8. Red
RED
She sleeps.
Against my chest. Her ribs pressing through her skin into the crimson of my body. My knot still locked. My cock still deep. The vibration humming through the seal, into her walls, into the bone of her.
Small. She is so small against my chest.
My hands count ribs. One side, then the other.
My fingers find them through the skin the way fingers find stones through sand—too easy.
Too close to the surface. A body should not give up its bones this freely.
The count goes high. The count means not enough, not between the bone and the outside, not inside her belly.
I press her belly.
Below the navel. The place where my cum pools. Warm there—the heat of it soaking into tissue that was cold. I check. Check what? No word for it. Just a pressure: more. She needs more. The belly needs more.
My cock flexes. Inside her. Not the hard driving flex of before—a slow press, the tip curling against her front wall, feeling where it wants to go.
She clenches in her sleep. Her walls gripping.
Pulling. Her body taking what it needs from my cock without waking up to do it.
My cock gives it. Gives and gives. I want to fuck her awake, but she needs rest more than I need to move.
Her hair against my chest. Dark, tight, the curls that catch on my skin when she shifts.
Different from the dead mate’s hair. Different from anything.
The curls have a spring to them that her body doesn’t have yet—like the hair is already coming back, already healing, while the rest of her is still catching up.
I touch one. My claw slides through the coil and it wraps around the talon on its own, gripping. Holding.
Things hold me in this warren. My mate’s hair holds my claw. Her walls hold my cock. Her breathing holds my attention in the dark.
Good.
But her breathing is wrong.
Shallow. Her ribs expanding against my chest—not enough expansion. The cracked ones limiting the breath. Two cracked. One older break, healed rough, present under my hands when I touched her. My venom is in the fracture sites. Working. Slow.
I cup her back in my hands. Between the shoulder blades.
The shoulder, the bad one. The joint ground out of true, the socket scarred over in the wrong position.
I remember this shoulder, the grind of it under my palm when I rotated it.
She made a sound, a hiss, sharp, bitten, and I put venom into the joint with my tail until she stopped.
I touch the shoulder again now. Gentle. The word isn’t in me.
But the touch is gentle. My fingers trace the line of the scar tissue, the place where the socket healed crooked.
The rage is quiet—not something that needs a target.
A heat in my chest that says who did this in a language that doesn’t use words.
I can fix this, not in one session, but my venom will soften the scar tissue over days. I will feel the movement each time. The joint will get better until the shoulder sits where it belongs.
Mine to fix.
She shifts in her sleep. Her face pressing harder into my chest. Her lips against my skin there, cracked, dry.
I press my thumb against her cheek. Along the jaw.
My fingers find the gap where the teeth should be, empty socket, gum scarred over.
The other side too. I probe gently. Two gone on the left.
One on the right. My mate is missing teeth.
Cum will fix.
A sound comes out of her. Not a word. A small sound—the sound sleep makes when the body underneath it is trying to decide between nightmare and rest. Her fingers twitch against my arm. Her breath catches. Holds.
My knot vibrates. Not harder—lower. A frequency that settles into the base of her spine and spreads. Her breath releases. Her fingers unclench.
Stay asleep. Stay here.
My cock gives one slow pulse. A push of warmth.
Her walls flutter around my cock and the clenching pulls another thread of cum into her tissue.
My palm, low on her stomach, feels it: the heat spreading deeper.
Reaching further. Her body drinking from my cock the way roots drink from ground.
Below thought. Below choice. I want to fuck her.
I want to drive in hard and fill her until my cum runs down her thighs.
But the body is too thin. Too starved. She needs to eat first. She needs to get better first. Then I will fuck her properly.
The night is long.
Her fingers move against my chest. Dreaming.
The small hands finding purchase on my skin, the nails dragging lightly—not intentional, not awake.
Her dreaming body reaching for something.
Finding me. The fingers splay and grip and then go slack, the pattern repeating.
Grip. Release. Grip. Her sleeping hands learning my body the way her waking hands haven’t dared to yet.
I stay still. Let her hands do what they need.
The canopy goes dark through the roof opening. My wings close—membranes folding around her, sealing the warmth, sealing the scent. The space between my body and hers becomes a territory inside the territory. Smaller. Warmer. My wings holding the dark the way the warren holds the cold.
The rut builds.
Not fast. A slow pressure behind my cock, in the base of my spine, in my knot. The knot softens—never unlocking, but loosening enough. Enough to pull back. Enough to thrust.
I thrust.
Slow. Shallow. My cock dragging against her walls, the tip curling forward on the push.
She’s asleep. My tail finds the base of her spine and venom drips into the muscle there, keeping her deep, keeping her under.
The rut wants more—wants to drive in hard, wants to hear her gasp, wants to feel her clench and take it.
But the shallow thrusts are what her body can handle.
So I give her what she can take. My cock sliding in and out of her in the dark, my knot catching at her opening on every pull, my cum building.
She makes a sound. Not awake. A small sound in her throat, her walls tightening around my cock. I come inside her. The knot swells. Locks. My cock pulsing, filling her, the warmth of it spreading under my palm, low on her stomach. Her body drinks it down without knowing.
I stay locked. I wait. My cock gives and gives. Her walls flutter and grip. I count the ribs under my fingers, and the rage is there—quiet, patient, mine. Who starved her. Who broke her shoulder. My cum will fix all of it, but it’s slow, and I want to fuck her harder and I can’t.
The knot softens again an hour later. I fuck her again. Same slow thrusts. Same venom. She sleeps through it.
Through the roof opening, the mound is visible. The flowers pale against the packed earth in the last light.
The mound needs tending. The flowers are wilting.
But my cock is inside my mate and the rut won’t let me pull out and I don’t want to.
Tomorrow I will carry her to the mound. She weighs nothing—I will hold her against my chest with my cock buried inside her and walk to the grave and pick flowers with one hand while the other holds her in place.
Mate is in the ground. Mate is in my arms.
The dead one didn’t smell like this. Different scent.
Different body. The dead one smelled like fear the whole time—from the claiming to the end, the fear never stopped.
It soaked into the furs, into the warren walls, into my skin.
I washed it out after. Spent days clawing the scent from the root wood.
Couldn’t get it all. Some fear goes too deep.
This one smells like fear too. But underneath the fear: something else. Warm. Getting warmer.
I hold both. The grief and the keeping. The dead one waits. The living one breathes against my chest with her cracked ribs and her broken shoulder and her body that weighs nothing. She needs to get better. She needs my cum and my food and my warmth until her ribs aren’t so easy to count.
Morning.
The light changes through the roof. Grey going gold.
She smells different. Not much. A degree.
Still the sharp sour tang of a body running on fumes—still starving, still not enough.
But underneath: something softer. Warmer.
She feels better when she eats. More like mate.
The food and my cum doing their work. Better. Not good. Better.
She’s awake.
I know before my eyes confirm. Her breathing changes, the rhythm of sleep breaking, the ribs expanding differently.
Her muscles tense against my chest. A full-body clench.
The fear hits my nose like a wall, sharp, acrid, drowning the scent that means mate in something sour.
She thinks she’s in the camp. Her body thinks it’s waking up to be beaten.
She doesn’t move. Doesn’t open her eyes. Lies against my chest with her body rigid and her breath shallow and the camp-fear pouring off her skin.
My cock is soft inside her. Soft but never out. The knot hasn’t unlocked—never fully does. It’s there, waiting. She gripped my cock in her sleep when I fucked her in the night. Now she’s awake and the gripping stops and her muscles lock around me instead.
I want to move. My cock wants to harden. The rut doesn’t care that she’s afraid—the rut wants to fuck her, fill her, breed her full. But her ribs are too close to her skin. Her bones are too easy to find. If I fuck her the way I need to I will break what’s left of her.
So I wait. Not for the fear. For the bones to have more between them and the outside.
Her breath hitches. Holds. A long moment where she is rigid and my cock is soft inside her. The rut is screaming at me to move. I don’t.
Then the breath releases.
Her eyes open a slit. She feels my chest under her cheek.
My cock inside her, not a camp bunk, not a guard’s boot.
The fear fades off her skin, not gone, just quieter.
Replaced by something confused. Her body going slack against my chest. Not relaxed.
Empty. She doesn’t have the calories to stay afraid.
My hands reach for the pot.
“Eat.”
Her eyes open. Gold-dark eyes, mine, looking up into whatever she sees when she looks at me. I don’t care what she sees. I hold food to her mouth and wait.
She takes it with her teeth. The jaw working on the side that still has them.
The swallow. The settling, in my body, the pressure in my chest easing a fraction.
A fraction. She’s eating. She’ll get better.
She’ll get stronger. Her body will fill out, and I can breed her the way I need to—hard and deep, fill her until she’s dripping with my cum.
My cock hardens.
Not slow. She smells different when she eats—the tang of starvation dimming, the warmth underneath getting brighter, more like mate, better able to breed—and my cock responds before I can think about it.
Thickening inside her, swelling against her walls.
The tip flexing forward, pressing against her front wall with a purpose that left patience somewhere behind. My cock wants her, hard enough to ache.
She goes rigid again. The food still in her mouth. Her jaw stopped mid-chew.
“Eat.”
She chews. She swallows. My cock presses deeper and her breath catches around the food going down.
Both things are happening at once—the feeding and the hardening—because my body makes no distinction between putting food in her mouth and putting cum in her belly.
Both are the same ache. Both are the same need.
Both are my palm pressed low on her stomach, saying more, more, more in a voice that doesn’t use words.
I need to fill her. I need to fuck her full of cum and make her better. I need her belly round with it, warm with it, need her body to stop smelling like dying and start smelling like mine.
My tail wraps around the base of my cock. Cinches.
Her eyes go wide.
I drive in.