you're too young & eager to love

I thought this was an interesting idea to investigate, but I got sidetracked by a pair of newbie characters. Therefore, I think this piece just panders on and doesn't really reach fruition. Whatever that means.

Oh well. It's 1900 words though!

Chason and Ita and angst and experiments. <3




“Do you think I can’t smell you? Do you think I don’t know who you are? Where you have been? Christ! I picked you for a reason, Swan Lake! Or are you naïve enough to think it was a coincidence? Made stupid from being fed off silver platters for too long?” He ran his hands back through his hair, stalking across the desert sand. The sun made him squint, but Ita knew his eyes were dangerously dark. His face looked carved out of anger, his mouth a hard line, the sinewy muscle of his body pulled taut in all directions. His body cast a deep gash of a shadow across the dune; Ita stepped away from it, her movements short and ungainly in comparison to his pacing. He was kicking up sand everywhere. She could taste it in her throat.
Chason was punctuating his rage with laughter. Swift, sporadic cackles that started as rumbles in his chest and came, ripping, out of his throat. His calloused fingers curled by his side while the heat bristled off of him in waves. He shrugged out of his jacket, all sharp and maddened movements. For a moment, she thought he would tear his shirt off too, leave it on the sand to begin a pile of his clothing. She had the distinct image of how he would shift – his tall body instantly curling downward until his skin became furred and spotted, his eyes more yellow and predatory than their usual slate green. He would leave her to bake in the sun. A swan pie for a feast of scavengers.
Instead, chuckling deeply, Chason knelt, his elbows on his knees, his head bent away from the glaring daylight. He wiped the sweat from his brow, rubbed his palms against his dirty jeans, and tried to lower his voice. “Look … I guess I could see … how this might be considered romantic, the whole impending danger and running away, but just because some biological instinct is telling you – ”
“I chose you for a reason too.” Ita’s voice was swept up in the dry wind, soft, silvery, somehow cool amidst all of the heat.
Chason scoffed. “When was the last time you even had to make a decision on your own?”
“ … You are not the only one who has known suffering.” Despite the hesitancy in her voice, she folded her arms over her chest, defiant, and the predator within Chason smelled something like anger and fear flutter inside of the woman.
He smirked, canine-like, and stood up. “Is that what last night was? You suffering? Sounded like you were enjoying yourself to me. Begged me to keep going.”
Ita flushed scarlet, biting her bottom lip. The color was brightest across her long neck. “I-I-I know I have not chosen wrong. You are good and kind. What you did for your pack mate – ”
“Don’t,” Chason pointed a finger threateningly at her. “Do not talk about her. You don’t understand that, you hear me? And I wouldn’t call a kidnapper kind.”
She blinked her large eyes at him. “You think I did not want to go? That I am something only to be stolen?”
“Well? Aren’t you?”
When she did not answer he growled, threatened by the insult of her silence, and strode to the top of the dune. He kept his back turned, the sun glaring downward, and his eyes on the slim horizon. She was more acquainted with this quiet, raging version, but Ita maintained her distance, watching him from the corner of her eyes. She knew he carried a burden familiar mostly to men.
One of pride and self-denial.



Harrow is a lean cut of jagged glass wrapped in a fine suit. His hands are immaculate. He drums his fingers against the arm of his chair, waiting, a smile curving his mouth.
Ita has learned to fear his amusement.
The panel of glass is one sided. They, the observers, cannot be seen but may watch and document, speaking orders through an intercom system and wielding encouragement in the form of pain by the push of a button. She hasn’t been in an observation room for some time; she stays where she’s kept, in gilded rooms, and is escorted to the various holding cells whenever a champion from the arena is granted his prize. Since the recapture, the security of the compound has doubled. She’s no longer trusted to wander as she pleases. Her daily breaks into the exercising yard are under the watchful eye of an armed guard – a man who waits for her to shift with eyes that hold a threat. She tries to stay silent, to steel her gaze, to numb her body.
Maybe it was simpler before the bond began. Maybe the time in the desert made her flower. Or maybe she thought Chason would be easier to block from her mind when he was no longer in front of her.
Beneath her high-collared dress, her heart hammers and her wings thrash.
“I have always spared you from being observed. My generosity, I see now, is a fault of mine. You think because you are rare that I will not hurt you but pain arrives in many forms.”
Ita keeps her head down, her eyes counting the pristine tiles on the floor. When Harrow snaps his fingers, she tilts her jaw just enough to the side to prove her acknowledgement. He is a man who demands awareness. “Yes,” is all she gives.



Chason buried himself in her in one thrust. Her eyelids shivered and he traced the back of his knuckles across her throat. She pressed her palm to his chest, her other hand curled around his neck. He caught her thigh and lifted it, guiding it around his waist, and nipped at her collarbone. His groans matched the rhythm set by his hips, mingled with the sound of her sighs. Was this bonding? This fascination with the way her mouth trembled, the taste of her sweat, the lust that struck his marrow whenever she lifted herself to meet him.
He did not tell her he loved her. He never said the words. But he tangled his fingers into her hair and licked the salt from her collarbone.
When he rolled them over, he kept his grip on her hips, and she turned a shade of pink that made him think of strawberries. He stroked the smooth skin of her belly, dipped his fingers down to tease the part of her that made her arch and keen against him. She ducked her head and, like a modest child, placed her arms across her breasts.
He lowered them, laughing, the type of snickering sound that meant affection rather than judgment.
“Like this,” he said and moved her hips for her.
She stretched herself across him, nipping at his lip, laughing when he growled into the shell of her ear.




He is brought into the observation room. Ita manages to stifle her gasp as Harrow’s sly gaze turns to her. She would rather not give him the satisfaction of watching her surprise, the slip of emotions across her face. Chason has lost two battles in the cage rounds, her determined fighter. The first was bad luck; the second was pure mockery. A Siberian tiger, double his weight and naturally stronger, tossed him like a pup around the arena. He is lucky to be walking, through the bruises on his ribs and the way he leans his weight to the left suggest a lingering pain. The gash dangerously close to his eye, stitched and starting to heal, causes him to squint.
He does not seem as tall here, not in this medical vault of a room. The lack of brightness in his eyes makes Ita worry that his rations have been reduced. She feels the sudden urge to press her palm to the glass in hopes that he will smell her or feel some type of urging warmth. She stays still instead. When he swings himself up onto the sterile gurney, gingerly but with a familiar confidence, she smiles to herself.
Harrow flicks his wrist and a doctor speaks into the telecom. The echo of her voice sounds scratchy with static. “Number CW006. Subject’s genus and species, Crocuta crocuta. Reproduction Demonstration 01, the 20th of June. Time, approximately thirteen hundred hours. Pairing genus and species, Lycalopex sechurae. Previous attempts of fertilization between these two species have been unsuccessful, but the female has succeeded in demonstrations between related species.”
The second automatic door shutters open before the doctor is done speaking and a small woman steps into the room, timid, her movements shaky and nervous. She has very large eyes, and she could have been pretty in an elfish way except for the bruises on her thighs and the mouth of broken teeth. She had a spirit once, before it was tested out of her. Chason looks at her with pity rather than caution; she has trouble meeting his gaze but, in practiced movements, slips the medical gown off her pale body. Fresh scars bubble, pink and elastic looking, over the small expanse of her stomach. Her breasts are heavy with milk.
Chason studies her body. His voice has the rumbling sound of thunder when he finally speaks. “How long?”
“…Two weeks.” The woman murmurs after a pause, her eyes cautiously glancing to the pane of window, as though she is expecting a reprimand for speaking.
“How many?”
“Three,” she says with the hint of a smile tinged in grief. “Or so I was told.”
“You haven’t seen them?”
“… Donor wombs are not permitted to have contact with the offspring.”
Chason snorts. He swipes his hand back through his hair, an action Ita associates with his frustration. He turns his eyes to the window, a steady, strong gaze, and speaks to the people he cannot see. “I’m no rapist.”
It is Harrow that leans forward, his voice buttery and encouraging. “Animal instinct does not incorporate nor does it understand the concept of rape. Bestial urges have no need for emotion.”
Stubborn, Chason folds his arms over his chest while the woman beside him shivers and shakes. She looks pleadingly between him and the glass and is either too nervous to be concerned about her nudity or too accustomed to the ritual to care.
Harrow flicks his wrist again, and Ita curls her fingers on top of her lap, her nails scratching against the fabric of her dress.
The same doctor as before speaks into the intercom. “Administrating pheromones.”



The display is relatively short for all its viciousness, Ita thinks, only half an hour at most. A small mercy.
She keeps the inside of her bottom lip between her teeth on the walk back to her rooms, her long strides oddly calm, her spine stiff with assurance. It’s only after she’s left in privacy (except for the cameras) that she sinks onto the edge of her bed, staring at her palms in her lap. Her nails are too long. They’ll be clipped soon, just like her wings.
She tells herself it was not him, not truly. It was the chemicals. It was the instinct. It was the basic primal urge of a predator.
She too has been with others. She has known the weight of manipulation.
Ita can’t find it within herself to care. She feels shattered, the swan inside of her broken yet unable to break.