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impertinences) wrote2021-02-15 05:43 pm
impertinences) wrote2021-02-15 05:43 pm
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This is a thank you to my dearest of dears, daintiestmartyr, who made me one of the best gifts I have ever received: a character-themed personalized calendar. Since she gave me 12 character-themed months, I am doing the same! … Except with writing rather than visuals since I have all the artistic skills of an undertaker.
I've been having a bit of trouble with my writing, probably because I haven't been keeping up with it as well as I should, so I tried to focus these as shorts and go off of the idea of focusing on a moment rather than having each short tell an actual full narrative. So! That's the idea.
Part One! 6 more to follow (eventually).
Part One:
1.
Augusta calls the summit home a woodshed ironically. It’s not a compound or a military base, so it is more humble in terms of sheer size, but the cabin is built into the mountain terrain—the southern side is hidden within the very walls of the mountain as though some gigantic steel monster had taken bites out of the earth and left a cavernous gap, while the northern side is nothing but sheets of tempered glass to catch the rising sun and make most of its warmth. It isn’t really a cabin but some long forgotten property of Maximus’ that Augusuta had found the deed for before her marriage to Baldric and had managed to include in her dowry (since all of Maximus’ children had a set price). It is the only property she can now truly call her own and because it gives her such freedom, to add to the irony, she is rarely able to occupy it. Albtraum, or Harrow, requires too much managing while her role as Minister of Propaganda keeps her unendingly busy with trips to compounds throughout the entire Eastern seaboard, and the journey to the coast from the summit is treacherous, requiring too much valuable time to traverse the unclaimed desert wastelands.
Still, when she can, she retreats into this hidden lair, and Radomir watches the way her many selves seem to sluff off of her the moment they enter. Each of her personas collect, like carcasses, at her feet until she is maskless and true. It is not a subtle transformation but immediate, as though one footstep through the frozen security gate and the steel security door breaks her cocoon. Augusta sweeps a hand across the back of his neck more gently, her blunt nails lingering behind the sensitive curve of his ear, and she sighs a relief before shaking the snow from her hair, her coat, her gloves.
The home is not divided into rooms but one mass open floor plan with a large central hearth capable of churning enough fire to warm the entire space. Radomir makes a fire without being asked, just as he checks the security footage and replenishes their stores without needing command; he is single-handedly the bodyguard, the butler, and the cook. He considers it a privilege.
Augusta showers, staying under the heat for a long time, until the chill has left her bones. She dresses in a man’s burgundy sweater, the long sleeves rolled up to her elbows, and fleece-lined sweatpants best suited for the weather. It is the most casual he ever sees her, unless she’s wearing nothing, which she rarely does at the summit on account of the cold climate. Radomir watches as she brushes her dark, damp hair free of tangles in long steady strokes before she collects it all into a braid with deft fingers. He waits until she’s drinking a glass of whiskey in front of the fire, her eyes heavy with tiredness, discarded government pamphlets near her feet, to ask.
“I’d like to do a sweep of the perimeter.” He’s careful not to actually pose a question; Augusta likes strength, confidence, even in language.
She doesn’t look at him. “You checked the security footage, yes? Is there a concern?”
“No.”
When Augusta looks at him, her eyes are amber in the firelight, similar to his creature’s. She thinks for a moment and then her thin mouth twists. He can’t tell if she’s smiling or scowling.
“Tired of this skin already?”
“I can wait.”
She flicks her free hand, the one not cupping the whiskey, dismissively and turns her gaze back to the fire. He’s already at the door when she tells him to wait, her voice as ice-cold as the winter winds whipping against the glass walls.
“I want to watch.”
It isn’t a question.
She’s human and, as such, her senses will never be as keen as his, but she can feel the electricity in the air all the same. Faintly, she thinks she can smell it too, a smell of thunder and storm and sand, but something beyond that, deeper, something musky, the distinct scent of beasts.
Radomir is a hulking brute of a man. His hands are large enough to span her waist, and she’s seen him crush skulls with those same hands in the fighting pits. He is packed muscle, his height and width as imposing as the mountains this home is carved from. If he’s uncomfortable or undone by her request, he does not show it. His movements are calm, deliberate, and he keeps his eyes on her as though he’s reading her face for any detection of displeasure or disappointment, however miniscule. Reaching behind him, he hooks his shirt by the collar then pulls it off, tossing it to his feet. Kicks off his military-grade hiking boots. Undoes his pants, a little slower when he imagines she smirks and flicks her eyes, however fleetingly, towards his crotch. He steps out of his pants, unabashed in his nakedness, and the fiend inside of him rakes, scratching at his skin, teeth bared.
Augusta thinks the transformation looks painful. She’s seen it before, but she sucks in a small breath of surprise all the same. It’s as though his bones break and mold anew beneath his skin but that too is shifting, changing, replaced by golden hair, no, not hair, fur and his two legs become four, his nails thickening, sharpening into claws. His eyes become amber feline shapes while his tail curls, long and full, behind him. The mountain lion sits where the man had previously stood, the discarded clothing by its massive paws looking almost comically small now.
When she makes a noise, some small, unintelligible response from the back of her throat, he cannot decipher if Augusta is proud or repulsed or both. He slinks closer, distinctly aware of her lack of fear, and pushes his white muzzle against her fingertips.
2.
“What are you thinking about?” Luke asks.
Haven briefly lifts her eyes from the glossy magazine pages she has not been reading. She’s folded into a wide, cracked leather armchair, her long legs dangling like a child’s over the side, her ankles crossed one over the other. Luke notices how brightly painted her toenails are, the pink reminiscent of bubblegum and babydolls. Since it’s Sunday and neither of them are bound to the estate or their respective cons, she’s in her trademark denim shorts, the ends frayed and cut and clinging to her thighs so tightly that he assumes they must chafe. Above that, Haven’s wearing one of his old Nirvana t-shirts, the sleeves rolled up an inch as though she’s waiting to tuck a pack of Marlboros under the fabric. She isn’t wearing any makeup. He hasn’t seen her so fresh-faced and natural in weeks.
“Nothing,” Haven lies and turns one of the pages of Cosmopolitan. It’s the first time she’s turned a page in ten minutes.
Luke rubs his knuckles across his jaw, eyebrow flicking up.
She can feel him continuing to watch her, so she uncrosses her ankles, keeps her feet a few inches apart to let his gaze appreciate the path up her calves and higher, till the curve of the armchair and fold of her legs block the view. She turns another page.
“And yet you seem so far away,” Luke says, not quite a grumble, and a little bemused.
“You don’t get access to everything going on up here.” Haven taps her temple with a nail as pink as the color on her toes.
“Since when?”
She shrugs, and Luke notices the way her shoulder jerks with tension. Haven’s always sharp in her movements when annoyed. She tosses her hair back, off of her shoulders, and curls deeper into the armchair. She crosses her ankles again.
“Is it David?” he says the name more loudly than he had intended.
“Is it David?” she mocks, her voice going nasal and obnoxious in pitch, her petulance making Luke’s own annoyance pinch suddenly between his eyes.
“Okay.” Luke rolls his eyes and grabs the remote for the TV. He uses his thumb to punch the down button, scrolling mindlessly through the daytime programs.
“I don’t ask you about .... what’s her name? The wife? Rowena?”
“Because there’s nothing to tell. Yet.”
“It’s not my fault she moves like a snail. Or, I don’t know, the recluse that she is.”
Luke ignores the statement. “This was your idea, remember?”
“Sure, but I’m still allowed my privacy.” Haven closes the magazine and tosses it onto the dingy coffee table between them with a flurry of pages.
“You like him.”
It’s Haven’s turn to roll her eyes. She swings her legs down from the chair and faces her brother more directly, her elbows on her knees in a mild imitation of their father’s favorite confrontational stance. “No, but I understand him.”
Luke doesn’t say anything. He’s learned over the years that silence more often than not will weigh her down. She’ll buckle under its pressure as though her golden shoulders are incapable of upholding anything other than her own pretense.
“Fine,” she admits after a few moments. “I like him. He’s handsome and funny and richer than God. I like him. Sometimes. Happy?”
“You can like him,” he tells her, as though she needs his permission, as though he’s unbothered by her confession. “But I still want to know what you were thinking about. What you’ve been daydreaming about all morning.”
Haven bites her lip, a quick, childish nervousness washing over her face before she sighs and leans back into the chair. The sharpness has left her body. She’s feigning calm but her hands flutter, uncertain how to be still, before eventually resting on the tops of her thighs. She fingers the hem of his t-shirt and looks away towards the wall of windows where the brightness of the sun makes her squint.
Finally, she says, “I was thinking about fucking him, about how he fucked me. Bent me over the kitchen counter after kicking my ankles open and didn’t even bother with a condom. I could feel him dripping out of me the rest of the night. When I came home, I took a shower, and then you went down on me and I don’t know which makes me wetter—him not knowing about you or you not knowing about him.”
When Haven grins, it’s full of teeth, like a crocodile, and Luke feels the old familiar twist of lust and shame low in his groin.
3.
“Should we be worried about this?” Sunniva asks, lifting her eyebrows in Eda’s direction.
Eda is barefoot, curled on the edge of the wading pool, her gossamer pink dress damp and the same shade as her visible nipples. Mac sits besides her, his feet also bare, a hand on her thigh as they whisper softly together. They are happy; there is an unmistakable air of natural intimacy about them, a conspiratorial quality that deepens when Mac brushes a wet lock of hair from Eda’s cheek.
Palmer leans against one of the marble columns opposite the wading pool, Sunniva near his left as they survey the couple. He shrugs, his mouth curving into an arrogant grin. “How much competition do you think that boy is? We’re still her favorites. Well, I’m her favorite, you’re the runner-up.”
Sunniva’s face is blank. She doesn’t reward him with a smirk or an eye-roll or even a clipped tone. “I’m not jealous although I’m glad your perception is still as dim as ever. You know who that boy is.”
“We’re out of reach of Vries territory. They can’t clamor down here and start rounding our employees up. Or you, for that matter, Sunshine. It’s-”
“Against the law? There is no law. We’ve survived so far because we’re too far away for them to be convenient.”
“And yet, the fox is in the chickencoop.”
Sunniva’s response is interrupted by Eda’s bright, shimmering laughter. She makes a mental note to remind the girl not to feign such adoration so easily, to prolong the moment, to let the client long for such unveiled displays of earnestness. Then she realizes that Eda’s response is candid, genuine, and she feels a slight twist of nausea in her stomach.
She tilts her eyes up at Palmer and sees that he’s noticed too. “What were you saying about favorites again?”
4.
Roman’s hands are in her hair, cold and smooth, sending shivers up her neck. Lene feels uncharacteristically flustered, the blood beneath her skin ripening on the vine, but she turns her face into the crook of his shoulder and fists his shirt in the center of his chest as an attempt to both press herself closer and simultaneously pull him nearer. The animal inside of her is giddy; if it could yip, she thinks it would be. She’s vaguely annoyed by this turn of events, by her own unbridled, irrational lust and the possibility of—she cuts the thought off before she can travel any further down that path, choosing willful ignorance in the heat of the moment.
How long has it been now? Three days? Two weeks? A month? Sometimes she gets so feverish so can’t remember before. Before his teeth and her blood, before she had ever heard his name or seen his smug face, before she knew of the Compound and the Insurgence and secret plots. It would bother her more than it already does if he wasn’t so compliant, so easily ready, so obviously wanting too.
Lene wonders if this is what a blood craze must feel like, a hazy, hungry ache that makes her mind unable to focus on anything else, and if as on cue, Roman pulls her neck back by a fistful of her blonde hair and drags the tips of his fangs across her neck with careful, teasing precision.
She bites back the whimper that tries to struggle past her teeth and forces herself to still, willing herself to be as stubborn as stone. She thinks about trying to explain to Anders how something so unnatural, something that had disgusted her before, is now something she craves. The thought makes her chest knot with shreds of shame like the beast inside of her is embarrassed to so revel in her own vulnerability.
He doesn’t bite and she swallows her disappointment. Lene feels the scratch of his beard against her collarbone and then the press of his mouth, faint as a ghost. He releases her hair and cradles the small of her back in his hands, letting her bow up against him so that he can nudge the underside of her jaw with his nose and lick the salt from her skin. His right hand crawls around to her front, circling her hip, rubbing the fabric of the ridiculously feminine dress Arletta had insisted she wear to the evening’s dinner, before tugging it up in an imitation of how she’d fisted his shirt. When he traces his fingers between her legs, Roman can feel how wet she is.
In the next room, there’s a clatter of excitement. Arletta squawks in a laugh that Harrow responds to with a snigger. His sister, Augusta, murmurs something that even Roman’s preternatural ears cannot decipher. There’s the shivering sound of shifting bodies within the adjacent room, and Roman steps away from Lene so quickly that she’s left feeling exposed despite being in the shadows, her hand hovering in the air where Roman’s chest had been.
Roman swipes his cold fingers back through his oak-colored hair, smoothing the strands to respectability, then rubs his shadowed jaw. He flashes a shark grin to greet Radomir as the Minister’s bodyguard turns the corner. Roman’s grin is the exact style of Harrow’s, a wide-mouth stretch full of teeth, like a predator gleaning at its prey. Lene’s face dissolves into a blank mask, as perfect and vapid as a china doll, and she presses herself tight against the wall.
Radomir, more out of a place in a suit than Lene is in a lace dress, runs his eyes from Roman to Lene. He finds her in the shadows without effort, but he doesn’t let his gaze linger as Roman is already heaving a theatrical sigh while reaching for the fresh bottle of bourbon haphazardly sitting out of place on the narrow table lining the hallway.
“They’re asking for that,” Radomir says, his voice low and deep, like muddy river rocks. He gestures with his head towards the bottle.
“Sorry. I was sidetracked by other delights. Can’t blame a man, can you?”
Roman leaves them in the fog of his departing smug laughter, unphased, moving around the massive man in front of him without a hint of fear. From where the party is eating, Lene can hear Roman slap Harrow on the back, but the joke he must say is muffled by Arletta asking for her. Radomir, ever the sentry, does not move but he glances thoughtfully around the hallway before pointedly stopping his gaze at Lene.
She clears her throat and runs a hand down her dress, smoothing imperceptible creases, before leveling her eyes to his. They don’t speak, but Radomir gives her the tiniest of nods, allowing her permission to leave.
Stupid, she thinks, admonishing herself as she sidles past and wills her heart to stop its hammering. When she enters, the small party inside is rosy-cheeked from the alcohol and oblivious to the atrocities happening all around them—in the kennels, in the arena, in the labs, even here, in the humans’ personal quarters, where they do damage to themselves and trade gossip like secrets to be bought and ransomed.
Next to Harrow, Roman is camouflaged in plain sight, his easy demeanor and casual camaraderie burying the ruthless predator he is. Not an animal, Lene thinks, coming to stand behind Arletta rather than sit at the table where she and her kind are not welcome. He is unlike all others, as she is with her own kind. In this, they are well-matched.
5.
After the fall, when the desert seems a landscape of opportunity, when Chason is no longer bound to his treacherous pack, they are lovers set adrift. They wander, aimless, and scarred.
He makes a fire outside of an abandoned, derelict house while Ita picks through the rubble. She comes back with an armful of musty bedding and together they pull an old couch to the edge of the fire then layer the blankets atop. Neither seem bothered by the smell, but they’re grateful for the warmth and each other.
“What do you think will happen?” Ita asks and tucks closer to his side. He’s thinner than she remembers, and they’re both blistered and rubbed raw from the sun and miles of travel. She breathes him in greedily, hungry for the closeness after the last tortuous year.
“Who cares?” He has a bitter angry tone to his voice, a sharp cackling quality she’s grown accustomed to, and she smooths a hand behind his neck to stroke his black hair and quiet the scavenger inside of him. Her thumb traces an old whip mark that tucks behind his dirty shirt collar. Chason has lines and scars and burns peppering his body beneath his clothes, and she knows he’s still fighting off the last remnants of the cocktails the doctors at the compound pumped into him regularly. His eyes aren’t as bright as they used to be and this, probably more so than anything else, saddens her.
After a moment of silence, he shrugs a shoulder, suddenly less irritable. “I bet the sister, the minister, she’ll take it all. Wear the crown and get all the adoration.”
Thoughtfully, Ita shakes her head. “I don’t think she wants adoration.”
“No? Isn’t that what everyone who has ever ruled wants?”
“I think she wants fear. To be feared. Harrow wanted that but he was small-minded … She’s ambitious. That should be terrifying enough.”
Chason’s mouth curls into a sloping grin and, seeing it, Ita pushes his hair away from his face so she can better gauge his expression. “Somewhere along the way, I’ve forgotten how to be horrified.”
“I haven’t,” she says quietly.
Chason chews on the side of his thumb nail and grunts, not unkindly, but he does not look at her. “I’m not a good man. Not really.”
Ita makes a noise, some kind of disapproving, disagreeing titter, but Chason continues speaking. “It’s okay. I’m not the worst there is, I know that. I think that’s my point actually.”
“You’re neither good nor bad?” Her pale brows push together, partially with amusement and partially with confusion.
“I’m better than him, I mean. I’ll always be better than him. Them. I won’t scare you.”
Ita’s smile is bright even though her lips are chapped. She shivers despite the fire and he pulls her into his lap. He holds her thin waist and kisses, slow, like he’s trying to drink her.
“I’ve missed you,” she tells him against the shape of his mouth, and he knows she’s blushing, the pretty quartz pink of a more innocent girl.
6.
“I cannot care for you again,” Abigail whispers, her soft voice shattering like glass, as Gerhard grabs a fistful of her sheer nightgown. She’s hiding the ivory lace beneath a bejeweled fur-lined cloak the color of twilight. It’s another gift from Renan and something Abigail would have adored in its beauty if only it had come from the younger Prince instead of the King.
Gerhard’s mouth is a twisted scar of pain. He looks as though he wants to laugh and cry at once. There’s still a flush of color on him from the evening’s wine and the many cups he’d had after. He is not a drinker, but he’s been wearing his pain so openly these past few weeks and few other than his sister Polina dare to remark about his uncanny thirst.
“As you cared once?” he asks. He means it to be a mockery but instead it comes out plaintive.
“That’s where you must leave it,” she murmurs, closing her eyes to the sting of tears.
It’s the wrong action. He ought to feel relieved that she had confessed her love and said it was gone. He should be glad that she had dismissed him, that she would no longer favor him now that the King himself had plucked her, like a rose, for his own enjoyment. He should, too, know that this move of hers, this strategic leap of upward mobility, was never Abigail’s game but her family’s. A woman like Abigail could not complain of the desires of the whims of the King, but Gerhard resents her some all the same.
“Better that I never saw you.”
“Don’t say that. I can’t endure that.” She’s crying now, softly, her hands in her face as he pulls again at her pretty shift and catches the hem of her robe. “He’s expecting me,” she protests, not quite urgently enough, her hands like broken-winged doves when he moves them away from her tear-stained face.
“I doubt it,” Gerhard murmurs, pressing his mouth to her upturned cheeks, kissing the salt from her skin. “This isn’t about you.”
“What?” she asks, confused even in her dismay. She can smell the drink on him. She can feel his pulse skip beneath his unbuttoned collar when her small fingers touch his throat.
“I don’t know,” he murmurs again, tilting her chin up, kissing her trembling mouth because he’s desperate for the familiar tangerine taste of her, for the citrus smell of her body once they’d used one another until fulfillment. Her her her. The only thing he’d ever had as his own, untouched and untarnished by his brother’s claim, until now. “I don’t know what I’m saying.”
She makes a whimpering noise that he’s always loved, and Gerhard pushes her back against the stone wall, their bodies draped in darkness as he fumbles with the opening of his breeches. She’s already looping her arms around his neck, leveraging her meager weight against him, until his hands find the backs of her thighs and the robe slips half-off her shoulders, caught between her back and the wall. When he enters her, she bites down on his shoulder, stifling a cry.
It will be the last time he has her, this drunken, clandestine moment of fervidity.
It will be the last time he has her, until it isn’t.
Renan cannot sleep. He turns around and around on the smooth linen sheets of his luxurious bed, getting more and more restless until the fever in his pulse heightens and the heat under his skin burns. The moon glows warmly, filtering in through the curtains, and he knows the hour is late. Too late.
He thinks of Abigail and her cherub’s mouth, how he likes the flash of her eyes beneath her eyelids and the absolute rigidity of her spine when she dips into a curtsey. Then he thinks of Gerhard and the cut of his cheekbones as his body finds solid footing into manhood, the expressive, coltish eyes, and the squareness of his jaw freshly patched with new stubble. He is acutely aware of how heartbreak seems to agree with his brother, to heighten his good looks, and then Renan’s acutely aware of how little this bothers him. In fact, it does the opposite, and he feels a stroke of desire smolder inside of him.
He goes down to the private chapel barefoot, the hidden alcove meant only for the family’s unencumbered faith and prayer, and lays himself down on the cold stone before the unadorned altar. He does not take a position of penitence—feet together, facedown, arms spread, like a prone crucifixion—because he does not feel like a sinner and he has rarely believed in the superstition of religion, but he likes the solemn atmosphere of the chapel and the lack of prying eyes. He presses his large hands to the cold stone floor and when he imagines the curve of Abigail’s cheek against his palm, the image somehow melts, like a fever-dream, to Gerhard’s bright eyes again and the flush of his anguished face when he’d seen Abigail in the royal jewels and the blue of monarchy. Even with the cold, his cock is as hard as iron, and Renan feels his desire like a pain.
The next day, Gerhard avoids everyone until the evening dinner, where the hall is crowded with the usual courtiers and ladies. He sits beside Polina at the royal table and when he watches Renan clutch Abigail’s hand and press it to his knuckles, he has a sensation under his ribs that he knows must be his heart breaking.
daintiestmartyr, who made me one of the best gifts I have ever received: a character-themed personalized calendar. Since she gave me 12 character-themed months, I am doing the same! … Except with writing rather than visuals since I have all the artistic skills of an undertaker. I've been having a bit of trouble with my writing, probably because I haven't been keeping up with it as well as I should, so I tried to focus these as shorts and go off of the idea of focusing on a moment rather than having each short tell an actual full narrative. So! That's the idea.
Part One! 6 more to follow (eventually).
Part One:
1.
Augusta calls the summit home a woodshed ironically. It’s not a compound or a military base, so it is more humble in terms of sheer size, but the cabin is built into the mountain terrain—the southern side is hidden within the very walls of the mountain as though some gigantic steel monster had taken bites out of the earth and left a cavernous gap, while the northern side is nothing but sheets of tempered glass to catch the rising sun and make most of its warmth. It isn’t really a cabin but some long forgotten property of Maximus’ that Augusuta had found the deed for before her marriage to Baldric and had managed to include in her dowry (since all of Maximus’ children had a set price). It is the only property she can now truly call her own and because it gives her such freedom, to add to the irony, she is rarely able to occupy it. Albtraum, or Harrow, requires too much managing while her role as Minister of Propaganda keeps her unendingly busy with trips to compounds throughout the entire Eastern seaboard, and the journey to the coast from the summit is treacherous, requiring too much valuable time to traverse the unclaimed desert wastelands.
Still, when she can, she retreats into this hidden lair, and Radomir watches the way her many selves seem to sluff off of her the moment they enter. Each of her personas collect, like carcasses, at her feet until she is maskless and true. It is not a subtle transformation but immediate, as though one footstep through the frozen security gate and the steel security door breaks her cocoon. Augusta sweeps a hand across the back of his neck more gently, her blunt nails lingering behind the sensitive curve of his ear, and she sighs a relief before shaking the snow from her hair, her coat, her gloves.
The home is not divided into rooms but one mass open floor plan with a large central hearth capable of churning enough fire to warm the entire space. Radomir makes a fire without being asked, just as he checks the security footage and replenishes their stores without needing command; he is single-handedly the bodyguard, the butler, and the cook. He considers it a privilege.
Augusta showers, staying under the heat for a long time, until the chill has left her bones. She dresses in a man’s burgundy sweater, the long sleeves rolled up to her elbows, and fleece-lined sweatpants best suited for the weather. It is the most casual he ever sees her, unless she’s wearing nothing, which she rarely does at the summit on account of the cold climate. Radomir watches as she brushes her dark, damp hair free of tangles in long steady strokes before she collects it all into a braid with deft fingers. He waits until she’s drinking a glass of whiskey in front of the fire, her eyes heavy with tiredness, discarded government pamphlets near her feet, to ask.
“I’d like to do a sweep of the perimeter.” He’s careful not to actually pose a question; Augusta likes strength, confidence, even in language.
She doesn’t look at him. “You checked the security footage, yes? Is there a concern?”
“No.”
When Augusta looks at him, her eyes are amber in the firelight, similar to his creature’s. She thinks for a moment and then her thin mouth twists. He can’t tell if she’s smiling or scowling.
“Tired of this skin already?”
“I can wait.”
She flicks her free hand, the one not cupping the whiskey, dismissively and turns her gaze back to the fire. He’s already at the door when she tells him to wait, her voice as ice-cold as the winter winds whipping against the glass walls.
“I want to watch.”
It isn’t a question.
She’s human and, as such, her senses will never be as keen as his, but she can feel the electricity in the air all the same. Faintly, she thinks she can smell it too, a smell of thunder and storm and sand, but something beyond that, deeper, something musky, the distinct scent of beasts.
Radomir is a hulking brute of a man. His hands are large enough to span her waist, and she’s seen him crush skulls with those same hands in the fighting pits. He is packed muscle, his height and width as imposing as the mountains this home is carved from. If he’s uncomfortable or undone by her request, he does not show it. His movements are calm, deliberate, and he keeps his eyes on her as though he’s reading her face for any detection of displeasure or disappointment, however miniscule. Reaching behind him, he hooks his shirt by the collar then pulls it off, tossing it to his feet. Kicks off his military-grade hiking boots. Undoes his pants, a little slower when he imagines she smirks and flicks her eyes, however fleetingly, towards his crotch. He steps out of his pants, unabashed in his nakedness, and the fiend inside of him rakes, scratching at his skin, teeth bared.
Augusta thinks the transformation looks painful. She’s seen it before, but she sucks in a small breath of surprise all the same. It’s as though his bones break and mold anew beneath his skin but that too is shifting, changing, replaced by golden hair, no, not hair, fur and his two legs become four, his nails thickening, sharpening into claws. His eyes become amber feline shapes while his tail curls, long and full, behind him. The mountain lion sits where the man had previously stood, the discarded clothing by its massive paws looking almost comically small now.
When she makes a noise, some small, unintelligible response from the back of her throat, he cannot decipher if Augusta is proud or repulsed or both. He slinks closer, distinctly aware of her lack of fear, and pushes his white muzzle against her fingertips.
2.
“What are you thinking about?” Luke asks.
Haven briefly lifts her eyes from the glossy magazine pages she has not been reading. She’s folded into a wide, cracked leather armchair, her long legs dangling like a child’s over the side, her ankles crossed one over the other. Luke notices how brightly painted her toenails are, the pink reminiscent of bubblegum and babydolls. Since it’s Sunday and neither of them are bound to the estate or their respective cons, she’s in her trademark denim shorts, the ends frayed and cut and clinging to her thighs so tightly that he assumes they must chafe. Above that, Haven’s wearing one of his old Nirvana t-shirts, the sleeves rolled up an inch as though she’s waiting to tuck a pack of Marlboros under the fabric. She isn’t wearing any makeup. He hasn’t seen her so fresh-faced and natural in weeks.
“Nothing,” Haven lies and turns one of the pages of Cosmopolitan. It’s the first time she’s turned a page in ten minutes.
Luke rubs his knuckles across his jaw, eyebrow flicking up.
She can feel him continuing to watch her, so she uncrosses her ankles, keeps her feet a few inches apart to let his gaze appreciate the path up her calves and higher, till the curve of the armchair and fold of her legs block the view. She turns another page.
“And yet you seem so far away,” Luke says, not quite a grumble, and a little bemused.
“You don’t get access to everything going on up here.” Haven taps her temple with a nail as pink as the color on her toes.
“Since when?”
She shrugs, and Luke notices the way her shoulder jerks with tension. Haven’s always sharp in her movements when annoyed. She tosses her hair back, off of her shoulders, and curls deeper into the armchair. She crosses her ankles again.
“Is it David?” he says the name more loudly than he had intended.
“Is it David?” she mocks, her voice going nasal and obnoxious in pitch, her petulance making Luke’s own annoyance pinch suddenly between his eyes.
“Okay.” Luke rolls his eyes and grabs the remote for the TV. He uses his thumb to punch the down button, scrolling mindlessly through the daytime programs.
“I don’t ask you about .... what’s her name? The wife? Rowena?”
“Because there’s nothing to tell. Yet.”
“It’s not my fault she moves like a snail. Or, I don’t know, the recluse that she is.”
Luke ignores the statement. “This was your idea, remember?”
“Sure, but I’m still allowed my privacy.” Haven closes the magazine and tosses it onto the dingy coffee table between them with a flurry of pages.
“You like him.”
It’s Haven’s turn to roll her eyes. She swings her legs down from the chair and faces her brother more directly, her elbows on her knees in a mild imitation of their father’s favorite confrontational stance. “No, but I understand him.”
Luke doesn’t say anything. He’s learned over the years that silence more often than not will weigh her down. She’ll buckle under its pressure as though her golden shoulders are incapable of upholding anything other than her own pretense.
“Fine,” she admits after a few moments. “I like him. He’s handsome and funny and richer than God. I like him. Sometimes. Happy?”
“You can like him,” he tells her, as though she needs his permission, as though he’s unbothered by her confession. “But I still want to know what you were thinking about. What you’ve been daydreaming about all morning.”
Haven bites her lip, a quick, childish nervousness washing over her face before she sighs and leans back into the chair. The sharpness has left her body. She’s feigning calm but her hands flutter, uncertain how to be still, before eventually resting on the tops of her thighs. She fingers the hem of his t-shirt and looks away towards the wall of windows where the brightness of the sun makes her squint.
Finally, she says, “I was thinking about fucking him, about how he fucked me. Bent me over the kitchen counter after kicking my ankles open and didn’t even bother with a condom. I could feel him dripping out of me the rest of the night. When I came home, I took a shower, and then you went down on me and I don’t know which makes me wetter—him not knowing about you or you not knowing about him.”
When Haven grins, it’s full of teeth, like a crocodile, and Luke feels the old familiar twist of lust and shame low in his groin.
3.
“Should we be worried about this?” Sunniva asks, lifting her eyebrows in Eda’s direction.
Eda is barefoot, curled on the edge of the wading pool, her gossamer pink dress damp and the same shade as her visible nipples. Mac sits besides her, his feet also bare, a hand on her thigh as they whisper softly together. They are happy; there is an unmistakable air of natural intimacy about them, a conspiratorial quality that deepens when Mac brushes a wet lock of hair from Eda’s cheek.
Palmer leans against one of the marble columns opposite the wading pool, Sunniva near his left as they survey the couple. He shrugs, his mouth curving into an arrogant grin. “How much competition do you think that boy is? We’re still her favorites. Well, I’m her favorite, you’re the runner-up.”
Sunniva’s face is blank. She doesn’t reward him with a smirk or an eye-roll or even a clipped tone. “I’m not jealous although I’m glad your perception is still as dim as ever. You know who that boy is.”
“We’re out of reach of Vries territory. They can’t clamor down here and start rounding our employees up. Or you, for that matter, Sunshine. It’s-”
“Against the law? There is no law. We’ve survived so far because we’re too far away for them to be convenient.”
“And yet, the fox is in the chickencoop.”
Sunniva’s response is interrupted by Eda’s bright, shimmering laughter. She makes a mental note to remind the girl not to feign such adoration so easily, to prolong the moment, to let the client long for such unveiled displays of earnestness. Then she realizes that Eda’s response is candid, genuine, and she feels a slight twist of nausea in her stomach.
She tilts her eyes up at Palmer and sees that he’s noticed too. “What were you saying about favorites again?”
4.
Roman’s hands are in her hair, cold and smooth, sending shivers up her neck. Lene feels uncharacteristically flustered, the blood beneath her skin ripening on the vine, but she turns her face into the crook of his shoulder and fists his shirt in the center of his chest as an attempt to both press herself closer and simultaneously pull him nearer. The animal inside of her is giddy; if it could yip, she thinks it would be. She’s vaguely annoyed by this turn of events, by her own unbridled, irrational lust and the possibility of—she cuts the thought off before she can travel any further down that path, choosing willful ignorance in the heat of the moment.
How long has it been now? Three days? Two weeks? A month? Sometimes she gets so feverish so can’t remember before. Before his teeth and her blood, before she had ever heard his name or seen his smug face, before she knew of the Compound and the Insurgence and secret plots. It would bother her more than it already does if he wasn’t so compliant, so easily ready, so obviously wanting too.
Lene wonders if this is what a blood craze must feel like, a hazy, hungry ache that makes her mind unable to focus on anything else, and if as on cue, Roman pulls her neck back by a fistful of her blonde hair and drags the tips of his fangs across her neck with careful, teasing precision.
She bites back the whimper that tries to struggle past her teeth and forces herself to still, willing herself to be as stubborn as stone. She thinks about trying to explain to Anders how something so unnatural, something that had disgusted her before, is now something she craves. The thought makes her chest knot with shreds of shame like the beast inside of her is embarrassed to so revel in her own vulnerability.
He doesn’t bite and she swallows her disappointment. Lene feels the scratch of his beard against her collarbone and then the press of his mouth, faint as a ghost. He releases her hair and cradles the small of her back in his hands, letting her bow up against him so that he can nudge the underside of her jaw with his nose and lick the salt from her skin. His right hand crawls around to her front, circling her hip, rubbing the fabric of the ridiculously feminine dress Arletta had insisted she wear to the evening’s dinner, before tugging it up in an imitation of how she’d fisted his shirt. When he traces his fingers between her legs, Roman can feel how wet she is.
In the next room, there’s a clatter of excitement. Arletta squawks in a laugh that Harrow responds to with a snigger. His sister, Augusta, murmurs something that even Roman’s preternatural ears cannot decipher. There’s the shivering sound of shifting bodies within the adjacent room, and Roman steps away from Lene so quickly that she’s left feeling exposed despite being in the shadows, her hand hovering in the air where Roman’s chest had been.
Roman swipes his cold fingers back through his oak-colored hair, smoothing the strands to respectability, then rubs his shadowed jaw. He flashes a shark grin to greet Radomir as the Minister’s bodyguard turns the corner. Roman’s grin is the exact style of Harrow’s, a wide-mouth stretch full of teeth, like a predator gleaning at its prey. Lene’s face dissolves into a blank mask, as perfect and vapid as a china doll, and she presses herself tight against the wall.
Radomir, more out of a place in a suit than Lene is in a lace dress, runs his eyes from Roman to Lene. He finds her in the shadows without effort, but he doesn’t let his gaze linger as Roman is already heaving a theatrical sigh while reaching for the fresh bottle of bourbon haphazardly sitting out of place on the narrow table lining the hallway.
“They’re asking for that,” Radomir says, his voice low and deep, like muddy river rocks. He gestures with his head towards the bottle.
“Sorry. I was sidetracked by other delights. Can’t blame a man, can you?”
Roman leaves them in the fog of his departing smug laughter, unphased, moving around the massive man in front of him without a hint of fear. From where the party is eating, Lene can hear Roman slap Harrow on the back, but the joke he must say is muffled by Arletta asking for her. Radomir, ever the sentry, does not move but he glances thoughtfully around the hallway before pointedly stopping his gaze at Lene.
She clears her throat and runs a hand down her dress, smoothing imperceptible creases, before leveling her eyes to his. They don’t speak, but Radomir gives her the tiniest of nods, allowing her permission to leave.
Stupid, she thinks, admonishing herself as she sidles past and wills her heart to stop its hammering. When she enters, the small party inside is rosy-cheeked from the alcohol and oblivious to the atrocities happening all around them—in the kennels, in the arena, in the labs, even here, in the humans’ personal quarters, where they do damage to themselves and trade gossip like secrets to be bought and ransomed.
Next to Harrow, Roman is camouflaged in plain sight, his easy demeanor and casual camaraderie burying the ruthless predator he is. Not an animal, Lene thinks, coming to stand behind Arletta rather than sit at the table where she and her kind are not welcome. He is unlike all others, as she is with her own kind. In this, they are well-matched.
5.
After the fall, when the desert seems a landscape of opportunity, when Chason is no longer bound to his treacherous pack, they are lovers set adrift. They wander, aimless, and scarred.
He makes a fire outside of an abandoned, derelict house while Ita picks through the rubble. She comes back with an armful of musty bedding and together they pull an old couch to the edge of the fire then layer the blankets atop. Neither seem bothered by the smell, but they’re grateful for the warmth and each other.
“What do you think will happen?” Ita asks and tucks closer to his side. He’s thinner than she remembers, and they’re both blistered and rubbed raw from the sun and miles of travel. She breathes him in greedily, hungry for the closeness after the last tortuous year.
“Who cares?” He has a bitter angry tone to his voice, a sharp cackling quality she’s grown accustomed to, and she smooths a hand behind his neck to stroke his black hair and quiet the scavenger inside of him. Her thumb traces an old whip mark that tucks behind his dirty shirt collar. Chason has lines and scars and burns peppering his body beneath his clothes, and she knows he’s still fighting off the last remnants of the cocktails the doctors at the compound pumped into him regularly. His eyes aren’t as bright as they used to be and this, probably more so than anything else, saddens her.
After a moment of silence, he shrugs a shoulder, suddenly less irritable. “I bet the sister, the minister, she’ll take it all. Wear the crown and get all the adoration.”
Thoughtfully, Ita shakes her head. “I don’t think she wants adoration.”
“No? Isn’t that what everyone who has ever ruled wants?”
“I think she wants fear. To be feared. Harrow wanted that but he was small-minded … She’s ambitious. That should be terrifying enough.”
Chason’s mouth curls into a sloping grin and, seeing it, Ita pushes his hair away from his face so she can better gauge his expression. “Somewhere along the way, I’ve forgotten how to be horrified.”
“I haven’t,” she says quietly.
Chason chews on the side of his thumb nail and grunts, not unkindly, but he does not look at her. “I’m not a good man. Not really.”
Ita makes a noise, some kind of disapproving, disagreeing titter, but Chason continues speaking. “It’s okay. I’m not the worst there is, I know that. I think that’s my point actually.”
“You’re neither good nor bad?” Her pale brows push together, partially with amusement and partially with confusion.
“I’m better than him, I mean. I’ll always be better than him. Them. I won’t scare you.”
Ita’s smile is bright even though her lips are chapped. She shivers despite the fire and he pulls her into his lap. He holds her thin waist and kisses, slow, like he’s trying to drink her.
“I’ve missed you,” she tells him against the shape of his mouth, and he knows she’s blushing, the pretty quartz pink of a more innocent girl.
6.
“I cannot care for you again,” Abigail whispers, her soft voice shattering like glass, as Gerhard grabs a fistful of her sheer nightgown. She’s hiding the ivory lace beneath a bejeweled fur-lined cloak the color of twilight. It’s another gift from Renan and something Abigail would have adored in its beauty if only it had come from the younger Prince instead of the King.
Gerhard’s mouth is a twisted scar of pain. He looks as though he wants to laugh and cry at once. There’s still a flush of color on him from the evening’s wine and the many cups he’d had after. He is not a drinker, but he’s been wearing his pain so openly these past few weeks and few other than his sister Polina dare to remark about his uncanny thirst.
“As you cared once?” he asks. He means it to be a mockery but instead it comes out plaintive.
“That’s where you must leave it,” she murmurs, closing her eyes to the sting of tears.
It’s the wrong action. He ought to feel relieved that she had confessed her love and said it was gone. He should be glad that she had dismissed him, that she would no longer favor him now that the King himself had plucked her, like a rose, for his own enjoyment. He should, too, know that this move of hers, this strategic leap of upward mobility, was never Abigail’s game but her family’s. A woman like Abigail could not complain of the desires of the whims of the King, but Gerhard resents her some all the same.
“Better that I never saw you.”
“Don’t say that. I can’t endure that.” She’s crying now, softly, her hands in her face as he pulls again at her pretty shift and catches the hem of her robe. “He’s expecting me,” she protests, not quite urgently enough, her hands like broken-winged doves when he moves them away from her tear-stained face.
“I doubt it,” Gerhard murmurs, pressing his mouth to her upturned cheeks, kissing the salt from her skin. “This isn’t about you.”
“What?” she asks, confused even in her dismay. She can smell the drink on him. She can feel his pulse skip beneath his unbuttoned collar when her small fingers touch his throat.
“I don’t know,” he murmurs again, tilting her chin up, kissing her trembling mouth because he’s desperate for the familiar tangerine taste of her, for the citrus smell of her body once they’d used one another until fulfillment. Her her her. The only thing he’d ever had as his own, untouched and untarnished by his brother’s claim, until now. “I don’t know what I’m saying.”
She makes a whimpering noise that he’s always loved, and Gerhard pushes her back against the stone wall, their bodies draped in darkness as he fumbles with the opening of his breeches. She’s already looping her arms around his neck, leveraging her meager weight against him, until his hands find the backs of her thighs and the robe slips half-off her shoulders, caught between her back and the wall. When he enters her, she bites down on his shoulder, stifling a cry.
It will be the last time he has her, this drunken, clandestine moment of fervidity.
It will be the last time he has her, until it isn’t.
Renan cannot sleep. He turns around and around on the smooth linen sheets of his luxurious bed, getting more and more restless until the fever in his pulse heightens and the heat under his skin burns. The moon glows warmly, filtering in through the curtains, and he knows the hour is late. Too late.
He thinks of Abigail and her cherub’s mouth, how he likes the flash of her eyes beneath her eyelids and the absolute rigidity of her spine when she dips into a curtsey. Then he thinks of Gerhard and the cut of his cheekbones as his body finds solid footing into manhood, the expressive, coltish eyes, and the squareness of his jaw freshly patched with new stubble. He is acutely aware of how heartbreak seems to agree with his brother, to heighten his good looks, and then Renan’s acutely aware of how little this bothers him. In fact, it does the opposite, and he feels a stroke of desire smolder inside of him.
He goes down to the private chapel barefoot, the hidden alcove meant only for the family’s unencumbered faith and prayer, and lays himself down on the cold stone before the unadorned altar. He does not take a position of penitence—feet together, facedown, arms spread, like a prone crucifixion—because he does not feel like a sinner and he has rarely believed in the superstition of religion, but he likes the solemn atmosphere of the chapel and the lack of prying eyes. He presses his large hands to the cold stone floor and when he imagines the curve of Abigail’s cheek against his palm, the image somehow melts, like a fever-dream, to Gerhard’s bright eyes again and the flush of his anguished face when he’d seen Abigail in the royal jewels and the blue of monarchy. Even with the cold, his cock is as hard as iron, and Renan feels his desire like a pain.
The next day, Gerhard avoids everyone until the evening dinner, where the hall is crowded with the usual courtiers and ladies. He sits beside Polina at the royal table and when he watches Renan clutch Abigail’s hand and press it to his knuckles, he has a sensation under his ribs that he knows must be his heart breaking.