Noctisardor Bypass reshwe

set for tomorrow morning 5/17 <3

the entire way home, heda had prayed that glaukos would stay shut of them, truly leave the valley entire and never come back if he could help it. 
waterlogged, she tried to wring herself out from the muck of a second storm, then gave up entirely. howling once to say she was back, heda cut round and waded right into the lagoon, welcoming the embrace of the stormchurned current.
don't think about it. he's going to be all right. so will druid. so will etienne. so will anselm. glaukos is gone. druid will see he's gone. etienne will see you're home, that you meant it. anselm has — well, he — and here heda faltered, for the fundamental flaw when it came to him was that glaukos was not his common denominator. it was her.

@Druid and Ava had agreed to watch the kids while Anselm stepped out for a morning hunt. He’d caught but one thing out near the lagoon — a small stoat that hung from his sodden muzzle as he made to return to Dawnleaf.


A howl cut through the storm, so close to him that he nearly leapt from his skin. He spied Heda’s silhouette in the current, her thin frame enunciated by the water that clung to her.

Anselm felt a spear of something quicken in his belly. He clenched the stoat tight, looking openly at the woman Etienne had accused of being his lover. He realized he did not understand himself; not truly. He was bitterly in denial with the attraction he felt for the seaborn. It was in the gold-gleam of Etienne’s rounded muscles, the shape of his sun-coin eyes — the strength of his body as he left furrows in the earth when he dug. And yet, there was something so elegant about women. Anselm’s eyes roved over Heda, tracking each soft curve of her body with a detached sense of lonely torment.

flanks flattened by the water, the willowed delicacy of her bones standing stark, heda felt she looked very dismal. unattractive. a crone surviving day to day on luck.
she shook out her soaked pelt and wondered if she had ever felt beautiful. as usual, such sensations had their beginning and end in caracal. and the last time she had answered her hunger for a man, well.
it was the self-same guardian who watched her now, she knew, sensing anselm and searching for him with her peripherals.
why did he watch?
she was not his lover, and this had meant very much for etienne to know. and yet — wouldn't they be? heda's mouth had gone dry. with all the ugly knowledge between them, she had no right to look back at the man.
and yet she did, at last, letting her own gilt gaze trace the strength in his broad shoulders, the height of him, the handsome detailwork of his jawline. anselm truly was striking, and despite her unsurety and perhaps even a minute aversion, she felt her body respond fiercely to the remembered power of his arms, and how he had pinned her to the earth thereafter.
perhaps that was the last moment she had felt worthy of desire.
heda's heart raced for she did not understand what this moment meant. in time she found the shadowed gold of his gaze, and waited in uncertain anticipation, more for his usual dismissive irritation than anything else.

It was one thing to openly watch someone as they metaphorically undressed by the river. It was something else entirely to meet their gaze, and hold it. 

Anselm felt a shiver rake through his fur as their eyes interlocked. There was so much communicated in Heda’s gaze, so many things he knew he needed to say and yet, couldn’t. 

That shiver ricocheted down through his body as he felt the fierce burn of her gaze. He too wondered what it meant, and recalled how she responded the first and last time he’d pressed his belly to the sharp ridges of her spine, and felt her move underneath him. In his mind’s eye he touched the flame of her fur, heard the soft gasp from her mouth as he found her — 

And perhaps if Anselm had not then remembered how furious he was with Etienne — if he had not remembered with a bitter inward laugh that this was his ‘lover’ — he might have looked away. 

Instead Anselm took one step forward, and then another — until his outrage with Etienne became an assertive arrow in which notched itself directly to Heda, the stoat left behind in the rain-trodden grass.

rain pattered in dozens of concentric circles upon the face of the lagoon. it was open here, too open for the intent stalk of the hunter who came toward her. and yet heda did not move, the tripwire of her pulse sending the same traitorous singes of heat into her bloodstream.
heda would have liked to be poised when anselm at last stood close, but she trembled as she held the darkened gold of his eyes and waited for him to decide.
but why should she wait?
did they feel entitled to one another simply because of the densite in dawnleaf? but her thoughts were blurring, melting, and finally in answer to every impulse, she rose. she might have grabbed his hand were it possible, drew him along; instead heda stepped back into the deep shadows of the thick forest which ringed the lagoon, shadows turning her own eyes into coinage spilled on a nightlit trail.
she did not take them from him, knowing now he was close enough to hear the thud of her heart.

If Etienne wanted to accuse Heda of being his lover, Anselm would make it so. He stalked towards her, his anger a brandished weapon — but it wasn’t Heda he wished to hurt.

She rose from the water with liquid splattering; the gentle curves of her figure an open and rolling plain inviting his trespass. He studied her with a hungry pause then, feeling the last of his resistance ebbing.

Anselm nearly moved to take her then, but stilled his urgent desire with a suckling breath. His heart thudded alongside hers as they made for the wooded bole, thick shadows casting dark pylons around them. 

Their first time had been rough — a powerful yet lustful affair with little thought for her. He’d thought of Etienne the entire time, which sorrowed what should have been a mutually pleasurable experience. It’d been over before he knew it — they’d parted to bitter words and confusion. 

This time, Anselm held Etienne in his thoughts with bitterness. He reached for Heda with a breathless touch, his blood thrumming. 

His teeth roved the gentle rise of red along her neck. She may not think herself beautiful, but Anselm never believed her ugly. Even at her thinnest, she commanded a wary awe from him. He breathed in the scent of lagoon and meadow that clung to the silver strands of her fur, wishing to impart his own scent upon her as a spiteful message.

Anselm fought the rising urgency that commanded him, feeling a strange sense of pleasure in denying himself immediate gratification. All the while he felt for Heda with a traveler’s roaming desperation, unwilling to spare a second thought to the betrayal he’d be committing by slipping inside her a second time.

When her sister’s call sailed through the damp air, Druid immediately rolled onto her feet. She felt a little bad leaving Ava alone with all six pups while she went to greet Heda, though at least they were napping—all of them, at once!

She made her way toward the lagoon, curious whether her sister’s hunt had been successful. Druid tried to ignore the voice of double that niggled at her, prompted by Anselm’s question. She wouldn’t lie to me, she emphatically told her inner voice.

When she arrived near the waterside, she found an abandoned stoat. Anselm’s scent was thick on the air, mingling with Heda’s. But where were they? Druid followed her nose into the nearby foliage, pushing her face right through the dripping undergrowth.

UH—

a goodly part of heda had not expected anselm to heed her. she had envisioned reluctance at the last moment, or a sneer, or perhaps even the sharp rejection that the mountaineer had always borne her desires.
and if she were another woman, she might have reveled in anselm's rejoining step, gloated to see her hold on him. 
in the absence of that woman and that rejection, heda found herself unmoored quite swiftly, and sought the only solidity in a sea of her own making: anselm.
the first time, they had been compelled by something beyond themselves. she and been so starkly aware that she was unwanted even as he had wound his hard arms around her waist. but now as he stroked her heated skin in the half-darkness cast by trees standing in the storm, heda only responded to him with an eager and tentative sound.
a small whimper eked from heda to feel the heat of anselm's breath along the back of her neck, piercing through her with pooling warmth. her own teeth moved gently through the fur of his cheek as he had once done for her.
what was it about him? he was handsome, yes, but it was so much more than that, and all heda could think was that it was the sin of it she enjoyed, the layered convolutions of truths so dire that only she and anselm might ever hold it between them.
shyly, losing some degree of her trepidation, heda sought with unskilled want to rouse him further, kisses to throat and chest, and all the while her breath rushed hard, and she let the desire for anselm transform her into —
her sister's eyes were upon them in another clap of thunder, and heda froze. not with shame, not with guilt, but with an inexplicable anger which the den mother forced away. "druid." there was nothing else to say.

It was wrong on many levels to use Heda like this. She was deserving of love, of something better than Anselm — and as he raked his teeth between her scarlet fur he pushed this knowledge aside. She had her chance to turn him away; she was just as complicit as he, he told himself.

A moan fluttered from her mouth, and as she touched his cheek a sensational wildfire swept under his skin. He could hold off no longer and it was then he reached to pull her under him, his preening transforming into a wanting grapple —

Suddenly, Heda froze beneath him. Anselm was not so self involved to miss this — as he froze from positioning himself atop her, he caught the surprised and speculative gaze of Druid.

This was supposed to be a private moment; anger for their discovery pouted molten from his chest. He moved like a cat discovered atop a forbidden counter, delicate and seething as he drew his gaze from Druid to Heda, unable to conjure anything but stilted breaths.

He felt shame, too. Shame that he’d reinforced Etienne’s fears and no doubt firmly cemented his longstanding role as Rivenwood’s biggest asshole.

She could join them, he thought with a twist of his gums — for what would hurt Etienne more than not one, but two?

After her little exclamation, she immediately withdrew. Scrambling back toward the water’s edge, she stepped on the stoat and blinked down at it blankly. She reluctantly glanced back at the bushes, not sure if she should say anything.

They were two consenting adults. And it was none of her business. She knew that. All the same, Druid was shocked. Heda was keeping things from her, important things. She didn’t understand why, though now was not the time to demand answers.

Instead, she shouted an embarrassed apology and hustled away from the lagoon. Druid didn’t know about them—for all she knew, they’d get right back to it—but she definitely needed to process before she could possibly talk about what she’d just witnessed.

The whole way back to Dawnleaf, she worried she might run into someone. What if she ran into @Etienne? She willed him to stay away, slinking back toward the den to settle among the drowsy pups. She avoided meeting Ava’s eye, in fact closing her own and pretending to sleep even as her mind raced.

the moment's volcanic heat had been doused. staccato desire pulsed inside every inch of her flesh, turning to disgust with herself as druid's unsure apology resounded over the trees. for a long time she only gazed at the ground between their paws, listening to the rustle of wind and the grazing of rain upon their pelts.
but she felt no shame. heda knew enough to understand that etienne felt highly for anselm, but because the words had never been said, they were easier for her evasive mind to simply — assume.
there was guilt there, licking hesitance into the fire of her veins, but not shame, and her eyes were clear when she raised them back to anselm. she could find more self-control, far more, but she had denied herself for so long that her half-warmed body felt as if it were twisting into nothing.
there's nothing wrong with this, her eyes softly insisted, searching his own; heda stood to tiptoe and kissed anselm's cheek before she bowed her head and pushed back through the rainy leaves in search of her sister.

Anselm simmered besides Heda with a new brand of self-hatred. Like her, his gaze fell to the ground as the last of his body’s infernal heat doused into cold ash. A part of him died then — a part that frankly was better off never existing at all.

His blood settled, the desire within him withering only to unpalatable disappointment.

He’d been so close to acting on his impulse, and to what end? Would their momentary tryst somehow act as the glue to the crumbling foundation of their relationship? Or would it just sow deeper resentment for one another? They were so different. So many worlds and thoughts and wants apart.

Druid was gone, an apology slung behind her that really should have been his own to issue. He jolted from his reverie by Heda’s unexpected kiss.

Now she was gone too, after her sister. Leaving Anselm in the familiar position of being by himself — alone, as he often came to find himself these days.

For he deserved little else.