"clearly, it's a family get-together," merrick scoffed toward orson, orson and her outburst. 
she choked out her last she never fought  dirt dirt dirt she breathes dirt now
merrick turned his one eye to burn upon each one of them in turn, aventus in particular. the boy seemed gripped by something unfathomable, dark, incomprehensible. the bearwolf's teeth glinted in the rainswept night. "for anyone who needs backstory, i caught this one stealing from us." he jerked his muzzle toward the features of the wolf upon the ground, features twisted in a rictus of pain and terror.
"it does not matter who he is. who he was. who he might have been. he stole meat from your throats, and so he's here with ursus now." merrick's violent cyclops-stare fell to 
indra indra indra indr —
avicus
and he stared at the pair of them.
and his sides undulated with breath.
"the gods have been kind enough to grant ursus a visitor," and merrick turned his dripping muzzle toward jaylen. "you must always respect the bears," he growled to the listening ears. "they are why we have been blessed." rambling now. he cast a glance toward their bleeding captive.
"come here," washed his voice, single lantern-eye coming to rest upon the cubs of his blackbird, lapping up against their tiny paws as merrick beckoned the fledglings forth.

red and dark; light shining behind one's eyelids; the shadow of sleep. children who summoned their own spirits. he did not look to his blackbird.
he did not look to the others; he was utterly consumed by each movement of their small paws, carrying the pair toward the inexorable power of the one that ursus called witch. and yet he was drunk upon the agreement of them to he as had never been before; some tiny link clicking into a notch long before made to house it.
a blink; the eye with its blaze of scars; merrick tasted salt between his teeth. some warm river that cut its way along his hardworn visage.
the downed soul's limbs began to churn against the ground; they could not raise up, only watch in a soaked, half-horror, as the bearcubs approached.
merrick drew a breath, watching the saliva drip from the dark jaws of the boy. and the girl, further back, but no less intent upon the trespasser that had fallen to his jaws. he lifted his head to all of ursus; he held his lover's aubergine stare, smile curling like the edges of shaved bark, an ear-and-a-half sweeping toward the little ones, the little wolves grown up from grubs that mewled at their mother's side.
something, now, something — he must make it so;
build for them a legacy from the roots up. his birthright had been bitter as wormwood, but there was no such reason it must be so for 
a pebble's insistent knock behind the door of his forehead. merrick blinked, lowered his muzzle conspiratorially toward the pair, glancing over them with the firegourd wash of his single eye. he stepped over the harrowed body on the wet grass, and in a motion of fluidity, merrick threw wide the gate of the prisoner's throat, a gout of crimson flaring wide as he sought to anoint 
"my children!" the bearwolf suddenly exhorted, suddenly choked with tears as the spinning death painted all in its path with a torrent of scarlet that appeared as a mist within the rain-filled air.
"ursus loves you." no heaviness in his jaw when he spoke, no clench of anger; they were his. they belonged to him, and the bearwolf at once sent up an exuberant howl of welcome and cunning threat toward those who would ever raise a paw to harm the pair of young bears that astara had granted him.