Heron Lake Plateau [m] Got death on his breath, halitosis

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Powerplay with permission

Tybault had never been the man his father wanted him to be. He was a singer, a wanderer, another orphan seed of The Gilded Sea drifting in search of a place to take root. Where his siblings found fertile ground and flourished, he remained unchanged. What else was he to do?

All he knew how to be was the man his father wanted.

See, he hadn't come here to kill. He didn't need another stain on his ashen soul.

But men like you don't deserve to live. Above the sound of blood rushing in his ears, the beast's laughter drilled painfully through his skull. He dropped a limp bloodied forelimb and growled. Shut - His jaws closed around the massive muzzle with crushing force. The fuck up.

Men like him didn't deserve to live. They didn't deserve the mercy of a quick death, either. Or maybe that was only what Tybault told himself.

Maybe this was what he'd meant from the beginning.

Tybault felt his wounds now. He felt — fuck. He sucked in a cold breath between his teeth and tasted only blood. This was the downside, he supposed, of fighting like you have nothing to lose. You might really lose something.

The heat of the moment was fading rapidly into something cold, something bright and sharp and fleeting. He struck just below the mangled wolf's ribs, blood welling in the wake of his teeth. The fire rose in him again. He remembered watching the man strike Reina.

The sound of his mother weeping.

Later he would remember nothing but the feeling of it, the wet heat and the blood pouring and his ears throbbing because it was so loud, the screams were so loud —

and in the moments just before consciousness slipped away from him, Tybault stumbled free, gagging and retching as he freed the slick red length of his foreleg from the yawning space beneath the dead man's ribs. A laugh bubbled from him; a wild sob.

Fuck you.

He collapsed.