Dragoncrest Cliffs Close your eyes and sleep,

fur and skin yielded beneath his teeth, giving way to a scarlet spray that tinted his lips and fired him more deeply. wretchedly she did not move; her muzzle swung upward toward the side of his neck. mahler snarled; she slashed him with her own blades, naked beneath her wrinkled lip.
in a moment all three of them bled; mahler was only dimly aware of the seasalt man and his retreat. refusing to step away from the interloper's bite, he bore the pain, twisting his jaws into her flesh, intending to lay the flat of her hard muscle open for the gulls and kestrels.
mahler set his broad paws against the earth, prepared to rip wider the rend along the curve of his neck, where the savage fool had grit through mouthfuls of graphite pelt and skin overlaid with scar tissue to the blood beneath. regroup — the thought was dashed to sand as the all-but-forgotten third swept closer, not for himself, but for the proclaimed queen of a wild cliffline that belonged to no one.
renewed, thrumming with the instinctual inclination of their kind, mahler began to tear himself loose, intending to circle, bloodstained, 'round to the woman's other side as the stranger bit toward her hindleg.