Bearclaw Valley those lions are coming, oh they're coming.

it seemed he was killing everyone who saw fit to see past his lamp-gaze to the serpent, and who accepted his inner coiling as they might the moon or the rain or yes, even death.
basilisk — salt dripped once, twice, from his chin onto caiaphas' matted fur. and yet he could not touch her; yet he nodded at her wish to be let alone, at the old iré rising witchcraft and eldritch within her.
he did not know if he could even have carried out his offer; he had briefly considered dragging the woman off to drown her, but as she lay with head pillowed upon stone, merrick understood he could not do it.
for the first time, the prospect of death at his hand was undesirable, and all culminated in the dread that he could no longer control what happened to caiaphas now.
"isn't there anything i can do?" merrick begged, perhaps selfishly; he dared dip his crown to nudge the edge of one crusted paw, wallowing in the snow alongside her as he agonized over ways to refuse her relinquishment. 
his one eye shuttered now as the smile dipped from her lips and she went off to some place in her mind he could not follow, if only for a moment; filled with anger and grief and the simpering of a small boy, merrick fought valiantly to keep the sounds out of his throat and thus out of her ears.
he could not stop caiaphas from leaving, but the boy refused to accept that he would be bereft once more.
"did i ever tell you," he whispered, crazed, desperate, biting back another choking sob, "that you saw more of me than my own mother ever did."