Wheeling Gull Isle bismil

Seelie was fast, faster than Stockholm — but not quite fast enough. The vicious clash of her bared teeth gnashing against Aditya’s was all too brief, his incensed passion far too great to be absorbed by her reared head, her small body. In a jaw-spar, she was no match for any grown wolf, let alone a wolf as towering as the gold-etched male. She licked at her gums and tasted the foul confederation of her blood and his, but the metallic tang was immediately washed away with a current of bitterness that he should so visibly sully Stockholm with his touch. Swaths of crimson painted the pale hollow of the Gampr’s throat, and though no wolf could hear, Seelie vented her fury in a thin scrap of expelled breath.

Rokig, `Io, Moorhen, and even Komodo had leapt to join the fray, and the Aralez was easily jostled out of harm’s way. Couldn’t they see how badly she needed this?! Stockholm, the island, the seawolves — they belonged to her! She did not want safety; she wanted to fight! There was a frenzied beating in her blood. Her hummingbird heart was a target, and every new wound was a firing squad. The inkdark empath felt each blow as a mark upon her own flesh and quite lost herself in the almost carnal nature of battle.

She did not notice, therefore, when Aditya’s fangs found purchase in the tender juncture of throat, collarbone, and spur of shoulder. She was too busy being stupid, trying to stubbornly insert herself between her husband and the others. It came as a shock when all motion seemed to stop, and Aditya was Aditya again, weeping and speaking in the lyrical singsong of his mothertongue. A soft smile was on her face when her limbs abruptly failed her and she sank bonelessly to the sand. There you are, Adi! bespoke the warm recognition writ in her Neptune eyes — but when her gaze passed inevitably from him to Stockholm after a beat (a symbol, perhaps, of what had transpired to shape their fates this way) she remembered.

As her blood streamed into the sand, so too did the warmth and love bleed from her visage. She rose, bobbling slightly, and she looked at him, and she told him plainly in a shredded rasp, “I did.” Her voice and face were entirely stubborn, utterly mutinous, and overwhelmed with hurt — because she had loved him, more purely than most, and while she could forgive any cruelty leveled against her, she resented his actions against her mate and family. “Peace go.” She still wished him peace, for this was not who she believed he was intrinsically, but the change in syntax was eloquent. He was not welcome here — not right now. Then she turned her back on him, as much as it pained her, and tried to make a dignified exit.

She made it about three paces before she collapsed.