#no self preservation instincts in that little dog

[yeyinde]

appetite | Alpha!Simon Riley

it's been decades since Alpha!Ghost had a rut. something that's probably for the best, really. his want is as hideous as he is. as ugly as his goddamn mug. it's best kept tucked away, secured under lock and key.

but then he finds you. and you're all alone. unclaimed, on the verge of heat. poor thing. it triggers a voracious rut. decades worth of want spilling out over you. you're it, he knows. feels the certainty in that statement simmering in his hindbrain, in his essence. he'll have you—now, forever. non-negotiable. where you go, he will follow.

but you run from him. stupid girl. didn't anyone teach you not to run from a starving wolf?

dubcon. size kink. size difference. a/b/o dynamics: knotting, rut. breeding kink. spit kink. implied virgin!reader. obsessive behaviour. possessive!Ghost. semi-public sex. reluctant reader bullied into submission lmao. forced bonds. implied kidnapping. basically, you're hunted down and fucked by Alpha!Simon who growls in your ear about how he's waited his whole life for you. and lucky him. he finally found you

AO3

It's been years, decades, since he had a rut. 

(Broken Alpha. Ruined.)

Trauma, they tell him, will do that. Sever the drive in the back of his head, the one that rears—vicious and angry—each mating season, bringing with it the urge to breed. To claim. Own. 

A form of self-preservation. It pitches a plexiglass of protection between him and his instincts, not letting them merge. Join. Done so because to be in rut, to want, to need, is vulnerability. It costs hypervigilance. Turns man into beast. Animal. 

This bodily reaction makes an alpha extend themselves, like an overarching limb, to shield the omega they pick as a mate. Bearing their own neck to save another. 

Naturally, they say, if he couldn't help himself, how could he ever hope to protect a fragile little omega? 

They tell him it could be as permanent or temporary as he allows. Healing, they say. Time. Laughable, really. And utter nonsense because Ghost is fine. 

Trauma tampered. Revenge sought, found. There's no one out there who could ever harm him, and still—

His last rut was before the mission that buried him alive. That turned him into the living dead. A mockery of man. Frankensteinian beast. 

It's not something he cares much for, anyway. From what he remembers of his youth—vague snippets of memories, disjointed, blurred sensation; a profound need, an urge, to sink his cock into something, to plug them up, to bite—ruts have always been a nuisance. In the way. An annoyance that took time away from what he'd rather be doing. 

And as Johnny enters his—skin pallid, waxy; cheeks flushed, eyes darkening like a brewing storm on the horizon; snapping at anything that breathes, whining like a dog, miserable and hot, all the time (ahm’a bleedin’ furnace, s’what ah’m)—he finds he doesn't care very much to go reclaim what he lost. 

No skin off his nose. Nothing to concern himself with. 

Besides. Omegas know better. 

Even before he lost himself, dying, rotting in a tumulus, pretty little omegas with their soft hands and bashful smiles always went out of their way to avoid him. Miserable alpha. His scent alone wards them off—burnt leather, charred bones; sarcophagus dust, dirt—and he found himself alone during his burgeoning ruts more often than not. 

No pretty little thing to tender the sweat on his brow, or bend over and present for him—offering up a sweet little cunt he got to bury himself inside, tie up nice and tight on his knot. 

It was usually his hand. A bottle of bourbon. A printed porn stash he swiped from Tommy, who nicked it off their old man—

And when he did find a partner, it was always transactional. Hand to hand, an exchange of money. All clinical and detached. Empty. Fucking into a concept instead of a person; a vacuum eating away at his soul because he knew, then, that they wanted to be there almost as much as he did. 

But what choice did either have when their home was the rotted gullet of a dying beast?

(Simon told them to stay away from shitty men like him, who broke bones in the throes of his heat, snapped his jowls at anything that got too close, and had to be chained to the bed like an animal during it—)

Nothing to miss. Nothing to mourn. 

And it's not like he doesn't get the urge. Wanting to sink his cock into something warm, wet, is as recurring as a sweet tooth. A prickle in the back of his head after he devours his dinner that says, dessert might be nice. 

He can fuck, but his knot never pops. A worry the doctors had—unsure what the consequences would be in the long run for such a virile, young Alpha already experiencing nature's version of erectile dysfunction so early in life. 

(“pity the poor omega who has to deal with that rut,” they whispered. “might not be much of anything left of them when he's through.”)

Inconsequential now because he's pushing forty and his last rut was a false trigger. One dragged out of him by drugs and torture. The last true rut, natural and instinctual, was when he was eighteen. 

It's doubtful he'd suddenly be cured at his age. 

This is what he tells Johnny when he asks, pries. Broken fuck, ain't he? Unmated. Can't knot. Piss poor excuse of an Alpha. Doesn't he think it's—

“a shame,” Johnny grouses, words muffled slightly by the way he's hunched over the cheap plastic table in the canteen. His fingers dig harshly into his temple. “Alpha like you—” it's enunciated in clipped Queen's English, the barb makes Ghost scoff. “—ack! a waste. ma mam would be livid. no grandbabies t’show off? sacrilegious.”

—funny. If he's being honest. Laughable:

because for as long as Ghost can remember, he's always had a predilection to ruin his favourite toys. slaking his unquenchable lust on their tender skin, biting down to the bone, sipping on their marrow—

not really the sort of thing omegas today go for, is it? 

his want is as hideous as he is. as ugly as his goddamn mug—

Instead, he shrugs. “hardly.” 

“yer no’ missin’ it?” 

“missin’ what, Johnny?”

“knottin’, ye surly prick.” He jeers, then, jabs his elbow into Simon's arm. “a bonnie omega to stick yer prick in. ain't missin’ th’, no?”

“no,” Simon gripes. The last thing Price needs is another order of protection against his Lieutenant. But to humour the alpha in an early stage of rut, he jabs out, hollow and full of wretched derision. “i can barely remember what it felt like. must be heaven, though. is that your plans for tonight, Johnny? gonna go and knot some sorry omega?”

It's meant to prod, poke. Sharp barbs aimed at Johnny's threadbare control, the same one held in place by a fraying, unspooling knot. Alphas in the early stage of rut are considered safe enough to be around. Not yet mindless drones, hosts to an ugly little parasite; a being forced to obey a single, instinctual drive to mate, to gorge themselves into a post-rut stupor. 

Safe. Or so they say. 

But Ghost knows what Johnny's feeling in the same sense as a phantom limb. A broken, fragmented memory. So, he twists his mockery in deep. All in jest, of course. 

And Johnny pales suddenly. Wavers in his seat. The affirmative comes after a bout of contemplative silence. A jagged, choked yeah slips from his Sergeant’s mouth as he drops his head to the table, and groans. Miserable. 

“go fuck yerself, Lt.”

Simon intends on taking Johnny up on that offer, lazying out on the futon with his hand stroking lazily along his flaccid cock, thumbing through the latest series of snapshots Johnny—ever the photographer—snapped up during his previous rut. Images of pretty omegas dressed up in fine silk, blood-red lingerie, and coy little grins on their faces, a vixen pastiche of demureness. Jejune appeal in all its coquettishness.

Innocent sluts—Johnny's preferred type. Ones who'll bat their eyes at him, nervous and full of faux modesty, while they rock back and forth on his face, tugging on his mohawk to make him lick their cunts just the way they like. Sweet, like candy. Dressed in sin. 

He likes to take before and after photos of them—often with the pretty models unaware (adds to it, aye, Lt?). Ones with them batting their eyes at him, soft and shy in all their twee delight, and then fucked out, ruined and chewed up like a broken toy when he finishes with them. Bitten off more than they can swallow. Cheeky brats sobbing for mercy on his bed. 

Likes, even more, to send them to Ghost. A little tease. One he has no compunction about partaking in. Enjoying to his heart's content. 

Or—

Intended to, of course. Because what ends up happening is this:

Price calls just as he's getting into the new series sent to his phone—the tear streaks streaming down this omega’s face are particularly appealing, bound in intricate Celtic knots (Johnny, the artist), and gagged with their own panties—and tells him he has a job for him. 

Something simple. Discreet. And local, too. Bears have been sighted in town—a mama and her cubs. Dangerously close. 

The prelude to the phone call is a clipped take care’a it before the line goes dead. 

Ghost doesn't need to pack much—he can't remember the last time he unpacked his duffle bag, anyway—and stays in the recliner until the mission file comes in, idly stroking his thumb across the pixelated, tear-streaked face of the omega in Johnny's clutch. Moussed. Messy. They make the prettiest picture, don't they? Drool dripping down their chin, a spillover from what the lacy, white panties couldn't catch. 

Flesh peppered with jagged circles, bite marks. Johnny knows better than to claim them, and their neck is bereft of his teeth. Smooth. Unblemished. 

To claim is to bond. To bond—

Well. 

His earliest recollection of a relationship is his parents’. His mum, tied and trapped to a man she wanted no part of, but stuck. Unbondings, divorce, were rare during that time. Unheard of. Even now. 

And under his old man's influence, he's always seen claiming as ownership. As possession. A lingering remnant he’s told is wrong, but can't shake. Can't change. It glues in the fibrils of his mind. A rotten, pulsing scab that no amount of sanctioned reconditioning can ever seem to get rid of, to scrape out of his skull. 

(one he knows would be there no matter what because his sole purpose is exsanguination; bloodletting— 

in his warped desire to protect the things he cares about, he ends up smothering them in the end. a child holding a firefly too tight in its chubby fist.)

But Johnny knows better. Good Catholic boy. Knows to keep a muzzle on himself when he sucks desperate kisses into the small omegas' sweet neck, breaking apart the blood vessels of their scent glands, soaking himself in their musk—potent pheromones of a needy omega in heat. Aching for a bite. To be held down and conquered. 

It's wrong, they say. This ugly mass sits inside his chest like a foreign body. Scandalised eyes drilling into the side of his head like he's a monster for thinking this way. 

And he is. 

(always has been)

But he knows better. Knows to keep those uglier, rotten parts of himself hidden away from prying eyes. Got good at it, too. Enough that they let him into the brothels time and time again. 

Still—

He can remember the closest he'd come during a rut to biting a shrill omega who screamed in his ear until his head rang, ached. Nearly did it, too. Teeth razoring over their jugular, pinching delicate skin. 

Clarity came like a gunshot when he tasted blood. Chiselled a hole through his delirium, broke up the haze, and snapped his jaws up tight, locking them as he finished with a muffled growl, tongue swirling over his teeth for another taste. Another drop. 

His ruts have always been messy. Bloody. Got him banned from several centres, brothels, where they offered up betas drenched in the artificial musk of an omega in estrus. Ones resilient enough to withstand the harsh coupling of an unhinged Alpha in need. 

He had a problem, they said, with treating their workers like chew toys. Biting to break skin, drilling in deep enough to scratch his teeth on their bones. 

Deranged, they hissed. Fuckin’ mental, mate. Stay the hell away!

Some are just prone to violence. Need to be half-sedated before they can mate without ripping their partner to pieces. Ghost has always been that sort. Aggressive. Hard to control. Rabid. 

His appetite is bigger than the expanse of their skin. He sometimes thinks he could eat the whole world and still starve. 

He hums, thumb sliding to cover the omega's neck. Trapped in his hand, his clutch. They're cute when they're ruined like this. Begging. Whimpering. 

His cock gives a half-hearted twitch. His work phone chimes, signaling the end of his leisure. 

shame, he thinks, squeezing his hand until the metal dents, the screen cracks, splinters. Pops. Hairline fractures split across their distorted, tear-stained face. He closes his fist over it until it breaks. Goes black. 

really. such a goddamn shame. 

Some things are just not meant to be—

—but they have a habit of falling into his maw, anyway.

It's a simple set up. 

Man—

beast, monster, thing

—with his empty, growling stomach and teeth made to bite, tear, goes out hunting for a meal. In that search, he finds you. 

You, Persephone personified: damned (eternal), standing beneath a spruce tree. Limned, halo gold, in the waning sunset's bashful kisses, you lean on the rough bark, idling your timelessness away. 

Postcard beauty. Pinup demure. Alluring. 

(creature of sin

and oh, do you reek:

The air is saturated in the tantalising scent of honeybush, roasted hazelnuts, and clove. Saccharine—almost nauseatingly so—but with a hint of spice, black cardamom, cinnamon. He drags in lungful after lungful until it tangles deep within his chest, nearly suffocating. Smothered in this earthy sweetness. Drowning. Drowning—

the perfect dessert)

It unleashes something in him. Chips at the lock buried deep in his mind, cudgelling through the hinges until they pop. Rusted, slick with oxidising oil. It peels back from the gate, unveiling this gaping, ravenous chasm, polluted and gangrenous, rotten down to the marrow. Noisome. Noxious. This frothing pit sloshes, geyser-like, and greedily foams at the maw, the mouth, aching for a taste. Something to quench this gnawing hunger. 

This bottomless abyss hadn't seen light since he was eighteen, and—

The hollow space where his rib once sat throbs, aches. phantom bone. He holds his chest with his hand, feeling for the gap, the chasm, stolen from him. Ripped away, taken.

By you. you—

—so,

it's only fair that he steals something back. 

(quid pro quo, or something, right?)

You greet him with a small nod when he wanders close, eyeing him warily under the black rim of your ballcap. Tense. Small hands curl into fists, partially hidden under the rain-soaked windbreaker nearly two sizes too big. It smells like you—honeyed milk, molasses; lilac, lavender and warm bread—and he fights the urge to pull his mask down, to shove his misshapen nose into your neck, and breathe it in right from the source. Drinking, feasting, on it. 

This want is visceral. It coils in his guts, bubbling in his veins. His musk—heavier than yours, pungent—beads along his scent glands, mushrooming into the air like a fine mist. 

Your nostrils flare. He takes a step closer, eyes skewering into you, taking in everything you have to offer. The rucksack left at the bottom of the tree, stained with dirt and leaves. A sprig of Saskatoon berries peeks out from the lopsided flap. And—

Ah. 

Foraging is off-limits in this area unless granted a permit. One you don't seem to have based on the skittish way you keep avoiding his eye.

His scent thickens, tainted sour with faux suspicion, and you wince, ducking your chin, tucking it close to your chest, hiding from his spearing gaze. 

All it does is give him a voyeuristic view of your fragile nape, your vulnerable neck. 

His teeth ache. Jaw clenched up tight. 

It looks so bare. So naked. 

(Be a shame to keep it that way forever, wouldn't it?)

“Hi,” you stammer, seemingly oblivious to the musk you leak into the air, into his lungs. Forcing some sense of staid indifference into your tone. Like being here, out in the middle of the forest is normal. “Did you need something?” 

On the verge of a heat like this, wobbling where you stand—

He wants to chew you up. Spit out the pieces on the pavement. Drink from the gash he'll rip into your jugular,

quench this unbearable thirst. 

He doesn't know how you made it out here as long as you have, smelling like you do, and the thought burrows through the haze spuming, clotting, on the fringes of his muted periphery. Anger is an icy deluge of white water raging through his veins. 

Under the mask, the remnants of his scarred lip curls. His hands close into tight fists. Balled up. He feels the tension crackling along his muscles, his body. Coiled spring. Ready to leap—

But:

There's clarity. Focus. Where he was meant to become a mindless monster, driven by instinct, he instead feels the pieces of himself snap back into place. Missing puzzle pieces. It shifts. Settles. Locks. 

He wants you. Will have you. It's non-negotiable. Ironclad. You just—

Belong to him, don't you? Pretty little thief. And wandering around like this, reeking like you do, you must want him, too. Need him. 

(protect, protect, protect—)

Honed in, drilling into your face to catch every expression that flickers past, he sees the moment you take a sniff, when realisation blooms in the inkpools of your gaze that you are less than an arm's length away from a starving predator. Supple, soft. All plush flesh seated seamlessly against brittle bone. Fragile. 

“hi,” he echoes, and it sounds hollow. Garbled. Like he's speaking underwater. Thinks, for a moment, that he's buried again. Drowning under the crushing weight of dirt. His own tumulus. Suffocating. Choking on dirt—

But you twitch. Feral little thing. It breaks him out of this nightmarish obtundation; shaking the cobwebs loose. He tracks it like a viper. Attention narrowing, shrinking, into nothing but the way you move. Smell. You anchor him in his place, keeping him stable amid this horrific onslaught of emotions that rip talons down his chest. 

“I–” you breathe in again, lashes fluttering. Strains of silk batting over your etiolated cheeks. You breathe him in. Deep. He sees your chest grow, expanding with his air. His musk. Has to bite down on a growl before it forms, the lash of a whip in his throat. Aching. 

There's something spellbinding about you—caked in a layer of grime, briny sweat clogging your natural scent; wild and untamed. Uncharted wilderness, untouched by man and their dirty hands. A corrie after a rain shower. Snow melt. He wants to bathe in it. Carry it with him wherever he goes. 

As if scenting this thickening desire, your eyes widen. You take a step back, swallowing audibly when he follows. Marionette on strings. Your shadow. 

“I should go—”

And he knows he can't let you do that. 

Won't. 

He hums, a fickle, brittle thing in the far reaches of his chest. 

“Go?” he flicks his hand toward your bag, head cocking to the side in a mockery of contemplation. “Don' think you got a permit for that, do you?”

“A permit…”

He has you. Your eyes lower, falling to the badge on his chest. Game Warden. You stare at it, eyes widening. Swallowing thick. 

With you distracted, he leans in. Curves his body over you mockingly, like he's bending down to whisper a secret in your ear. Cupping a pretty little firefly in the palm of his hand. 

When his shadow falls over you—dark and damning—you flinch back, fists trembling under the hem of your jacket. Brows furrowed, knotted tight. Your lower lip wobbles. You try to hide that, too, by sinking your teeth into your flesh until it floods white under the strain. 

He wants to pry it apart with his own teeth. Take the bruised flesh into his mouth until you start to drool, whining from the abuse he inflicts on you in a mockery of a kiss. 

(wants to tear through it, taste your blood on his tongue—)

“An’ I don't reckon tha's a good idea, pet.” 

You shiver when he places his hand on the truck above your head. Boxing you in completely, nothing to spare—not even an inch. 

He hums at that, cock giving a vicious jerk inside his trousers at the almost impossible dearth between your sizes, at the way he swallows you up in an instant. Has to take a deep breath to steady himself, to keep the inkblack tendrils swirling, gathering, at the edges of his periphery from bleeding in. This starving murder of crows. 

When he speaks again, it's low. Deep. Kittenish licks from the tongue of a tiger; abrasive, rough. Mocking baritone of a shifting canyon, a mountainside, before it buries anyone alive under rubble. 

“Not reekin’ the way you do. Might ‘ave every alpha in a one square mile radius frothin’ at jaws for a taste. Ain't safe out there.”

And it's definitely not safe with him. 

He watches, transfixed, the moment this clicks. When your eyes waver between the hard bulk of his body—spread out, laxed; plumage unfurled—and the noisy clatter of the town just within reach. It's this thicket that cups your scent, that protectively curls over you, and keeps the Alpha's prowling about the market square from sniffing you out. A beaten trail. Hidden desire path no one was supposed to wander down. 

Except the bear problem in the woods, infringing on town, and him, the gun bolstered on his thigh still hot from his warning shots into the bush.

(lost little Lamb—

wandered too far from the herd.)

You take another step, cautious. Small. It brings you flush against the tree. Your polyester jacket whines at the friction. He can see indecision play out on your face. Oscillating between the badge on his uniform shirt, the gun on his massive thigh, and the clamour of muted noise from the town just within reach. Alphas prowling. Their acrid scent is unmistakable even through the dense foliage spreading around you.

It's an impasse. Neither option affords you much choice in the long run—it's either stay here with him, with the heady scent of want, of an Alpha on the incipient cusp of a voracious rut; or risk yourself in town. There are police officers patrolling. Ones who can sedate an alpha who gets too out of hand, but still. 

The mimesis of desire pooling around you might send you into heat sickness. That, or you'll get in even more trouble for fleeing a pursuing officer. Resisting arrest. Jail time, certainly. 

The pendulum wavers. Your knotted fists wobble. 

Then—

Your eyes leave his chest, the gun, trailing over his shoulder. Widening in surprise at whatever is there in the distance. 

He ought to commend you, really. The rouse is quite believable—

But: 

“Not bad,” he murmurs, leaning down further. If you won't jump, he'll push you—

He sees his mistake as soon as it happens. 

As he bends, you drop. Waiting until his attention seemingly drifts elsewhere, to when he's distracted and off balance. Lured in by your faux attempt at distraction. 

And it might have worked on a lesser being, but all Ghost has ever been is raw, unadulterated instinct.

He lashes out as soon as you move again, palm curling over your wrist in an instant. Snapping jowls of a defensive snake. Shackled. Locked. He tugs—

But the movement costs momentum. You use this against him, going limp. Forcing him to take the brunt of your weight on the spread of his fingers. Tricky little minx. His mouth breaks out in a feral smirk, tugging harshly on scars, on burns. Stretching skin. Distorting it under the mask, ugly and vicious. 

Your scent plumes up around him, sickly sweet. His jaw aches, gums itch. He wants to bite, snap his jowls around the scruff of your neck, chew on your skin until you sob out his name—

In seconds, you twist. Swinging your body back in a beautiful pivot, clumsy as it is. You're all animal now. Reckless in your pursuit to escape. Throwing out pheromones at him—purposeful, he realises a moment too late. 

And it works. Distracts him long enough for his grip to slacken. Your arm slips out of his grasp, and you're on your feet in an instant, darting through the thicket in a maddened dash to escape the heavy, starving alpha and his burgeoning hunger. 

Escape, or—

Weighed down by the afterbirth of his sudden rut, a prickle of his old self buoys, brims, from beneath the mess. He shouldn't chase you. Should leave you alone, call someone—Price, perhaps. Bark out between a clenched jaw that he needs a tranquiliser and chains. Will have to break Simon's teeth to stop him from biting into you like a man starved, famished. Tie him to the back of his pickup truck, drag him to the edges of the forest. Knock him out. Knock his teeth in. 

Anything.

Because they said this might happen. The doctors’ who poked and prodded. Therapists—all mandatory, non-negotiable, when he signed his name on the dotted line—murmured about unravelling. His self-control snapping like a twig. Sense of self retreating. All hiding away, protecting itself from the torrent of chemicals flooding his hindbrain. A heavy, unrelenting accumulation of a decades-long bout of rut celibacy all washing over him, all at once. 

Said to lock himself up if it happens. Chains. Shackles. Nuts and bolts. Heavy tranquiliser. Immediate sedation. 

And in Price’s office, in that messy filing cabinet he keeps, is a folder. A playthrough of everything that's supposed to happen if this happens. 

(“but that won't happen, will it, Simon?” 

and he'd rolled one massive shoulder in an easy, effortless shrug. 

“no.”)

The failsafe is that he's meant to call in if it does. Precious seconds of clarity, cognisance, enough time for him to dial the number, to bark out the order. To be hunted down, rounded up, and thrown in a pit. 

where he belongs. 

He should. Should. It's the book. Rules. Coloured in red ink. No option to negotiate. 

But as you slip through the dense foliage, angelic gold against the phthalo green bosky, the knot in his shoulders abates. Uncoils. In this sense of ease that permeates within him, he finds that he's shockingly cognisant. In full control. The plexiglass shatters, and in the ruins he finds purpose. 

You smell good. Too good. Any alpha will scent you in an instant, will claim you. Take you. It makes something in his broken, moulted head shift. Crack. He can't let that happen. Has to protect you the only way he knows how—

To wrap his paws around your throat before any other Alpha has the chance to sink their teeth into you. To claim you. 

All his. Little Persephone tucked tight against his ribs where you belong. 

And if the way the air clots with your cloying smell—heady, potent; the unmistakable ripeness of an omega in heat—then you must want him to chase you. Want him to follow. 

(escape, or—

a game.)

He tracks your movements, honed in on the rustle of the underbrush. When you're out of sight, Ghost flexes his hand, curling his gloved fingers over the leather on his palm. There's an itch in the back of his head. Festering. Rotting. He wants to reach in, rake his claws down the mass, shred it to pieces, but it affixes one simple truth inside of him: 

you need him. want him. why else would you run in the opposite direction of help if you didn't want him to give chase?

And so, he does.

You're a crafty little thing. To throw him off of your trail, you leave scent markers on the tree trunks you pass, doubling back to run in the opposite direction. 

It might have worked on someone else, but Ghost has spent half of his life buried in this thicket, and knows better than to follow smells in the forest. A vacuum, a great chasm; it plays tricks with sounds. Distorts scents wafting through the canopy, mingling with the natural loam, the disturbed humus underfoot. 

Instead, he hums at your cleverness—his smart little omega—and shifts his gaze to the forest floor, roaming over the footprints sinking into the soft soil, the peat and moss. A breadcrumb trail leading right to you. Broken twigs, crushed bushes. 

Ghost follows it. Places each foot down carefully, nose angled upward to catch the fresh wave of your heat leaking through the tangled furze. It beckons him forward. Calls out to him. 

(come, come, come—)

This lost little lamb needs a shepherd. 

He intends to give you just that. 

(—find me)

The path you cut through the forest is a twisting sawtooth meant to throw him off your trail. Traps laid out in tall tussocks, weaved through sweetgrass all drenched in your scent. Pieces of your clothing torn at the hem, the shorn fabric pressed on pine needles and tangles furze. 

These breadcrumb trails—a neat nest of wile, it seems—are cunning, he'll give you that. 

Even with his eyes to the forest floor, he finds himself throwing a wayward glance in the opposite direction, snagged in your webbed subterfuge. Somewhere between the visitors centre and the first trail meandering into the thick taiga, you seemed to have realised that your boots leave indents in the mor. He follows the deep impressions in the podsol until he finds them shoved under a Saskatoon berry bush. Another dead end. 

Clever little thing, aren't you?

But even when strays from the path, he's right on your tail. Confident in his scenting abilities. His prowess has always been tracking down wily little rabbits when they try to flee, picking them off in stasis from high above. The layout might have changed—his perch closer to the ground instead of a deer stand—but his eyes are just as keen. Your winding trail is ingrained in his mind. A long loop through the eastern trailhead, and he knows, instantly, that you'll try to throw him off at the placard where the west trail branches off through the dense conifers, and the east meanders downslope to the hidden stream where hunters like to trawl. 

He feels a pinch of pride simmering low in his guts. Anyone else would have lost you three pitfalls back. He's enraptured by this pursuit. Smitten by you. Your clumsy little escape. Your sweet little ploys. He wants to chew into you, let his teeth leave jagged scars, false starts, on your bones. Permanent. Starlight—dusting meteor showers in milk white. 

Ghost’s belly gives a tremendous growl. He huffs at the ache clawing against tissue, ravenous and unbearably empty. 

He'll have you soon. All to himself. 

The thought makes fresh blooms of pleasure spume from the rot in his chest, prickling through the layers of muskeg and peat, etiolated little sprout. Germinating in wet gangrene. Feasting on necrotised flesh. 

He swipes his hand over a honeybush, catches the lingering scent clinging to the leaves. You must have fallen here. Tangled yourself in the furze, overcome by your heat. 

Poor thing. Tired already. 

He holds his hand up to the fading gossamer of twilight trickling through the dense canopy, clenching the lingering remnants of your scent in his fist. It's fresh. He wants to tuck it in his pocket, carry it around with him. 

He finds you in a small clearing, bent down with your palm resting on the trunk of a tree. Nails digging into the rotting bark, desperately struggling to catch your breath. Your heat is a wildfire. It scorches the earth. Burns his nose. 

You're no longer on the cusp of it anymore, but in the throes. 

His rut, he finds, isn't too far behind. 

Perfect synergy. Meant to be. You call to him, and the gaping, gnarled chasm inside of him answers with a growl—

Before you can blink, he moves.

He falls over you, felled timber. The earth shakes under his indomitable weight. Palms slam into the rough bark of the gnarled spruce you've taken respite against, boxing you in. 

You fall against it with a gasp, hands pushing against his broad chest as he backs you into the tree. Little fists pounding on his sternum, mouth pinched, twisted in a snarl. There are pieces of bush caught on your clothes, tangled in your hair. Leaves. Sticks. A spot of dirt on your nose. 

It's mesmerising. 

The ballcap falls first. Morning sunlight over a boscage in bloom. Pitfalls, ravines. The canyons of your eyes quiver; this new topography shifting, sliding. Tectonic beauty in muted midnight. 

He wants to reach in, feel these granite walls of yours with his bare hands. Clamber up the colluvium, the scree, until he reaches these rugged peaks gleaming at him, angry and feral, in fading twilight. 

Time is endless. There's no limit to how long he has to know you—drink from your rivers, feast on your valleys; find all the hidden nooks, the crannies, shaded under the towering monoliths of your body. Chart your couloir. Defile your flume. Bathe in your estuary. Tangle himself inside your dells. Tame your chaparral. 

Fastidiously. Expertly. Until no part of you is unknown to him. 

Your chest heaves, mouth open as he crowds you further. Pressing into you. Over you. 

He wedges his broad thigh between your legs, presses it tight against your pussy. Your thrashing stills when he touches you, when he angles his knee up, up—

There. Through the layers of clothing that separates his bare skin from your cunt, he feels the heat bleeding out against him. The wetness from your sodden panties. Undeniable proof of how much you want him. Need him. 

 “All wet f’me?”

“Fuck you—!” You spit, angry and feral, but you arch into his touch, pushing your pussy onto his thigh. Aching for friction. 

It makes him hum. A low growl caught in the back of his throat. 

“Reckon I'll be the one fuckin’ you, pet.” 

And he will be. This is fact. 

You shudder, brows notching together in a vicious glare. “I don't want you.” 

It's hissed between the sliver of your clenched teeth. Full of heavy conviction. Forging truth out of lies—

And that's all it is. A lie. A fallacy. 

(and even if it wasn't, unlikely considering the way you arch into him, needy despite the disdain dripping down your brow—he really just can't find it in himself to give a fuck; he'll make you want him—)

Ghost leans down, muzzle pressed against your neck. He inhales deep, audible. Chest expanding, lungs swelling. Full of the aroma bleeding out of your pores. Proof of just how much you do, in fact, want him. Betrayed by your own body. 

He huffs out, paints the air with his derision. “Is that so?” 

Ghost drags his hand down the solid line of the tree, dropping it to rest against the jut of your hip. He ducks his head, watching. Staring at the way his palm nearly swallows you up when he rests it over your waist. Spanning nearly the entirety of it—hip to hip. 

It bludgeons into him. Knocks the air clean from his lungs. 

He's always had a hunger for things he can cup in his palm. The barrel of his rifle. The hilt of a knife. Your wrist in his hand. The curve of your hip. 

His gloved fingers slip under the hem of your shirt. Pads ghosting over your skin. Warmth bleeds through the leather, an unmistakable tell of your heat reaching its first equinox. It'll be all fire, all smoke, from this point onward. Desperate. Feral. 

Groaning deep, wanting, he pushes into you further. Chest rumbling. Eager. 

It takes a great deal of effort to pull his hand away. To bring it up to his mouth, fingers hooking over the edge. 

The fight in you abates—marginally—and you watch him with a keen look of suspicion dancing in the moulted dirt spread over your nullah. Wary. Anticipatory. 

He fights the urge to laugh—deep and delirious—and instead works on prying his mask down over his crooked nose, his mangled mouth. Letting the hem snap under his chin, kept there. Bearing himself to you for the first time. Naked. Exposed. 

Your eyes widen, trailing down the jagged lines, mauled ridges of scar tissue. Drinking in everything he offers in the fading embers of a summer twilight. 

He grins—a rivened, ugly thing—when you let out a heavy, quick breath, and your hips drop, rutting your sopping cunt over the wide heft of his thigh. Gyrating subconsciously. Quietly pleased by the way he looks—as maimed, as beastly as he is. He lets you. Lifts his knee, pressing his cap tight into the bark, and bumping the top of his flexing quadriceps at the apex of your groin, right where he knows your clit sits. 

The breath you take is pulled in through clenched teeth, biting on the rind of a moan. Its shapeless silhouette ducks, hides from sight. 

He lets you have it. Lets you run. 

But it's not without recompense. 

With his upper lip curled, he sinks his teeth into the leather tip of the glove above his middle finger. Letting you see them for yourself—these thrawn teeth he'll bury into your neck. Claiming you entirely as his. 

Your pupils start to eclipse your irises. Lagoons of liquid black blotting over rugged peaks. 

Ghost slowly tips his head back, dragging the glove with him. Eyes setting along his lashline, he drinks in the sight of you swallowing thickly, your gaze darting between his teeth, his mouth, and now—his bared neck. Voracious, greedy, in the way you feast on him. Drilling into the stretch of skin slowly unveiling itself to you. 

The muscles in his neck flex against rimy skin. Adam's apple bobbing with his slow swallow. 

You follow it all, but your gaze seems to fix itself on the brawny arch of his neck, falling—and then glueing— to the thick vein protruding from his flesh, pulsing with the steady rhythm of his heart, and the small, swollen bump of his scent gland beneath it. 

Hunger, he finds, paints such a pretty picture on your face. The greedy, anfractuous glances a bludgeon into him; so heavily affixed with desire that the shake of your head when he pulls the glove free, letting it dangle from between his teeth, and drops his hand back to your skin, is minute. Meaningless. 

You want him as much as he wants you. 

The clause in this, the axiom, is ironclad. Irrefutable. Bound in brass when you shiver at the touch—feverish skin on feverish skin—and arch into his palm for more. Panting through clenched teeth, each hiss striking against that fraying coil leashing his threadbare control. To distract himself from the unspooling knot, the ache in his gums, he charts the first inch of skin he passes with his thumb, committing the sloping plains of your body to memory. The jut of your hip, the stutter in your breath when he runs the rough pad of his forefinger over the slope of your underbelly. 

It's easy to marvel at the sheer enormity of his size compared to yours. Simon hitches his thigh firmly into your clothed cunt, nearly lifting you up off the ground. You teeter on the tips of your toes, falling forward into his chest to stabilise yourself. Little fists curling into the fabric of his jacket, knuckles tight against his the last rungs of his ribcage. Your head lifts, a glare chiselling into the soft fields of your face. 

You hiss something at him—feral and scathing. He drops the glove, leans down to meet you in the middle, and eats your feeble protests from your lips in a bruising kiss. Scorching. His teeth knock into yours. Tongue lashes out to catch the vitriol dripping from your fangs. You make a noise in the back of your throat, and he swallows that, too. Devours it all. 

It's a vicious kiss. All teeth, tongue. Bullying. He lets you sink your teeth into his tongue, huffing into the seam of your lips when you coo, victoriously, at the first drop of blood spilled. 

In retaliation, he sets his hands over your ribs, and lifts you up off the ground. Making you gasp. Mewl. Your legs kick out as the back of your head catches on loose bark, raining it down over your shoulders in flakes. He doesn't stop kissing you throughout. Eyes half-mast, still open, as he drinks in the sight of yours rolling back in your head when his thigh, one the width of both of yours—fuckin’ hell—catches the perfect angle on your clit. 

Loose-limbed, caught, you have no choice but to wrap your ankles around his waist, curl your arms around his broad shoulders. Clinging to him desperately to remain grounded, held aloft. 

His hand falls down, cups the back of your thigh, fingers spanning the entire curve of your cheek. Held tight in his palm. He bucks into you—quick, hard. Letting you feel the unmistakable bulge of his stiffening cock, leaking spend already in the tight confines of his trousers. This groin, inner thighs, already sticky with the mess dribbling out. 

You fall apart at this. Head tipping back, crown thudding against the truck of the tree. He has your lower lip between his teeth, and it pulls, skin stretching until he huffs out another breath, mocking, and unhinges his jaw, letting you go. 

Mewling, whining low in the back of your throat, you clumsily rut your cunt into the hard press of his cock. Eyes hazy, liquid, with your blooming heat. 

Its approach is quicker than he thought it would be, and he hums, tongue rolling over his teeth to catch the lingering taste of you. Under his hand, your skin burns. Singing with the urgency of your desperation. He answers it with a grunt, falling forward to smother you under his weight. 

There's a flash of clarity in your eyes when they crack open. Brief. Fleeting. He feels your sluggish attempt to push him away, to free your hands from between your chests, and he has to dip his head to stifle another groan. It feels good to have you under him like this. Covered entirely in his bulk, his shadow. 

His hand pulls away from your flesh, snaking between your bodies to catch your wrists in the palm of his hand. Only one swallows them up, and the easy way he subdued you—effortlessly—has him nearly coming undone in his trousers. Untouched. 

“Fuck, want it bad, don't you?” he snarls, hips bucking into you. Chasing pleasure. He pulls your hands out, lifting to arm to trap yours in the shackle his fingers make high above your head, and—

It's devious, this. 

Somewhere in the loosening agency of his self, his autonomy, he knows this is becoming dangerous. Something that ought to be stopped before he rips into you with a rabidness that promises nothing at all will remain intact when he's finished. When he's had his fill. He needs to clear his mind. To get away from the way you fit against him so perfectly. Tiny in his wicked embrace. 

Like you were made to fit between his ribs. His teeth. 

He gnashes them together, trying to stem the ache in his gums. 

He wants to fuck you. Needs to—

But as ripe as you smell to him now—tender melon, warmed honeycomb—he knows that you're not yet ready to take him. 

Ghost steps back, letting your feet drop to the soil below. With the sparse inch of space between your bodies, he breathes in the lingering scent of your breath—sharp, burning; imbued with a heady thrum of adrenaline electrifying your nerves—and finds the musk a near-perfect pantomime of ozone. The arid tang in the air just before the air. A lightning strike. It rolls over his tongue, tastes of wet pennies in the back of his throat. Heavy with anticipation. 

Something he feels very keenly as well. An eagerness he hasn't met in decades. Absolutely famished for it, for this familiarity of want. Potent desire. 

He mourns the loss of the way your ass fits in the cradle of his hand when he pulls it free, fingers trailing over the feverish skin of your hips, your belly, as he goes. He doesn't stop until he comes to rest on the button of your trousers, eyes flickering down to catch your gaze. Purposeful, now. Intent clear. 

Nothing is stopping him from taking. Your protests are paper-thin, dissolving the moment it touches the dense blanket of humidity in the air, but he wants your submission. Wants to see your resolve break, crushed by your own hand. 

The gossamer wings of a butterfly, crumpled up in your palm, and offered to him for the taking. How sweet—

You seem to realise his intentions when his thumb dips below the hem of your pants. Just a tease. Brushing against the soft skin he finds there with the curve of his nail. 

Your glare is instant. The sharp tug of a drawstring pinching tight between your brow. Mesmerising as it closes over your lax expression. A fierce snap. He wants to pry it apart. Wedge himself between the seam. Create a gap wide enough for him to fit. 

“I won't beg,” you grind out, acidulous. Firm. 

He huffs, quietly amused by the fight still sparking in you despite the evidence of your arousal, your want of him, evident in the stain at the seam of your pants. His other hand rests on the trunk of the tree above your head, boxing you in when he leans closer. Taunting. “That so?” 

You don't respond, but your glare sharpens, mouth tugging downward in a harsh frown. Displeasure sparks in the air. Cutting into him like fine glass shards. He lets it graze his naked flesh, the warning ghosting over him in needlepoint pinpricks. Entirely too captivated by you to notice the sting. 

Your ire is a heady, tangible thing dripping down your brow, slashing over your cheeks. Anger, however misguided it might be, paints a pretty picture over your face. Darkens the inlets nestled in the corner of your eyes. Drenches the ravines, gorges in a startling chiaroscuro. Limns the alpines, the valleys, in a halo of golden starlight. 

He wants to drink it down. Hold your fury in the palm of his hand—

Crush it between his fingers. 

Because despite the dissent, your desire cuts through, and hews the air in a thick tapestry of want. 

mutinous, teeth bared, but your eyes burn, rage against the prison walls, and scream, please—

His fingers dig into the bark above your head, catching flecks of sap between his nails. Knuckles turning white under the flaxen hair dusting over them, strained. The grip is unintentional. Unconscious. He keeps thinking about you beneath him. The heat of your thighs around his waist was a mere tease. A morsel when he wants a meal—

The pressure in his knuckles grounds him. Cuts through the phosphenes blanketing the edges of his vision, smothering the clarity, the cognisance, that lingers in the centre. Threadbare as it is. 

There’s an ache in his jaw. 

(the need to bite—)

He pulls it off, and shoves his hand tight between your thighs, cupping your cunt in his palm. Feeling the heat bleed through the gusset of your pants. The touch is harsh. Firm. He bullies his fingers into your flesh, letting out a mocking chuff when he feels the fabric dampen.  

“Somethin’s’ tellin’ me otherwise.” 

Your hand lashes out, grabbing the thick of his wrist. Holding firm. It should be a warning, but the obvious gap between your middle finger and thumb makes him groan instead. 

“You're wrong.”

“Am I?” 

You twist away from him when he leans down, chin ducking to your shoulder. Hiding. Denying him your mouth, your taste. This meagre measure of control you grapple for is easy to give. He presses his lips to the shell of your ear instead, letting you run. Flee. For now. 

His voice is thick when he continues, husky. He pitches it low, lets it swirl into the seashell coil of your inner ear, earning him a shiver in response. Your nails biting into the skin of his wrist. Holding tight. 

“‘m a lot of things, pet—” rucked gravel, sodden with his derision, spills into your ear. Your shudder makes him want to bite, to maim. “Wrong ain't usually one of ‘em. But you'll learn that soon enough.” 

Your breath hitches. Expression morphing, shifting. Changing into something adorably beleaguered as he encircles you like a tiger, eyes drilling through the tussock, aimed directly at your head. With his body boxing you in, coiling over you like a hideous shadow, he has you trapped, caught. Little lamb writhing between the paw of a tiger.  

You seem to be keenly aware of this. Your eyes are shrewd, searching, as you probe around for any escape route, but he's a bulwark around you. Inescapable. 

Finding none, you suck in another breath, and slowly lift your chin, glancing up at him through your lashes. The look on your face is—

Enigmatic. 

Something changes in the morphology of your mien. Fracturing. Cracking. 

“Yeah?” You breathe, soft and goading. Your hips buck into his hand, rutting shallowly against the tops of his fingers. Unconscious. Like you just couldn't help it. 

And he supposes you can't. 

A fine sheen of sweat has been building since he took after you into the forest. Gathering around your temple, your hairline. The harsh reminder of your festering heat, once dammed by your raw disdain for him—hatred, he'd say, and doesn't the thought just make him want to laugh; you're all bark, no bite, and he knows he'll have fun breaking you in, breaking you apart—but flooded over by the primal drive to mate. 

And he's perfect for you, isn't he? 

Hideous bastard that he is. It's a sharp juxtaposition to your prettiness, your earthly beauty. 

Under the spinel sky, you break. The hand on his wrist tightens, your hips flexing into his palm. Seeking friction. Needing pressure. Needing him. And pissed off about it. Delicious. 

“Prove it,” you snap, irritation blanching the corners of your eyes arsenic white. Edging into a frenetic desperation hot enough to burn the threads of your resolve. But there's a gleam of reluctance pushing through the syrupy murk folding over you, heavy molasses. You want to give in, but there's something about him, his appetite, that makes you hold back. That makes you visibly sick at the sight of him—

Unfortunately for you, he has no such compunction to shelf his barbarity. To leash his desire, to muzzle the overwhelming urge to crush you under the weight of his accumulated need. It's decades of listless apathy. Divorced from anything resembling human emotion at the root. Carved out, scraped off bone. He was left to stagnate. A misfortunate creature submerged in a bog, dead but unable to rot. 

The deluge of his savage, bestial hunger rages in his veins. It's corrosive, vile, and—

unrestrained. 

Ravenously esurient. He wants to sink his teeth into you and never let go—

but first: 

he needs to eat. 

His meal is a feast, it turns out. Simon gorges himself until he's full. Promises that he'll stop as soon as he's satiated. 

(but he's lying to himself, and to you, because he never is—

never will be.)

Tears pebble along your lash line as he feasts on your sopping cunt, licking at your fluttering rim, slurping up your slick. Your clit is pressed tight against the crooked arch of his nose, sliding and catching on the jagged ridge each time he moves his jaw to dig deeper inside of you as if he's trying to taste the seal of your womb. You pant, whine. The noise muffled half-heartedly behind your palm. Teeth sunk into your skin, lodged against your bone. 

Angry rivulets rain down your cheeks, dangling like fine beads, gems, on your jaw. He wants to taste them next, as soon as he fills his gullet with the earthy tang you release. 

Your tears remind of that pretty omega Johnny sent to him—a brat, he'd said; the best, Lt—and it churns in his stomach, dredging up something awful. Terrible. He wants to make you weep harder. Wants you sobbing, begging. His own little brat to take over the knee whenever he wants—

But that's where the uncanny resemblance ends. 

You're not a brat. No. You're a headache. The kind that will have him written up, sat like a bad dog in his best suit, as they level him with charges, and orders, and the like. The sort of thing that even the old man wouldn't be able to string him out of—not that he would. Price is three days away from a much-deserved retirement to the mountains and sitting on his hands to keep from snatching up the pretty conservation officer who moons at him whenever he passes by. 

He won't be much help to get Ghost out of trouble. That leaves only Gaz and Soap. And while he's sure they can swing it, he doesn't really want to be under their ahh, guess ye/ya owe us one, Lt/Riley. 

So—

It stands to reason then that he should have you tamed before dawn. Shackled down, locked up tight. Only right considering he's the best in town to keep bears at bay. Do you really want to deal with a mama grizzly and her defenceless cubs? Or a starving male clumsily pawing his way out of hibernation? 

Probably not. 

So. So. 

He pulls back, rests his chin on your thigh. 

“Gonna be good for me, pet?” He asks, lowering his tone considerably until it catches on the gravel below. 

He's not surprised when you hiss through a cloud of tears. “Go fuck yourself—”

Ghost tips his head, suckles your clit into his mouth. Tongue laving over your flesh. Blunt teeth pressing flat against the swollen bead, a tease. You tense, gasping. Hand pushing his head back, back—

“Don't, don't—” you're mewling, nails raking over his scalp. Hips bucking, pulling back. Struggling to get away. The bite marks along your thighs weep fresh blood in your struggle, filling his nose with the heavy scent of iron. 

They serve as a harsh reminder of what he can do with these jagged teeth of his. 

He chuckles, mouth still closed around your clit. The vibrations have you choking, spine curving into a beautiful arch. 

Fingers digging into your hips, keeping you still. Trapping you. He's not quite done with your cunt, yet. And all this wriggling is something he can do without. With his hand pressed to your hips, he notches the other down your thigh. Tracing his index finger over your soft skin, dragging it close to your outer lips. Catching the tacky slick drying on your flesh with the tip. 

Tiny fists rain down over his shoulders. Urging him forward, eager for more. Selfish, spoiled little thing. 

What a monster he's made—

“Patience, pet,” he coos, mocking and mean. Likes the way you react to the patronisation in his tone. All taut shoulders, shaking fists. Bearing your teeth at the slight, the stinging barb. Shaking in an amalgamation of embarrassment and shame. 

You seem to like it when he's a little awful to you. A little mocking. Cruel. 

“Shut up—!” You hiss, lips curling as you glare down at him. “I'm not your pet—”

He ignores you. Bends down to sniff at your cunt instead, and finds his answer is the white hot desire he can taste in the back of his throat when he breathes you in. 

His fingers pry apart your folds, and he greedily drinks in the sight of your drenched hole, clenching down on nothing. Poor you. His heart thunders in his chest, rages. He wants to sink inside of you—impossibly deep—until the beginning of him and the end of you ceases to exist. Rolled into a single being, atoms merged. Bodies fused. He wants to take everything from you. All of it. Eat it out of the cup of his hand like pomegranate seeds, let the skin get stuck in his teeth. 

He wants to devour you whole.

(to eat—)

Settles, instead, for pawing at your cunt. 

Pressing the width of it against your slit, feeling the heat of your core on the palm of his hand. Branding himself with the intensity of your desire. Another scar among many. An uncountable number of jagged asteroids cratering along his flesh, making a home out of a ghost. A shell. 

Reinforced, too, by the absurdity of how terribly contrasted his flesh is to yours. Monstrous. His scarred hand rests over your pussy, encompassing it entirely with extra digits to spare. Folding each finger on top of the other to wedge between the basin of your thighs. And as his gaze comes to rest on the way he swallows you up, he is struck by the garishness of his hand—hideous scar tissue, burns—falling over your pretty cunt. 

Sinful. Frankensteinian beast palming the sweet pussy of a pretty, human woman, and—

Fuck. 

His cock twitches, spits out a thick glob of pre-cum.

Ghost has never wanted to ruin something as badly as he wants to ruin your cunt. You. Mess you up so badly that everyone will know you belong to him, and him alone. To brand you with the tattoo of his teeth on your mons; force a claiming bite on the pillowy skin above your clit. His ownership bracketed between your thighs, at the very apex of your hip bones. Buried into tissue right under the bulge of your womb. A fecund valley for him to lay waste; for you to grow beauty from the rot, the ash. 

Cinder scraps over his nerves. Fells his resolve in a brutal sweep. 

He comes undone at the seams, unravels. 

Simon curls his fingers into a loose fist, passing the rugged peaks of his bone over your soft flesh. Gathering slick on thick, scarred knuckles. He holds it there, folds pried apart by his hand, content to luxuriate in the softness of your flesh, the scorching heat.

Possessively, he unhitches his thumb from the coil of his fist, and swipes it over your clit. More slick leaks out as you keen. 

“Sweet omega like you should ‘ave been claimed by now,” he rumbles evenly despite the sour twist in his guts at the thought. “Might not ‘ave ended up ‘ere, would you ‘ave? Beggin’ the first alpha you see to fuck this sweet little cunt.”

“Begging?” 

“Practically gaggin’ for it, weren't you?” And even though the words are his own, they sit in his gut like a stone. An angry knot tangled in his intestines, snaking its way up his gullet. Bitter. It's quelled by the sight of your bare neck. Ripe for his teeth. And his alone.

But even if you had a pretty ring made by another alpha, Simon knows that wouldn't have stopped him from taking you, anyway. Biting over the claim. Breaking it between his teeth. Precious, loving union shattered by his crooked greed. He'd have relished in it, too. Basked in the way you sobbed as he tore your alpha into pieces. An obstacle turned into a pretty effigy at his feet. Wicker pyre burning to keep him warm.

(he'd have caught dinner for you, too; hunted caribou, moose, and roasted it over the open flame. Fucked you under the blume of orange. Let the fire lick across your skin as he sunk in deep—)

He rocks back on his haunches. Mood labile, quicksilver, as his rut grows. Festers. 

You deny it, breathless, as he slips the mountainous peak of his bent middle finger into your hole, stretching your rim around the scarred cartilage. You pulse around him like the fluttering wings of a hummingbird. Rapid, quick. Wanting. It draws him in. Makes him want to spit on your pretty pussy, and then break you apart on his cock—

“Such a needy cunt, eh? Starving for a good knot, ain't it?”

You hiss out your protests, but clench tight around his knuckle. He chuckles, and it's liquid. Wet rot. Lungs polluted, spitting nocuous, black smoke into the air. 

“I'm not—”

“You are.” 

He pulls back, pursing his mouth, and spreads your lips apart, opening you up wide and vulnerable to his prying eyes. Saliva puddles on his tongue. He gives you a moment to clue into what he's about to do, your fingers tightening, nails digging into his scalp as you do on a shallow gasp of disgust. Then, brutish, he leans forward, and spits. Lets the glob hit your clit, and he has to hold you still when you jerk, cringing away from him, snarling out your displeasure.

“You're disgusting—”

The protests are weak. Your knees tremble, giving away the growing slickness gathering on the insides of your thigh. 

He hums, watches as it oozes down between your folds, over your fluttering hole, before it falls to the ground between your legs. He lets his hand fall back over your cunt, middle finger gathering his spit. Rubbing it around your pebbled clit. It's done detachedly, perfunctory. A means to an end with hardly much concern for your pleasure. Not yet, anyway. 

You've given him nothing in return yet. 

He intends to change that soon. 

As you grapple with the harsh reality he presents to you—one of ownership, humiliation, and pleasure on his whim—he drags his finger down, sliding it between your soft lips until he reaches your hole once more. Petting around the drenched entrance slowly, softly, humming under his breath about how wet you are. 

Your hips drop, greedily chasing after his finger. You won't ask—not yet—but he likes the way you rut against him: all hateful, spiteful. Like you can't decide on what you want more—to bash his head in, or keep it locked tight between your thighs. Sweet thing. 

“Need me, don't you?” He sinks his finger in. Nearly whites out at the pressure, the tightness, he feels. Soft, wet. Squeezing him in a vice as you yowl, whimpering into the stretch like it matters. Like his thick, scarred finger is the most you'd ever taken before. Sweet girl. So naïve. 

He drinks in the sight of your flesh forcibly being parted around his knuckle, matting the wisps of blond on his skin as it leaks down to his wrist, until that, too, is pushed up into you. His whole finger now engulfed in the wet heat of your body as you squirm around the stretch, pulsing around him like a heartbeat. 

He groans when he tastes your discomfort on the back of his tongue. 

“Don't worry, lovie. M’gonna take good care’a you.”

You watch him with slitted eyes as he pushes you down to the forest floor, glaring over your shoulder as he adjusts you the way he wants. Maneuvers you around like a little toy. Forearms braced against the trampled grass, knees sinking into soft moss. Thighs spread. Cunt bare, drenched. Ready to be claimed. Taken. 

He drops to his knees, shuffling close from behind you. His hand drops to your lower back, pressing your torso down further into the ground below. His cock aches between his thighs. Heavy, fat. He reaches down with his other hand to where it droops, smearing pre-cum over his inner thigh. He catches it in his fist, flushed the colours of a fresh bruise—angry red, purple—and strokes along the sensitive skin of his shaft, dragging it up and over his engorged head. Pre-cum weeps from the tip, drools long strains down to the forest floor. Puddles thick between your knees. 

A prelude, perhaps, for what's to come. When he has you tied like a bow around his knot, milking all the pent-up spend from his heavy, full balls. 

It's been decades since he had this—

(“shame.”

he concurs.)

Simon pulls his cock up, taps it against your pebbled clit. Drinks in the sight of you keening, cunt gushing more slick out of your empty hole, dribbling down your thighs. Mingling with the mess he already started making. 

It shocks him how good it feels just to tap his cockhead on your pretty pussy. To drag it through your slit, teasing it against your fluttering hole that drools copious slick over him. 

He wants to make a mess of you. Fuck your pussy until you cum, until all you can feel is the split of him inside of you. Filling you. Ruining you. 

Until all you can think about is the thick drag of him against your stuffed walls. Empty without him plugging you up. Desperate for his cock, his knot—hungry little slut just for him. All for him.

He presses the head of his cock against your rim, letting it catch. Holding it there. A tease. Just a little taste. 

Likes when you whimper, head hanging between your shoulders, fingers curling into the moss below. You make such a pretty picture like this—the expanse of your back bare for his eyes to roam, locking on the dimples of your hips, the curve of your waist. The plump shape of your ass inviting him in—eager for a bite. Your flesh looks bare, lonely, without his mark. The contrast of his own inked palm—fingers webbed with faded lettering, some slogan he picked up in his youth. Hands etched in black. Lines bleeding, bulky. The unmistakable tremble of an incipient artist’s first brush of a needle on real skin. Jagged, garring. Ugly. He lets his hand rest against the small of your back, groaning at the way it looks. 

Sinful.

You're made for soft silk and a fluffy bed. Head resting on a plush cushion instead of your arms, forehead braced over the uncomfortable squeal of your polyester windbreaker that he didn't even have the courtesy to let you take off. No. Just trousers. Panties. Pushed haphazardly down your legs, left in a pile by the spruce tree so he could throw your ankle over his broad shoulder, feasting on your cunt. 

There's a spot of dirt on your asscheek. The curve of it is scraped from the bark, red and raw. 

The glare you aim at him from over your shoulder is venomous. There's a smear of moss on your cheek. 

You're made for epsom salt baths. Being tended to by a besotted alpha who treats you like fine china, only to be taken out on special occasions. Brushed, always, in a fine layer of dust from disuse. Sweet, tender lovemaking under the waning summer sky. Your alpha apologising for ruining you like this, for making you take the brunt of his rut. Poor thing. Gentle kisses, and hands clasped together. 

He can see it so vividly in his eye. So viscerally that it almost feels like a crime when he glances down at his cock, the weeping, engorged head almost comically too big for you. The thick of him could easily swallow your cunt up if he flattened his length against you. Covering you wholly by his girth. 

It's a thought that makes his hand tighten, and nearly chokes him on a moan. 

Even his thighs bracketing the backs of yours is hideous to look at. Bigger, broader—there's a considerable gap on both sides of his legs that he thinks nearly his whole fist can fit there, notched against the outside of your thigh, covering the expanse of his own. Garish. 

He can't wait to lay you down on your belly, lock his thigh tight on either side of your own and rut into you like that. Crushing you under his weight. Swallowing you whole. Until anyone misfortunate enough to wander by thinks he's fucking the cold ground. 

His thumb strokes along your fevered skin, collecting the sheen of sweat building up on the pad. Rubbing it in. He feels it too. This unrelenting swelter. A cage, pushing down from all sides. Inescapable. 

The only way to quench it is on you. In you. 

“Ready for me, pretty girl?” The words are mangled in his throat, thick with want. 

Your shoulders tremble. In worry, he thinks. Scents the air like a viper, letting your emotions curdle in the back of his throat. “Just get on with it—”

He meets you in the middle of that taunt, teeth against your throat. 

Ghost pushes inside with a groan, eyes rolling back at the way you swallow him up. Stretching around the considerable girth, fluttering around him. Pulsing like a heartbeat. 

It's heaven. 

Nirvana nests between your thighs, bracketed by rings of blood. Red. Absolution imbued in tender flesh, parting perfectly around his cock in a loving embrace. 

You haven't confirmed it for him, but the tightness of your cunt around his fingers, the heady scent of discomfort burning the back of his throat when he buried them inside of you, make him mutedly aware that you're inexperienced. A fact he pockets for later because if he thinks about being the first alpha, the first man, to ever claim you, take you, then he might lose his mind, he might fall down that yawning chasm that reeks of damnation, of brimstone and ash, and never recover—

So, he doesn't. Won't. 

Can't. 

His pace is slow as he feeds you the fat length of his cock, eyes drilling into the way you swallow him up. Rim stretching taut, flesh paling under the strain of taking him. With one hand anchored against your hip, holding you tight, and the other curled over your shoulder, fingertips resting on your collarbones, he slowly, slowly, sinks inside of you, bottoming out with a deep groan. 

The outstroke drags with it an iron scent in the air. He huffs, nostrils flaring. Greedy for more. There's discomfort leaking from your pores. His girth is more than you can conceivably take, even with the preternatural help from your heat, leaking slick down your inner thighs in thick rivulets. 

He holds himself there, breathing—heavy, tremulous—through his nose. His hands shake. The pressure, the pleasure, is indescribable. It coils in his guts, spumes liquid bliss in his veins. The way you feel pulsing sweetly around him is—

Equilibrium. 

Every misfiring synapse inside himself is slowed. Imbued with a potent sense of ataraxia. His mind comes to a standstill. Thoughts looping over themselves, tangling into the gossamer threads of control floating in stasis. Unmoored. You unravel him. 

It's further proof that you are his missing part. His ruts in the past have been calamitous. Snarls wrenched from the trenches of his chest; a gluttonous feast—a sacrifice to Hēdonē. Violent, vicious. 

But this—

It's drinking ichor from the vein of Anteros.

There's a crack in the back of his head. The sound of everything, all of it—

Falling into place. 

His hands tighten. Tighten some more. He holds you, sure and firm, keeping you nestled in the anchor of his embrace, unable to run, to flee. You're his. Settled. The caveat is ironclad, bound in permanence. 

And Simon moans. Deep, and low. The noise jutters out of his chest, and seeps into the evening air. Fine mist, crystallising in front of him. Phosphenes of ice cemented his decision, gluing to his cheeks. The nape of his neck. 

His ears burn. 

“Fuckin' hell, sweet thing,” it's a guttural growl in the hollow of his throat. “Where ‘ave you been all my goddamn life?”

It's a nauseating confession, one scraped out from the vacancy between his ribs. It peppers the air in a soft, saccharine kiss. Makes you shiver beneath him, gasping in lungfuls of loam, dirt in your throat. 

He grunts. Stills. He doesn't want that for you. Ever. Would rip off his own limbs before he ever let you feel the crushing weight of dirt congealing inside of your lungs. 

The way he arches over you is damning. Nauseating. He curls his arm around your shoulder, your chest, traps a heaving breast in the palm of his hand, holds tight. The other falls from your hip, closes over your mons. Greedily feeling your slick, hot sex pulsing wildly around him when he passes over your clit, toying with your stretched, swollen rim. It's perfection, this. 

He pulls you up, up, leaning back on his haunches until you're balanced on your knees, nearly sat on his lap. Taking him deeper than before. He drops his head back with another moan when he feels your slick gather, dripping down to coat his balls. 

Everything about you is just—

Perfection. Absolution. 

Your hands fly up, curling over his forearm, mewling when he pinches your nipples between his middle and ring finger. 

“C’mon,” he rasps, leaning forward to press his face into your nape. You smell sweet. “Play with ‘em for me, pet.” 

Nails bite into his skin. You whimper. Squirming around on his lap. But you do as you're told. Slowly, slowly, reaching up. Touching yourself the way you like. Fingers ghosting over your flesh, brushing across your nipples. Pulling, petting, the way you like. He hooks his chin over your shoulder, watches. Devours. Commits each movement to memory. Every sound, every breath. Everything. 

He keeps a slow, languid pace like this. Content to just feel you pulsing around him, listening to the slick, wet squelch of him filling you up. Over and over again. A lazy rut. 

It's unexpected, he knows. You've been bracing yourself this whole time, fingers digging into the podsol, spine tightening up. Waiting for the savagery to befall you. 

When it doesn't come, he feels your quiet acquiescence come in a soft breath. In the way you slowly drop down to meet the deep rut of his hips. Taking your pleasure, pulling him in deeper. There's an edge to your voice, one still dipped in threads of discomfort, a waning pain that rings out, shrill, in the satin spill of moonlight over the indigo forest. 

It's good like this. Tender. Not something he'd have ever imagined for himself, and the reality of it is dizzying. 

Reedy, he groans. Nuzzles his misshapen nose into your scent gland. His gums pulse, ache—

But he ignores it. Swallows it down. 

He's not sure what compels him to do so. Spellbound, maybe, by this unnatural softness that spools silken threads between you. Sutured in tenderness—so unbefitting of the man he is. The monster—

His hips stutter. Jerk. 

“Simon—!”

You whine into it, arching back. Sweat gathers, drips down your spine, smears into his chest, belly. Matts the thatch of hair running in sparse, patchy clusters down the thickness of his midsection. A bountiful spring fattened him up. Made him soft and pillowy over his abdomen. Something you can't seem to get enough of—pressing the flat of your back against him, leaning into it. Groaning when his arm shifts, boxing you in. Crushing you to him. 

Wily little kitten, purring so sweetly in his lap. 

He draws lazy circles over your clit, grunting with each clench of your cunt. You're soft in his arms. Malleable. He slides his hand up from beneath your breasts, catches your jaw in his palm. Fingers spanning from cheekbone to temple and, oh—

Doesn't that just make him preen. 

He drags your chin to the side, catching your mouth in a sickening kiss. All tongue, teeth. He wants to taste, to devour, every part of you. Bones and all. 

It's a fight, though. You tense in his grasp, lidded eyes snapping open, wide and around. Cheeks bulging between his fingers when you twist, trying to pull away. 

“Don't—I don't want to—” he bites the protests from lips. Messy, sloppy. He flicks his tongue over yours, wrapping it around you like a satiated snake burrowing in after a heavy meal. “Don't—f–fuck—”

It earns him a nip. Teeth digging into his bottom lip. Drawing blood. 

He huffs into the seam of your mouth. Only fair, he supposes, and then pulls you down—hard, fast—onto his cock. The air is punched out of your lungs, flooded into his esophagus. 

“Be a good girl for me,” he warns, bucking into you. It's harder this time, deeper. Tempo increasing. Growing. He feels himself thicken. Knot fattening up. Each piston of his hips seems to knock something inside of his head loose. Common sense, maybe—

The fraying knot of his self-control winding tight. Pulling taut. 

He huffs again, feeling himself slip. Lost in the sensation dripping down his spine, the unified pleasure blooming in the pit of his stomach. 

The air plumes with the thickening tang of your arousal—all sweet, spice. You can take it, now, he knows, and tries not to growl when you hiccup his name wetly into the air. 

The muscles in his thighs bunch tight. Corded and powerful. He arches up, up, forcing his cock deep inside your cunt, splitting you apart. Rutting desperately, edging into something animalistic. 

It runs a knife along the thin skin of his hindbrain. Come out, come out, come play—

He moves you again, pulling his hand away from your jaw and pushing you back down the forest floor. He stays glued to your back. Tucks his arm under your chin, and smothers you under his bulk, groaning when your thighs give out, sliding on the sweat-slicked moss below.

“Simon, ah—” your voice tapers off into a breathless cry when he pulls his hand free from beneath you, wrapping it around to join the other. Holding on, clinging to you. Keeping you locked tight against him, under him. You can't move at all like this—

The swell of his knot bumps against your stretched rim. He presses the brunt of his weight into each thrust now, spurned on by the needy way you yowl into his forearm, drooling all over his skin. Begging for it. 

“Please, please, please—”

Your body is jostled forward with each harsh buck of his hips as he gives you everything he has, feeding his cock into your sopping cunt over and over again. Eager now to fill you up, to flood you with his cum. Make you swell with it. Overstuffed. 

Perfect little omega, you rut back into him with each thrust, taking his thick cock to the root. Mewling sweetly when his knot begins to catch. Too much, he thinks. It might just wreck you for good—

pomegranate seeds splitting over your teeth, blood red juice leaking from the tear. spilling into your mouth. just a drop. just a drop, and Persephone is all his

—Perfect. 

He teeters on the edge of ferality and control. Spinning, spiralling. Loosefooted on the wobbling chossy. Coming undone in a magmatic end—wicked heat, ashes, brimstone; he catches fire, and smoulders you under his heat. Letting the flames lick across your skin until you whine his name, desperate and needy, in the back of your throat. The thrill a bludgeon against his skull, spilling pleasure, bliss, in the broken hole you wrought. 

You tighten like a vice around him—tight, tight—and he pistons into you, burrowing deep. Deeper still. Until you thrash around beneath him, soundlessly screaming his name into the dark forest. Begging for mercy, mercy, please—

He won't. Can't. 

He can't get enough of the way you feel wrapped around him like this. Silken, whitehot. Tight. Tight—

It squeezes the air from his lungs. Static in his head—

And then you let go. Pulsing, throbbing around him. Pulling him in deeper, blanketing his mind in white noise. In nothing but magmatic pleasure. 

“Fuck—!” He snarls, almost angry. Vicious. Chasing after his end in the aftermath of yours. Instincts are at war within him, banging against his skull. Demanding recompense. Paid it's pound of flesh. 

It's what he's promised. What it's owed. 

(and he always keeps his promises, doesn't he?)

Most describe their ruts as mindless, driven by instinct. No control. But Ghost has never felt more present, more alive, than when he sinks his teeth deep into your nape, nearly choking, drowning, on your blood.

For the first time in decades, he feels the crater inside himself, suffused with spare, broken parts, seal when you yield with a mangled yowl of his name, raw and fractured as it splits between your teeth. Pretty pussy swallowing up his knot when he bullies it in deep, locking you together.

pretty little lamb—

a perfect fit between his teeth.

His rut is a voracious thing. 

Ghost has you on your back for the second and third round, heels resting on his shoulders as he bucks into you. Makes you stare at him—don’t look away from me, pet—as he commandeers your body with an ease that seems to break apart all demurrals as they form, rendering you sweet, malleable, beneath him to do with as he pleases. 

And you are, aren't you?

So fuckin’ sweet. 

(“gonna give me a cavity,” he rasps, thick with pleasure, into your ear. he has you on your belly now. holds you down with his weight, crushes your chest against the soft moss below, thighs squeezed tight between his own. you can barely make a sound with his forearm digging into the dirt right above your crown, swallowing you whole under his bulk. 

(owns you like, he finds. no one would be able to see you beneath him if they wandered by. encompassed wholly by every iota he has to give—

he cums like that. nose buried in your crown, moaning low, scorched, in the back of his throat as you twitch beneath him, unable to move at all—)

It's early in the morning when he finally finishes, when his rut begins to slowly recede, and a fresh bloom of clarity yawns over his periphery. Moonrise peppers soft kisses over his aching shoulders as he glances at you curled up against his side, sleeping soundly. Exhausted by the hours and hours of mating, fucking. Taking him, his knot, drinking down everything he has to offer. 

The sight that greets him is gnarled fingers wrapping around his rotting heart, affection peeking out between the brackets of his ribs. His appetite for you is dizzying. Unquenchable. He wonders if he'll ever be able to look at you without wanting to crawl inside your body. To reshape your tender flesh around his bulk until it is indiscernible from himself. 

This want is agony. It's dread, desire. Greed. 

His shoulders bite back in protest when he reaches up to drag his dirt-crusted nails through the prickly hair on his scalp. As dawn slowly unfurls across the midnight blue aether, he knows he'll have to leave soon. Can already feel the creeping heat gnawing in the pit of his belly. His rut starting anew. The scant hours he has of mental clarity, moments meant to eat, to feed, and regain strength for the next marathon of fucking, are needed to feel out his next move. 

He glances at you again, and feels the same covetous tug in his chest as he did before, when he was thickly entrenched in the urge to mate. But as the burnt orange of the sun smears hazy fingerprints across the moulted sky, he sees you in a new, cleaner light. You're young. Much younger than he is. 

It's something he ought to worry about. To feel some shred of shame, of despondency over shackling you to himself—a defective alpha with more scars than morality—when you're in the burgeoning bloom of your freshly untethered youth. All jejune beauty outclasses nature itself. Snow melts on the alpines, trickling down to feed the valley below. Life itself—

But you are his. 

The ugly rings around your throat—mangled tissue swelling in the morning dawn, caked in a thick river of blood—all signify that you belong to him. And while it's a little extreme as far as claiming bites go—one would suffice, but he buried his teeth in you over and over again, biting down on both sides of your neck, your jugular, your nape; inner thighs, mons, wrists—it’s proof enough that you are meant for him. Made for him. 

His pretty omega. 

The rest doesn't matter. He ought to feel shame, but instead he luxuriates in it. Stares down at you with a needy sort of possession spuming in the putrid remains of his chest, mapping out the marks he put on you. And the ones he'll add to later, not stopping until covered in the perfect impression of his crooked teeth. Tattoos of his ownership all over your body. 

Mutual, of course. There's a scant patch of skin, restive and empty, above his heart, save for a fine, jagged line from a serrated dagger. He'll have you bite down on the flesh until your teeth meet inside his muscle. Scarring down to the bone. He'll go, then, to the man who inks him up whenever he has the whim to desecrate scar tissue, and have him etch midnight black against fine silver. Permanent, forever. Always. 

And anyone who kicks up a fuss—stupid as they might be—he’ll sort them out. Prove to them that you are meant to be his. 

(unshakeable:

his spend leaks out of you, drying, tacky and thick, on your thighs. under the sleepy citrine of the dawning sun, it's tinged pink, and looks just like pomegranate juice.)

Ghost rolls his shoulder, and reaches for his discarded trousers. He's covered in a thick layer of dirt, and reeks like soil. But the thought of being buried alive is miniscule compared to the want of being buried inside you again. The urge. Insatiable. He groans with it, cock throbbing already. 

He leaves you naked. No point in dressing when he plans on going home and sinking back inside of you before midday, anyway. An unneeded obstacle, really—

The clearing is close to his truck, and he sets a leisurely pace, yawning into the dawn, as he gathers you into his arms. Carrying you to it as you drool on his chest, brows pinched at the soft jostle of him trudging through the thicket until he reaches it. 

He's not in a rut when he stretches you out in the back seat, spreading your sticky thighs around his hips, sinking inside, bottoming out just as you come to, waking up with a gasp. 

The intense fucking from before lingers in the air. You're soft, molasses; arching into his chest, whimpering out the name he hissed into your nape only hours ago, folding into him with a somnolent submission. It won't last, of course—

You're a vicious little thing, and his back and chest twinge with the rivers you carved into his flesh when he didn't move the way you liked. Wolfish, aren't you? Spitfire hiding under the soft pelt of a slain lamb. He wants to devour you, bones and all. 

He takes his fill of your malleable concession, rutting into you with a sluggish ease. Mapping out the starlight sparking in the depths of your glossy eyes. Magnetic. It pulls him deeper. Unravels him at the seams. 

His hand spans the expanse of your jaw from ear to ear. He holds you like this, thumb buried in the tender embrace of your soft tongue, and begins to understand the reason behind Johnny's niche appetite when you toy with his flesh, coquettish and sweet, suckling him in—pretty seductress—and then mewl when he pushes in too deeply, bringing crystalline gems to corners of your eyes. 

Angelic innocence. The type that demands he prostrates himself at your altar, let his bones be picked clean when you so wish it. And he'll give it to you—body, blood, tissue; all of it. The entirety of him, however broken, shattered the fragments might be. 

He promises it all to you without a word, drilling holes in the gaps of your eyes, chasms wide enough for him to fit. When he cums, it's to a songbirds sonata. Your moans are a whisper, your pleasure swallowed down as it ghosts over his lips, clenching around him like a vice. Pretty bow. He doesn't hold back—groans, baritone; woodsmoke, into the gathering symphony, filling you to the brim. Thick, copious. He wants it to stick. To root. 

When the blood sputters back to his head, he gathers you in his arms once more. Keeps you seated on his lap—shush, pet; s’alright, jus’ close your eyes an’ I'll ‘ave us home in a bit—as he starts the old pickup, and puts it into drive. One hand on the wheel, knuckles blanching white in the glimmering sunrise; sparse forests of muted blond catching, limned in the coruscating light. The other is placed on the small of your back, holding your belly to his. 

Quietly, your body eases. Melts. You press your face into his chest, fingers curling into the fabric, and nuzzle into the heady scent of his sweat, his musk, still clinging to his shirt. Signing, soft and twee, in the cup of his embrace as you slip back to sleep. 

He drives home like this. Mind a quiet place for once. Silent in its contentment, it's comfort. There's an itinerary still left to do, but he pushes it back for now, gaze roaming the dense green of the forest bracketing the road. 

You'll like it, he knows. There's a fen on the outskirts of his territory, a little pond where wild rabbits have been known to make burrows. Deers, elk. Bears. They all come and go. You'll amuse yourself in the untamed wilderness of his abode, drawing delineations of your own as you carve out places in his home just for you. 

And as he makes the turn to his hidden driveway, this buried sanctuary, he can't help but glance down at your crown, and think—

Persephone, finally home.

He finds your identification in your rucksack, nestled underneath the contraband you smuggled from the park—mushrooms, berries, bark, feathers—and sears your name to memory. Every part of you will be unravelled in the coming days, pulled from the depths of your being until it's all ingrained in his head. A gaping chasm chiselled into bone just for you. All for you. 

Your address is a rental. He'll have to call them later today to cut your lease. Your job, too. They'll need to be notified on both your off time for his rut (and your burgeoning heat), and to update your contact information. 

But that's later. Now, he just wants to get home. Sink down into his bed with you beneath him, and fuck you until sundown all over again. Stain the house with the scent of you. With the potent tang of your coupling. 

It's yours too, after all. Should smell just like you. 

And when you wake up later to him fucking his tongue into your drenched hole, fingers toying with your pebbled clit, Johnny will be busy packing the rest of your things into the pack of his pickup truck. The majority of it is already stacked on the porch, waiting for you to rearrange it all in your new house. Lease cut. His name added to your contacts as spouse, husband. Address updated. Marriage certificate laying on the table, only one line unsigned. Waiting for you. 

Maybe it's too fast. You'll certainly protest like it is, bearing your teeth and hissing at him from across the room about too much, too fast, slow down, you don't even know his last name—

(“Riley,” he grouses, arms folded over his broad chest. Eyes burning in the cresting twilight. “S’your last name now as well, pet.”) 

Fast—sure. He might think so too for a brief moment when he as you purring against his chest, submissive and docile after he fucked the fight right out of you, bullied you into agreeing to everything—it's for the best, after all. No one could ever protect you like he can. 

Made for each other. Reinforced when he presses your fingers to the soft spot where his last rib once hung—

(“stole it,” he murmurs into the seam of your lips. “right from under my nose. only fair that i get to steal somethin’ right back, ain't it?”

the look on your face is rapturous when you press your hand to your side, eyes widening when you feel the extra rung—)

He's had decades of waiting. Waiting. And now that he's found you—

He's never letting go. 

You're it, he knows. Feels the certainty in that statement simmering in his hindbrain, in his essence. He'll have you—now, forever. Non-negotiable. Where you go, he will follow. 

(after all, there's something about three-headed dogs and their bones—)

#simon riley x reader #simon ghost riley x reader #ghost x you #alpha simon riley #alpha ghost #alpha ghost x omega reader #reader in this is very much roman from succession during that one scene w connor where he tells him #“no you liked it. you asked to be put in that cage." #do w that what u will

[two-calicos-in-a-trenchcoat]

Large doggo not aware of her size or how sharp her claws are

Paw to the face

Clawed my nose

Ow

#she was jealous cuz i was hugging precious #so she tackled us and clawed me in the face #precious used the distraction to steal the tug #apparently precious doesnt even play with toys at home #she just wants the toys cuz chewby wants them #i fuckin love dogs man #theyre so funny to watch #even tho chewby comes close to giving me a bloody nose at least once a week cuz she forgets how big she is #like a 65 pound puppy #its funny how little dogs act like theyre bigger than they are and big dogs seem to think theyre much smaller than they are #i mean chewbys definitely more of a big chicken than she likes to act #calling her chewby doo is very fitting #she acts tough and shes big and has a deep voice and is all muscly so that works in her favor #but shes just a big scaredy cat #its just funny after having a chihuahua that had no fear or awareness of her own personal safety #that dog woulda jumped off a cliff if you threw a steak over it #no self preservation instincts in that little dog #she tried to fight a coyote once

[atomicqueer]

.

#if i move to this city it'll triple my commute (plus more traffic!) but obviously i wont have that job forever anyway but i do like it #but not to sound like a sheltered little white girl but im a dumbass and living in a city with ''''''''bad'''''''' areas is. uh. #a recipe for disaster maybe? i WILL go to the wrong neighborhood just to go to Denny's and i will act a fool #we heard gunshots last night while walking out the door and i just shrugged. i have no self preservation instincts. #also. knowing that I could. at a moments notice. end up with sole responsibility for a high maintenance dog.... #i love her but uhhh. im a gremlin. and im lazy. &&& i don't want to have to find new roommates in 6 months #also i love these people obviously but i would want to deep clean this whole house upon move in. its not horrible but its soooo dusty #honestly the landlord probably needs to get the air ducts cleaned #but. yeah. i would be scrubbing basebords for real. #actually i put on my glasses and a lot of the visual bleh is just bad paint jobs :/ its got that landlord special #but man i just wanna take a mr clean magic eraser to this whole gd home #aaaaanyway. much to think about. im NOT moving to DC with all of them tho. they can steal by brother away but i cant live in that humidity

[kisskiss-slashslash]

Slashers chasing their victim (their future s/o) and in the middle of the chase their s/o just stops to grab and protect a little animal thinking they were going to hurt them (like a pup or kitten) how would they react

Can you also make their s/o chubby?:)

Plz and Ty

I didn't quite know how to bring up that the reader is supposed to be chubby in this one but I definitely imagined a chubby reader while writing it.

Slashers when their future s/o is protecting a small animal from them

Warning: Animal Death/Animal Cruelty (not described in any detail but it is mentioned and implied)

Jason Voorhees

He has been chasing you around for a few minutes now, and you are slowly starting to get winded. Then there is the small stray cat, dirty and terribly malnourished. There are a few of them living around the lake, you know that much. And the cat is right between him and you.

Oh no, he’s gonna crush the poor thing, you think, and your protective instinct overrides your self-preservation. You rush to the cat, pick it up and run away again, not noticing that Jason stopped following you and is just staring after you with wide eyes.

You hide in one of the cabins, hoping to be able to catch your breath for a few seconds before having to run away again. Your new companion is meowing at you.

„Hush, you’re gonna give us away“, you whisper hectically, when a huge shadow falls over you. You look up, and your heart drops into your stomach.

That’s it, you’re going to die. Jason is already reaching for your neck… then his hand slips lower, gently patting the cat’s head.

„H...huh?“

He saw what you did, how you risked your own life to save that little creature… and he admires that. Maybe you’re not so bad after all.

Vincent Sinclair

The creature you try to protect ends up being Jonesy, ironically. You see her in the Sinclair house and you’re to stressed and scared to even consider the possibility that she belongs to the people chasing you.

„Come on, please, they’re going to hurt you too if they find us“, you say to the dog while desperately trying to get her to follow you. „Come on, little one, I won’t hurt you, I promise-“

Vincent appears from the next room, looking at you for a long time. Jonesy happily runs up to him, tail wagging.

„...Oh. She’s your dog. Well don’t I look stupid now.“

His shoulders begin twitching, accompanied by a suppressed chuckle. He manages not to fully burst out laughing, but he can’t help himself; your awkwardness is just so *endearing*. He may want to keep you around just for that. Alive, of course. You won’t be half as entertaining if you’re dead and covered in wax.

Freddy Krueger

Really? You’re willing to sacrifice your life for an imaginary *hamster*? He thought that letting you see a bit of his past would be fun, and of all the fucked up things that happened in his life, him killing the class hamster when he was a kid is the only thing you take issue with? Not the fact that he murdered his foster father? Not the fact that he murdered *children*? No? The hamster it is? Okay, then. You got damn weird priorities, but Freddy likes weird. Maybe killing you would really be a waste, so he lets you live… for now.

Brahms Heelshire

„Brahms Heelshire, you let that rat go right this instant!“

Brahms actually flinches and does as he is told. The rat quickly disappears somewhere; you’re not sure where.

Once he gets over the shock, he gives you a sour pout. „Why? It’s just a rat.“

„It’s a living, breathing, feeling being.“

„So are cows and we still eat them.“

„Oh I’m sorry, is this household doing so poor financially that we have to resort to eating rats now?“ You cross your arms in front of your chest. „Well?“

„No“, Brahms says between gritted teeth.

„I thought so.“ You know that scolding Brahms is a delicate task; being too lenient with him means he won’t learn his lesson, and being just the slightest bit too harsh with him will result in an angry outburst. And those can end deadly. But that’s what you signed up for when you agreed to become his nanny… right?

„Rats carry diseases though. They shouldn’t be in the house“, Brahms continues to argue.

You pinch the bridge of your nose. „Yes, that’s why we have the traps out in the garden, and another reason why you shouldn’t touch them. I don’t particularly like having to kill the rats at all, but the traps do so as quickly and as painlessly as possible. So even if they have to die for our safety, there is no, and I repeat, NO reason to torture them. Understood?“

Brahms has his chin pressed firmly onto his chest now; the tension in his body shows that he is getting frustrated. „Yes.“

Okay, time to ease off a little.

„That’s my good Brahms.“ You smile at him.

Bubba Sawyer

Another case of mistaking your would-be-killer’s pet for another potential victim. In this case, it is a chicken. When you saw the poor thing in this room, sorrounded by human bone furniture, you didn’t dare imagine what this family would do to it.

„Hey… nice chicken… good chicken…“

At first you don’t see Bubba lingering at the entrance of the chicken room, looking at you gently speaking to his favourite.

When you notice him, you immediately grab the chicken and nudge it to the questionable safety behind your back.

Bubba looks at you and licks his lips. You are so nice to his chickens. He likes that.

You flinch when he comes inside and kneels down in front of you, pulling the chicken from behind your back into his arms and holding it up to you to pet, like any proud pet-parent.

„Oh… they chickens are yours? They look pretty well taken care of, actually…“ That, and this one is so calm, despite being held by this behemoth of a man.

You reach out and run your hand over the soft feathers, making Bubba smile, delighted.

#slasher x reader #jason voorhees x reader #vincent sinclair x reader #freddy krueger x reader #brahms heelsire x reader #bubba sawyer x reader

[jubileemon]

Loona started off as a fan favorite, but as the series progressed, some hate her for being your typical "misunderstood teenage goth girl" who is bratty, temperamental and mistreats others around her as little more than nuisances, even her adoptive father, Blitzo.

Background and Trauma

Loona exhibits a complex personality shaped by a traumatic upbringing. Her behavior is rooted in her experiences at the Hellhound Adoption Foundation, where she was raised by uncaring caretakers. Devoid of affection and subjected to violence for disobedience, Loona's formative years were marred by isolation and mistreatment. This harsh reality of her childhood in the orphanage left her with deep-seated trust issues and an inability to properly give or receive love, influencing her interactions with others, including her adoptive father Blitz.

The so-called "adoption center" looks like a cross between a run-down dog pound and a juvenile detention center, with most of the hellhounds Blitzo sees looking malnourished or deformed. When he sees Loona, her cellmate is threatening her with a bloody nail bat before she flings him at the bars, growling and then she starts crying, looking more like a frightened, feral dog than anything. The social worker's indifferent description of her in her emotionally dead tone doesn't help, saying all this directly in front of Loona's cell, and only highlights how lonely Loona's life had been for almost eighteen years.

Loona's living space gets more tragic the longer you look at it. The back and side walls are covered in tally marks scratched into the tile. And there's a typical "Hang in there!" poster ripped with obvious claw marks, making it clear Loona had long given up hope of being adopted into a family. There are some drawings on the walls of Loona with storm clouds above her head and a giant version of her stomping on a city. Either they were drawn by Loona in which case they show just how frustrated and fed up with the world she has become over the years, or they were drawn by the other hellhound kids who only see her as a vicious monster.

The fact that this place is essentially a pound and not an adoption place paints Loona's situation as much grimmer. They're not treated as individuals but as animals and would normally just leave as rescued dogs. When the social worker mentions that Loona will age out it's implied that it doesn't mean that she's exactly leaving safe & sound.

You can also see that Loona takes a look at her tally marks, and as it lines up with the social worker's statement on her aging out, it wordlessly states Loona knows about this. Whether she's put to sleep or kicked out ownerless, it's a cloud of pitch-black dread she can do nothing about except countdown to.

The social worker's dialogue makes it clear how hellhounds are treated in this world. They're not treated as sentient individuals; instead, they're valued for either being strong laborers or cute family pets. Loona is both strong and beautiful, but being a self-actualized person with internal struggles and self-preservation instincts makes her undesirable. For an imp, one of the lowest creatures in Hell's hierarchy, to be able to adopt a hellhound as a pet or servant shows that despite their strength, they're seen and treated as even lower than imps.

If Blitzo hadn't adopted her, Loona would apparently have "aged out of the system" and been "out of the kennel's hair". This could simply mean that Loona would be kicked out, but given a mix of how scared she looked, the way hellhounds are treated in this setting and what sometimes happens to real dogs when they're deemed too old for adoption…

Personality

Loona's past manifested in various aspects of her demeanor. Her reluctance to perform her job may stem from a newfound appreciation for freedom, contrasting with her previously constrained life. Her agreessive nature, particularly towards characters like Moxxie, can be seen as a defensive mechanism, a way to assert control in situations where she might feel vulnerable.

Blitzo's adoption of her before she aged out ensured her gratitude and was why she didn't leave him. But years of hardship have made it hard for her to open up to him properly. Despite her tough exterior, moments of genuine vulnerability reveal her social awkwardness and desire for connection, which she struggles to navigate due to her lack of social experience.

Loona is shown throughout the series to have a strong aversion to being touched, reacting either with threatening growls or violence. However, her aversion to being touched might've stem from her past in the adoption center, yet she can handle being touched when she's the one initiating the contact, as seen when she allows Octavia to hug her and then holds her hand through the portal. That being said, she never reacted aggressively to Blitzo's affections beforehand, so this felt out of place, even for her.

Social Skills

Loona seems to be hiding some deep insecurities and feelings of loneliness, having never had any friends before meeting Vortex and briefly glancing with visible sadness at a picture of an happy family in "Murder Family", which implies Loona does wish to have good relationships in her life, but is unable to due to her tendency to see the bad in people and vent out her frustrations on others, including (and, arguably, especially) those who try to be nice or fatherly to her, like her adoptive father Blitzo.

However, after having been friend-zoned by Vortex, Loona didn't resent him and kept in touch with him, becoming great friends with him and going to parties with him, which might be making her more open to people and less hostile, as she's gradually becoming less rude and apathetic towards her co-workers.

Father-Daughter Relationship

Blitzo is her adoptive father, but she almost always refers to him by his name since she doesn't like showing the fact that she cares about him. That said, there are times where she slips up: on Instagram, she was so worried about him being kidnapped that she straight out called him "dad", though she immediately tried to walk it back out of embarrassment by claiming she was just upset that food was running low in their home. In "Spring Broken", she was so flustered with seeing Vortex that she almost slipped and called Blitzo "dad" before catching herself.

Once, she showed to be more than capable of both showing affection to and taking care of Blitzo: when he became severely intoxicated at Vortex and Queen Bee-lzebub's party to numb his pain after having rejected Stolas, she drove and carried him back to I.M.P. headquarters, set him on the couch and covered him with a blanket. When Blitzo shared his insecurities regarding loneliness and asked her if she'd be by him once he met his end, Loona promised him she would, showing her seriousness and true care by willingly calling him "dad".

Sisterly Bond

For the longest time, Loona and Octavia never met each other, only being connected to each other through their dads being in a rather complicated relationship with each other. This changed one day when Octavia snuck into I.M.P.'s office to obtain her father's grimoire so she can watch a meteor shower on Earth on her own. Loona actually spots Octavia trying to sneak in, but deliberately chooses not to say anything (partly because of lingering anger from a discussion she had with her father earlier).

As Loona approaches Octavia when she finally finds her, she's incredibly gentle with the girl and even compliments her on her photos. Loona rags on Blitzo at the beginning of "Seeing Stars", even physically assaulting him. But on Earth, she ultimately does do what he wants in finding Octavia, confiding in her that she recognizes that Blitzo is trying to be a good dad to her. It's as close as Loona gets to admitting that maybe things with Blitzo aren't as bad as she's ever gotten.

When Loona asks Octavia if she's ready to go while extending her hand out to her, Octavia gives the grimoire over to Loona and hugs her, glad to have someone who listened to her and can relate to. Previous episodes have shown that Loona does NOT like physical affection, shown most often with Blitzo. Yet here, Loona accepts and even returns Octavia's hug with no resistance whatsoever. It's even better since Loona was the one who initiated the contact. She holds her hand out to Octavia twice as though to help her stand up and looks a little confused when Octavia instead hands her the book the first time.

Conclusion

So far, I can see that Loona's character among fans is kinda mixed. While some viewers are sympathetic with her traumatic past and understand her defensive behavior, others find her attitude off-putting, which is understandable. It's also understandable that due to her recent absence and lack of dialogues during the second season, Loona's VA was probably given time to grieve due to the losing her partner and probably a busy schedule with other projects.

#hazbin hotel #hazbin analysis #vivziepop #helluva boss #character analysis #analysis #helluva #helluva boss analysis #blitzø #blitzo #blitz #blitzo helluva boss #loona #loona hellhound #helluva boss loona #queen bee helluva boss #beezlebub #bee helluva boss #octavia #octavia helluva boss #hellhound #helluva boss blitz #female characters #character writing #loona buckzo

[cannyparagon]

🐦 Father and son 🪱

Events took place during the time of the "Witch Queen". World Throne.

It was there that this worm was discovered, which Parazon named To'Io.

The baby was wounded, thereby doomed to death.

And Parazon (with a complete lack of understanding of possible danger and the instinct of self-preservation) saved him, taking him with him to the Tower, where he cured him.

To'Io turned out to be extremely loyal and good-natured.

Although Nata-14 insisted that he should be killed or at least returned to the Hive (So that Parazon would not remember about him in a couple of years and even if they meet, calmly kill him)

Parazon couldn't. He began to care for the baby, during which he learned that he was growing up very quickly and somehow a full-fledged Hive had grown from the worm. That's when the problems started.

To'Io was not aggressive, more curious.

But still, the habits of the Hive made themselves felt.

He could attack some dog or even bite someone who was not careful. It was not aggression, but curiosity. After all, he wanted to explore the world.

The Vanguard's patience ran out and when Parazon was not around, To'Io was quickly eliminated from life.

Parazon experienced enormous stress after losing him.

After all, To'Io could easily be considered his son.

There was no need to grieve for long.

A few years later, they crossed paths on the battlefield as Guardian and Shining Hive.

To'Io almost emerged victorious if at the last moment he had not remembered who was in front of him.

For now, Parazon and To'Io are close again, like father and son.

A little fact:

To'Io can change color depending on the temperature :D

#art #artists on tumblr #destiny 2 #digital drawing #destiny 2 art #destiny 2 fanart #destiny the game #destiny exo #destiny 2 hunter #destiny 2 bungie

[monster42069]

It’s known in animal care that dogs, as an example, don’t show their pain and will keep going unless it’s an injury or internal attack that’s bad enough to severely incapacitate them.

A dog at my work is missing half of her adult teeth from them being knocked out while catching tennis balls. Her owner didn’t notice until she saw the blood because the dog kept playing while her teeth and gums were hanging out of her mouth. Her previous dog went on a walk with her before going home and immediately getting into bed and dying without her knowing he had any problems.

Dogs will often eat and drink water up until the moment they die. They will run around after being hit by a car. Those are dogs working on instincts of self preservation and their little understanding of what pain means— that’s how greatly dogs and puppies can handle pain and death.

Now let’s think about the instincts humans have, the way society has conditioned humans, and how humans equate pain to weakness with all of our other societal issues on top and expectations unending.

Do you think a person will drop and howl and whine and cry… or realize that that’s potentially dangerous and not helpful to do, and instead try not to show the severity?

People who know about animals understand that most of them won’t show pain and can run laps with broken bones without anyone noticing, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t in pain and in need of help. When the subject shifts to humans, another mammal, the tone of the conversation changes.

#… #disability #chronic pain #chronic illness #chronic fatigue #chronic injury #ableism

[haveyouseenthisskeleton]

What is every skeleton like when they feel a strong emotion such as fear?

Undertale Sans - Self-preservation first, he teleports himself and whoever is close to him out of here. That sometimes leads to awkward situations where he teleports random very confused people several miles from where they were a second ago. That's difficult to explain afterwards...

Undertale Papyrus - He screams, instinctively and to scare whatever is attacking him. If he's holding something, it's usually flies in the air as well.

Underswap Sans - He jumps slightly, and his eyes flash briefly bright light blue, but that's all. He's hard to spook and he has very good control of his magic so it's fine.

Underswap Papyrus - He faints to protect himself. Contrary to his brother, Honey is very easily to scare. Just a jumpscare in a movie can make him pass out lol. He's not good with dealing with strong emotions.

Underfell Sans - He screams and insults the whole world as he's trying to control his magic and not attack what scared him. He's usually quite jumpy after that. However, he's paralyzed with fear if he hears loud noises like thunder, fireworks, explosions and immediately goes into a panic attack.

Underfell Papyrus - He throws bones at whatever is attacking him and usually stops his attack an inch from your throat when he realizes he's not getting murdered. That can be quite scary the first few times.

Horrortale Sans - He growls like a dog and puffs up like a cat, before calming down almost immediately if it's nothing. He's ready to fight though if something is threatening him.

Horrortale Papyrus - He screams very loudly, and then he has to take a moment to calm down because he sees stars. It gives him bad headaches as well (and to everyone around as well, Willow is VERY loud when he wants to.)

Swapfell Sans - He hisses and jumps back instinctively from what's spooked him. He's quick to regain composure if it's nothing. Otherwise, he switches to royal guard mode in seconds to attack.

Swapfell Papyrus - He stays emotionless, then silently says "jeez". That's the best his reaction can be lol. He's really hard to spook as his earing is extremely good, and he's just too chill for that.

Fellswap Gold Sans - First he attacks, then he thinks. Thankfully, it's terribly hard to surprise him as he's very good at noticing things. If you spook him, you usually end at the hospital. It happens to all of his friends and his brother, at least once.

Fellswap Gold Papyrus - He curls up on the floor in a hurry and cries, making himself as little as possible. Then either he dies from embarrassment or he goes to lock in his closet to recover from the scare.

#undertale #underswap #underfell #horrortale #swapfell #fellswap gold #sans #papyrus #undertale ask blog #undertale asks #undertale imagines #undertale headcanons

[dogmotifz]

OKAY BUT ALSO re: Silna and Hickey is their self preservation instincts? Like Silna v much doesnt want to mutilate herself despite it serving the greater good for her culture and she camps near the ships bc she is afraid and generally stays with them too long. Hickey, despite his "me above all" ness like. Goes out in a storm, gets whipped, nearly gets hanged and yeah just lops his tongue off no hesitation. They are both looking out for themsleves but god what a contrast

SOOO FUCKING TRUE.

I think a lot of it boils down to how much they each value their bodies. Silna seems to value hers much higher than hickey (and the rest of the sailors) does; we hear that she's eating well, she doesn't want to cut her tongue off even when it's necessary, etc, while hickey is much much more likely to put himself in physical danger/accept the risk of physical harm for shit that's just... Not necessary. He brushes off the idea of being lashed for sodomy, he walks around the artic in his underwear, he eats dog meat-- he doesn't seem to care much what happens to his body or what he puts in it.

This is another foil/mirror bit I think, since they're both operating how the other should be acting in their roles. Silna, as a shaman, should be willing to sacrifice her tongue and her safety to manage the tuunbaq so that the rest of her people don't have to*, and hickey should be keeping himself physically safe so that he can be the best little sailor he can be. but, as we know, they're both kinda shit at doing what they should.

#*going off of the book explanation of the tuunbaq/shaman relationship

[whitecreekvalley-if]

Care to tell some facts about the ROs?

Fun or serious? I'll do fun little tidbits. Hard hitting angsty facts later, when you least expect it aye 🤌🏼 (this is me trying not to get too angsty at once because that's what I usually doooo)

Mason

On a first name basis both at the clinic in town and the hospital in the city. No self-preservation instincts. Zero. It's actually saved a lot of other people, houses, and animals, so bonus points for that. The nurses still look unamused when he comes through.

Does not trust roosters. Will never get a rooster for the ranch. Won't be caught dead near one of those feathered devils. (He's not afraid of rooster. He's not. Please believe him.)

Has a real hard time saying no to people and it almost got him unintentionally engaged (TWICE) before his friends were like hold up wtf dude. Alcohol might've been involved during one of these moments. Boy gets silly when he's had mezcal.

Alice

Like spice? Not as much as Alice you don't, she could eat a Carolina Reaper and go for another in half a minute. It freaks people out. Don't eat the chili at the potluck if you treasure your insides.

Has the most amazing memory. Forgot what you did on June 18th, 2016? She remembers. Need a reminder what to do five months from now? Personal calendar, let the lady know. It's a curse of you don't want to relive drunken shenanigans.

Total dog person. Sheep are great, but dogs is where it's at. You'll always catch her bringing one or two of her pups to the bar on slow weekdays. She owns many. Like 12 many, and they're all vital for the sheep farm. Absolutely.

Judge

Always, always has to sit with his face towards the exit(s) and back against the wall, otherwise he'll be tense enough to feel like solid rock if touched. He'll deal with not facing a door though. Just prepare for extra grouch.

His nickname used to be Joe. Joe. No one uses it anymore, for their own good. If you really want to burn bridges (or get the coldest glare), start quoting Don't Fuck With Joe by The Blackwater Fever.

Don't go hiking with him, whatever you do. This is a fella who smashes those long distance trails for fun, and has gone out for weeks and even months on end during extended vacations. 100 miles minimum to make the big lug take a relaxed breath.

Sadie

A living, breathing lie detector. She has a deep, intense interest in body language analysis, and listens to tonal changes so hard it looks like she's lost in though. But there's a very, very slim chance for anyone to lie to her and get away with it, which is a freaky skill for a lawyer.

Has never touched an animal bigger than her. Sure she's seen a horse, a cow, a bull, but she'll keep her feet firmly planted on pavement while the animals are out there in the pasture. Equal minding of own businesses.

No one plays poker with Ms. Sadie because they always lose. If the lawyer thing won't work out, she definitely has a future as a card shark, professional players better shake in their boots. Don't watch her shuffle the deck too closely. Or ask why she knows card tricks.

#wcv answered #oh hey look at that it's meeee lol #drafted this and forgot to post in the haste to leave for my adventures #anyway hi hi i'm almost home #thanks for the ask although i'm darned late on the uptake oofs #ch: mace #ch: alice #ch: judge #ch: sadie

[panur]

Radovid Joins the Hansa

At the Radskier discord we are Goncharov-ing what Radovid-joins-the-hansa (aka: Hansovid) AU would be like and here's some of the ideas shared so far:

the exact details on HOW this happens are not set in stone (Did Radovid escape before Vizimir got offed, leaving Pip and Siggi without a convenient spare? After? More importantly, does he have the annuity??), but some headcanons are:

Art major nerd perk, Radovid knows a lot about slightly more practical things, like art, history and architecture and sometimes weird law facts that he personally found interesting

barding- under Jaskier's tutelage, Radovid's playing has improved dramatically, which is great because unlike jaskier who is kind of recognizable, Radovid can more easily go into towns as a perfectly average, unremarkable bard, making getting items/information while keeping anonymity (they usually pair him up w Regis for safety reasons)

Very good at looking dumb and pretty and quite pathetic which makes people underestimate him more

Courtly training so he's polite and educated… and good at remembering faces and names.

THE ONE NORMAL PERSON IN THIS GROUP. Radovid often ends up being the most sensible/practical person in a situation simply by process of elimination. Radovid will read a potion saying 'drink me' and...not do it. He'll see spoopy shit and walk the fuck out. He's the guy who asks who's on the other side before opening to sus knocking.

he's very bad at athletic stuff and takes awhile to build stamina, but at least this time everyone's got horses and boots so it balances out

Radovid is not good at self defense BUT does have some concept of swordsmanship/archery… from like like 20 years ago. He is, however, decided not to be a burden and not to get left behind. He's especially invested in protecting Jaskier- who Radovid is horrified to find- is even more useless than he himself is (bitch you live like this??).; Because Radovid has common sense and self preservation instincts, things jaskier is mostly lacking).

he eventually starts getting lessons from Cahir and Milva when time permits, and healing stuff from Regis. He's got excellent memory and attention to detail, but remains average at swordsmanship/archery.

he is, however, fairly good with a crossbow (no the wrist ones from TW3, the bigger ones ).

he also gets a cute ponytail/braid and smiles more! (original art by naumaxia-art)

Still too weaksauce for the path?

we've named him 'Faro', after a type of Cintran beer

He's a Polish Tatra Sheepdog and was acquired by the group when Geralt was handling a monster infestation. Unfortunately neither the puppo's owners, nor his sheep were spared, but puppo not only survived, but saved Jask and Radovid and became extremely protective of them.

I imagine the acquisition goes something like:

Geralt: absolutely not. Radovid: I'm calling for a vote! Milva: You. You're calling for a vote? Radovid: why not? is this not a democracy? Radovid: I'm of course voting to keep him. Jaskier: I second the vote to keep the very handsome boy! Angoulême: come on Geralt, we'd never have found where the Barghest were coming from without him, AND he saved your bard from walking straight into it. Jaskier: yes Geralt, he saved your bard! Geralt: fine, then I vote no. Milva: I'm not taking care of any more mutts than I have to Radovid: he's clearly purebred! Cahir: still no. Geralt: see? We are done here Angoulême: *the little shit* nunca hasn't voted yet. Geralt: *sigh* Regis, can you please tell them so we can leave? Regis: Geralt: Regis. Geralt: Regis, no Regis: *trying not to smile like he's entirely charmed* … well, he is a very handsome boy.

In the end Regis suggest they at least try to get him to civilization so he can be adopted by a good family, but in the week it takes to get to it, Faro proves himself the MVP, not only will it defend the weakest party members, but it's a vert smart dog who will deter wolves/and will bodily shepherd jaskier away from dangerous areas/items as needed.

the one and only drawback is that Jaskier and Radovid can no longer have obnoxiously loud sex since Faro gets stressed thinking they're getting hurt and will try to intervene, effectively cockblocking them.

Finally Geralt gets some (relative) #blessedsilence

Geralt: *hugging the dog* I'm so sorry i ever doubted you

feel free to add to this!

#it's free real estate prompt just tag me so i can read

#radskier #hansa radovid #hansovid #jaskier #radovid the stern #the witcher #witcher netflix #not canon but should be #prancing plotbunnies #it's free real estate prompt just tag me so i can read #AU'S AND UA'S MAKE PANUR A HAPPY GIRL

[radical-revolution]

"You are at a party and there are beautiful people, surroundings, and laughter. The music is good too. Suddenly someone gets angry and throws a glass of champagne. It ruins the whole show - even the dog leaves the room. When someone gets angry, it affects the whole environment like an unpleasant odor that everyone has to smell. And, as our mental states are often quite fragile, it disturbs people's minds. But it disturbs the person who gets angry more than anyone else.

When we get angry, we lose the dignity of our intelligence. We become a stranger to pleasure. Others stay away from us, and we are left alone with our mind and all the residue that comes from our angry reaction. We feel vulnerable to the core, not because something happened outside, but rather because we've lost trust in our ability to respond to situations in a sane and reasonable way. . .

Sometimes aggression moves in. And when it does, we often mistake it for discerning intelligence or our instinct for expressing generosity and care or our longing to better the world around us. The reason for this is that anger gives the illusion of clarity. A certain strength arises when we have an opinion and we know where we stand.

The difference between the clarity we believe we have when angry and the clarity that results from actually seeing clearly is that aggression has its own narrow logic, which does not take into account the deeper level of causes and conditions that surround each situation. Because it has no foresight or perspective, the aggressive mind doesn't see any reason to hold back; it is only concerned with preserving the sense of self it seems to be working for. It doesn't think about peace or disturbance, benefit or harm, so it does not try to reroute itself in an emotionally positive direction. Aggression fixes its logic on the wrongness of other and always possesses the distinctive feature of aversion. We see that aggression results, to some degree or another, in our not responding well to situations. We lose our poise and dignity and get all keyed up like a nervous little dog barking and jumping around, trying to intimidate others. We lose our ability for reasonable discernment, which we regain only after our anger has subsided. But by this time it is too late. We've created a mess, and we feel shredded."

~ Dzigar Kongtrul, Light Comes Through

[dovesndecay]

As you said you're open to questions, and I've never seen a "needs space" leash before - is there like, an accepted universal response/behaviour around a dog with such a thing? Like, I know not to bother service dogs, and to respect a therapy dog needing personal space after they're done providing therapy, that sort of thing, and in like, a big park I'd just keep going on my path/sitting where I am/whatevs and trust them and their human to handle the situation as they see fit, because there is the space for them to do so, but what if, say, one is coming towards me on the sidewalk, and thus the space is limited? Should I still continue as normal, or try to provide more space on purpose, maybe by walking closer to the side the dog isn't so their human can be a barrier?

I love my boy, so I'm going to intersperse some of my favorite pictures of him throughout this.

The day he came home vs a year later.

So, Aengus is fear reactive and incredibly anxious around people and animals he doesn't know -- sort of an automatic "I think these people are a danger to me and my human" thought process that means he does great big boofs, and sometimes will lunge at anyone who gets too close.

He was, unfortunately, already traumatized by the time he came to me -- he'd been anemic, stung by wasps, his poor little paws were rubbed raw from walking on hot concrete, and he was terrified of people.

"Too close," for him, generally means within 10 feet, for people he doesn't know well.

I can usually keep him focused on our walks or a specific task ("sit" and "wait" are both ones he's gotten pretty good at) when just passing by people, provided that they ignore us (unless they also have a dog, and then it's, "okay, time to detour to get home faster and without an interaction").

In an ideal world, I would have the money to get him the behavioral training I know he needs, and the supervised socialization time with other dogs I wish he had. I want it for him so much, but... yeah. I lack the money for someone who knows what they're doing, and I'm too disabled to try and DIY it on a consistent enough basis to be beneficial to him. So we muddle through as best we can.

He's my baby, and I love him so so much

When I take him out, the ideal behavior from people in the distance who see the "Needs Space" tag on his leash is that they will simply ignore us. Feel free to privately coo over how adorable he is, and even a friendly wave is fine from a distance. I love seeing people see him and have the "!!!!! I saw a dog!!!!" moment. It makes me very happy!!!

But, in the situation of crossing paths, yes, making it so that the owner is between you and the dog is the best choice. Personally, as the person responsible for my dog, I will usually do that immediately when I see someone coming our direction, and keep the leash tight and him close to me for both their safety and his. But sometimes folks will just see DOG and their self-preservation instinct shuts down with a quickness.

I can't tell you the number of times I've had children old enough to have been taught better just run up to us, completely unbothered by the fact that he is trying to protect me with his big ol' boofs of "get the fuck away" because Oh Cute Dog Trumps Animal Safety. I have to be like, "He's not friendly, sorry sorry sorry" and cut short our morning walks a million times. Which isn't fair to either of us.

he loves rough-housing so much and he makes the best honking sounds

The handful of times I've taken him to one of the local walking paths, I have him sit on the side of the trail, holding him tight in a sit+wait, and having him wait until the other person has passed us. Sometimes, he's very good and not at all interested in the other person. Sometimes, it's more of a fight to keep him distracted.

So, I guess my overall advice is:

"Be aware of the potentially dangerous animal in your immediate vicinity, maintain reasonable and available distance, and take your cues from the owner. Prioritize your own safety, and that of the animal."

Something I wish more people used to inform their behavior around strange dogs -- but admittedly, my dog in particular, is that if someone (or more likely, in my neighborhood, their unleashed and uncontrolled dog 😡) just runs up on Aengus, and he freaks out and bites them, he's the one that dies.

I ask him, "Where's your baby?" and he brings me his lamb-chop. (This toy has since disintegrated, and I haven't been able to replace it, unfortunately.)

So thank you so, so much for asking about this.

Don't get me wrong -- I don't want people to be afraid of my dog; he's a big ol doofus that trips over his own very long legs and sleeps with stuffies.

He learned how to throw his toys at me, and now he refuses to hand them to me when we play fetch -- he just lobs them at me from his mouth. He pounces on his toys like an arctic fox jumps into snow, and sometimes he sleeps like an AT-AT.

See?

But every dog has the capacity to be dangerous, and I wish people would spend more time asking these questions so I can give them the answers that keep them and reactive dogs safe.

#askbox #aengus mcdangus #fear reactive dog

[floofy-grumpuses]

Bugsnax oc concept I'm 100% using: Journalist oc except they're like this 15-16 year old kid who was sorta working this news thing as their first job and somehow puppy-dog eyed their way into going to Snaktooth despite the backlash this could get when/if the kid comes back and makes it public.

Filbo: Wait. You're the famous journalist Lizbert invited? You're....young.

Journalist: I'm very talented :)

Wambus is ready to just be all angry at Filbo but this teenager is standing like two feet away like "You're a farmer? I came from a rural area too! That's cool haha." and he's all ohhhh this kid has not been affected by the island.

Even though they're not a little kid or anything, the entire village feels so much concern bc this kid is still two years from becoming a legal adult, they're nowhere near the age of anyone on Snaktooth. Everyone gains parental instinct suddenly bc this grumpus has no self preservation and almost cries when anyone raises their voice too loud.

#bugsnax #bugsnax oc #my oc #journalist oc #ITS JUST SUCH A FUNNY CONCEPT #Floofty: Why in the name of literally everything did Elizabert invite a literal child to this island #the Bigsnax trip is literally just like family outing but everyone is arguing and the journalist just found a really cool rock #autism win! the bugsnax are so silly and the journalist gets a new hyperfixation #Shelda would be fussing over them begging them to not give in to the temptation or something like that #And they're just Oh no worries grandma lady I'm allergic!

[antisociallilbrat]

Losers Hc's

I have so many personal Loser Hc's that just live in my head and I just want to share them. I wanna put them somewhere so I'm putting them here. Some hints of Poly Losers

Ben

He has a peanut allergy, idk why, it's the vibes

Until he met Bev his wardrobe consisted of nerdy t-shirts with awful puns. You know what I'm talking about.

Secretly loves Twilight (him and Richie watch it together)

His favorite drink is lemonade, iykyk

Keeps fish! Like really big aquarium set ups and he actually designs some of the decor. Can't keep any aquarium plants alive tho

Mike

loves the smell of cashmere and just collects candles in general

I've mentioned picnics with him before (the ones he takes with Bev and Eddie) but he also likes to make little finger sandwiches and wears fancy sun hats on said picnics

hates the taste of olives, my man is anti olives

bringing this up again, but he had a stuff tigger as a kid and when he's an adult he keeps it in a shadow box

also he's a bit of a technophobe, he had a flip phone until the Losers literally made him upgrade, it was difficult for group texts

Eddie

red shorts this, red shorts that, consider him wearing overalls! He has a whole collection for every kind of weather and they're adorble

not much of a gamer but went through a really intense minecraft stage, the other losers refused to play with him

he loves traveling. Sonia never allowed him to go anywhere so as an adult he goes everywhere. Constantly taking trips and planning the next place to explore. Also he tries to travel with the Losers if they're going somewhere for work. Richie to L.A., Bill to London, Bev to Italy for fashion shows

secret huge ya novels nerd (don't tell Bill)

he's really into fancy coffee. Has an espresso machine in the kitchen and tries to make little designs in the foam and is constantly watching aesthetic coffee videos

Richie

pretends to like horror movies but is actually baby, he covers his eyes the whole time

He owned a ferret, his name was Todd. Eddie and Stan pretended to hate it but the creature grew on them

allergic to cats, cue the ferret, his skin will break out in hives if he's near one, but he doesn't care. He will pet that cat and the others Losers have to stop him

LOVES Futurama, he has a tattoo of Bender on his ass

Actually enjoys doing yard work. His mind is constantly going but when he's doing yard work, running the weed wacker or the lawn mowers, he can't hear himself think. Or if he's raking leaves or cutting bushes, his mind is too zeroed in on his task. It's strangely therapeutic for him

Bill

constantly has ink on his hands, from drawing or his typewriter, it's always there

had adult braces, IK I've said this before but I'm very passionate about 20 year old something Bill with a full set of braces. Yes I had adult braces too, why do you ask?

Sticks his tongue out when he's really focused on something and gets a wrinkle between his brows

he is dumbest smart person you will ever meet. He is an idiot. Everyone thinks he's supposed to be smart bc he's a best selling author but no, this man will try to pry something open with a knife with his face too close to said knife. He has no self preservation instincts, it's only bc of the Losers he's made it this far

has a weird obsession with Cherry Coke

Bev

again, i've said this before, but Bev always wanted a pet and she can't give the emotional care a cat, dog, rat, ect needs so she keeps reptiles. They're really cool and besides their basic care, they don't need anything else from Bev, they're perfectly content to be watched by her on the other side of the tank

speaking of that, her favorite reptile are geckos and she's actually based a couple her designs on their patterns

went through a phase where all she did was play the Sims. She was obsessed. The losers would go to bed while she was playing and wake up and she was still playing it. Yes this overlapped with Eddie's minecraft phase.

believes in Bigfoot. Like for real.

complete roller coaster fanatic, loves going to amusement parks to ride the most extreme roller coasters

Stan

has a deep passion for the Law & Order shows, they're his guilty pleasures

had a mental breakdown in his twenties and dyed his hair blue. The others losers where surprised and yes Stan regretted it. It was Impossible to get out and he basically just had to grow it out

believe it or not he is a horrible driver. He insists he's a great driver but the other losers refuse to ride with him. He doesn't get it. It's not like he's hit multiple curbs and gets massive road rage

he is constantly cold, over half the sweaters in the house belong to him and he's always under the blanket when watching tv. His cuddles are rare but during winter with no hesitation he will snuggle up under the human space heaters (Richie, Ben, and Mike)

he gardens! Has a rose garden out front with a bird bath and feeder. hates dirt though so when he's out there he has gloves and a little garden apron on

I have more too

#I JUST HAD TO PUT THEM SOMEWHERE #they're things that live in my head about the Losers #it 2017 #it 2019 #bill denbrough #stanley uris #richie tozier #beverly marsh #mike hanlon #ben hanscom #eddie kaspbrack #poly losers club #poly losers headcanons #polylosers

[waffletheorist]

Just finished.

So people liked my Linksona, the Hero of Simulation. And after some prompting from my little brother, I have decided to write something on him. I have never posted my own writing online before, so any advice or guidance will be appreciated. This is his first meeting with the Chain, content below the cut.

TW: Brief mentions of sleep deprivation, hallucinations, insomnia, mild violence.

Link's bad sleeping habits were beginning to have consequences. It was 2:00 a.m, on a rainy Monday afternoon in January. He was in his room, with it's green painted walls, hastily made bed, mildly cluttered desk, and abundance of Zelda posters and consoles, including the N64 passed down to him by his father. He had been doing homework up late, running on God knows how many cups of pure caffeine, (again) when he glanced outside his window and through the rain, saw a Lizalfos. He glanced back to his work, and out the window again, coming to the immediate conclusion that he's hallucinating as a result of sleep deprivation. The lizalfos was still there, alongside a mesmerizing triangular gateway, purple in colour, which immediately piqued his curiosity, he had always had an interest in the fantastical after all, how could he not when named after a videogame hero?

Suddenly, the Lizalfos turned towards him. Beady red eyes glared at him through the darkness and rain, and Link shrank back, before putting on a brave face. It is only a hallucination after all, it can't hurt him, right? He turns back to his maths work, staring longingly at his N64 before snapping himself back to reality. The logical part of his brain tells him it's probably best not to pay any mind to the bizarre hallucinations outside his window, while the impulsive part screams at him to pack his bags, grab his sword (from where?), and become the fictional Hero his parents named him after. He shot his homework one last guilty look, the pen still held in his Triforce-tattooed left hand, before deciding that it wouldn't be any harm if he just took a quick stroll outside, and the fresh air would probably be good for him anyway! Even though it's still dark, raining and around 2 in the morning.

He grabs his phone from it's resting place on his desk, and empties out his school bag. He thinks back to the Lizalfos. It's scales were shining, black as night, and it looked like the kind from Ocarina of Time. If a Lizalfos was there, then surely Hyrule was through the portal? In that case, it might be best to pack his Hyrule Historia. Not that he's wasting any thoughts on his hallucinations though, that would be ridiculous. He shoves some more items into his bag, including a lighter, solar powered phone charger, deodorant and some clothes. He takes note of the rain outside, and also decides to bring an umbrella. After some searching, he discovers it by the door. He puts on his trainers (or sneakers for the Americans reading) and his coat, which is an appealing shade of sage green with many pockets on both the inside and outside, and after taking one last look at himself in the mirror, he steps through the door, locks it behind him, opens up his umbrella, and sets off around the side of his house to face the portal and the Lizalfos, forgoing all self preservation instincts because:

A: It's just a hallucination, so it's probably not even going to be there when he turns the corner!

B: It's a portal, and a Zelda enemy in *real life*, there's no way he's missing this, even if he dies, he's taking a photo, and heading through that portal, this could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

C: He had no regard for his own life in the first place, he's a Link, and although the thought of leaving his dog does sadden him, she'll be in good hands with his brother.

He makes his way outside, pale (probably Vitamin D deficient) skin standing out as a stark contrast to the darkness around him, the rain beating down mercilessly on his umbrella as the puddles grow continually deeper on the path around him, wet grass glistening in the moonlight. His home is in the countryside, it's only neighbours being the fields owned by the farmers, which stank of slurry, the abandoned property that some land developers were looking to purchase a few years ago, and finally the other home across the road with the old, friendly St. Bernard dog who had been there for as long as Link could remember. It was an isolated place, and tended to smell, but it was home. He opened the gate to the back garden, but just as he was about to look around the corner, he felt a presence behind him.

Link let out a rather unheroic high pitched scream the moment he felt the choking grip fasten around his neck. Now he was sure. This wasn't some hallucination, this was reality, and he was in danger. Adrenaline coursed through his veins as his fight, flight or freeze response kicked in. The lizard hissed ominously in his ear. He could feel the spiked metal plates of armour rubbing uncomfortably against him. Why, oh why, did he let his curiosity get the better of him? He should've just kept doing his homework. His desperate shouts were quickly muffled by the creature's scaly arms covering his mouth. In that moment, Link knew he had to make a decision, and quickly, as the pressure around his throat increased. He was sure to black out if he didn't act now.

Link bit down. Hard. The Lizalfos yelped in pain and surprise, pulling its arm away. Link fell to the ground painfully, his neck still in pain from the force of the creature's choke. He stumbled backwards, and the creature turned to him, enraged by his audacity. It unsheathed a cruel, jagged blade from its side, teeth bared and snarling as it stalked towards Link. 'It's not real, it's only a nightmare', he repeated to himself like a mantra in his head. The monster raised it's sword, dark metal glinting in the light of the stars, as Link accepted his demise at the hands of this glorified lizard. Not quite how he wanted to go out, explosions would've been more fun, but alas. There's no way out now.

But then...

Link fell.

He was surrounded by an endless swirling abyss, a feeling of weightlessness as his stomach dropped. He felt sick. He shut his eyes, trying to block out the emptiness around him that seems to force it's way into his mind. He screamed again, but he couldn't hear anything, and the oppressive nothingness closed in around him, stifling and disorienting him.

Link woke up. At first, a feeling of relief coursed through his system. It was only a nightmare after all. But as the fogginess cleared from his mind, he saw that he was in unfamiliar surroundings. He heard voices around him.

"20 Rupees says they're dead."

"Vet, no."

"I think they're alive."

"That was a rather nasty fall, somebody get them a health potion."

"On it!"

"From a portal, maybe they're a spy of the shadow!"

"Their ears are strange."

"Most people have ears like that where I'm from."

"Really?"

"M'hm."

"I've seen ears like that in Hytopia. It'd explain their fashion sense if they're from there as well."

The voices all blended together. Link couldn't make sense of it all through his headache. Everything hurt. He jolted up with a start after remembering what happened, headbutting some unfortunate person who happened to be too close, as they fell back with an "ouch!" and forced his eyes open to come face to face with... his childhood heroes. Immediately, he's a deer in headlights. They're **real?** They're in front of him?

"Aw, looks like he's alive after all." A pink haired teen calls, wearing a familiar hat.

"Who would you be?" An older hero asks.

Link would recognise those markings anywhere. They're from the Fierce Deity. Then that must be the Hero of Time. He got *old*.

"I'm... Link. Same as all of you." Link replies.

"Another one? Isn't nine enough?" The pink haired one calls again. Must be the Hero of Legend from a Link to the Past with that hair.

The Hero of Time's expression hardens. Another hero. Another person forced to fight through so much suffering by his cruel destiny.

"A hero?" Asked the Hero of Wilds. With that blue Champion's Tunic, he's easily identifiable. Although Link doesn't recognise that scarring, that wasn't there in-game.

"Yes? Maybe?" Link replies.

"What does that mean?" The Hero of Wilds asks.

"Well, I donate to charity, and I saved a squirrel the other day when walking my dog."

"What about the kingdom? Have you saved the kingdom?" The Hero of the Wilds asks impatiently.

"The kingdom? I mean I guess? On a technicality I have?" Link replies.

All the heroes look dumbfounded.

"How can you save it on a *technicality*? You either save it or you don't, no technicalities there." The Hero of Legend asks, an underlying tone of snark to his voice.

"Well, it wasn't really real?" Link replies, just as confused.

A collective 'ohhhhhh' is shared among the heroes. A few have had adventures in worlds that weren't truly real. That must be the case with this one too, or so they thought.

"We can't call you Link, do you have any other nicknames?" The Hero of Winds asks, easily recognisable in his blue Island Lobster Shirt.

Link pauses, trying to think of a cool name. Most of his online names are things he made up at age 12, and he doesn't want to be called by his TLoZ speedrunning aliases or any of his school nicknames while here. Hero of Videogames or Games just makes him sound less serious. What's a fancier word for that?

"I'm... The Hero of Simulation."

#linksona #linkeduniverse #legend of zelda #linked universe