Mudminnow River it will break my heart to go against your wishes [m]

merrick's nostrils flared;
his single pupil dilated with a hot and anticipating pleasure. the savageness that suddenly limned laurel was unhinged; it reminded him so vaguely and yet so strongly of his own —
blood of my blood
last remnant of whatever disaffected line had spawned his mother; indra, are you watching? indra indra indra — i am going to kill her. i am going to kill you — again. you will keep dying over and over again. merrick's voice rose again into that stilted laughter, high and boyish and delighted —
"YOU UNDERESTIMATE WHAT MADE ME!" the bearwolf thundered; throat cracking and constricted, a thicket of lightning. his was first leap, claws propelling him forward through the loamy mud of the dingy river.  overhead, darkening clouds, gravid with bellies of spring rain which they soon birthed down upon the continued battle of laurel and merrick.
once upon a time she had taken him to see the birds; he had run to the borders and she had caught him there, and made him stop. what would have happened had he run away that day? might all of this have been changed
and her voice had been soft, soft, soft, and her eyes filled with a love from which merrick had never grown accustomed to from anyone but his mother, the
"nobody likes a naughty boy."
had laurel seen him then for what he would become?
oh — in the seconds before their collision, merrick discovered an even deeper vein of hatred for her, that she had not culled him early. had she never come at all; been alive at all; been there at all; indra might have been saved, for she would not have abandoned him to chase after laurel's worthless spawn.
my mom left, my dad left, my aunt left, my sister left
YOU LEFT YOU LEFT YOU LEFT YOU LEFT ME TOO
he wanted to tear laurel's shoulder open again;
merrick accepted eagerly the predictable nature of his own attack;
he wanted to feel the scars he had given her puncture and part beneath his fangs;
perhaps this was the blood which might give him atonement; 
which might remake merrick, reforge him; he the hammer and she the anvil, and between them caught the red-hot iron of his own salvation.