums, his hand around your waist tightening as you groan under your breath. “Good. Thought I was dragging a corpse—would have wasted my bandages.”
Your eyes shudder as they open into the light, having to focus on moving them before the sting of the sun makes them water. But you do, and then the confusion outweighs the numb stinging of tended wounds.
Head shifting, you look behind you slowly with wide eyes as the horse under both of you snorts.
Brown eyes watch you before a dark brow twitches upward. “What is it?”
You just blink, mouth slightly open.
“Where…am I?”
“Forest.” Ghost states matter-of-factly.
If you had the energy to glare, you would have. Seeing that nothing will get the man into a proper conversation—he was a brick wall even now—you look down at yourself and land on the scarred forearm that keeps you secure on the saddle. Ghost’s gloves were still on, but the sleeve of his dark shirt had ridden back to his upper forearm, and in the wake of pale skin, you find the black ink of all manner of warfare.
Werewolf skulls; vampire fangs and fire. The slash of inkish chains with skeletons.
Your lips thin, your senses slowly becoming your friend again as you stare at the snarling face of a needle-hewn wolf. Eyes tightening as the horse moves to the left, your body follows the reactive action before Ghost’s pressure tightens once more, visibly veins behind the pale flesh. You move on, seeing the thin tunic and pants over your body—feeling under that, the bind of wrappings with the scents of mashed yarrow leaves in the fabric.
They’d been re-applied recently, too.
“Stay still unless you want to re-open them,” Ghost utters, eyes scanning the trees for unseen threats. It was midday by now, the sun high above the trees watching the both of you on your trek to seemingly nowhere. “We’re far enough away, but I want more distance before I take the time to close them fully.”
“The trial,” your arm moves up, fingers grazing the side of your nose before it falls back down. Ghost can feel the air heat with unease. “The…the cage?”
“Trial was two days ago,” he draws, thighs shifting over the saddle. “Give or take.”
The confession isn’t as shocking now that you have woken up here, but the lack of remembrance on your part of that time startles you. It’s a blank slate—just like the aftermath of your shifts. You don’t like not knowing.
The next question comes out with a haggard cough, sweat dripping off your nose. “Why?”
“You’re going to tell me ‘bout the werewolf that made you,” the Hunter grunts. “And you can’t speak if you’re lit up like a pig on a spit. Took you the night we met in the square.”
Through it all, Ghost barely looks at you—always his attention keeps to the trees and the shadows that linger; seeming to listen. He knows more than anyone that they do.
The horse continues on, your pain surfaces again, and with a shuddering breath, you fall into a fitful sleep once more. The arm around your body tightens, and the warmth it lends is accented when Ghost’s shifting gaze glances at the top of your head. He wears an expression he can’t name yet.
When the throws of fever pull their curtains back for the last time, it shows you the slats of the attic above your head, wood polished and clean as the heat of fire moves over your body. Pulling a large inhalation of air into your lungs, you blink softly as if clearing away cobwebs with a broom—willing sense to return in the few seconds it had flown away.
The furs are warm.
In the village, you weren’t anyone of standing. A simple woman—unwed, and, thus, unimportant due to the era the world sees itself in. It wasn’t all bad…namely, it hid your affliction far longer than you could have hoped it did. You had a small piece of family land passed down to you on the edge of the village, and that was where you stayed. Nothing fancy; a hearth, a large, single-room property with a garden and a well. You were known to keep sheep, a fact that had caused perhaps a few hysterical chuckling fits when, every full moon, one or two went missing, but it gave you the ability to accumulate money and, more importantly, an alibi.
Who would suspect a werewolf to own sheep?
But this home already had a more detached feel to it—something removed. The air was sterile, somehow. Groaning, your face tightens before you rise to the palms of your hands, muscles quivering to keep the strength your stubbornness gives to them. Half-vertical, you turn and study the area.
Square, the four walls are stone with mortar and clay to keep the rounded blobs together. You’re on the ground floor, a staircase to the far right while the bed is stuck into the left corner; a nightstand sitting void of all except a single chamber-wick holding an unused candle. A sturdy table with one wooden chair, a stone fireplace set into the same wall the headboard is level with, and a large oak door.
There are runes written on it.
You can’t make sense of what they mean, but when you see them, your tiny-pupiled eyes slip to the rest, all placed at windows or near some point of entry—unassuming things until you realize why they were red in color.
Your shoulders tighten, and whatever bit of magic moves through your skin lets your nose pull to the scent of human blood.
You clear your throat and look away, licking your lips with a dry tongue. Moving your toes under the two bear furs that rest at your abdomen, you notice the lack of earth-shattering pain that accompanies it, and, shifting a hesitant hand, you grab the edge and push it back a bit farther.
Bandages with perfect ties meet you, void of any crimson staining.
Truth be told, you expected more of a Hunter’s home—skulls; trophies. The town always spoke of burnt bodies strung up on crosses that mark the property of those in this profession, a ward and a sign of grim hope. Vampires mostly, wasting away in the brutal sun. Others as well. Werewolf fur and witch bones shoved in blessed boxes.
This place is almost normal, you think, thighs shifting over the dip of the bed as your finger runs the white wrappings where the bolt should be. Your mind dares not go to how he got the thing out of you, and at the stretch of sutures, you take your curious grip off of it entirely.
Looking around once more, your brows furrowed tightly.
Where was the man? The hunter responsible for your current predicament? Ghost. With his vampire skull mask and his black attire—a hellhound with dark ink and intentions. More importantly…
Why were you still alive?
Your memories come back slowly as you stand, bare feet moving to the floor as the tunic over your upper half falls to your knees at the verticality of your spine. They creak a bit, the bones, at the ability to stand fully upwards and not be impaired by bars of silver. A strength seeps through you slowly.
In the deafening silence, you clear your throat tinily and lightly itch at the clean flesh at the back of your neck where the muzzle sat; rubbed raw now scabbed and healing with the spread of natural oil balms. Taking in a slow breath, you step forward with a heavy limp and watch the door, glancing at locked trunks and cupboards, eyes blinking. Your muscles ached, but the sting only served as a way to remind you that you were still here—living. Few in your position were granted second chances.
You’re about to study the runes at the door when you’re called to with the creak of the stairs in your left ear.
“Wouldn’t recommend it.” Your head snaps over, blinking quickly.
Ghost carries the leather holders of his twin pistols in one hand, the bodies of the weapons in them hanging as he comes to ground level one step at a time. Brown eyes glance over through the confines of his skeletal face-covering as he walks to the table, placing down the items.
“Keeps the spirits out—smudge ‘em and the house gets haunted,” he grunts. “Rather not bleed myself again to get the runes copied.”
You stare in mild shock, sound sparking from the back of your throat. “...Right.”
Side-eyeing the markings, you shiver and step back from the door, silent as Ghost seems to focus on his task at hand—looking over his weapons.
Large hands running the metal and wood, the pistols in his grip shift as the drying light of the day streams in through the curtains of the windows. He touches them intimately, knowing every grove and dip until he tilts one and rubs away a slash of dirt from the barrel with his bare thumb.
You quickly turn awkward, looking down at yourself and the bareness of your lower legs. It wasn’t lost to you that the man was the reason you were in this situation in the first place.
“You shot me,” you grumble—not unlike someone who had a knife to their throat.
“Affirmative,” Ghost says nonchalantly. You get a slow, blank glance and nothing more.
“Have you drugged me?” You ask, heart speeding up. There wasn’t anywhere to go—not without an escape plan and with Ghost in front of you.
“Wolfsbane?” The Hunter shifts his thighs, boots moving over the hardwood. “Negative. Not yet.”
“Yet?” An attitude seeps in, lips thinning.
Ghost sighs under his breath, slipping the pistols back into their holsters. “Forgetting about how we met, Love?”
“No,” you huff. “Not really.”
“Perfect.” Eyelids pull down slightly. “Don’t.” Ghost nods his head to the table's chair, crossing his arms over his chest. “Sit.”
“I told you I’m not a—” A sharp, numb look makes your snappy reply stall itself, and you stand there for more than a minute before you find the pointlessness of this.
You limp forward and sit in the chair.
Looping your arms around your waist, you glare to the side as your skin crawls at the unblinking eyes that stare. Ghost rolls his shoulders, tilting his head.
“What do you know about the werewolf that bit you beyond appearance?”
“Nothing,” you chuckle hopelessly, moving a finger in confusion. “I…I don’t know why you’re asking me about it—it’s not like I had a conversation with him.”
The Hunter blinks at your sudden confidence, unable to separate your form now from the one in the cage; blubbering ceaselessly in a grassy clearing. But lesser pains always bring out someone's true colors. As long as you told him what he needed to know.
Ghost explains with a sheen of dull annoyance. “Every turned werewolf holds a connection to the one that bit them. It’s pack mentality.” At your blank look, his brows pull in, the mask shifting. “You telling me you’ve never come back into contact?”
“...No?” Your lips dip. “For three years I’ve been by myself with this.”
Brown digs into your face, a small sheen of confusion slipping in to tighten them, around his biceps, Ghost’s fingers twitch.
You lick your lips, speaking up in the impending silence. “I don’t remember anything after I turn. Is that normal?”
“For you?” He mutters, still not taking his eyes off of you. “Yes.”
“I’m not going to pretend like I know what’s going to happen,” you shrug. “But at the very least I want to try and understand why I’m like this.” You open and close your mouth for a moment. “Before you kill me, anyways.”
“If I wanted you dead,” Ghost grunts through a half-amused tilt of his head. He doesn’t beat around the bush. “...You would be.”
“‘Capture or kill,’” you huff. You’d seen the flyers; heard from word of mouth. “Right.” You sigh. “They’ll track you down, you know. They’re not going to just let you take me.”
“They won’t make it through the forest. Bastards would get lost on the trail.” The Hunter moves until he can grasp the waterskin from the counter, dragging it over with his hand. He tosses it to the main table in your direction after he comes back over, and you hesitantly reach forward and pull the top off. Ghost changes the subject back to his studies of your condition closely. Dark eyes slip down your front as your lips part to take up the liquid. “Before your shift, tell me what you see.”
Your throat bobs as you drink the water, thirsty as it soothes your dry mouth. You hum, but the inquiry makes your hair rise. Your arm wipes at your mouth as you lower the waterskin, a small thankfulness in your heart. “It’s less of what I see and more of what I hear and smell—blood; metal. River water. I…” Your chest tightens. “I feel my bones breaking and I hear howling mixing with whispers.”
“Whispers?” Ghost leans, eyes alighting with dim interest. “What’re they saying?”
“I try to block it out,” you whisper, not exactly answering. “Makes it go faster.”
A long nothingness ensues.
The impending night grows deeper, and then Ghost finally speaks again after you begin to shift with unease. He nods firmly, tilting his head as if it’s already been decided.
“Next full moon, you’re going to listen to them.”
Your horrified face snaps up. It’s a moment of stuttering before you force out a heavy, “What? No!”
He’s already turned, moving back over to the stairs and placing one foot on the steps.
“Ghost!” You yell, face devoid of blood.
He side-eyes you. “Go back to bed. You’re dead on your feet.”
And then the same man who shot you in the thigh with little remorse disappears into the attic.
—
The Hunter was a strange beast.
The days the two of you spent together were mostly silent—left with tight stares and tense shoulders. Clipped sentences.
Ghost, for what it was worth, gave you space in this small house; as much as you could get. He kept himself up above while you stayed on ground level keeping yourself occupied. You’d gotten spare trousers and socks, a jacket, and the bed was practically yours with how your scent rolled off of it now. Yet, you had never been permitted to go outside.
You’d seen the land from the windows—careful of the runes, of course, and it wasn’t anything… ghastly. A vegetable garden, a single-stall stable with a dappled mare, and a beaten-down trail out the front.
No livestock.
No bodies.
It was only when you had become ever more curious about your lupine curse that you braved the stairs to the attic—one week into the impromptu stay. It’s funny due to the fact that Ghost had never said that you couldn’t go up there sooner.
You stand now in the flat room with a sloping roof and find the man making bullets. It’s a long table, parallel to the walls in the center of the room; dark and covered in all manner of books and tomes. Grimoires tied up and locked. Racks of weapons with markings and blessings tied to sheets of ribbon…it was something you’d never seen before.
Studying it now, the contents were a dark fascination.
Ghost fiddles with his silver shell, mixing in gunpowder into the hollowness. He doesn’t speak until you do, but he knows you’re there.
“Tell me more about werewolves,” you speak through the air, and he waits before answering. “The ones who are born with it.”
“Rare,” Ghost comments, and you’re stuck by how willing he is to tell you about this. He puts down his bullet and picks up another. “Harder to find, even harder to kill. Unlike you, they know what goes on when they’re running ‘round. Fuckin’ nightmare to pick up the pieces—bloodbath.” You thin your lips. “Not all of ‘em are murderous, but they’re unpredictable. Can’t help but make packs.”
“Instinct,” you murmur, coming a bit closer. Ghost pauses, looking at you before huffing in the form of a gruff ‘yes.’ Your wondering continues. “But why am I alone then?”
“That’s the question,” the hunter says slowly. “Need to figure out why.” Brown eyes slowly move to you. “‘Fore more people end up dead. Or turned.”
“Can I,” you stop at the table, standing opposite the man. “Can I turn people, too?”
“No,” is all you’re given. Ghost’s eyes glint. “And I’d rather you didn’t bite on me to try.”
Your face heats.
Your attention focuses for a while on how he works—prepares for something unseen. He’d said he’d kept you alive to help him find the one who bit you, but he’d also cleaned your infected injuries, bandaged you, and fed you. Kept you warm. Safe. It was far more than could be said about your village.
However, it was strange how Ghost’s stark muteness was something that you found in the darker hours, a small comfort. When the moon was coming in from the windows, and you hid from its rays as if being stalked down, he once found you sleeping under the bed on the floor because of it.
He never said anything, just offered you a silent hand and helped you back out with a slow blink and a tilt of his head.
There was a distrust, obviously, but there was also an unspoken nearness. No one would make any sense of it—you couldn’t either. It was like a wolf and a raven; something built on hesitence but necessity. You didn’t like Ghost’s mask or his brutalist profession of shooting his wolfsbane-coated bolts, and he didn’t like that once a month you turned into a rampaging werewolf.
Comparable things, really.
But even here, in this workshop in his attic, you saw the need for this—for hunters. If you couldn’t stop yourself, there came a time when you had to be stopped. Truth be told, you expected it to be a quick and final end. Maybe that was just a foolish hope.
A silver bullet would have always been your final song, you believed. Perhaps the very one that had once swung from around your neck; the one you’d never taken off until now.
But then, perhaps that would have been your own brutalist profession.
“Thank you,” you nod. Ghost pauses, fingers stained with gunpowder. He blinks at the bullet in his hand as you continue. “I know you don’t care about anything beyond your work, but if you hadn’t gotten me out of that cage they would have burned me alive. Skinned me.” Your tongue pokes out of the side of your mouth. “I don’t know, but it wouldn’t have been kind. Job or not…thank you for getting me out of there.”
“I shot you,” he utters, voice gravel. Ghost seemed confused.
Your lips flick. “I never said I forgave you for that part.”
A smooth chuckle wafts out over the attic and your own softly mirrors. Your head tilts somewhat quizzically. “But, about that…did you mean to put so much wolfsbane on it?”
Ghost shakes his head, grumbling. A small sense of honesty leaks out. “...Expected you to be bigger.”
You blink, and then, a few seconds later, a loud snort echoes like a ringing bell.
The Hunter's unimpressed look only leads you to find him all the more enjoyable. “Shut it. Fuckin’ hell.”
A hand is waved from your party, dismissing the harsh snap. “Sorry, sorry.” You puff out amused air. “Spector not up to your expectations?”
Ghost nearly rolls his eyes, trying to focus on the task at hand. He didn’t mind your company, at the very least he knew he needed to keep an eye on you for any potentially forced shifts or hostile attitude. What he hadn’t expected was to find you so…different from your muzzled counterpart, your shared physical inhabitant.
He could almost call you endearing if he wasn’t so numb to the sight and scent of reality.
“Sightings were far between,” Ghost grunts. “Here-say. I took an educated guess—better to put something like you out of commission than drag my way out of a forest without legs.”
“No apology?” You try, tilting your head.
“None,” is the drawn response. “I don’t have regrets. You’re alive.”
Your fingers touch the outside of one of his journals, tracing the bumps and grooves of age and wear. You hum, but don’t reply. Most of your pains have been pushed back now, even if you still weren’t up to full strength. Food and rest helped, but the anxiety that perpetuated only lengthened the healing process.
When you can’t trust even yourself under the drunkenness of the moon, it only makes your fear of the sun worse. Everything made you afraid—most of all your mind; most of all, the future.
“Why do you want to find the werewolf that turned me?” You have to speak this, have to push. Your curiosity demands it.
Ghost puts the bullet down and grabs a rag from his belt, mask turning to look your way as he brushes off his hands. He pauses, looming with that gargantuan height—natural intimidation in the span of his chest and the trunk that makes up his front. You find yourself in his shadow as he rubs at his fingers with the rag, taking it away and slotting it back into his belt a moment later.
The man’s heat leaks into your body as he blinks over, glancing your form up and down in a single look; keeping a respectful distance but still making his attentions known.
He stares. “If it keeps biting people, there won’t be any villages left to take up contracts from.”
“Money?” You frown.
“Principle,” Ghost counters, chest rising and falling steadily. “There needs to be a middle ground. Too many feral werewolves, too few people. Cut off the head.”
“Ominous,” your form turns to his, itching at the back of your head again—the scabbing skin. “If what you said was true, how do you know the thing isn’t already dead? If it hasn’t tried to get to me, what was the point of making me?”
“Because you hadn’t left St. Francis’ by the time I put a bolt in you.” Ghost grumbles, rubbing a hand on his bicep, itching above the fabric of his tunic. He stretches with a grunt—and you see his shirt ride up and the pale skin underneath. You gawk for a moment at the length of scars and brutal muscle.
“Charming,” you dryly utter, stuttering in a brief second of pulling back your senses, but the Hunter continues on, ignoring you.
“That was where you were turned—your territory. You stayed because your leader is still close by waiting.” Legs shift, and all of a sudden, a body is over you, hands are on the base of your skull, pushing your own away as brown eyes dig into the injury you pick at.
Your breath hitches, tensing for a second as your spine straightens. You watch widely from the corner of your eye as Ghost runs a careful hand over the flesh. He puffs a breath, chest moving in a grunt that is both commonplace and expected, yet the brush of his chest to your shoulder is not.
You restrain a shiver, nostrils moving to the overwhelming swell of leather and gunpowder. Bone fragments; the tang of whiskey.
His skin as he runs a thumb over the edge of your wound.
“It’ll start cracking.” Ghost utters, and through his fabric, you feel the brush of speech. “Have to apply more balm. Stop messing with it unless you want stitches soon.”
It takes a moment more of his surgical study and a small clearing of your throat before you can speak. Your mind changes the subject for you.
“So…if my bite can’t turn anyone,” you breathe, nearly sagging as Ghost’s fingers catch in your hair, shifting it under his attention to get a better look. He listens, you know. He wasn’t good at talking, but he always listened. “Why did they muzzle me?”
For a brief instance, you think you feel the Hunter’s fingers jerk a tiny amount—some reactionary muscle twitch that leads your body to still.
Ghost can’t say why he did that, though perhaps it was the sudden flash of the injuries that he’d wrapped on the road back to his property that went over his eyelids. Or the cage—your pleading face aching for whatever small sliver of brutish company you can get.
The silver bullet that he still had in his pocket, attached to that leather cord. He knew the purpose; the intent. Just as he knew the scrape of scabbing under his fingertips.
“Control,” he grumbles, and it’s all he’ll say.
Your burning face is somewhat down-turned, letting him do as he must, study what he can. He hadn’t made any moves to endanger you, and besides the upcoming full moon, there was nothing here that screamed imminent danger. Danger as a general, yes, of course. You were a werewolf in a hunter’s home—it would always be…your eyes flutter when his fingertips drag over your scalp…it would always be danger….dangerous.
Ghost doesn’t think you notice it, but your eyes are drooping.
He watches after the slight shock wears off, a tiny smirk flickering the hidden skin of his lips after he realizes the reason. If you had a tail, he’d assume it would be moving in a soft arch by now.
The man was mildly amused at that, and before he moved away fully, he had to stop himself from uttering a sarcastic, ‘like that, then?’
He had to remind himself not to get attached to whatever…this was. He was using you as bait, as some key to his problem. Not a companion. The distance here had to be firm and heavy-handed.
“The balm is down in my packs,” he grunts, leaving just as his name implied before you had the chance to gather your bearings and the lack of caressing heat. You startle back to the attic room, eyes wide and face loose before Ghost’s retreating footsteps echo on the stairs. “Don’t bloody use it all, then.”
The front door opens and closes with a pull of weighted wood.
—
“I can’t do this,” you mutter, pacing alone in the middle of the night down in the living room
The full moon was tomorrow.
“I can’t do it,” you itch at the back of your head, peeling at the nearly healed flesh harshly. Your nails dig into the soft tissue, drilling like a knife. A bead of blood slips around your fingers, but it doesn't stop you.
It’s late—late enough to know that Ghost should be asleep by now. For days, the paranoia, just like always, builds until you are nearly as mute as your Hunter. No more curiously searching his attic; no more questions about his job or how he got into this business. Brown eyes had been lingering more as the days went by, this strange companionship growing. You knew, in his own way, he was…worried.
So silent, even he had been getting noticeably uneasy. Shifting legs and quick glances. Nights where you hid under the bed from the moon until lunch came around, Ghost speaking as easily as he could to try and coax you out to no avail. You, a feral dog with white-rimmed eyes.
At supper, only hours before this panicked pacing, you had told something to Ghost that made him double-take.
“If I can’t stop it…I need you to shoot me. In the head.”
He’d never answered, but his eyes seemed to get ever-sharper as the hours continued on. More tense. Ansty.
But…that was his job, wasn’t it?
“Can’t do it,” you murmur. Blood slips down your wrist. “It isn’t right—”
“Spector?” Ghost’s voice had become so familiar to you that the only thing that made your heart skyrocket was the sudden call of it. Your gasp is sharp from behind a panted breath, hand flinching away from the crater you were steadily digging in your skull. A long string of blood trails into the air as your fingers jerk away, and it’s only then that you notice the deep pangs of pain.
Your eyes shudder for a second as Ghost’s form makes it to ground level. He comes over slowly, attention staying on the way the moonlight makes the crimson stains glint from the dripping line seeping into the sleeve of your tunic. He blinks, and you both stand.
The man’s skeletal adornment was missing, though the fabric under remained. A loose sleep shirt and pants, stained by the rays of night.
“Let me see,” he sighs under his breath, a tiny rasp telling of the sleep he’d been awoken from.
“I didn’t mean to wake you,” you utter. He doesn’t seem to care, grabbing your wrist and pulling the limb away as his body takes up presence behind you.
“Was already awake,” Ghost grunts, eyes narrowing in hidden worry. You calm down a bit at that, one less problem to worry yourself about.
The Hunter, quietly, leaves for a second and grabs his pouch near the door. With a muffled command, he nods to the bed until you’re backing up and hitting the back of your knees off of it, sitting.
Ghost lights the candle on the nightstand and opens his belongings with stiff glances your way. He noticeably doesn’t ask why you’ve harmed yourself like this.
“I can’t,” you say it like a plea for help. “Ghost, I can’t do it again.”
Hands fiddle with clean bandages and take out his waterskin. The man douses a rag with the liquid and comes over, shifting onto the bed and lightly turning you so your back is to him—legs half hanging off.
The hard press of cold water makes your breath hitch, and you bite your lip.
“It hurts,” you push out. Ghost knows you’re not talking about the newly opened wound.
“Breathe,” he says to you, seeing the way your sides expand with heavy lungs. Brown eyes flutter from the push of his large hand to the warmth of your shaking flesh. “Tell me about your home, yeah? Heard you lived in your own place.”
The question makes you double-take.
He’s asking me that? Here? Now? Hours away from perhaps another catastrophe?
Yet, you can’t help the slippage of your tongue as Ghost’s fingers rub into your scalp. The rag is lessened, and, soon, the material is rubbed gently over the sore itch of weeping skin. You fight a whimper and reply with an addled mind.
“It…it’s quiet. Calm. I always keep the candles going because I don’t like the dark.” Ghost works quietly and quickly.
“There,” he grunts, glancing at the flickering light of the candle he lit. He’d have to remember that. “And?”
“I kept sheep.”
He pauses, and, without meaning to, a soft scoff bounces off the confines of his chest. It catches your attention far better than a bullet could. Ghost shifts a needle and thread out of his gathering of items, taking away his limbs only for the short while it takes him to loop the two together.
“How many?” The masked man asks, amusement gone just as quickly as it had come.
“Only a handful,” you whisper. Your mouth opens and closes, glancing over your shoulder as the candle-light spills out over the room; casting shadows over Ghost’s face, catching on his long eyelashes. Those browns of his glint like tree trunks covered in dew.
“Please,” your words are muffled. Eyes wide and fearful, there isn’t anything that can console you on this. “You need to kill me.”
There was a dichotomy to you—a violent thing. You didn’t want to die, no, you feared it heavily, more than the moon, but the truth was that you couldn’t keep going through this. The unknowing. The breaking bones, the blinding pain. The understanding that nothing that you do can stop it.
“It hurts, Ghost,” your breath stutters. “More than taking off a limb, more than slicing yourself open and ripping out your intestines—it burns more than the light of the moon.”
The Hunter listens through all of it. He sits, he stares, and he hides the brimming sense of concern behind his dead eyes.
With a pulling of his eyebrows, Ghost’s free hand moves upwards and grabs your chin. Freezing, you study this phenomenon from over your shoulder, face on fire with eyes wide to the pale skin visible to your view. You hadn’t realized until now, but this was the most you’d seen of the man’s face.
You could make out the point of his crooked nose—the strength of his jaw under the form-fitting fabric. Cheekbones and the heaviness of his brows. Wisps of hair. He had eyes like a cat, you had to admit; something sly about them despite the numbness that seemed to extend bone-deep.
But his hands had been kind to you.
Firmly, Ghost’s fingers run your flesh, and he blinks softly before a low sound echoes in his throat. He pushes carefully on your jaw and shifts your head back forward so he can help you. When he lets go, your heart quivers in your breast
“I’m ‘ere,” he mutters, and you feel the first stitch enter the thin flesh of your head. You take down deep breaths, focusing on the scrape of his fingertips and not the point of the needle. Ghost can understand the fear of it—of pain. It’s instinct. He tilts his head and pushes out, “I can only ask for one full moon from you, yeah? No more. I just need one.”
“And if I can’t find the werewolf?” Your voice vibrates with emotion, staring down at your hands as Ghost’s chest brushes your spine. The scent of him was addling your brain; the rub and slide of his hands.
The Hunter’s jaw clenches softly. “...Then I let you go.”
It wasn’t what you were expecting, but anything from the time you’d gotten a bolt through the thigh was unknown territory, and, like a dog without a leash, you’d run into it. Your brows furrow, blood oozing down your neck before Ghost’s grip shifts to place the rag back again, swiping away firmly.
“Go?” He nods, but you can’t see it. “But what about the hunt?”
“I can manage.” The stitching pauses. The air is broken up nearly a full minute later. “You’re not evil.” Before they start up again as if nothing was uttered aloud.
The confession makes the sting in the back of your eyes start up again—a strong thing of confusion and vulnerability. Ghost continues his task, pulling together your skin one suture at a time until the injury is fully closed; clean.
“Chin,” he lowly states, and you allow him to tap your jaw, shifting it up so the wrappings can loop above your ear and over your forehead—securing them.
Even far after the blood has seeped through, the two of you stay.
—
Come morning, you already feel wrong.
Your body stays in bed, shaking—sweating. A large pain flairs in your chest over and over like a pulsing well in the earth, skin twitching with the spread of blood. Ghost sits beside the bed all the while, having dragged over his chair. He leans back into it, one arm over the side, hanging with the thing ever so often moving to rub at the back of his neck.
You don’t think he’s moved since he brought it over last night; since he got another candle to stick into the holder—push back the dark. To watch, to study, or just to stave off your rising anxiety is another question.
It’s only after the fourth time you try to rip at the stitches at the base of your skull that he finally grabs your hand and holds it silently. Now, his thumb moves over your knuckles—his gloves back on.
At noon, he tries to suggest eating.
“Hungry?” Ghost asks.
“No,” you say instantly, sweat dripping over your temple, your body partially buried under blankets. “No, I’ll just throw it up.”
Brown eyes glint. “Just one bite?”
Your mouth is already salivating—thoughts of wet flesh and blood in the forefront until you whine and shove your face into the pillow; panting heavily.
Whispers dance in the shell of your ears.
I’m here.
I’m here.
I’m here.
“Go away,” you whisper quickly to them.
Ghost pauses, hesitating. After a moment, his thighs tense with the action of movement, thinking you’re speaking to him. Something swirls in his chest, but he starts to stand nonetheless.
Your eyes widen.
“No!” Both of your hands latch onto the Hunter’s wrist, fear a needle stuck in your gaze. “No, not you. Stay, please.”
A silver cage covered in blood slides across Ghost’s slightly shocked look, but he only licks at the corner of his mouth and slowly leans back once more.
“Not going anywhere,” he says, accent dipping. “Tell me what you’re hearing, yeah?”
His hand slips back into yours, and he presses into your pulse softly, counting. The sun continues across the sky.
“I don’t like how it sounds,” you say, shaking your head. “It’s wrong.”
“Focus,” Ghost breathes, looming closer. His grip squeezes once. “It can’t hurt you.”
You shiver, eyes tightly closed as tears burn the back of your nose. “It’s howling.”
A suddenly gloveless hand spreads up your cheek, resting there and pushing back the sweat that pools. It’s calloused—scarred. You whine, head spinning.
I’m waiting.
Find me.
Find me.
“I don’t want to,” you utter under your breath, words an amalgamation of slurring gasps.
“Spector,” Ghost calls, head moving closer. “Eh.”
“I don’t want to hurt anyone,” your hurried panic is similar to a mind overdosing on wolfsbane. “Gotta go away—gotta get out—”
“Spec!” The Hunter’s quick bark makes your eyes pop open, and you lock instantly with brown orbs.
They’re tight, unblinking just as always. They offer just a few moments of clarity.
Ghost holds your head still while the rest of you shivers with cold sweats, you can hear the blood inside of his veins; his heart pumping. The scent of his skin was addicting to the point of memorization on the airwaves. You watch, gulping down breaths as your throat bobs.
Eyes dart you up and down, fingers spreading out to offer what little comfort he can. The man wonders if he’s completely in over his head.
Ghost pulls his face-covering up to his nose, and your heart skips beats at the sight of ravaged skin and stubble, scars spreading out like your own. Long ones, short ones, burn marks, and hyperpigmentation. He wasn’t pretty, but he was real.
Oh, he was real.
His grip on you strengthens until all you can focus on is him.
Ghost blinks, and you see his lips move. The gravel of his voice was never more clear. “Fucking hell, keep that head on, okay? Nothing’s going to happen as long as I’m here. I’ve got you.” He sighs out a low breath, thumb running your undereye as the small dribbles of tears begin to sneak out. Ghost murmurs. “I’ve bloody got you, alright? Let it happen—we can figure it out.”
He’d grown fond of you over the course of a month. You were curious; not pushingly so. Honest. Good. You’d been dealt a bitter hand, and damn him if his stone heart wasn’t stretched thin at the raw fear on your face. This wasn’t your fault, but he needed to find who turned you and stop them before it got any more out of control than it already was. If more unstable werewolves went running through the woods, there wouldn’t be anyone left in the territory alive.
“When you turn,” Ghost says as clearly as he’s able. “Go. Don’t fight it. I’ll find you.”
“Promise?” You ask, a weak flicker coming to your lips—eyes vulnerable.
Ghost nods once, and it’s all you need. “I’ll find you,” he repeats. “Doubt me?”
“No,” you ease, clearing your throat. “But…one more thing?”
“Anything,” the Hunter instantly says.
“Just don’t shoot me in the thigh again.”
When the claws start protruding from your nailbeds hours later, you’re bolting to the door with only one last glance at the Hunter and his half-pulled-up mask. Booted feet hitting the wood as he stands, he lets you go even as his thighs tense in a need to run after you. Patience was his beast to tame, but it seemed to have left him in the form of a woman disappearing into the tree line.
There is companionship in broken things.
Your body slips into the forest just as the creak of your bones begins to shift and bend. You fall into a heap, hearing the gargling of marrow under your skin like a call to sea. An urge grows to infect you; a feral need to run and hide. Biting back a shrill scream, a hoarse yell escapes instead—flesh rippling as your mouth opens, fangs breaking the supple mushiness of your gums as blood floods like a river.
Find me.
Find me.
Find me.
“Ghost,” you whisper, hands snapping to your head. “Ghost, please.”
Your bullet, you want your silver bullet.
A rabid scream rips from your throat, and back in the house, Ghost’s hands tighten into fists as he glares at the open door. He growls under his breath, eyes tightening in a certain type of anger that brews in his gut. The nights your shuffling woke his light slumber were more common than when you hadn’t, and every utterance was clearly heard to his ears. It had become a curse to him—how you’d met.
A regret was seeping in, a care, and now, as he forces himself to back up and head into the attic, Ghost clenches his jaw tightly. So unaffected by the horror of monsters, he was now at a loss of sense for this growth of feelings.
He wasn’t dull, he knew that some of the contracts he took marked him as a tool and not a person of stable mind. He’d done things he wasn’t proud of, and he would continue to do them for no other reason than they were the orders he was given.
But you had broken a piece of that off of him, somehow, someway, your face had seared itself into his retinas—speared him at the brutality that your community had treated you with. The muzzle. It was cruel, and while Ghost was precisely that, there was a limit.
He did his job, and that was that. Anything after wasn’t his problem.
You became his job, and the one who turned you was an add-on. Maybe if he justified it to himself, he could understand his actions better.
But he was already sprinting to grab his gear when the first howl shattered the night.
—
A white beast prowls the forest.
It stands on two legs, but it isn’t human—isn’t natural. It’s taller than a grown man is; snout pulled back in a soundless snarl that puts dogs to shame with rows of teeth so sharp, they look like pale knives. Its feet—large, splayed—soundlessly skate the ground until clawed fingers slam to the earth.
A nose inhales the scent above the dirt, tongue lulling as a shaggy tail lays limp behind a curved spine. In between the erect ears, under the thick skull of the werewolf, the rolling bumps of a brain spark. A pull.
Find me.
Your eyes are tiny black dots—and they blink once before you rise once more. A great growl moves inside of your chest, the large collection of hair around your neck standing on end.
I’m waiting.
But there’s something that keeps you here—standing in the grass as the moon shines atop your head, your fur nearly glowing even with the stain of bloody injuries. The remains of clothes are about a meter away; only strips of what was.
Your gaze looks over your shoulder, and your gargantuan frame lumbers backward until you can stoop to them—nose once more sniffing with your arms reaching.
Your fingers twitch, blackened claws digging through the ground as a near purr echoes in your throat. The scythe-like additions card across the strips.
Gunpowder.
Leather.
Whiskey.
Something you can’t quite name, but feel drawn to despite the tightening noose at your throat. There was something there you can’t focus on…something that you need.
Your drooling jaws snap, saliva coating the fangs until they drip off one at a time to stain the grass. Body shifting, your head lowers until your wolf-ish visage rubs against the fabric, licking at the sides of your gums as delicate grumbles slip out of your mouth.
A far-off howl leaves your frame freezing.
Eyes slipping back into the feral-inhumanity of a wild animal, your body jolts up, gaze to the forest trees and the rustling of bushes. The swell of rain on the clouds is in the back of your nose, and the previous attraction to the ripped clothes is lost as simply as it had come.
You were being summoned.
Ears twitching, the entirety of your body refuses to move to the sound; tensed and ready to spring on anything that moves if only to let off the spike of anger at the lack of control. The pull grows stronger, and it feels like something is trying to drag you away into the wilds.
This was the sensation you were always trying to fight—the one that led to the aggression; the hunt. You knew that if you followed that howl, whatever was left of your human sense would be gone entirely before you could stop it.
Yet, this time, there’s a nagging need to find the owner, and you can’t remember why.
Your large head tilts, feet spaced as the curve of your spine grows more aggressive—hunching forward as you snarl at nothing, claws shaking as your fur is more bristly than sleek.
Like pure white spikes.
In the back of your head, a thin sliver of a memory slips in. Fingers on the back of your head, caressing calluses and dark, dark, eyes. Clean bandages and gentle touches.
I’ll find you.
If the side of your vision picked up the shadow shifting from far off into the trees, your curled lip never turned that way. If your nose twitched to the heavy weight of a man’s sweat, it never shifted to point as a mutt would to the rustling bush.
Your body bolts after the resounding echo of a wolf’s howl, and it’s no later that Ghost slips after your clawed prints to follow.
—
Crossbow in hand, the hunter’s mask gleams in the darkness, his pale eyes twinkling. Bending down, he glazes at the long pushing tracks of your form—seeing the spray of dirt to the side and the broken branches. Ghost blinks, shoulders tense before he swiftly stands and continues on. The firearms at his thighs lightly rattle, and the bolts in his crossbow are already laced with wolfsbane; silver tips smelt a week ago.
He passes a river with only a single glance at the tossed rocks from the bed, sloshing through the water as the bottoms of his pants get weighed down. Ghost’s mind is on one thing only: make sure this plan won’t get you killed.
The bolts aren’t for you—the silver bullets aren’t for you.
He grunts under his breath, the dark woods casting phantoms over the ground. The Hunter’s legs shift through tall grass, and he carries himself with the ingrained confidence a man of his station requires. If he were anything less than a monster himself, he would have died ages ago. Ghost shoots and lets others come up with the questions, but he could never be called dumb.
Seeing what fast glimpse he had of your shifted form after the last time, he was struck by how erratic it acted. Snapping head, twitching ears, and roving eyes. If he didn’t know any better, Ghost would have called it rabid.
Yet, your actions with his borrowed shirt were…body-stilling, to say the least about it. It had made his gut swirl.
“Give me a trail,” Ghost utters to himself, brown eyes still picking up the dash you’d taken. His agile feet splash through a puddle, the beginnings of raindrops hitting his head.
The man grabs at his hood and pulls it up stiffly, frowning under his mask.
Rain would wash away the tracks.
“C’mon, Love,” he grinds out, body hunched. “Leavin’ me to do the dirty work, eh?”
It’s too quiet—even a collection of minutes later of hard hiking, the trees barely move. There aren’t any birds; no animals beyond the black bodies of crows in the far-up branches, waiting, watching with obsidian eyes that don’t blink.
Ghost isn’t off-put, but the length of his strides gets far tinier, carefully stepping over twigs and rocks like a soldier at war. Then again, he was at war. And if he was caught unawares, there wouldn’t be a bullet to pull out of his side, but, instead, a chunk missing.
His ears were almost ringing from how hard he was focusing.
Brown eyes shift from one area to another, and then, suddenly as if a deer, he freezes.
Ghost’s body winds up, fingers twitching from the stark trigger discipline of his crossbow downward instantaneously. No one but him can explain what just happened, but he knows when he has to listen instead of act. Stuck in a clearing not unlike the place he’s first met you, his feet rest shoulder width apart and his eyes stare blankly into the trees ahead.
Your tracks end here.
From behind him, just as the large raindrops slap the side of his bone-ed visage, the small crack of a twig makes his ears twitch.
A low snarl sets his hair on end.
Looking over his shoulder, Ghost is met with the same color that he’d become so accustomed to in a full month completely blacked out. Void. Lifeless to anything besides rage and bloodlust.
Your white fur was infected with dirt, blood, and leaves—a mosaic of ferality ingrained into your body; pale fangs snapping. The beast slips through the treeline, slapping a veined hand into the soggy earth.
Ghost only watches, eyes a mystery.
His finger shifts over the trigger, and for the first time in his life, he hesitates.
The man looks into your glinting orbs, the dripping saliva on your lulling tongue as your esophagus pants for breath. One hesitation, he always knew, would mean death. One mess-up.
You’d asked him to end it, he shouldn’t feel remorse, guilt, perhaps—he was still human, despite his appearance, but remorse was deeper. It left wounds that were harder to lick clean again.
…So why isn’t he sending a bolt into your forehead?
Ghost remembers the times he’d found you under the bed, your shaking, and the way you hadn’t allowed him to change your bandages the first few weeks you’d stayed with him; didn’t want him to touch you. The nightmares and the small smile you’d gain when he’d spew his dark, sarcastic words as if this was a joke. How you’d always thank him under your breath for the food he’d give you, hunted by his own hand.
A silver cage. Crimson blood. The sight of your pleading eyes when you’d told him to shoot you.
Maybe the two of you were far more alike than he’d dare to admit. And he currently won’t, not even on his deathbed. Not even now.
Ghost watches, and he waits.
He can’t do it.
Your body slinks closer, stalking with the sound of anger, nearly rib-shaking in its volume. Ghost’s jaw clenches, and his body shifts to face yours head-on. At the sight of the crossbow, your snarl turns into an air-biting rage, saliva flying through the rain.
“Spector,” he keeps his voice low, even. The sight he’d seen as you smelled his clothes had to mean something. Ghost tilts his head, moving out a hand from the side of his weapon in an appeasement gesture. “I’m not going to shoot you. We have a job to complete…get those fangs away.”
He wonders if ordering you around will even work. You had told him before—you’re not a mutt. Ghost agrees. No mutt was the size of a fucking boulder.
The werewolf’s claws drag—goring the mud as if a pig to tear apart.
“Spector,” the Hunter tries again. But something’s different about his tone; he drops it, letting it pull on a softer string. “I’m here to end this. We’re here to end this.” He blinks and lowers the crossbow completely. “Breathe. The night can’t last forever.” A breeze whips the trees. “I made you a promise.”
There’s a second, he thinks, where he can see something shift in your gaze, pupils slightly widening above the deluge that wets down your fur into a sopping mess that hangs off muscle.
“That’s a girl,” Ghost grunts, taking a small step closer. “Never told you,” he utters, eyes locked with yours. He sees your nose twitch minutely. “But if we get this right, Spec, there’ll be no more painful shifts, hear me?”
Your dog-ish mouth is closed, hanging off every word as Ghost comes even closer.
“I kill this bastard,” the hunter breathes, gloved hand still outstretched, nearing closer to the near-silver of your form. “The moon’ll have no claim on you. She’ll let you off the leash, Little Wolf. You get to decide when it happens.”
He thinks he has you now, back to some state of recognition in the addled brain that tries to see him as prey; as competition. Ghost’s fingers are close enough to almost touch you, but just before he can brush his gloves over your wet fur, your mouth opens in a display of untamed challenge. Your growl is enough to make the man unconsciously reach for his pistol, and in the time it takes him to realize the fault of it, you’ve already rampaged forward with an unhinged jaw.
Ghost’s eyes widen, taking a quick step back.
Your legs push off, and you shove the hunter out of the way just before the fangs of an immense beast can clamp down on him, your own finding the shoulder of gray, thick fur.
Fighting as wolves do, Ghost only needs a moment to recover and get to his feet, though the sight in front of him can rival any that he’d seen before. His crossbow clatters a few feet away, sending the bolt off into the trees with a metallic ‘twang’.
The two werewolves roll around the pouring clearing, snapping teeth and rending claws drawing blood that’s deep enough to swim in to the green grass. White and gray meld together—blue eyes like a knife to Ghost’s chest when he takes it in from between the sound of tearing fur.
“Bloody fucking…” the man trails, staggering as his palms slap to the pistols at his side. He blinks, shouting in more of a bark than even a dog could imitate. “Spector!”
The wolves pull and rip the other to shreds, flesh torn and limbs grasping for purchase. Bodies are slammed to the ground before getting tossed to the side, fangs flashing in the moonlight. Ghost watches crimson stain your fur a pinkish-red.
He can’t get a good shot.
The werewolf that turned you sinks its claws into your sides, dragging them downwards as you yowl, eyes tiny with aggression before your jaws connect with its snout, biting down with more force than a horse’s hooves. The monster screams—a garbed thing of fangs and saliva.
Just as easily as it called you here to it, as it stalked your Hunter, it bashes your body back into the earth and takes you by the scruff of your neck. Eyes wide in that lupine way, you lock on Ghost’s profile before your body is lifted, and tossed away violently.
Spine slamming into a tree, you hear the cracking and bending of your bones in your ears just after you hear the sharp shout from the man in the clearing, body dropping to a heap into the grass and mud. Angled head flopping back and forth, black infests the edges of your vision, coughing up blood that seeps from between your gums and slips down the back of your esophagus. Fur and flesh are stuck at the base of your throat.
Whining, your limbs drag and pull futility, eyes flooded over with crimson and fogged by rain. A great roar worries the air, sending long shivers over your spine as you try to rise to your limbs, a five-fingered hand slamming you back down.
Just before the fangs can clamp your throat, two great booms burst through the forest.
The wolf atop you reels back, great bellow escaping its throat when you can finally drag your head to look over. This beast was clawing at its chest, shaking its large head in an arch to try and dispel the shock of having two silver bullets entering its back—the gray head snapped around to Ghost, who held his twin pistols aloft with eyes burning with anger from behind his mask. An avatar of vengeance; a bringer of death.
The orbs inside of your sockets widened, nose twitching wildly as you bleat a quick warning bark.
Blue-Eyes rises, body far larger than yours would ever grow to be—on two feet more powerful looking than a bricklayer many years into his craft; tall enough to reach to the sides of black-shingled homes and pull itself up. Ghost takes one look and growls under his breath, knowing there would be no time to reload the weapons in his hands.
So he drops them and pulls slowly at the cruel blade in his belt until the gleam winks in the low light like a curved smile. Setting it in his hands, the small flicker of a sharp smirk on his lips is lost to you.
Yet, there isn’t a chance for some brawl between two beasts—there’s only the flash of pale fur and the final crunch of a body hitting the ground.
You bury your fangs into the wolf’s neck; the one responsible for all of your pain and torment spanning years of isolation. You feel the body seize as it drops, the last remnants of a dying brain trying to fight the inevitable nothingness that ensues, and, you only hold on the harder, the bloodlust seeping back in with every drop of life pooling into your locked jaw.
Your throat releases tiny growls of pleasure, biting a bit to make sure there wasn’t a sliver of a chance that something living was walking away from this scene.
Ghost pauses, and in the back of his head, he knows he should stop you. Brown eyes see the animalistic sheen of enjoyment at a fresh kill, the way you pull at the flesh until chucks peel away from a gurgling wolf. Even when the thing is long dead and the rain still slaps the earth, you barely let go until you get a hold of the meat and tear with a backward jerk of your snout.
“Love,” the Hunter sheathes his knife, taking a step forward. The blood was pooling under your body. How many of those were treatable? He had to know. “Let me see what’s—”
The eyes that lock on him are not yours.
Up to your ears, the entirety of your face was awash with the stain of life, dripping off the whiskers at your cheeks; your chin.
Before he can utter another word, he finds himself on his back with a snapping snout right in front of his face, two dead eyes staring deeply into his own. Ghost sucks down a quick breath, hand snapping to the large wrist shoving down on his chest.
He pants out, gravel accent far more deep than it was before.
“Easy, Spector. Easy. Eh—focus on me.” Your tongue licks at your fangs, body shaking. Ghost pushes out, “That’s it, then. It’s over, yeah? You did it; let's pack it up and head back home.” He grunts. “Recon even dogs get cold in weather like this—the bed’s waiting. Get a nice fire going.”
Ghost sees your face move closer, and his hand minutely shifts to the vial of wolfsbane on his belt. It wouldn’t kill you, but it could put you out of commission until your body shifted back into its proper form. He could carry you back—that wouldn’t be a problem at all.
But he was worried about your injuries. Even now the droplets of blood roll off of you faster than the water can.
Too much.
Brown eyes crease, darting a look down.
“Fuck,” he growls, seeing the carnage and the open meat. “Sweetheart, we need to get you checked out—you need to listen to me. Can you do that?”
He can see the conflict; the internal fight.
Your mouth moves with fast pants, claws stuttering over his gear futilely. You blink rapidly, shaking your large head in fast increments with small snarls.
“C’mon,” Ghost says slowly, fingers looping the vial. “Keep listening. Know my voice is utter shite, but only you can tell me it.”
Your head drops to his chest just as the wolfsbane is popped open, and, for whatever reason, Ghost pauses. He waits.
You take a long inhale of his gear—of the leather and the gunpowder, and just before the Hunter can dump the vial over your skin, the long blackish claw on your finger loops the bottom portion of the fabric under his bone attachment.
The man’s breath hitches as you let it rest along his nose bridge…holding it there as you drag your head upwards as if it were an impossible chore. Your mouth dribbles out gore to his cheeks, but the Hunter stares upwards into your eyes as they soften in a lupine way.
Inexplicably, you let out a bone-rattling sigh and slump into oblivion.
—
Come morning, you sleep under the spread of large fur blankets—clean bandages over your bare frame as the man has tended to you for hours. He mutters for you to slip your arms into a spare shirt after he finds your eyes open, not uncomfortable by your nakedness, though he wants you yourself to be at ease.
His brown eyes are creased, and you can’t remember what you’ve done.
You comply with small grunts and moans; more sore and cut up than you can recall ever feeling as a large tunic is slipped over your head by scarred hands.
Gunpowder.
“What did I—?”
“You finished the job,” he says, sparing you a glance as he shifts back with his eyes averting themselves from your visible legs. The sun seeps in through the windows. “It’s morning.”
You blink slowly, and the man eases you back down into the furs.
“I’m tired,” your voice yawns out—weak and brittle like the hope you’d had that this plan of his would work. Eyes half-closed, they blink at the hunter with a soft kind of care that you can’t remember showing before. Whatever pain medicine he’d given you, it was working. The underlying itch was still as strong as ever, though.
“Tired is good,” Ghost nods slowly, standing still until he crosses his arms and sets his feet. He’s in a fresh shirt and pants. There’s blood under his fingernails; traces smeared over his flesh. “Means you accomplished something.”
“Don’t think that’s entirely true,” you breathe. A pause. “...Why is your mask like that?”
It was half pulled up—showing off his lower jaw and the stubble. The scars that you already have memorized. Ghost shrugs, blinking those dead eyes of his.
“Ah,” he grumbles. “Forgot. Here.”
He reaches up and slips the thing off in one motion. Your loose brain takes a moment to realize the entire face you’re staring into, but the second it does, the image is engraved into your mind forever. You make a noise in the back of your throat.
“Better, Little Wolf?”
“W—” Your lips stutter, new sutures pulling tight. “Why would you…?”
“Hungry?” Ghost asks, quickly changing the subject. “Know you like that venison that I caught.”
“No,” you breathe. “No, I’m not…I’m tired, Ghost. My head hurts.”
A hand sweeps over your forehead, staying as you sag into it with a hum and a fluttering of your eyes.
“Bloodloss,” the Hunter murmurs. “Normal. Go back to sleep; take however long you need. I’ll be here.”
The bond between the two of you has strengthened to that of a silver rope.
“Stay,” you plead under your breath, already slipping back into nothingness with no promise to wake up again soon. “Hold me, Ghost?”
“Simon,” he grunts to only himself, knowing that the words are lost to you. Perhaps that makes him all the more eager to share it with you when you’re better. “Stay still.”
It wasn’t like you could protest.
The broad man slips in, shifting the furs until you’re covered back up and your forehead is to his chest—keeping himself closest to the door where the runes still sit in their bloody glory. If he listened hard enough, he could even hear them humming him a tune.
No song was better to him than the one of your breath at this very moment. Alive. Moving. There were many times in the night that he thought...hm.
“Better, then?” The dry tease slips out.
A kiss to the side of his mouth is what he gets in answer, and he doesn't say a peep more until he knows you’re back in the clutches of a dream—a good one, he knows, because he watches your expressions like a loyal guard dog would.
Ghost, Simon, rests his lips on the top of your head, and in a delicate murmur, eases, “You did good, Love.”
There was much to do, but for now, all he had to do was hold you a little bit tighter and let his stone heart beat a little bit faster.
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They kiss on the ring. I carry the crown (Chapter 4)
Chapter 1 ++ Chapter 2 ++ Chapter 3 ++ Masterpost
What does it take to be the woman by Sukuna's side? You are willing to find out and learn more about his dark Kingdom by diving deeper into Tokyo's underworld. Maybe that is the way to win the King's heart. Or maybe you already have it.
Pairing: Sukuna x Reader (female)
Genre: Mafia AU, smut, fluff
Playlist: Mafia AU
The songs for this chapter: Cravin by Stileto ++ Do it for me by Rosenfeld ++ Dirty Mind by Boy Epic ++ Catch me by Dxvn ++ F**K by The Code
Word Count: 5k
Warnings: 18+, smut, some dark crime-related themes (Yakuza, implied violence, implied murder in later chapters, gambling, alcohol, sex workers), use of the name Daddy, oral, fingering, cockwarming, creampie, squirting, cum eating, light choking, biting, hair pulling. All characters are of age. This story is 18+. Minors don't interact.
Sukuna's people knew you by now. They knew your name, knew who you were. It still gave you chills to walk past them when you saw them in Sukuna's office or in one of his establishments. But all these dangerous men and women treated you with respect, always greeting you so politely and making sure to hold doors open for you and take a step back to make space for you.
One night during an afterparty following an official event in the casino, Sukuna pulled you on his lap. He wrapped his arms around your waist as his lips trailed over your neck and his deep voice murmured in your ear in that sexy tone, telling you about his inner circle.
There was Gojo, a tall white-haired man, just as smug as Sukuna, who was responsible for adult entertainment. Gojo always had his flock of the most exclusive escorts in the whole country trailing him and introduced them to the rich and mighty people of the city, trying to sell their services to the lonely hearts of Tokyo's upper class. And apparently, he was good at it.
Then there was Nanami. Handsome and professional. The guy in charge of the finances definitely didn't look like a Yakuza member to you. Even his tattoos were hidden perfectly under his expensive suits.
Others looked like criminals from far away already, like the scary-looking guy with a scar across his lip. Toji. He was born into the Zenin clan but had decided to turn his back on his family because he disapproved of their dealings. He was in charge of the illegal gambling in the casino's private rooms. He looked dangerous, and you weren't surprised to learn that he was also someone who took care of things for Sukuna. You knew what that meant.
Ironically, the other people who took care of things for Sukuna were Yuta, a seemingly shy young man who kept playing with an engagement ring on his finger, and Maki, a beautiful young woman who had left the Zenin clan together with Toji.
Then there were people like Todo, Toge, and Nobara, who functioned as bagmen and were called for all kinds of services, like deliveries and observations.
And, of course, there was Yuuji, Sukuna's younger brother. He looked a lot like Sukuna, but instead of a smug smirk, he had a bright smile and a loud happy laugh. The baby brother that Sukuna was so fond of that he kept him out of the illegal side of his business.
Yuuji was in charge of the Pachinko places, the small legal gambling places, and arcades they owned all over the city. By his side was always Megumi, officially Yuuji's business partner but unbeknownst to Yuuji, also his bodyguard.
Megumi never said a single word to you, just gave you curt nods, and otherwise, he just glared at everyone who came too close to the young tiger. But you could see him smile when Yuuji talked to him, saw him putting himself always in front of Yuuji, shielding him, protecting him. It was nice to see signs of love in this otherwise tough business.
All these people were dangerous and powerful, but they were nothing compared to Sukuna. They all bowed to him. Sometimes you witnessed it happen right in front of you.
One of Sukuna's subordinates would drop to their knees, take Sukuna's hand and kiss the crown-shaped ring on his finger. It never failed to send sparks of desire through you.
Sukuna really was their King. This was his world. And you were the princess sitting on the King's lap while he was holding court on his throne.
You kept your promise that you wouldn't close your eyes to the dark side of Sukuna's business anymore. And he let you see more of his world. The world behind the shiny casinos, behind the glittering night bars, behind the luxurious office buildings. Sukuna showed you his Kingdom: Tokyo's underworld.
You weren't just accompanying him to the official events. You also went to the backrooms with him and attended afterparties, where deals were made that wouldn't appear in the books.
Sukuna's show of trust towards you made your heart flutter. And he made sure to let you know how proud he was of you.
He showed you right there in his luxurious office when he hugged you from behind, letting you feel his growing bulge as he pressed his strong body against you and trailed soft kisses over your neck. His lips closed around your earlobe, biting it before whispering in your ear:
"You've been such a good girl today."
He made sure to let you fall apart right there in his office, his hands slipping under your skirt, playing with you until you were moaning. He made sure to spread you out on his desk, skirt lifted up, panties yanked down so he could bury his face between your thighs.
You felt his calloused hands settle on your thighs, pushing them apart, exposing all of you to him. His smug smirk was driving you crazy as he looked up at you from between your spread legs.
"Kuna... please..."
"What do you want, darling? Tell me."
You knew what you wanted. What you needed. Him. It was always him. Sukuna, Sukuna, Sukuna.
He turned his face into your left thigh, soft lips leaving little kisses all over your sensitive skin.
And you were a quivering mess, so wet for him that you were worried it would mess up the files you were lying on.
Your fingers tangled in his soft pink hair, trying to get him closer to where you needed him.
You felt him smile against your inner thigh.
"Oh, you want me to eat you out? Is that it?"
His smug tone and the sexy low voice made you moan even louder,
"Yes, please, Kuna...please, Daddy."
A small part of your horny brain was still sensible enough to hope that his assistant had already left. Still, the moment Sukuna's soft lips closed around your clit and sucked on it, you forgot about anything else. Your hips were bucking up against him, and you moaned his name like a slut.
He was always so in control. His strong hands were pushing you down, stilling the desperate movements of your hips as he lapped at your creamy clit, kissed it, and sucked on it in the sweetest way.
Your wild cries filled his dimly lit office as you squirted all over his handsome face. But he kept sucking your sensitive bud, dragging more spasms out of you, making you mewl and arch desperately against the iron grip of his hands.
Your fingers tightened in his hair as he looked up at you, his pretty face wet from your cream, looking so messy and so sexy that it made another bolt of desire shoot through you.
Sukuna's laughter filled the room,
"You like what Daddy does to you, huh? I'll clean you up, you sweet, messy thing."
And he smirked and leaned down and lapped up your cream with his tongue with long, sloppy licks, all the way from your slick hole, dipping into it teasingly with the stiff tip of his tongue and then up to your glistening wet clit, pressing the flat of his tongue against it.
Your nerves were on fire, still high from your orgasm only a minute ago, body spent but a the same time already sparking with new arousal. Sukuna tapped his tongue against your clit, drawing another loud moan out of your mouth.
It was too much, it was so good, you didn't think you could take any more of it. Your fingers tugged firmly on his hair, trying to shove him away.
"It's enough...I can't..."
But Sukuna's fingers dug into your hips.
He lifted his face just enough so he could look at you, glinting maroon eyes looking far too amused but also burning with desire.
"It's not enough yet. Daddy has to make sure you get what you asked for. You wanted me to eat you out, didn't you? Now take it, princess. I never do things half-heartedly. You should know that."
He laughed again and went back to flicking his tongue against your clit, teasing you with light kitten licks while he grinned up at you, looking so smug and so sexy.
Your face was burning hot, lips hanging open panting loudly, probably looking so fucked out that it was a great feast for Sukuna's eyes.
He always reveled in seeing you like that. So needy for him, your body reacting so intensely to everything he did.
He pushed your legs up, his pretty face sliding down even further between your spread thighs, until his velvety tongue pushed into you, fucking you open and making you yelp.
You ended up as a horny crying mess, leaving sticky wet stains all over his face and his files, and his desk, cumming a second time for him, coating his lips with your cream, feeling embarrassed when you heard the obscene slurping noises his mouth was making as he tried to get as much of you as he could.
You sobbed with lust when he stood up after that, opening his pants hastily and then ramming his throbbing hard cock into your still twitching pussy. He fucked you unrelentingly with impatient hard thrusts, taking his pent-up arousal out on you, making you take it as hard as he wanted.
And you loved to take everything your man gave you. You wrapped your legs around his hips tightly, urging him on, sobbing his name, fingers clutching desperately at his muscular back, almost tearing the expensive fabric of his dark red button-up shirt as he fucked your pussy full of his hot cum.
All you could do was moan his name and press against him as your head lolled to the side, facing the window-wall, thinking how pretty the glittering lights from the other skyscrapers around you looked and how perfect Sukuna's cock felt inside you.
You spent more and more nights at Sukuna's penthouse. He was a busy man, and you had long work hours too, so the easiest way to have some quality time together was for you to stay overnight at his place. This way, you could fall asleep in his arms and at least steal a few kisses in the morning or take a shower with him before the two of you had to leave for your busy workdays.
The weekends were the days on which you could have more time with Sukuna. Especially Sundays had become your couple day. You always started the day with a sumptuous breakfast, spending hours eating and catching up on reading newspapers, magazines, or books.
It was one of those lazy Sundays when you woke up to gentle kisses on your neck, making you sigh happily as you pressed back against the solid warm body of your lover, smiling when you felt his deliciously large bulge greeting you.
The next thirty minutes consisted of tangled silk sheets, soft moans, and the rhythmic sound of the headboard banging against the wall as Sukuna made sweet morning love to you.
You loved waking up to this, a horny Sukuna fucking you with languid, slow thrusts, his voice still raspy from sleep when he groaned into your ear and told you sweet and dirty nothings.
You stroked his back afterwards, in slow circles, smiling up at him, feeling so carefree and exhilarated. So high on endorphins, your heart still beating a bit too fast, feeling warm and sated, pussy still filled with his gorgeous cock and his generous load of cum.
Sukuna blessed you with one of his soft smiles, too, before leaning down to press a kiss on your forehead.
"I'll make breakfast."
He untangled himself from you, making you groan softly when his thick cock slipped out of you. But you just snuggled back under his warm blanket, rolling onto your side and enjoying the blissful feeling of afterglow just a few minutes longer.
When you walked into the spacious kitchen area a while later, you were wearing one of Sukuna's casual t-shirts. You hadn't been able to resist when you saw it hanging there over the back of the elegant armchair next to his bed. It felt nice on your skin, a heavy but soft fabric, clearly expensive. And it was comfy, loose as it was on you, usually fitting around Sukuna's larger frame. It also didn't hurt that it smelled really good, just like him.
Sukuna stood at the floor-to-ceiling window, gazing out over the city. He looked so sexy but also kind of cute with his unstyled hair, ruffled from sleep and sticking up in weird places from your fingers running through it when he fucked you.
He was wearing his grey cashmere sweatpants again, which hugged his firm ass in a very mouth-watering way. You let your gaze trail unhurriedly over his shirtless gorgeous muscled back with the black tattoos lining his tan skin so attractively.
Sukuna was a beautiful man. Sometimes you caught yourself thinking it was ironic that the Yakuza boss had such a pretty face and was so stunning and sexy that he left people speechless. He looked nothing like the villains in those Disney movies.
But maybe that was what made him even more dangerous. Sukuna was so enticing, so charming, pulling people to him like a magnet. Luring them in with his handsome features, pretty pink hair, and confident smirk.
Sukuna was as close to perfect as someone could be.
It was something he worked hard on, always immaculate, always wearing his carefully constructed mask of arrogance and power, spiced up with some joking comments and a flirty attitude.
But on a Sunday morning, standing here shirtless, with messy hair, he looked much softer.
Sukuna had heard you, and he looked over his shoulder at you, blessing you with one of those rare dazzling smiles. He looked nothing like a Yakuza boss if it weren't for the tattoos lining his handsome face.
"Hey, princess."
You smiled back at him, noticing his maroon gaze slowly wandering over your face and body with a strange expression on his face.
Even after dating Sukuna for several months now, you still got nervous when he looked at you like this, as if you were the special prize that he had one. As if you were the most fascinating thing. But there was something in his gaze on this Sunday morning that you couldn't place.
His eyes stayed glued to your torso. And that's when you realized that it was the shirt you were wearing that got him so enraptured. His shirt.
Apparently, he liked seeing you in his shirt. Your smile grew wider, and before you even realized it, you were already walking towards Sukuna. His intense gaze never left you, making your heart race.
Sukuna reached out and pulled you against him. His strong arms wrapped around your shoulders, hugging you tightly.
You laughed a bit breathlessly, doing the same and wrapping your arms around his waist while rubbing your face against his bare toned pecs.
This had become your favorite place. In Sukuna's arms, pressed tightly against his warm muscular body. His strong arms gave you a feeling of safety and being taken care of.
But he loosened his hold on you after a moment and instead put a finger under your chin, tilting your face up. And there was his burning maroon gaze again, looking at you as if he could see right into your soul.
Something about the way he looked at you made your pulse flutter nervously. And then he said the words that would flip your world upside down.
"I love you."
Sukuna's voice was his usual sexy purr, but there was a tenderness in it you had never heard before.
You forgot to breathe for a moment. The world seemed to stop spinning. The only thing that existed were Sukuna's eyes boring into yours. And his lips. The lips that had said those words. Those three little words that you had been longing to hear but hadn't dared to hope for.
You weren't prepared. Sukuna had caught you by surprise. Swept you off your feet once again, just like he always seemed to do.
You had always known it was an unspoken rule that Sukuna would be the first to say it.
Sometimes you had let yourself get lost in fantasies and imagined it. In those fantasies, you had assumed he'd do it during one of the dates he took you on.
You had pictured the glittering lights of the city surrounding you as the two of you were having drinks at a rooftop bar. Or maybe during an elegant dinner in Tokyo's number one restaurant. Somehow you had always assumed that was what Sukuna would do.
You hadn't expected him to say I love you on a Sunday morning in his kitchen, where he was standing shirtless, with ruffled hair, and you were only in your panties and one of Sukuna's shirts.
You hadn't pictured it like this, but you knew with utmost certainty that it was perfect.
It felt right.
Your lips trembled with emotion, and your vision was getting blurry, but you managed to smile at him and answer softly:
"I love you too, Kuna."
Sukuna's arms tightened around you, holding you, making you feel warm and safe.
Maybe it was strange that the King of Tokyo's underworld was the one who could give you that feeling, but nothing had ever felt more like home than this. Being in Sukuna's arms, knowing that he loved you.
Nothing had ever felt so right.
The morning sun was bathing the room in soft, warm light, making Sukuna's hair look even pinker than usual and making honey-colored flecks stand out in his pretty eyes.
It reminded you of that moment in the beach house during that first weekend you had spent with Sukuna. It seemed ages ago, even though it was just a few months.
And now you were here in his penthouse, exchanging love confessions. Sukuna was your lover, your man, your partner. You had been his from the start, you knew it, and he probably did too. But it felt even more intense now that those words were spoken out loud. Why he chose that moment was unclear to you, though.
"Why did you say it now?"
"Because I wanted to."
There was his boyish smirk again that always made your heart race. Sukuna's large hand cupped your cheek, thumb caressing your skin gently. His voice turned even softer when he continued.
"I don't need a fancy restaurant or an impressive sunset to tell you how I feel about you. I have to put on a show for everyone else all the time. But not with you. So you get it here without a show. I don't have to play any games when it's just you and me."
And you understood.
He told you here where he could just be himself. Where he was in his grey sweatpants, no shirt, hair still ruffled from sleep and from your fingers raking through it when he made love to you last night and this morning.
Here, where he smiled at you, no smirk, no arrogance, just a genuinely sweet smile that made his eyes soften. Here, where he could allow himself to feel and show emotions.
"Did you want it to be somewhere else? I can take you anywhere you like and say it again. You know I'll do that."
"No, it's perfect."
It really was. Especially now that you understood. It wasn't just him who made you feel safe and at home. You did the same to him. He could let his guard down when he was with you, and that made his love declaration even sweeter.
You couldn't hold back the tears any longer, and a few escaped your eyes, spilling over and running down your cheeks.
Sukuna laughed softly,
"What are you doing, princess?"
He leaned down to catch your tears with his lips, kissing them off your skin.
"Don't cry. Save those tears for when you cum on my cock."
There it was again, the sexy purr and the amused, cocky smirk, and it made your tears stop and instead chuckle happily. You wrapped your hands around Sukuna's neck, grinning up at him, probably looking just as mischievously as he sounded when you answered him:
"Oh? You gonna show me how much you love me now or what?"
"You bet I'll do that. I'll have you crying so much, baby. Better get some tissues."
You couldn't stop yourself from squealing when Sukuna suddenly picked you up and held you against his chest princess style. He carried you back to the bedroom like that, and your laughter carried through the whole penthouse.
You didn't get breakfast that morning. But you got more I love you's from the man you loved.
"I love you." Whispered against your naked skin as his soft lips worshiped your tits, covering them with gentle kisses and sucking on your nipples until you were squirming and moaning beneath him.
"I love you." Groaned against your neck when he fucked you with powerful snaps of his hips, your legs pressed to your chest, pussy taking him so well that his voice sounded almost like he was about to cry too.
"I love you, darling." Spoken softly, when he interlaced his fingers with yours as his thrusts slowed down, and he took his sweet time with you, watching you so he could see the pleasure on your face.
And you let him hear it again too, voice thick with tears and desire: "I love you...I love you, Kuna...I love you...ah!"
You were wrapped tightly in Sukuna's arms, his face buried in the crook of your neck, leaving little kisses there when he suddenly murmured against your skin:
"Move in with me. I want to have you here all the time."
Even when it came to something like this, he made it sound like a command. Sukuna was used to everyone always doing what he told them to. It was sexy. His power always turned you on. It made you press your ass against him, your body betraying you and showing him how much you loved his natural authority.
And he knew exactly what he was doing to you, laughing softly before his lips closed around your skin and left another hickey on your neck.
You couldn't think of a reason why you shouldn't follow his wish. Sukuna was the man you loved and who loved you too. You practically spent most of your free time with him anyway.
It made you happy that he wanted to have you with him. That he invited you into his life and wanted to share his days and nights with you.
Of course, there was also the convenient side of his offer. Sukuna was rich, and it didn't hurt that he lived in one of the most luxurious and most beautiful penthouses you had ever seen. And you had seen a lot of nice apartments and houses in your line of work!
A life in luxury awaited you here if you came to move in with him. That would have probably convinced a lot of people to say yes. But it wasn't what made you say yes. It was a nice side effect, yes, but the real reason you wanted to live with him was that you loved him. Because here in this penthouse, when everyone else was gone, Sukuna was just himself, and as careful as he was about who got to see him that way, he wanted you to be here by his side.
He was just a man asking his love to offer him the company he craved, the comfort of falling asleep with a warm body pressed against him. And you were a woman in love, drunk on love really, about to cry happy tears because the man you loved wanted to wake up next to you every morning.
So you didn't hesitate long before taking the last step off the cliff and jumping into the dark ocean that was Sukuna's world.
But hadn't you already been in there ever since you first met him? Back then, those dark waters had felt so tempting but also scary and dangerous. Now they felt warm and comforting, like a calm ocean at noon, water all warmed up from the sun.
But, of course, you knew that an ocean was always an untamed thing. There would always be storms. The waters would be perilous, cold, and deadly at times. But you were ok with taking that risk. You would just have to be a good swimmer.
You would be the woman who came home to the King of Tokyo's underworld every night and shared a bed with him, no matter how stormy those waters became.
He smiled at you when you came into the penthouse on the day you moved in, Nobara trailing behind you, helping you carry your things.
Sukuna looked pleased. He walked over to you, took your hand in his, and brought it to his lips, brushing a soft kiss onto your knuckles.
"Welcome home, darling."
He spent the next few days fucking you on every surface in the penthouse. It was a rush of feverish desire, soft moans, whispered love confessions, loud, passionate cries, tangled limbs, naked skin slapping against naked skin, heated kisses, sweaty bodies moving in perfect synch.
Later on, when your passion was spent, the two of you found yourself cuddling on the soft carpet in front of the artificial fireplace. You cupped Sukuna's cheek, caressing the tattoos on his face, gazing into his pretty maroon eyes, which looked almost red in the warm light of the fake fire. You chuckled, looking at him affectionately.
"You know you already had me in all of those places. Didn't have to claim me all over again, Kuna."
"It's different now. And I will claim my woman as many times as I like. Also, those scratches on my back are kinda territorial too, you know that right, princess? I'm not the only one staking a claim here. But it's ok, baby, I know how much you want me."
His cheeky wink and the smugness in his voice were enough to make you roll your eyes before attacking him with more kisses just to shut him up.
On most evenings, when you came back to your new home after finishing work, you found Sukuna sitting in his home office.
Usually, he was still wearing one of his custom-made suits, still in work mode. Maybe his tie was loosened a bit, but other than that, he still looked thoroughly professional. He was always busy, working tirelessly to reign his Kingdom like every good ruler should do.
And you made sure to join him. On the one hand, it was to spend time with him, but you were also there to learn more about his work. To show him that you didn't shy away from it. Just like you had promised him, you wanted to see both sides of his business.
"Hey, princess."
He grinned at you as he looked up from his work, and that grin grew bigger when you walked over to him and plopped down on his lap, greeting him with a kiss.
"Hey, baby. What are you working on tonight?"
Sukuna was amused by your braveness, as he called it. He liked having you on his lap, leaning against his muscular chest as he went through his bookkeeping files or answered business e-mails. He liked that you wanted to see what he was doing.
"What is the red folder?"
"Gojo's department."
"Red for adult entertainment? Really? That's tacky."
"Oh well, princess. You can think of a better color code if you want, don't let anyone stop you."
You could tell that he was pleased, though, that you were there on his lap, asking questions about the legal and the illegal side of his business. That you were getting to know him better with every visit to his office. He was pleased that you had come back to him and that you had stayed. That you hadn't let the darker side of his world chase you away.
He always rewarded you for being a good girl when you didn't shy away from the uglier parts of his bookkeeping.
His reward was bending you over his fine mahogany desk, fucking you until you sobbed his name. He was rough, he was powerful, he was a real King. Sometimes you couldn't resist moaning things like:
"Please fuck me hard, your majesty!"
It always got a very nice reaction out of him. You loved the low growls, the way he rammed his thick cock even deeper into you when you said those things. The way his strong fingers tangled in your hair and pulled you up so he could bite your neck as he fucked into you with powerful deep thrusts.
"You like that, princess, huh? Getting fucked full by your King until it runs down your thighs."
The meetings in his home office became one of your favorite activities, and you suspected that it was the same for Sukuna.
He liked having you around to make his long workdays sweeter. You knew because he called you in your office when it was getting late, and you hadn't joined him yet.
"Come here."
"What if I'm busy?"
"When you better stop being busy. Or I promise you won't get any dick tonight. I'll take care of myself and make you watch, but you won't be allowed to touch. I won't even cum over your face."
"And what if I like watching you jerk off?"
"You won't like it when I tie you to the bed, so you won't be able to touch yourself. I know how needy you are. It would be hell for you, baby. Better not risk it."
His sexy voice sounded amused. You knew how much he enjoyed those little games the two of you were playing.
You did too. You enjoyed them so much that you were already grinding against the chair, panting and feeling your panties getting soaked. Of course, you packed up your things and hurried over to the penthouse.
And Sukuna smirked that arrogant knowing smirk and pointed to his lap. A silent command from the King.
You sat down on his strong thighs obediently, knowing that he had won this round. But didn't you win too? After all, you got everything you wanted:
Spending time with your lover, feeling his warm solid body, stealing kisses from him, riding his thigh until you were close to cumming, and sometimes until you found completion, soaking his expensive trousers with your cream.
You chose to wear skirts most of the time because when you did, Sukuna almost always slipped a hand under your skirt while you were sitting on his lap.
He just kept on working while one hand played with you absentmindedly, rubbing lazy circles around your clit, spreading your wetness over it, teasing you until you were panting heavily.
You could feel how much he enjoyed it, could feel him growing hard beneath you.
And his lips found your neck and left soft kisses there followed by a sexy whisper in your ear:
"My sweet darling hm? So wet for me. God, I love you."
Sometimes he was needy after a long day, and on those evenings, he pulled your panties aside and opened his pants, got his cock out and made you sit on it, stretched you open so deliciously but didn't do anything else. Just enjoyed the comforting warmth of your throbbing wet pussy around his thick length.
"Just sit, princess. I still have work to do, but you feel so nice around me."
A gentle kiss to the back of your neck, and then he focused on his work again.
You cockwarmed the King while he was typing e-mail replies, or going through files, making notes, or sometimes even while he was doing business calls.
If one of those calls took too long, Sukuna always got a bit bored, and you were delighted to find out that when that happened, your man's attention slipped from the call to you.
First, a slow roll of his hips, burying himself even deeper into you. Next, his strong hand wandered up your body, teasing your nipples, wrapping around your throat, applying the slightest pressure, making your lips part in a soft moan.
But your noises were muffled instantly as Sukuna's hand pressed firmly against your mouth, effectively shutting you up, so he could buck his hips and slowly fuck into you without risking you giving away what was going on in his office while he was talking to the CEO of some big company.
But most of the time, Sukuna stayed focused on his work, and you just sat there on his lap, with his gorgeous cock snuggly inside your creamy pussy, watching your man managing his legal and not-so-legal empire.
You were his good pet. You waited patiently until he was finished with work, and his hands grabbed your hips, and he smirked at you, looking like the sexy devil that he was.
"Good girl. Ok, now make Daddy cum."
And you did your best to please him, to ride his wonderful cock in the most pleasurable way.
He always helped you, always unable to hold back. His natural dominance always took over at some point. His hands tightened their grip on your hips or around your waist. His strong fingers held you in place as he fucked into your tight wet heat with brutal snaps of his hips, using you like a sex doll.
Until his eyes closed, and his head fell back against the headrest of his black leather chair, and you got blessed by those sexy low moans coming out of his parted lips.
And you knew that as dominant and powerful as Sukuna was, he was losing control too. He was yours too. Just as crazy about you as you were for him. Just as in love with you as you were with him.
Thank you so much for reading! Finally, the "I love you" scene yay!! Sukuna definitely convinced me! To be fair, though, he already has my heart and can do anything he wants, and I will swoon and (s)cream for my Daddy Kuna, so it wasn't really hard for him to get the "I love you" right lol. Anyways, please let me know what you think, how you liked the chapter, how much you want Sukuna...let me know everything! Reblogs and comments make me very happy! Thank you to everyone who sticks with this series! I'll try to post chapter 5 next week.
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