Porcupine Ridge I'll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies

She liked this game. Liked to be included.

Didn't like that last part, though. God she hated competition, her gaze darkened in kind and teemed with little fantasies of the worst kind; there would be no others because she would make sure of it. There would be none to dethrone her, not without meeting the worst of her ire, an ire tested only once, and left banging against the cell bars of her thoughts, scratching at cocoon walls just begging to find its way out.

Hard to forget that taste, though.

She grew used to the smell of iron, to the stains and smears that slicked ivory surgeon's hands, but the taste? Not like deer, not like coyote, not like not like not like anything else. Grease on gears, and suddenly they worked all that much better. The clarity was like the first breath of clean air she'd ever had, looking down over that still mound of fur. Breath materialized in the crisp air, synchronous, in tune and not on the sidelines, finally, finally, finally.

And she deprived herself of it, that fresh air. She knew what it made her. Wretched thing. All wrong.

But it didn't feel all that wrong, right now. Maybe it was the way he spoke, his indifference paired with her own; crimes weighed but not judged, not judged. She owed it to him and even if she hadn't she would've kept all things close, secrets wrapped in thorns and dragged into the depths of whatever could've sufficed for a heart inside her.

I can keep secrets. She said through a soft breath, a world away and returned in the blink of an eye; she found herself quite... amused. Excited, really. Anticipation, rot, it all seeped from her. But you would find nobody else like me... I'm a rare breed, hard to replicate. A paw rolled forward in gesture before she'd spin around in place, flick a switch, sensitivity now lacing her breath; something tender in her eyes and in her voice. You wouldn't leave, would you?

Leave me. Not when she was starting to like him. No no no no no he couldn't go anywhere. Claws were in deep.