She's so cute! <3 Also, slight PP. Let me know if you'd like me to change it and I gladly will. :3
Vienna did not come to him. He had watched the muscles within her body tense and coil as if she were prepared to run
into his arms to him to greet him and then it was gone, her ears having slicked back to her skull. Sumayl was confused by the lack of enthusiasm on her part, not able to comprehend, at the given point in time, that it was because of
him that she had ceased in her own movements. The distance between them killed him, caused his paws to fidget against the hard earth as he yearned to close it in the few strides it would take. He just wanted to be
close to her. To feel her, to know that she wasn't a delusion of his mid, that she was truly, in the flesh
back.
“Wait, wait,” Sumayl broke his silence when she blabbered something, in a rapid, breathless (or at least Sumayl was sure she hadn't drawn a breath for the entire duration of her explanation) about a “sad-looking wolf-thing” that had
attacked it.
“You were attacked?” Sumayl's hackles bristled rigidly along his spine as the knowledge set into his mind. He would find whomever was responsible for hurting her and he would
kill them. She didn't
look too bad, but his second greatest fear had come to life, though, hadn't it? Vienna had been hurt and he hadn't been there to protect her. On Sumayl's scale of frightening things that definitely ranked up there with fire. The Ostrega had been helpless to protect his mother from that, too. He had watched her burn to death, and yet even as the fire consumed her it had been his safety she had been concerned for, screaming at him, three months old at the time, to run. To take his siblings and
run. Sumayl had always assumed that Dhani had been the first to die by the flames. Sumayl hated feeling helpless. Never again had he wanted to feel as helpless as he had that day. He was reminiscent of it now, knowing that she had been attacked and there had been nothing he could do about it. He hadn't been there.
But Vienna seemed alright, from what he could see at any rate, and he stayed still until she had sucked in her deep breath before he surged towards her, overwhelmed with relief and regret and joy and love that he couldn't stand the distance anymore. As her head had risen to await his response, he assumed, he had closed their distance in a few strides, brazenly brushing his muzzle against hers, before pressing his nose against the crook of her neck for a few seconds, greedily taking in her scent, tendrils of her fur tickling his black, leathery nostrils. Her body was warm, and solidly there and that was all Sumayl needed.
“Don't ever scare me like that again, Vienna,” He murmured gruffly into her neck, his composure lost as everything came crashing down off the surviving high he'd been on. “I was so fucking worried.” He wasn't chiding her, more like letting his genuine feelings out, which wasn't something that Sumayl Ostrega did very often. “Do you even know how much I love you? How much it would destroy me if something were to happen to you?” It was the first time he'd actually told her he loved her, and while Sumayl wasn't one to make big fanfares over the dropping of the L word bomb he realized the significance of it, nevertheless. He pulled back some then, more interested in her reaction to his admission than he was anything else at the moment; though he had hardly forgotten her mystery attacker — but that was a topic to pick at when he wasn't confessing his undying love.
