Raven's Watch [m] α

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---

hvis din mor kunne se dig...

"hvis min mor kunne se mig," skorpa growled to that grating voice in his head, "ville hun forbande guderne for at have ladet mig leve ved fødslen."

brunhilde had only loved einor and svein. sigurd had been standoffish, enough to where skorpa no longer included him in fatherly saga — but einor, einor, einor! "guderne gav dem tre sønner, og de elskede kun to."

ravens blackened the sky. skorpa leant his head back against the stone. he was tired, so very tired, and his exhaustion made him weak. angered tears stung the man's eyes, a secret over which he would kill to protect, but for a moment skorpa was only an abandoned boy with the marks of a father's teeth in his hide.

they had made him do it. they had driven him to it! his laughter was crazed then, an echo which did nothing to dispel those jet wings.

fire-eyes opened in hate. a childish sniffle. he angrily wiped his mouth, smearing old blood and rot along his wrists. this was a man! he was a man, blooded many times as a warrior; it did nothing to cry. skorpa's last meal had been a rabbit and its gore caked his front — but this had been many days ago. the scents of a man and a woman were strong here and it was why he had begun to trail them at a distance. her footfalls were filled with something harsh. his scent was the brash reek of a confident man. perhaps these two had come to fuck themselves into a new pack, and the potential that they had dug even a shallow cache kept the exile shifting forward on their trail.

---

Faust had been gone for less than a half-hour. She couldn’t remember ever being so impatient in her life— a prisoner bereft of a sentence. But it would come, soon, no medicine woman need confirm it beyond the quickening in her pulse. She’d be damned if she was made the man’s bedwife!
Rush now. Think later.
Thoughts had taken on her father’s voice, and he was all but yelling them at her. Ayovi did not know when she’d be let alone again. The window was now.
Flouting pain, the dove vaults from the cave and pushes for the treeline, thick tail bannering behind her. He might lose her scent in the hemlock– he might–
A pair of bright flames is what she sees first but it’s the startling smell that kills her course with a slide and an audible gasp– like cow vomit and blood stewed in spirits. The air fouls, Ayovi finds her head snapping back, but her wide blue eyes never divert from off his face– not down to the old crusted fluids– not to the hide smothered in violence.
“Please. H-help me,” she pleads quietly.

it was toilsome. really. again and again, faust would attempt to prove himself a worth-while, exceptional man, but here he was! full in mouth with the lactating goat, and no sign of iskava.

at the drop of a dime faust was on the move. scowering plentifully. through the hemlock he rounded, her scent still fresh, albeit fading at a rapid pace. he had been done with the hunt sooner than later, his coat floundering with fresh blood that marred his face and neck.

there was a vile scent up ahead. male, no less. he was large, cumbersome, and seemingly wild. faust could see ayovi up ahead, pleading.

pleading!

oh gods be good. faust was quick, too quick, anger rolling off of him in waves. the gods don't heed your request, iskava. with a snarl, he toppled just behind her.

you look hungry! faust called, pretending everything had been just fine.

HOPE THIS IS OKAY

---

feathery green and the reek of raven shit, cold stone and colder water. snow on the air, and the taste of that last was something skorpa held between his teeth. another moment and he would leave this ledge, go to taste the ground and find these wolves.

before him the branches shuddered, and he fell back with a wrinkled lip, body falling at once into deportment of man holding rusted axe, ready to bring it down upon warring head. what he found was no battle, no stricture of teeth, only a woman wearing the hues of an early spring rain.

there had been no time to learn the words of this place, but skorpa did not need to know their sound to understand her fright, to comprehend that regnvand fled from something. his stare flared beyond her to the hemlock leaves. some — metallic tang clung to this stranger. skorpa weighed her in a brief but heavy moment, but decided at last that he was not a dane who could deny himself silver.

a squalid smile spread his reddened mouth; in a moment he stepped to circle, to gesture her ahead of him. a thrall? did the gods send him in poetry to free her? and it must be so, for suddenly the man was there, the man whose scent melded with that of regnvand. he placed himself between them and offered the same slow, dangerous grin to that stranger. "jeg tror ikke, hun ønsker at tilhøre dig," he pointed out conversationally, though the hunch of his shoulders said other matters might soon burn.

---

Where blows a breeze flickers coarse red into the line of sight. Her eyes fall down just long enough to espy the rotted carnage pouring from the wild man’s unsettling grin to the depth of his chest. A hammering rival to her anxious heartbeat crackles around them and the huntress whips head overshoulder only to immediately regret it. Faust is suddenly there behind her, voice cracking with thunder and a gaze simmering his incipient rage. The mountain wolf’s cool device is more unsettling than if he’d meant to grab her outright. Instantly her tail tucks, ears slicking back upon her skull.
She’d done it, now. Ayovi could not know all the ways he intended to punish her disobedience if she were to fall back within his possession.
Her head rakes for the wild man but he’s already drawn her behind him, setting a distance and converging on Faust with battleworn competence. He delivers words she cannot understand and in rattling fear the woman sinks deeply into her heels, concealing herself behind the boulderstone body. Indigo eyes flick restlessly between the men and in the net of her soul Ayovi prays she has not traded one captor for another.

faust stood still as stone, his green eyes piercing through the cold air to the man who circled like a scavenger eyeing a carcass. his frame loomed large, solid as the mountains that framed their icy world. snow swirled around them, the gods' breath chilling the air, a reminder of their ever-watchful gaze.

he inclined his head slightly, his voice rumbling like the distant echo of a storm. vi deler tunger, fremmed. gudene har ført mig til denne kvinde af is. hun er ikke din at tage. his words rolled in the old tongue, their cadence calm but firm, a glacier poised on the edge of breaking.

his gaze flickered to her for a brief moment, noting her defiance, her playfulness, her strength wrapped in a veil of coyness. she was toying with him, no doubt, but the evidence of her survival was plain to see—how much fuller she had grown, flesh rounding her edges. he huffed, a low, amused sound.

se, hvor fed du er blevet. det er på grund af mig. his words carried a faint edge of humor, though his stance remained unwavering, a wolf unyielding to the wind.

his gaze shifted back to the other man, his lips curling faintly into a smirk that did not reach his eyes. faust took a deliberate step forward, his size and presence cutting through the space between them like a blade.

vi kunne kæmpe som mænd, hvis du ønsker at afvige fra mine guders vilje.

he tilted his head slightly, studying the man before him. smaller, yet still toned, his scent sour with sweat and blood—a stinking heap of flesh unworthy of the gods’ gaze. faust felt the weight of his own bulk, the sheer mass of his form, and the strength that coursed through his limbs, honed by years of survival and conquest.

---

behind him regnvand crouched, and before him the darkpelt man gazed her way with a possessiveness that skorpa recognized well. had he not seen it in a thousand plundering faces? leverage was here in the face of her reticence, and the exile meant to use it.

now Loki played a pretty game, and to hear the first cadence of familiar tongue brought a billowing, pleased chuckle from skorpa, the sound of a man who has found his equal. firstly did this stranger cement his claim to pretty thrall, offering violence on the altar of their shared axeblade.

"du er ikke god til at lytte," skorpa said in selfsame assurance, a man with proverbial hand to swordhaft. a smile dazzled his bloody teeth in splendid glitter. "jeg sagde, at hun ikke vil tilhøre dig."

a long breath taken. blood. rot, not only wafted from his own fur but the figure of the woman behind him. step taken, another gained, a saunter from skorpa which might have shifted blade to dominant palm. "jeg kan også se, at hun er skadet."

some slight space only divided skorpa now from the drengr who meant to claim his prize, and for no reason save his own self-interest did the exile make himself an obstacle. "er du parat til at dø for en lemlæstet træl?"

in truth, there was no immediate benefit to fighting for her. the benefit lay in having what another man coveted. so long as she crumpled at his back, skorpa believed this was tacit acceptance of his own prevailing against her captor. "jeg kan helbrede. du kan dele. eller du kan være dum." arched brow, stare as unyielding as the thunderhead expression upon the warrior's face.

ah. was this it then? "du kommer ikke til Valhalla ved at slås om indmad," was his final rejoinder before he stepped back, forelegs widening in battlestance, shoulders readied for it.

---

She had seen duels from the kootsin in musth, great thunder beasts drunk on hormones, full of spit and swagger, emerging from the ether to measure their tines against the daring of another bull. Her head swims, increasingly frustrated she has so little to defend herself with, only fangs in a tired jaw and thinned muscles that had lost so much substance from months of lone trekking in foreign lands. She would be the weaker party in a straight fight, and quickly outpaced if she chose to run.
No, neither was an option in this delicate state.
Her eyes snap to Faust’s hard-cut face as he draws a broad forward-step. He’d been providing her with meals and would fight hard for his payoff. But the wild man would not be cowed, Ayovi sees the opposite in how those heavy scarlet limbs mast beneath him.
They speak in northern tongues. She flinches when they laugh.
“Please,” the voice stammers lowly, foolishly, like it might inspire some new sensibility between man and woman.

Mature Content Warning

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teeth clicked together in a sharp scoff as the other man spoke, the grating sound of norse filling the space between them. the claim was laughable, and yet it made his blood run hot with offense. the idea of sharing ayovi, of relinquishing even a shred of what he had earned, was an insult he wouldn’t stomach.

jeg deler ikke kvinder. the words came firm and cold, delivered with the finality of a man unwilling to entertain such absurdities. his gaze flicked briefly to ayovi, her frame tense and trembling behind him. she was hurt, yes, but it wasn’t because of him. hun er klodset. jeg bragte hende gedemælk, så hun kunne helbrede.

his attention snapped back to him, his stance widening as his broad shoulders rolled in preparation. there was no mirth in his face, only the hard-set jaw of a man who knew his next actions could spill blood.

in the common tongue, his voice dropped low, heavy with accusation. he wants to fuck you, ayovi. the statement hung between them, sharp as a blade. faust’s green eyes bore into hers, unyielding. is that what you want?

his chest heaved with slow, controlled breaths, though the tension in his body coiled like a spring ready to snap. he wouldn’t act without her answer, not yet. but his disdain for the other man was palpable, and the unspoken promise of violence simmered just beneath the surface. if she gave even the slightest inclination that this man’s presence was unwelcome, faust would see to it that he never got the chance to take another step toward her.

---

a lie did not care who told it. clumsiness was the veil of a man who beat those weaker, or so skorpa believed. at least when he struck a wench he did not need to make some farce of it. to think that this stranger too had invoked their gods did not sit well with the ragged exile.

but his words had found their mark, and his bloody teeth hewn into another grin. he fell back in ambling steps, not turning his spine for teeth but pressing into the space beside the woman, so close that the tips of dirty pelt-hairs brushed her own.

proud was the big drengr, yet if he truly wanted to fight for an injured wraith he would have already tried to strike the mockery from skorpa's filthied face. words changed; comprehension fell away, and he glanced with peripherals at whatever part of her leg or paws he could see. "gjorde han det her?" the exile asked, though his towering body meant to blot half the she-wolf from the stranger. she surely did not understand him and he surely did not care.

skorpa had no desire to keep a thrall who would only be trouble. she was fed goats'-milk; the stranger indeed meant to put fat onto her thin frame. to support what? but this too was known; a half dozen bastards had been thrown by the slaves of his father before he himself had been born. 

as the man spoke harshly to what had just been his property, the redstained mouth remained stretched in humour. he could trade her for that goat and its milk; he lifted his chin, making a show of inhaling a far more delicate scent than his own, his burntbranch eyes taunting them both. the stranger left this choice to a woman and she had only two from which to choose. was he so assured to be chosen again when it was from him that regnvand had fled at all?

---

She did not want this.
She wanted her husband.
She was not a child anymore but she remembered being the girl who would let herself become so deeply smitten, believing it was safe. She dreamed of marriage. She dreamed of sex.
Ayovi could not stomach the idea of wild man forcing himself on her. She glances away as he nears, feeling a great flush of shame rip over her face at having been desperate to believe so much of him in the first place. He was a man. He speaks and she knows it’s hardly innocent. His breath is wet on her neck. A familiar twinge of sick runs through her and she fights to suppress it. She had known only the initial touches between man and woman.
But the huntress had not yet felt what heat the band wolves spoke of. She did not yet know longing in the waves of air. Nothing would come of it. Nothing could come of it—
He’d sully her! How could any husband want her after that? But would he let her go? Would it be enough to grant her safe passage?
She wouldn’t have to carry his children— it could be a moment quickly buried. She would never have to speak of it again. No one would have know—
“After,” she swallows, “will you let me go?” Her eyes do not lift from the snow, too ashamed to look fully into either man. Her mind is in the North.

he watched as the wild man moved closer to ayovi, his filthy form brushing against her pristine coat. his stomach churned at the sight, at the mockery on the man’s face, and his ears pinned back. the beast dared to question him, dared to ask if he had hurt her. as if faust had ever needed to lie to her, as if his honesty and care had not already been proven.

he asked if i hurt you, he said, his voice even, though there was a sharpness beneath it, an edge that cut deep into the cold air between them. his golden eyes flicked to ayovi, searching, hoping she would answer honestly as she always had. he had been truthful thus far, trusting her to see that, to return it. to see him.

but what he saw now—her hesitance, her shame—it stung worse than any bite. she could not seriously be considering this man. this filthy, stinking, ugly man. faust’s teeth clicked together audibly as his jaw tightened, restraining the disgust and rage that boiled within him. his gaze bore into her, heavy and unyielding, daring her to meet it.

was she so desperate to run from him? after all he had done, all he had given her? the thought was bitter, and it clawed at his chest. he had carried her when she couldn’t walk. he had fed her when she couldn’t hunt. he had protected her, and now—this?

you cannot sully yourself this way, ayovi, his voice dropped lower, softer, yet no less firm. the words were not just a plea—they were a command. not with him. not like this.

faust stepped forward, his frame towering, casting a long shadow over the wild man. his bite was coiled, waiting, ready to be unleashed. but first—he needed her answer. her choice.

is this what you want? he asked, his tone daring her to speak, daring her to confirm what he feared. he would not act until he knew, but his patience was thinning, his disgust threatening to boil over. he would not let the wild man take her—not before he did.

---

what was this? skorpa had never seen dramatics of such nature over a woman, let alone one already compromised by inflicted hurt. his expression remained a study in mocking grin, continuing to bait the man who meant to keep his prize here in the mountains.

above their heads, ravens shattered cold air with raucous cawing. the gods watched such a pathetic scene with black eyes, for skorpa had realized that regnvand was more than a slave. this pleading, these commands, the anger. exiled grin broadening to show the extent of red-daubed teeth, he kept his eyes upon the man.

upon the husband.

this must be his wife then. no drengr put such investment into a thrall. for all his dire bulk, the warrior gave himself away too often. too easily, pouring the silver coins of himself out where skorpa might see. his second step did not dislodge the exile, only broadened him with a breath. it was he who held overhead gambit in this foolish game of hnefatafl. it was he behind whom the woman crouched. did not his opponent comprehend that the battle was already won? 

what was i-oh-vee? twice had it been said, in a tone one might take with a stupid creature who had forgotten the proper hierarchy.

only to those deemed fit did the gods give their plunder. but if regnvand was not tribute, if she was indeed bound in marriage to the drengr, then Frigg had given her all the rights of any other woman.

did she comprehend her own power?

skorpa found himself fascinated. Odin was here among the blackfeathered messengers, and his exiled worshipper remained rooted, though his smiling eyes said he would move to crush the warrior's skull in the gloom cast by that tall shadow.

---

Want? Want? And now, bestowing the illusion of choice when he’d stripped her of it entirely— for a boon from wild man? In further attempts to rework her?
Ayovi knows her face is coloring as Faust in bristling shadow advances once more and is met with the wildling’s putrid red bluster. The northern bulls seem eager to write a victory in blood, but Ayovi had already lost, fettered to one or the other. Her shaking makes her feel a weak-willed fool. Once, she had been a talented kootsin huntress. Now her life was marked only by a man’s absence.
Still, the eyes look around desperately for an escape she cannot see.

faust remained still, though the tension in his body screamed with a barely contained ferocity. his lone green eye bore into the filthy man, his sharp features shadowed in grim defiance. but within that defiance, there was something softer, a flame not meant to be shared, not meant to be challenged. it was for her. for ayovi.

hún er mín, he growled again, his voice low and guttural, as though the weight of the gods themselves pressed upon his words. she is mine. his breath billowed in the frozen air, chest heaving not from exertion but from the storm roiling within. he stepped forward, deliberate and slow, the ground seeming to shift under the weight of his presence.

ég vil ekki úthella blóði fyrir augum goðanna, he continued, his tone dark but steady. yet the edge of his voice hinted at what lay beneath—violence coiled tight, ready to spring if provoked. his last warning.

his sharp green gaze flicked briefly to ayovi, and in that moment, the plea was clear. it was not a plea for mercy, not for himself, but for her. let this end. let her be safe.

farðu, he commanded finally, his voice unwavering. go.

for the first time, the storm in his eye softened as it landed on her. what had once been quiet affection now bloomed, undeniable in the heat of his gaze. she was not a thing to be claimed, not a trophy for men to fight over. she was more. and the thought of her, trembling and desperate, being forced into the clutches of a lesser man filled him with disgust.

he stood taller, his frame casting a broad shadow over the snow. no one—not this wretched exile, not anyone—would take her from him.

this fucking simp i stg..

power play, i can edit if not okay!

---

"go," said the drengr, but it would be his misfortune and her own that skorpa understood the terms. his proximity to the rainwater pretty made worthwhile his boldness.

a hard arm shot out in fierce speed, grabbing for regnvand, the brawn of his strength pulling her back against the raging beat of his chest. did she feel the gallop of drumming in his pulse, in the wrist which banded across her breastbone as if it were a leather cord.

"bring mig geden," he ordered, though his bloodied grin burned close to the woman now. her captor and husband had given himself away with that look, of wondering and soft want. he would rather release her than see skorpa have her and that was a weakness to be seized and shaken to pieces as a dog with a rat.

what else would the stranger give to see her freed?

his arm tightened. his challenging look leveled toward the warrior, who would do as he said if he truly cared. they were warring men of the north; skorpa's willingness to snap her neck should not be ignored. he had done more for less.

and today he would kill a woman over a goat simply because he had been slighted. "hvis guderne vil have, at du skal have hende, må hun være i live, ikke?" skorpa mocked.

if the warrior could not barter her way to safety, then regnvand belonged to the white heart as a war bride. this was also their way, no matter how the brute postured in bristling rage.

---

She would look at Faust as his eyes fall upon her. Is it weariness she sees on him then? Or a soft, inward grief? A foreign command and another silence while the bulls exchange their glances.
Now she is jerked upright, pulled so fast against wild man that surprise has her gasping, a red limb coiling around her neck like a noose. Her vision breaks, for a moment she can do nothing but breathe back strangling fear and temper the panic rising in her throat.
“Please,” it’s a meaningless plea, the fight in her glistening like a final ray of sun before drowning into sea.
The blood has gone solid in her veins but wild man’s pulse is harsh against neck while a voice like blackening coals grates over her ears.

faust’s growl resonated low and deep, barely restrained, his green eyes darkening as he watched the brute manhandle her. every muscle in his frame screamed to lunge, to tear and rip, but the gods whispered restraint into his ear—a test, a cruel one, but a test nonetheless.

the demand was made, and though rage coiled like a serpent within him, faust forced himself to turn. his paws struck the snow with a brutal rhythm, faster than he had moved before, the cold air biting at his lungs as he surged back toward the carcass. the goat was heavy, fat with milk, and his muscles burned as he hauled it onto his shoulders. his breath misted in heavy clouds, every step a prayer to the gods that she remained unharmed.

when he returned, the scene was unchanged—ayovi held like a prize, her figure dwarfed by the brute’s grasp. faust dropped the goat with a heavy thud between them, the sound echoing sharply in the still air. his gaze never left hers, his chest heaving as he tried to gauge her state.

his jaws tightened, but he spoke no words, his body taut as a bowstring as he awaited the next move, praying silently that his offering had not come too late.

---

regnvand was pliable in his arms. weak. there had been no difficulty to taking her, to stealing the rainwater woman from the man who had sought to claim her. and now the white-heart controlled them both, for despite this growl did the drengr do as he was told.

hunger leapt sharply in the exile. some days' worth of meat lay heaped and cooling now in front of him, fat with milk besides, but he did not move a muscle from its taut preparation. burntgleam eyes roved over the carcass and then to the warrior, who beneath the anger seemed almost stricken.

scarlet-smeared smile scorched toward the drengr. "jeg vil give et råd til en tåbelig dreng," mockery offered in a companionable tone. his arm was heavy around her neck, but loosened now, the threat lifted at present. "vis aldrig en mand, hvad du har kært," skorpa murmured, raising the crook of a muddy claw to trace the warbride's satin cheekbone. "han vil helt sikkert finde en måde at tage det fra dig på."

a deep inhale. a proud grin of his ugly bloodwet teeth. "vend dig om. gå væk. fortsæt med at gå, indtil solen er gået ned."

skorpa chuckled. "så kan du komme og finde os. tag mere kød med. hun vil være i live."

purposefully he refrained from speaking any further on her fate for the sole reason it would addle and plague the man, throw him off-guard and off-balance again.

no more words. no more bartering. skorpa only smirked his crimsonfang grin and waited.

---

The mountain wolf returns with goat meat and suddenly the huntress realizes the northmen are bartering. Ayovi wanted to be enraged but she could not afford to curl her lip, not even when she felt the wildling’s touch trail more intimately along her cheek. Her napes shivers.
How quickly that claw could lodge within her throat—
She does not move. Unseeing eyes find a fracture of light on the snow and hold there.

LET ME KNOW IF THIS IS OKAY! I'm not too familiar with combat, so this is a learning spot for me ^^'. I imagine Faust barrel rolls into both of them, but is aiming for Skorpa to make space.

utterly still, save for the subtle rise and fall of his chest as he dragged in deep, steadying breaths. his smirk was slow to surface, crawling onto his face like a crack spreading across the icy veneer of a frozen lake. the mocking words of the vile man echoed in his ears, their venom stoking the inferno simmering within his chest.

his green eyes burned like shattered glass in sunlight, his expression shifting from feigned indifference to something much darker—feral, untamed. every fiber of him coiled like a spring, ready to unleash the wrath of a northman, the wrath of something far greater and more terrible than mortal rage.

fuck this, he snarled, his voice a low, guttural growl, the sound reverberating through the frostbitten air as he turned on his heel. his movements were deceptively casual, his broad shoulders loosening as though he were conceding.

a single step.

another.

and then he was upon them.

faust's immense form moved with the power of a glacier breaking free, an unstoppable force fueled by unrelenting fury. he surged forward, the smirk on his lips replaced by a snarl that could have been born of the gods themselves.

the air cracked with the impact as his massive frame collided with the pair, his bulk and momentum enough to knock them both down. his focus was singular, his strength unyielding, as he aimed to wrest the disgusting male from ayovi, to flip him onto his back and pin him to the earth.

faust's claws dug into the snow, his muscles straining as he loomed over the man like a vengeful shadow, his presence a testament to his northern blood. his green eyes flicked to ayovi for the briefest of moments, a glimmer of something softer buried beneath the primal rage, before he snapped his gaze back to his enemy.

he would not let this go unanswered. not this.

good by me!

---

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.

---

She falls back screaming! Landing upon the wild man with the full weight of her body and the impetus of Faust’s wild lunge. She is seized again, this time as a shield that connects with the thrusts of both men. With each bite, each fire, they seem to miss her by only a hair's-breadth, and any moment she expects to see her own blood go flying with the brutish effusions that stream from haughty jaws.
“Stop!” She struggles now with all her art and strength employed in surviving this, paws splayed to push back against Faust’s furious strivings, hind legs kicking into the belly of her enormous captor, and feeling feeble against them both. The huntress swings her head aside while solid sheets of snow are thrown into the air.
North be damned. She would die here, she was certain.

let me know if anything needs to be changed!

the revolting man’s underbelly was exposed, vulnerable beneath ayovi’s struggling form. the scene was chaos, the air thick with snarls, screams, and the sickening scent of blood and sweat. faust lunged, jaws wide, and his teeth sank into flesh, tearing through the soft underbelly of his foe.

blood spilled, warm and thick, painting the snow beneath them in violent streaks. he sought to make him squirm. hoping his hold on ayovi faltering for just a moment.

it was a moment too long.

ayovi’s desperation erupted, her hind leg connecting with faust’s chest with a surprising force that sent him stumbling backward. the pain flared, but faust only snarled, his body vibrating with a dark resolve. his lips curled back, exposing his bloodied teeth, a silent promise that he would not yield.

relax, relax.

the thought surged through his mind, an anchor amidst the chaos. he could not falter now, not for her struggles or the screams that cut through the frozen air. ayovi would live. he would live. but this vile man—he would not. faust’s anger burned hotter, not a wildfire but a smoldering, controlled blaze.

he surged forward again, his movements calculated despite the storm raging within him. the disgusting man could not use ayovi forever—faust would see to that. his snarls reverberated, carrying the fury of the gods of the north, a relentless force bent on delivering judgment.

---

a grunt; he writhed aside from the teeth which furrowed him anyway in harsh thick rivulets of blood. the woman kicked and cried out; skorpa felt the agony hot and piercing within him, and lowered his teeth to her own ear, the side of her face.

for each glut of fangs he would have his own, forearm now an iron lock around her neck, her shoulders. were she anyone else he would not seek to mar, but now that the man had descended upon skorpa he would make sure the conflict was worth nothing.

he had not cared before the defiance, and as he sought to punish regvnand for the transgressions of the avenging drengr above them, he was reminded of how he had held einor at the end.

arm across the muscled shoulders, teeth to open the large pulsing vein in a straining throat.

beneath the pain which threatened to shred his pride, skorpa hauled rainwater woman up higher against his chest and grabbed for the side of her own neck now, stilling all other movements. amusement now, against the backdrop of anguish; imagine that he was he who died over a thrall after all! ha!

se. jeg vil tage hende med mig til dine guder.

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