Broken Antler Fen Nothing compares to when the smoke settles and you're the last [m]an standing.

Reyes didn't know what to do. He wasn't thinking — that had to have been the goal of Teya's little game, and later when he was rested, he would think back to these moments and how different he felt beneath the chill of her gaze, or how different he felt from the rage that had so corrupted him, pulsing through him now as fuel for his body.

One look from her; that's all it had taken for Reyes to fall for Towhee, and now all that it took to push Reyes over that edge for Teya. Time hung frozen between them while she watched him; Reyes gathering his breath, trying to calm the pounding of the heart in his chest.

He closed that distance without thinking about it. As soon as he did and the ginger of her brackish coat touched the darkness of his own, he bristled again. All that he had shared with Towhee now forfeit — the patience she had once spared him, meaningless. Love she may have claimed for him, evaporated. He grabbed now for whatever he could of Teya, the way a hungry animal might feast after too many days of starvation.

Where before there had been awkward fumbling and anxiety, now there was the anger of a man wanting to prove something - to the woman, to himself, Reyes wasn't coherent to why, only that he let his aching heart devour all sensation.