Sea Lion Shores danger close

He’d told her to command him, but the forced note of cheer in her voice was so high and false, he balked immediately. “No,” he grumbled, and got to his feet, moving tentatively toward the kill. If she did not gainsay him, his muzzle would dip and his jaws would part, lapping at the run of blood at the pinniped’s throat. “Eat,” he muttered flatly, and whether he’d intended it as a command or an explanation was anybody’s guess. He tore through the thick blubber, steeping his muzzle in blood until the mask of crimson reached his eyes, and feasted like a creature starved; at this point, any attempts to move him or drive him away would have been for naught. It was only when he’d sated his own hunger that he stepped around to the creature’s belly and tore a messy incision, excising the stillwarm viscera and dropping it with roughhewn tenderness at her paws. “Eat,” he repeated, maybe a bit uncomfortably, a crick in his tail and a jagged knot in his spine confessing that whatever he’d done to offend her, he was sorry — and he would make it up to her, if she allowed it.