Raven's Watch [m] α

good by me!

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there it was, an unhingedness to that drengr's face which signalled the end of their discourse. skorpa sighed loudly as muscles bunched beneath warriorhide just before the bullrush began.

a selfish man! too proud to share, too weak to keep her, too myopic to see how he endangered her life over and over, willingly despite the look which had touched his face just moments before.

they collided as boulders might beside a frozen lake, a crack of bone and bruising force that pinned regnvand between them. he had fallen backward to his spine, arm clamped once more across her breath, feminine body guarding him from throat to entrails. a shield of upturned belly, one easily broken by the force of his opponent. if he lived, morning promised a horrible agony in all the fibers of his being, but for now he was spared the sensation by adrenaline's rush.

but she would die. and then he would die. skorpa could taste the blood of the goat already, running down his throat to mingle with the stickiness of their own.

tighter, tighter he held the woman, knowing her sounds of struggle would affect the beast above him, and though he could not see her panicked eyes, skorpa assumed she stared up at her first captor in a way which might only affect him.

a pawn on a dirtstained board. in compromise the white heart lay, girded only by a ribbon of silver fur which was nothing to his boiling strength. blood might run in rivers from his own flesh; what mattered now was taking what the man wanted, damning him to a murder which filthied only his own hands. it was the price for stupid dominance over a more intelligent submission, and skorpa would see all its riches spelled out in a pool of red.

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