Silvertip Mountain thestral

As they knew he would, Dragomir dared let himself feel a glimmer of hope when he careened past Astara and Sanguinus. It grew into a swell of triumph as his paws splashed through the water collected at the den's mouth and then he was free, free to the open air and the falling rain. He felt like he could fly in that moment, felt his paws slapping on the wet ground as he tried to escape the nightmare he found himself in. He could imagine himself running back to the forest, outpacing the yearlings despite the impossibility of it, and returning to his father and his mother and his sister.

The hope died when teeth rent his hide and agony pierced down into his hips, threatening to drag him to the ground. Sanguinus' hold was true. Dragomir could go no further with the larger male clinging to him, and the feeling of serrated jaws closing on him would have driven him to stop even if he fought to go on. He was not a wolf who could blindly charge through his pain, nor one for whom adrenaline was a numbing drug; he was one who squealed and sought to make it stop when his body screamed with it. Adrenaline did not render him immune... but it did seize the reins and turn him around.

For the first time in his life, Dragomir wielded his fangs as a weapon against his fellow wolf; he twisted, tears streaming from his eyes and stomach clenching with nausea as he felt his flesh tear in the beast's jaws, and drove his own youthful muzzle toward Sanguinus' face in a ferocious show of self-defense.