Gaz’s Blue Hat Masterlists and introduction! (Please Read Me!)
Hello! I’m Val, or “the hat”. I love the CoD universe and have watched play throughs of most of the games. At the moment, I’m only writing for 141 and possibly other main characters throughout the story.
If you do not have your age in your bio, you’re getting blocked. I’m sorry but this is an 18+ blog. I don’t feel comfortable with minors interacting with my things.
Another thing. I will write rough topics. I’ve struggled with Suicide, Self Harm, Sexual Abuse, Addiction and many other vices. I feel like there (rightfully) is a lot of hesitation to write these topics. However, I find comfort in stories. Of course I’ll put trigger warnings on every piece I do, but I want to let you know that you’re seen and you’re heard.
Final thing and I'll stop my rambling, I promise. I won't tolerate hate here. I do my best to stay educated on things and thus, this is a safe place for people to ask questions and learn about things they might not know about.
Be kind folks.
Key:
💖-Fluff
🪄 -Silly
🩸-Whump
☠️-Angst
❤️🔥-Smut
Series
-Fair Winds and Following Seas- Simon Riley x Reader (Tempest)
Read on Ao3: Here!
Chapter 1: Pilot
Chapter 2: The Winding Road of Introductions
Chapter 3: The Calm Before the Storm
Chapter 4: Speed of Sound (Wip)
Glacial Tides- King!Johnny MacTavish X Siren!Reader
Masterlist Found Here!
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Small Town UA- Hiatus
-Sunflowers and Shotguns (Small Town UA)- Soap x Reader (Lamb) 💖🩸
Welcome
Southern Hospitality
Around the Fences
Air Pressure
Tornado Sirens (Wip)
Toxemia (wip)
-Injections and Ivermectin (Small Town UA)- Ghost X Reader (Tens)💖
Moos Malady
Like Little Railroads
Riley and Riley (Wip)
Concussion (Wip)
CPR (Wip)
Fireplace (Wip)
-Books and Bombshells (Small Town UA)- Gaz x Reader (Keys)
Books Bring Us Together
WPM (Wip)
Dewy Decimal System (Wip)
Movie night (Wip)
Kickstarter (Wip)
Dog-earing (Wip)
-Waves and Warfare (Small Town UA)- Price X Reader (Skip)
Captain to Captain
Come a little closer (Wip)
Kate Kate Kate (Wip)
High Seas (Wip)
Depth Charge (Wip)
Songs of the Deep (Wip)
-TF141 and the WSM- (Small town UA blurbs)
Wear the hat, ride the cowboy 🪄
Beware the Wave Soaked Maidens (Wip)
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Dungeons and Dragons AU (All characters have three parts)
Seeing isn’t everything (Kyle “Gaz” Garrick X F!Reader) (Medusa)
Pt. 1
Pt. 2
Pt. 3
Songs across Seafoam (Johnny “Soap” MacTavish X F!Reader) (Siren) (Wip) 💖🩸❤️🔥
Pt. 1
Pt. 2
Pt. 3
Shapes in the Mists (Simon “Ghost” Riley X F!Reader) (Changeling) (Wip) 💖☠️❤️🔥
Pt.1
Pt.2
Pt.3
Curls of Smoke and Embers (Captain John Price X F!Reader) (Dragon) (Wip) 💖☠️🩸❤️🔥
Pt.1
Pt.2
Pt.3
---------------------------------------
One Shots
Captain John Price
Left Behind ( Wip) 💖🩸
Yours to command ❤️🔥
Wedding ring (blurb)❤️🔥
Cherry stem (blurb) mild❤️🔥
Bad day (blurb) 💖
Simon “Ghost” Riley
Potent Poisons and Precious Passions (Fem!Reader) 💖❤️🔥
Loving Something So Broken (Gn!Reader)☠️💖
Forged in Blood, Bonded by Steel (wip) 💖❤️🔥
Hearts Do Mend ☠️💖 (Slight❤️🔥)
Cherry Stem (blurb) mild❤️🔥
Tags (Blurb) ❤️🔥
Bad day (Blurb) 💖
Johnny “Soap” MacTavish
Whispers in the Night (Wip) 💖❤️🔥
Domestic Bliss (wip) ❤️🔥💖
Cherry Stem (blurb) mild❤️🔥
Desperate (Blurb) ❤️🔥
Bad Day (Blurb) 💖
Talking you Through it (Blurb) (Capt. MacTavish) ❤️🔥
These will be complete lists of everything I have ever reblogged about these characters. I don't like the Tumblr Tagging system to look through my stuff so I made my own list like this. I'll be going backwards from present day to the very start of this blog (June)
(11/5/2023 update): I'm working hard on linking and sorting everything I have reblogged. I have organized up to October. Everything that has yet to be linked will have the tag 'To Be Linked' on it. Feel free to rummage through the bins while I get my books on a shelf. Thank you for your support!
Johnny browses Craigslist when he’s bored. It’s a habit he picked up as a teenager and he’s never really stopped. He sees all sorts of weird shit on there- sex ads, sketchy electronics, animals, fist fighting offers, even paying folks to be wedding crashers (One of which he did reply to. It was one of the best nights he and Gaz have ever had together)
Today, however, as he’s lounging in the rec room between drills, his eyes scan over a listing posted five minutes ago
ISO: Someone to break into my asshole ex’s house and steal my cat back. Details inside.
Soap feels his mouth curve upwards as he scrolls through the posting, smile undeniable as he reads the utter frustration and bitterness in your words.
My dickhead ex cheated and left me for his side chick. I don’t know how, but when he came to pick up his stuff he took my cat with him. He keeps denying it, but I know he has her. I’ve been over twice and each time he’s refused to answer the door. Cops are no help. Close to breaking in myself but I can’t afford a record.
Attached, a picture of a fluffy grey cat with blue eyes and white paws.
Cute, Soap thinks.
Message me for his address. If you can break in and get my cat I’ll pay you and provide an alibi. Cat’s name is Chestnut, but she goes by Chessie.
Soap has admittedly made some terrible decisions in life- faking his age to join the military, developing a frankly concerning fondness for pyrotechnics- not to mention that one tattoo on his ass. Still, he thinks to himself as he thumbs the message button: bad decisions make the best stories.
Soap: Heard ye were in need of a cat burglar
You: Cute. Hope you're actually serious, because I'm getting kinda desperate
Soap: Ahm serious. Though you should ken I kill people for a livin'
You: Very funny
It's not a joke, he thinks, but decides not to press it.
Soap: You able to get him out of the house? Otherwise can leave it tae me
You: Ugh, I'd rather not see his stupid face again if I can help it
You: Just don't...kill him. I guess. Or do, but I'm not covering for you if you do
You: Even if you are funny. and maybe cute
Soap feels a grin slowly creep across his face, eyes twinkling as he types
Soap: Ah'm very cute, ta. Also a good thief
You: I guess we'll see. How much do you want?
Soap: I ken we can talk details when yer sweet puss is back home safe n sound
You: Right. Well, here's his address. and you can meet me here after
Soap reads the address, mentally going over in his mind whereabouts it is, and what tools he'll need.
Soap: I'll be there with yer bonnie cat by 2100, see you then bonnie
You: See you then, cat burglar
Soap's got a little pep in his step as he makes his way back to his bunk, enough so that even Ghost notices.
"Good news, sergeant?"
"Aye." He grins. "Got me'self a date tonight."
----
He finds the bastard's house with little issue- typical street house with a tidy little yard and a bike in front. It's dark by the time he gets there, and there's a light on on the second floor that tells him your ex is home.
He's got a doorbell camera, which is fun. Unfortunately it's hooked to a primary power source, which means it won't survive what Soap has in mind.
Soap can't help but hum to himself as he goes about tinkering with the electric meter outside, out of view of the camera. While he does, he imagines what you must look like. Surely you're pretty, surely a sight for a weary soldier to rest his eyes on. You've got a little bite to you by the sounds of your texts messages, and the more Soap thinks about it the bigger his smile grows- until at last he snips a chord in the box and the whole house goes dark with a little fizz of power.
"Bloody hell." He hears from upstairs, followed by footsteps. He's probably going to come inspect the box. Not a problem, Soap's done a similar feat enough times to make it seem like a decaying old circuit- something chalked up to a bout of bad luck.
As the bastard comes out the front door, Soap goes in the back- lock already picked.
"Here kitty kitty." He whispers, voice quiet as he stalks through the dark house. "Chessie, pspsps."
Right on cue- there's a lonesome little meow from a room behind the kitchen, and as the man curses outside Soap moves towards it, gently opening the door to the laundry room to discover a small cage on the floor. Dirty food bowl, water bowl empty, and a pair of glinting eyes staring up at him with a pathetic little mewl.
"Och, ye poor sweet thing." Soap croons, and the poor wee thing bumps it's head up against the bars with a quiet sound of greeting, still sweet despite it all. "Not to worry, ah'll have ye back home in a few."
There's a duffel slung on his back, and Soap makes sure to apologize to the cat before unceremoniously zipping it up. He can hear her in the bag whining, and tuts a small reassurance before going back the way he came- making sure to throw the gas on the stove before he leaves.
Just in case. If the fellow decides to blow himself up on accident- well. Soap's always loved a good explosion.
He waits in the shadows of the backyard for the bastard to go back inside, talking angrily on the phone to an electrician about an overtime fee.
Soon as he's out of sight Soap hops the fence once more, out towards the street, and whistles a tune as he goes on his merry way.
The bag meows again beside him, and Soap pats it gently.
"There there." He coos. "Ah'm sure yer mum will be happy to see ye."
And hopefully me too. He adds as a panicked shout echoes from the house behind him.
---
He's exactly three minutes late as he walks up to the car park you had texted him from, and in the dim glow of the streetlights Johnny sees a car idling directly underneath one of them.
He offers a friendly little wave as he walks over, holding up the duffel beside him and unzipping it so a fluffy head pops out with an indignant little yowl.
The door unlocks, and Soap watches as you step out.
Bless his wee heart, you're about as pretty as he dared to dream, hugging a jacket around your shoulders, blinking against the light as your eyes widen at the sight of your cat.
"Chessie!" You gasp, racing forward to cradle the cat's head between your hands, cooing and bestowing a flurry of little kisses on her head. Soap unzips the bag so you can cradle her, watching as you hug her and whisper sweet little words to her that makes his battered heart tug against his chest. Chessie purrs about as loud as your car engine, bunting her head up against your chin with a series of happy little chirrups.
"You're an angel." You tell Soap, who's eyes dart up to yours as you speak. He watches you blink, pause for a moment, and then offer him a shy little smile.
Be still, his beating heart.
"Nae, I wouldnae go that far." He shrugs, but returns you smile even so.
"He didn't see you, did he?" You ask, wrapping your jacket around Chessie.
Soap shakes his head. "I was in an' out before he noticed. He'll have a nasty electrician bill tomorrow."
You blink again, but this time a laugh follows as you shoot him a sort of puzzled look. "Sounds like you know your way around these things. You're not like...an actual burglar or something, right?"
Soap grins, and can't help himself from leaning a little into your space, eyes glimmering. You take a half step back, but Soap ignores it. "A burglar? No, but if you're not careful I might steal yer heart, bonnie."
He relishes the way your eyes go a little wide, the way your lips part in surprise. You try and stammer a response, but nothing comes. When he reaches up his hand, Chessie rubs her face against his fingers.
"How about that alibi?" He asks, voice velvet soft and seductively low. "I dinnae need cash for a good deed, but I reckon the company of a sweet thing like you will suffice."
Besides- Soap mentally adds. A'hve been dying to see that other sweet puss o' yers.
You wake up to an empty bed one morning after a very eventful night prior. You’re covered in hickeys, sore between the legs, and doubtlessly your hips are going to hurt by evening. Confused and dismayed you text Simon, who doesn’t answer. His hoodie, mask, and phone are all gone. For a desperate moment you think he’s been called on assignment, or even worse: left entirely.
When he finally comes home a few hours later, you demand to know where he’s been. Wordlessly, he pulls his shirt over his head and points to a new tattoo on his shoulder:
Johnny whimpers each time he thrusts into you. The sound of his hips slapping against yours accompanies the rhythm of the headboard, hitting the wall gently. Your legs are wrapped around his waist and your arms around his shoulders.
This isn't the first time he's found himself on your bed. It's the third, and he's hooked. You smile, drunk in the pleasure but not as far gone as he is. You press kisses against his lips and cheek, pulling him down closer to where he's almost laying on you.
Your insides feel like molten lava, and the tingles of pleasure zip through you. Johnny barely is saying anything that makes sense.
"Bonnie- fuck- I can't." He whines and grinds his hips against yours. Stirring up your insides. You squeal from the angle and let out a breathy sigh.
"Yeah you can Johnny." You whisper in his ear. "This pussy is yours, and I wanna feel you cum deep in me." You clench your muscles up and feel each drag of his dick even more. The warmth and heaviness of it makes you gasp and you feel him twitch.
"Ye c-can't, fuck fuck fuck," He whines as he starts to jack hammer himself into you. He's chasing his release, "ye cannae say stuff like tha' you'll make me cum too soon." He's over stimulated.
You don't care. Part of the fun is hearing his whiny whore like moans when he cums.
"Come on baby, come on." You're like a siren to his ears. "You can do it. Cum inside of me. You're so close, you can do it."
He gasps, his blue eyes cloudy with pleasure and his hips press against you. He's trembling and whining, barely sounding like the playboy he pretends to be. A long drawn out fuck escapes him through clenched teeth. You watch him, enthralled by how pretty he looks, flushed pink from exertion. Drool dripping down the cor er of his mouth.
You roll yourself and him over so you are on top. He's shocked at the sudden placement. His hands gripped your hips and he throws his head back as you ride him. He's still in the trappings of his orgasm and this is pleasurable torture.
"Bonnie wait, it's too much!" He's trying to slow your movements. "I can't take it, fuck!"
"Yeah you can Johnny, you're doing so good for me." You coo to him. "Just a bit more yeah? Be a good boy for me."
He whimpers and nods his head, "yeah I'm your good boy."
He can feel his cum spill out of you with each roll or bounce of your hips. He wants to be a good boy for you. It's part of the reason he keeps coming back.
Soap who fucks you like you're gonna leave him if he doesn't.
He's a whore, wanting to grind his cock as deep as he can while fucking you into the mattress, making you scream and try to crawl away from the overwhelming pleasure.
You feel like you're dying from how good it feels, the hard, slow thrusts driving you crazy. You can't do anything but moan, thighs useless and limp, the bed creaking and groaning under you.
Your hand fists the sheets, tears ruining your makeup, throat hoarse from screaming his name as he continuously ravages your insides.
You've cum like what, 4 times already? Your pussy is raw, aching, taking pounding after pounding, your cervix is ruined, toes curled and then you feel his rough hand shove your face into the sheets.
Which makes you clench. Such a slut he is.
You can't help but pass out after the 5th orgasm is pulled out of you.
Once Soap is done with you he holds you close, smirking as he feels you whine and twitch as his softening cock presses against your lower back.
Simon can hear the sound of every sphincter in the room squeezing shut. The typical chatter of the footie game goes silent except or the noise from the telly, and he watches with a curious sort of amusement as his normally stoic captain’s face pales to the color of chalk.
“Archibald?” Gaz whispers to Soap beside him, who remains shock still, eyes looking everywhere except the door to the kitchen. He can’t remember the last time he saw the Scot that still- as if a single movement will summon a deadly predator.
Simon’s heard graveyards louder than the silence that falls over the room.
At last Price clears his throat, grunting as he stands from his creaky armchair and nodding to Simon and the others.
“Pardon me, gents.”
The look Gaz offers appears more like a send off for a soldier wrapped in a flag going back home for the last time.
“Heaven help him.” Soap mutters, clutching at his cross through his shirt with a whispered prayer.
Simon hums, more curious than concerned. He’s never heard you use Price’s full name before, which is an event in of itself. But raising your voice with the power of a whip is something unique as well. He can’t help but wonder what his normally unflappable captain did to deserve such ire.
“Prolly forgot to take the bins in.” He muses, and though he doesn’t believe it, it’s enough to get the conversation going.
“It’s more serious than that.” Gaz comments, nose scrunching in that tell tale way of his. “Probably left cigar butts in the yard again.”
“With a voice like that? Wouldnae be surprised if she found someone else’s knickers in his laundry.” Soap offers, shaking his head. “Poor man.”
The silence descends again, and this time Simon strains to hear any sound of argument or voices from the other room. Instead there’s silence, which would be concerning if not for the fact that Simon’s curious about what fate may have befallen Price.
“Takin’ a piss.” He rumbles after a few more minutes, watching advertisements roll through on the telly.
“Don’t you die too.” Soap comments wryly, and Simon mutters a low curse towards the Scot, which only makes his smile brighten.
Simon doesn’t head to the bathroom at first. Instead he follows Price’s path through the kitchen and dining room, listening until he hears a noise from the laundry room. He thinks at first maybe Soap was right about the panties after all, until he hears a noise that stops him in his tracks.
“John~”
Spoken with the true depravity of someone getting fucked.
Simon’s not a voyeur, or at least he tells himself as much, but he’s also not above quelling his interests in things that make him want to peel back the curtains to others houses. So he lingers in the shadows of the hallway- deadly silent as he carefully peeks through the doorway to reveal the sight inside.
You’re sitting atop the washer, house dress bunched up to your hips, your panties dangling from an ankle and mouth parted in a silent ‘O’ as you clutch at the head between your legs.
Price’s hands wrap around your hips, mouth securely fastened to your folds as he utters a low, breathy groan into your cunt. Simon can see the man’s fingers kneading into the flesh of your thighs, stopping between breaths to mutter low, filthy praise right against your entrance.
Fuck, Simon can’t help it when his cock twitches in his pants. Between the wet glisten of your cunt, the rise and fall of your breasts with breathless gasps, and the wrecked, utter look of ecstasy on your face, Simon can feel himself chubbing up, and reaches a hand down to grope at himself with a silent groan.
He can’t tell what turns him on more- the sight of your blissed out, starry expression as you roll you hips up into Price’s mouth, or the fact that he gets to hear his captain eating you out like a man starved.
Christ, he wishes you weren’t quiet, can’t help the envy that bubbles in his gut at the idea that Price gets to hear those sweet little sounds you’re making at any time of the day.
He can see the orgasm build in you, watches it travel the length of your spine until it clenched in your stomach, and your legs snap shut around John’s head. Price works you through it, and Simon watches as you jolt through the waves, panting, sweat beading on your brow, until at last it fades and you force out a long, slow breath.
“There’s a girl.” John coos, standing and wedging himself between your legs so he can kiss you properly. There’s a few murmured words Simon can’t hear, but at last Price gives a warm, fond chuckle.
“There’s better ways to get my attention, love.” He tells you, and you laugh before dragging him in for another kiss.
Simon manages to adjust himself before he heads back to the living room, settling down in his spot and ignoring the curious glances of the younger men with him. When Price returns with a gruff assurance, Simon allows himself to linger in the silence before finally speaking.
“Got something on your beard, Boss.”
It takes three seconds for Price to process, and another two to promptly launch the remote at Simon’s head.
Gaz will give you a choice for how to start the new year.
do you want to cum, for the first time ever in your life, on his tongue or on his cock? he's fine with either one, he just wants you to start the new year with a bang.
he's secretly thrilled that you choose his cock. but first spends the a good amount of time edging you with his tongue, rolling your swollen clit and sucking on it till you beg for him to just put you out of your misery.
he doesn't. he's too cautious not to let you cum in his mouth because he relishes the fact that he gets to spend the last few moments ending the year with his cock nestled inside your virgin cunt.
and he times it just right for both of you. does a whole countdown while watching the alarm clock. counts the seconds from 23:59 and hastens his pace to have you both panting and clinging for dear life with your foreheads pressed against and with him swallowing your choked whimpers in his mouth.
and when the whole neighbourhood celebrates outside at midnight, you both hear them shouting "five, four, three, two—"
his cock slides in deeper than ever and touches that spot you didn't know existed while he rubs your clit. your eyes roll back, his name spilling from your tongue and yours on his as you both cum together when the fireworks start to pop outside at midnight.
"happy new year, love." he whispers into your mouth.
(Female Reader, Knight 141, Poly 141 x Princess Reader, Medieval AU, Seduction, Smut, Vaginal penetration + fingering, Nip sucking, Cunnilingus, Fellatio, Seduction, Implied age gap, Virgin Reader, Loss of virginity, Orgy, Seducing your knights so your father the king doesn't marry you off to some loser prince)
---
You are eighteen years of age when your father announces your hand for marriage.
It’s not unexpected. In truth you’ve been preparing your whole life for this. As your kingdom’s only princess you know by now that your duty falls not as a bearer of the crown, but as a contract- an obligation to whatever country your father chooses to send you to.
You know also, that you will not have a choice in who that is.
The marriage offers come numerous and swift. Seeds your father has planted for many years begin to sprout in the most distant lands. Those in foreign nations speak of your unparalleled beauty and wit, of your astounding intelligence and charisma. A true prize, they say. The rumors are overstated to an extravagant degree, a ruse designed by your father so that he may extract the most lucrative offer in exchange for your hand.
It does not stop the suitors from coming. In vast swaths with their colorful retinues they come to see your father, sat atop his golden throne with his eyes sparkling and full of greed. You sit beside him, silent, demure, hidden behind a veil which obscures your features. You stand only so they may kiss your hand and regale you with their accolades and achievements, telling you of the luxuries that await you upon the completion of your marriage contract. They boast, crow, and sing their own praises as a means of swaying your heart.
Sometimes, they demand.
It’s the Marquess of Graves that sidesteps your hand and lifts your veil when he comes to greet you and your father. Underneath your shocked expression meets his flint-gray eyes and smirking mouth.
“I simply wanted to see if the rumors were as true as you claim.” Graves tells your father after his burst of outrage. “Now I see that perhaps they’re overstated.”
Your father’s furious bellows follow Graves from the hall.
You are nineteen when your father bestows his four finest knights to your watch.
It’s for your own safety, he tells you. To keep you safe from men who would rather take advantage of you. You know it is false. The men he’s assigned to you are there only to keep safe his secrets. More than that- there are four of them so that if any one of them do try to move your heart or taint your honor, the other three are there to stop him.
You meet them on a dusk gray morning out in the castle garden.
“Your highness.” Greets the captain, a man with a bristly beard and sharp, calculating blue eyes. His bare hand is worn with sword callouses, scarred from battles you almost wish you could ask him about. He tells you his name is John, but that his men call him by his father’s name: Price.
He looks up at you over the knuckles of your hand. Something inside you shivers.
Price introduces you to his men, the first of which he calls ‘Gaz.’
“Kyle.” He tells you instead as he bends towards your hand. His smile is warm, brown eyes soft. There’s a humor there hidden behind his stare. You wonder what it sounds like when he laughs. He lingers by your hand for a moment, pausing to tilt his head up at you, as if searching for something. His face feels like a friend.
“Soap.” Price tells you next, and you can’t contain a small huff of laughter as the young man with the strange hair and bright, electric blue eyes strides up to boldly place a kiss on the back of your hand beside his brothers. It’s enough to make your maid gasp lightly, and that alone makes Soap grin against your hand. When you ask him about his name, he grimaces.
“Dinnae ask.” He replies in a northern accent, and you make a note to pester him about it later.
Then, there’s the behemoth of a man that lingers behind the other three. He’s had his face turned this entire time, as if searching for threats. When he turns, you take a step back.
His helmet is painted like a skull.
You steady yourself as he approaches, heart thumping wildly but refusing to show your trepidation as the knight falls to one knee. Rather than kiss your trembling hand he merely bows his head to it, then pauses to look up at you with dark, soot stained eyes the color of rust and dried blood.
“Ghost.” He says simply, and when you swallow to ask him if he has another name his voice replies in the same monotone: “No.”
“Ghost is my second in command.” Price tells you, and you’re settled by the hint of pride in his voice as he stands beside the taller man. “If you ever are in need of me and I am not here, he will stand in my place.”
You nod, hiding your trembling hands in the folds of your gown. “I am in your service, sirs.” You tell them, and watch as they all pause to exchange a look you can’t parse.
“No, your highness.” Gaz supplies at last. “We are in yours.”
In time, you will understand what that truly means.
The four men surprise you with their dedication to your protection. You half expected the knights assigned to you to be lackluster, to follow behind you with a lackadaisical nature, scuffing their boots and leaning nonchalantly at their posts. It would make sense for them to be as such with a sheltered princess who has scarcely set foot beyond the walls of a castle, likely assuming that you are spoiled and haughty, hardly a charge worth their oath.
Instead the men assigned to you are always alert, eyes sharp and ears keen to any threat that may cause you peril. You never catch them unawares, even with your soft slippers and silk gowns rustling against the floors. They always turn to face you when you speak, showing you their full respect and attention not as some contract to be auctioned off, but as you are: The sole heir to a kingdom they’ve sworn to protect.
Their care shines through in all they do. When you stretch for a book on a high shelf Ghost steps in to retrieve it for you. When there’s a puddle in your path Gaz takes it upon himself to toss his cape onto the ground so your skirts do not dampen. When one of the horses near the stables spooks, Price is quick to shield you behind him. As you lean a touch too far over a parapet, Soap’s arm gently loops about your middle to balance you. They don’t flinch in the face of danger, they don’t dismiss you when you speak, and sometimes in the soft light you sneak your eyes to their faces, tracing their features with a distant murmur of something...fond.
Your days are simple. You spend the daylight hours with your skirts bunched around your feet in a sunny window of the library, walking in the gardens, and standing at the parapets imagining what your life will look like beyond these walls in a land you’ve never seen. Sometimes you are called to the throne room to be paraded in front of would-be suitors, or to sit at banquets for foreign emissaries and ambassadors. All the while you understand: You were never meant to be more than this.
Though you find yourself constantly attended by ladies maids, now it seems even in your most private moments you are never alone. Your knights constantly stand at your side, at least one of them never more than a mere whisper away. In your rooms, in the garden, in the library, out on the castle turrets, the four men take turns always being three steps behind, at your right shoulder, ready to draw their swords at the merest chance of danger.
They’re handsome, you think, each in their own way. Price has the air of a man whose heart has been hardened by battles you’ll never see, yet remains tender in his gaze and oath towards those he’s sworn to protect. His voice is gentle with you, firm when it's required, but spoken like a man who offers aid, his shield, his fealty towards something greater than himself. Sometimes you lay awake thinking about what it would be like to be the maiden he eventually devotes himself to, with his worn hands and beard tickling her lips as he descends for a kiss.
Gaz is striking in the way young, bold men are. When he speaks, his words have weight. He allows it to settle on his shoulders, to consider them before he allows himself to say them. Yet there are times he offers a wry comment or a spark of humor that has you shielding your bark of laughter behind your hand. You see him and Soap laughing under the eves of the stables, sometimes sparring by the barracks. More often than not you pause to watch them, and find yourself warmed by the flicker of torchlight in Gaz’s gaze.
Ghost is the quietest out of the four. He hardly speaks, and when he does it’s with a dry, biting humor that is both grim and amusing all at once. He doesn’t spar with the others, but on cold, frosty mornings you watch him practice in a quiet corner of the courtyard below you. It’s in that dim light that you see the scars that mangle his bare torso, dance along his spine and litter across his shoulders. You wonder how he received them, and at the same time you admire the strength coiled in his muscles, the survival and tenacity of which those same scars speak.
Soap is an affable companion, always ready with a smile and a joke given the chance. His younger years speak in his roguish charm and playful nature. It’s not uncommon for you to laugh and smile in his companionship, and each time you watch the blue of his eyes sparkle at the sound of your laughter. Yet there are also times where you see his gaze harden, his jaw set. When a suitor approaches you in the courtyard and spends an uncomfortably long moment kissing the back of your hand, Soap takes a single step forward in warning, and your suitor scampers down the corridor with his attendants.
“Not as bold as he thought he was, then.” Soap huffs, and when you turn his eyes glint with mischief.
As the days and weeks lengthen, you begin to find yourself impatient with the true lack of privacy. The only time the four knights are not in your presence are the hours and minutes where your ladies attend to you instead. The knights stand outside as you are dressed, washed, as your hair is combed and braided, and as you’re disrobed for bed. Even at night, when the candles burn low, you lie in bed knowing that at least one of them stands outside, eyes and ears sharp as they listen to the mildest sound from inside your bedroom that might pose danger.
It’s a divine sort of punishment, you think. Constantly are you in the presence of four handsome, strong, fearsome yet gentle warriors sworn to protect you. Their grazing touches, soft voices, and gentle words haunt you in the dim hours, settling low beneath your stomach with a swoop of need you cannot tend to. You wish you could indulge in the blasphemy of touching yourself, of closing your eyes and pretending that instead of your own fingers it were those of a strong, handsome, dashing knight playing between your folds. If you were to do so, if somehow one of them outside were to hear...
Instead you muffle a groan into a pillow, and resist the urge to throw it at the door when one of them knocks to inquire if you’re alright.
“Did you hear?” One of your maids whispers the next morning as she helps another set out your dress and garments. “One of the lords out in the country sent his daughter away to a convent!”
Your ears perk, and you feign indifference from your place at your vanity, where a maid tends to your hair and weaves delicate ornaments into it.
“I heard!” Whispers your other maid. “She tried to run away with a stable boy, but they were caught!”
The conversation dissolves into hushed tones, but it sits under your skin, itching with an intense and abrupt curiosity that has you staring at your own reflection.
and, slowly, a ruse unfolds.
It begins with the shyest of touches- delicate whispers of the hand as they graze the passing pauldron of one of your knights. Feather-light, just enough for them to notice before it’s gone. You take longer to speak to them, tilting your head to expose the lovely bare curve of your neck and offering a sweet, docile sort of smile to them. You laugh at their comments, shyly hiding your mouth behind your hand and flicking your eyes to them just long enough to catch them staring.
Your flirtations do little to move them, it seems. Perhaps its resolve, perhaps its obliviousness, but your delicate, passing advances seem to float right past your knights, enough so that you sulk in your bed and resolve to try harder.
So as you ascend a staircase you pretend to trip only so Ghost catches you, balancing your weight in his arms as your hands hover above his chest and you whisper a breathless “Thank you.” He blinks down at you for a moment, slow like a cat, and then sets you on your feet once more without so much as a word. Straightening your skirts, he gestures for you to continue ascending without another glance.
You should have known better than to attempt Ghost, with his unflappable nature and monotone expressions. So instead you try Gaz, loosing your slipper in the gardens so that he bends to retrieve it, setting you upon a nearby fountain so he may put it back on for you. You slide up your skirts to allow him to do so, and perhaps you hike them just a little higher if only to watch the way his hands stutter at the sight of your gauzy chemise under your gown.
“Perhaps you should call for a cobbler, my lady.” He tells you with a smile that for a moment looks almost knowing. “Or ask your ladies for better laces.”
Unfazed, it seems. So instead you turn to Soap.
You sit outside with your ladies on a sunny afternoon, chattering and giggling like the girls you are. You take turns weaving daisy chains and flower crowns, whispering to each other with hushed, gossiping tones and occasionally darting your eyes over to Soap, who has his back towards you as he scans his surroundings. When you call for him he turns instantly, a curious expression changing to something soft, something fond.
He kneels in the grass next to you when you gesture him to do so, and his quizzical expression morphs to surprise when you arrange one of the daisy crowns atop his head with a coy little smile. Behind you your ladies maids titter and gasp, shielding their laughter behind their hands.
“As fair as any maiden.” You announce to a smattering of applause, and for a moment Soap looks almost bashful. He grins at you, eyes mirthful.
“Aye, ah’ve been told I grow like a weed before, but ne’er a flower.” Before he stands and turns to resume his post. When you look for him later, you’re disappointed to see he’s removed the crown. Likely disposed.
There’s still one last hope, however- that of the knight captain himself.
You settle upon taking a night walk, citing your lack of sleep. Alone, Price trails behind you as you wear nothing but a shawl over your nightgown. You stare up at the starry expanse and allow your breath to fog up against the heavens, ignoring the shiver that settles in your limbs. You can hear Price three steps behind you, to your left, the sound of his quiet, steady footsteps a constant companion.
“It’s cold.” You say at last, turning so your eyes catch the moonlight and your hem is lifted by the midnight wind. A small smile, shy but entreating, asks him what you normally wouldn’t dare: “Won’t you lend me your warmth, Sir Price?”
Price pauses for a long moment, face unreadable but jaw setting hard as he regards you. Yet instead of stepping forward to beckon you into his embrace, he instead unclasps the thick fur cloak draped about his shoulders, stepping forward to gently arrange it around your own.
“The night grows late, my lady.” He tells you, smoky voice a low murmur. “You should return to your rooms.”
You almost argue with him, chewing your lip and staring up at his unblinking, unyielding stare.
“I insist.” He tells you, voice low as a hand gently braces against the small of your back. “You’ll catch your death here.”
“And you won’t?” You chance.
“Worse things have failed to kill me, your highness.”
You stare up at the canopy of your bed that night and listen to the thrum of your racing heartbeat.
It seems that your seductions have failed to move them. No matter how you coyly smile and bat your eyes, how you drop a handkerchief for them to retrieve or call upon them for their chivalry, your knights do not falter. Even when you catch them alone without the watch of others, they do not cede to your flirtations and sweet words.
Greater measures must be taken.
You’re not so bold as to simply invite them into your bed. Nor do you think they would accept, so unyielding is their vow. So instead you work to wear at their resolve. Graves and your suitors may not think of you as the most beautiful woman in the world, but you can make it so in the eyes of your sworn protectors.
Under a blazing sun you pick a ripe fruit from a corner of the orchard at the edge of the castle grounds, allowing the bright juice to wet your lips and dribble down your chin under Soap’s watch. He watches as red juice paints the corners of your mouth and the tips of your fingers, and he listens to the moan of appreciation as flavor blossoms against your tongue. The juice spills down your chin, carves a trail down your bare throat and bleeds against the lace of your neckline where the rise of your breasts press against your bodice.
You turn to him, smile impish as you suck your fingers, eyes half lidded and heavy. “Would you care for one, Sir John?”
Soap stands stiffly, hands at his sides but fingers twitching. You watch his eyes flick to the bead of red juice that stains your skin at your collarbone before flicking back to your face. His jaw is set hard, eyes a beautiful storm of conflicting desire and want that sends a tender flame racing on the underside of your skin.
“No, your highness.” He replies at last, but his voice is strained, face struggling to be drawn into impassivity. Under his heated gaze you take another bite, laughter bubbling up your throat as juice stains your palm. Excitement bleeds into you, eyes bright and dancing as you speak through your gaze alone.
Come, sweet is the taste of the ripest fruit.
For an exhilarating moment you think his resolve will break, that he’ll step forward and taste the juice from your lips instead. But Soap swallows, adam’s apple bobbing before his face is schooled into firm resolve.
“You’ll ruin your dress, my lady.” He murmurs, withdrawing a cloth and tilting your head into his hand to tenderly wipe the stain from your mouth, not daring to touch any lower than the plush bed of your bottom lip. He hands you the rag and abruptly turns, but you can see the rosy blush on his ears. “You should clean yourself before the king sees.”
By the time you’ve rinsed yourself at the well, he’s gone, and in his place Kyle looks just as puzzled as you do with his comrade’s sudden absence.
You suppose that's fine and well, for now you turn your attention to the warm brown gaze of his fellow.
He follows you up to your room, where your ladies are going about cleaning your chambers and doing their daily chores. You can’t dismiss them without arousing attention, so instead you set about sending them on a myriad of tasks. Fetching fresh linens from below, asking the castle chefs to prepare a lunch, delivering a letter to one of the other castle ladies- all things that are common enough they don’t arouse suspicion, but numerous enough so that eventually you are left alone with only Kyle.
You hum, sitting at your vanity and applying a rosy balm to your lips while you eye your knight in the reflection of your mirror. He stands relaxed, easy but no less alert, arms crossed behind his back at a perfect parade’s rest. For a moment his eyes dart to yours, and he blinks in surprise as he catches you staring before an easy, amicable smile graces his lips.
“Can I assist you, my lady?”
You stifle a chuckle. “Yes, you can.” You reply, standing. “It seems that with my ladies on their errands, I have no one to help me change out of my stained dress.”
You stand with your back to him, glancing shyly over your shoulder. “Would you help a lady untie her laces, good sir?”
Kyle’s reflection in the mirror pauses, his earlier smile going somewhat flat as he considers his decision. To your surprise he moves in, removing his thick sword gloves so the dark tone of his bare hands is revealed to you. It feels intimate somehow, a sliver of vulnerability you never see in him, hidden underneath a facade of a charming, winsome smile.
Gingerly, you feel his hands come to rest on your waist, looking for the knot that secures your bodice lacing at the knob of your spine. You hold your hands aloft on either side of you like a swan would bare its wings, watching keenly in the silver reflection of the mirror as Kyle focuses intently on his task. One by one you feel your lacings loosened, and with each your bosom rises with a deeper breath, exhaled as a gentle sigh.
His hands are unsteady, you notice. It’s unusual for him, usually so composed and calm despite your many attempted flirtations. There’s a knot forming in his brow, lips slightly parted as you stare at his reflection.
Then, you watch as his eyes flick up over your shoulder, meeting yours with a surprising sort of want that colors the depths of his gaze. He doesn’t look away, and neither do you, holding still in the space between you until you tilt your head with a coy smile.
“Am I distracting you, Sir Kyle?”
With a slow unfurl of delight, you watch as the knight behind you shudders.
Footsteps outside the door, and Kyle jerks back like he’s been burned.
“My lady I- oh.” One of your ladies maids comes in, holding a dress in her arms and pausing as she sees you by the mirror and Kyle ramrod straight on the other side of the room.
You smile at her, reassuring despite the vapid annoyance that sits under the surface. “Ailie, would you please help me change?”
By the time you’re dressed, Kyle is gone.
Ghost returns in his place- eyes unreadable under his helm. You chew your lip in thought, pondering your next move. Ghost, from what you observed, requires a fairly direct approach. He’s known for his subtly for others, but he only seems to respond to direct orders when they’re given. More than that, he seems to have little interest in you. There are times you’ve caught his eyes staring a moment too long, where you’ve relished the low dip of his voice whispering “Princess.” To you- but when it comes to direct seduction, you wonder if you’re falling short.
You decide to sit with it for the remainder of the evening, pondering over the bites of succulent steak where you sit in silence with the king, who crows about another suitor arriving the next day.
The thought strikes you just as sleep is about to take you that night.
The next day you find a reason to request Ghost at your side when you meet with the suitor your father spoke of. He stands behind you as a gauche looking man with colorful vestments and plumes bending from his cap approaches you with a flourish.
“Princess.” He announces grandly, voice honey-sweet and very clearly trying as hard as he can to make an impression upon you. You’re thankful your grimace is hidden behind your veil, instead feigning a girlish sort of shyness as you giggle and hold a hand to your mouth shyly. You watch your suitor grin, showing his teeth, and bestow a second kiss to the back of your palm.
“If your face is as lovely as your laugh, your highness, I dare say my heart may be smitten.”
You suppress a roll of your eyes.
You allow the suitor to escort you to the gardens, where he grandly regales you of his wealth and accomplishments in his estate to the east. Ghost follows in your shadow, quiet as death and looming just as dark. He watches as you offer your suitor glancing touches, as you feign astonishment and awe at his words. He glances back at your knight smugly, as if to say ‘woe be the dog that guards that which he cannot keep’.
You can feel Ghost’s growing irritation at your back.
It’s only once your suitor places a hand at the small of your back to guide you towards a secluded, shady grove that Ghost steps between you- reaching for the suitor’s wrist and feeling it pop in the gauntlet of his hand.
“Do not touch the princess.”
“Ghost!” You cry, reaching forward to try and calm him, placing your hands delicately upon his breastplate and gazing up at him through the fabric of your veil. You feel him stiffen against you for a moment, then soften at your touch. Like a guard dog tamed to heel, and oh how it thrills you.
“Rabid dog.” Your suitor spits, and you turn to him sharply, unable to stop yourself from kicking his shin with your slippered foot as he yelps.
“Do not ever speak to my guard like that again.” You seethe, all pretense of pleasantries gone as you watch the suitor’s jaw drop in astonishment at your brazen behavior. “An insult to him is an insult to myself.”
“I-” He tries, and you interrupt him.
“I have no use for your proposal. Be gone.”
The man limps out of sight like a wounded hound, and you turn to Ghost in his absence.
“Ghost, my deepest apologies for- oh!” You stammer as Ghost abruptly crowds into your space, pressing you against one of the aging orchard trees as a metal palm braces beside your head. His eyes are a tempest, howling with the wind as he gazes down at you. There’s a light within them that shimmers like something from the deep, a siren’s song that draws you in, threatening to take you under, to eat you whole.
His hand reaches for you, and you watch with a breathy, fluttering exhale as his fingers reach under the hem of your veil...
All at once he tears himself away from you, the heat of his body there and gone as you’re left reeling by its absence. He paces away a few steps, clutching at his face as if tormented, plagued. He does not speak, his body one long line of tension as he grapples with something you cannot see. All the while you feel your heart swallowed down with every breath, fluttering against your chest with rapid wing-beats. Silently, you will him: Return. Continue.
It takes him a few more moments, but finally Ghost straightens, seems to come back to himself.
“I shall send the captain to escort you back to your chambers, my lady.”
He leaves you there, slumped against the willow, where its bending branches tickle against your hair.
It takes time to collect yourself, and when you finally return to your senses irritation begins to boil within you. You were so close. You’d been so close. A moment longer would have seen Ghost’s lips brushing against yours, would have seen him hauling your frame into his as you wound the thread of him around your finger. You could have invited him into your bed, could have avoided seeing another suitor for the rest of your life after the secret was spilt- and now, now-
Rather than wait for Price or the others or return to your chambers, you find the careful corner of the castle garden that you’d hid a gap in the stone wall. It takes little effort to slip through, even if it means dirtying your dress. You've taken this path many times as a girl eluding your ladies maids, and you know the path well as you slip through the meadow and down to the bank of the nearby stream, where sunlight glints off the water.
Maybe you should run away, you think, as you crouch at the edge and idly swish your hand through the cold water. After all, few know your face except the king, your ladies maids, and your own knights. Perhaps you should vanish in the night, tie a rope of sheets and make with the wind onto distant horizons.
Yet even as you consider it you know the men your father has assigned to you will find you. You are not a warrior like they are- used to sleeping in knells and at the edges of distant battlegrounds. You do not know how to find water, to hunt, to haggle or to make your own way in the world. No doubt they’d find you within the first day, and would drag you back to your prison to face your inevitable future.
As if to mirror your own thoughts, you hear the pounding sound of hoof-beats as a rider approaches. A glance over your shoulder proves it is indeed Price, dismounting quickly, his face a storm of irritation as he stalks forward.
“Princess.” He states. It is not a question, not a greeting. Rather it’s something akin to a demand- an unspoken order you should heed to despite your obstinance.
You frown into your reflection, grasping within your thoughts for any effort to stall your return- if even for a few moments.
“I came down here to bathe.” You announce, and it stops him in his tracks. Slowly, you raise yourself, standing and discarding the veil. “I grow tired of the palace grounds.”
“You should return with me even so.” Price’s voice is hard, unflinching. Yet he still makes no move to stop you, not even as you begin to undo the lacings of your bodice.
“You will stand guard, won’t you Sir John?” You ask innocently, still facing away so he does not see the bitterness in your face. “I cannot have one of my suitors seeing me in such a...indecent manner.”
Your bodice slides to your feet. It finally snaps him from his stupor.
“Enough.” He growls, striding forward and grasping at your wrist as you try to remove the remainder of your dress- the pale fabric doing little to hide the swell of your breasts, the translucent furl of your hips.
You look at him, doing little to hide your expression as your eyes meet the storm of his gaze. Your stare feels warm with brimming tears, but it does not soften him.
“You try to seduce me, you try to seduce my men-” He grits, voice a low, dangerous purr as his gloved fingers flex around your wrist. “All for your petty games and dangerous prizes.” He pauses, and you watch him swallow thickly, lips pressed into a thin line before he continues.
“Do you know what the king would do if he discovered one of us had bedded you, princess? Do you know what the punishment is for deflowering his most prized possession?”
You scoff despite the flutter in your stomach, the unease sitting ill in your chest. “Prized? I’m nothing more than a pawn to him.” You declare, voice wavering. “A tool to acquire more power. He cherishes me as much as he does you, Sir John. We are nothing if not instruments of his authority.”
“Which is why this game is more dangerous for you than for us.” He hisses. “If the king were to put a sword to our throats we would at least survive. No cell can hold us. No king can kill us. But you- do you think he’d be content sending you to a convent? Banishing you?”
You ignore the implication, instead feeling your eyes widen at the knight captain’s previous words.
“You speak of treason.” You whisper, feeling your face grow ashen with fear.
Price stares at you in the silence that follows, unblinking blue coursing through your veins like ice.
“No, Princess. My oath to the king became void the moment I swore myself to you. As is the case with my men.”
You don’t blink. You scarcely breathe. The world around you feels hushed, frozen in time as the true implications of price’s words wash over you.
“Then-” You try, voice wavering for the first time. “Then if I told you to bed me...then-”
John softens at last, and for the first time you see pity in his eyes.
“Your highness, I will do what you ask of me, everything except that.”
Warmth returns to your eyes. Your lip wobbles, and you feel a sob cling to the back of your throat.
“Unless-”
John’s other hand reaches up to cup your face, turning you fully to him so the front of you is pressed flush against his frame.
“Unless you ask this not from selfishness...but from desire.”
Oh.
Oh.
“I-” You stammer, eyes suddenly glassy. “You-”
“We care for you, my lady. All of us. How can we not? The king is correct of your beauty, but he does not see your charm, your wit, your curiosity and cleverness. These are the things we see and long for, would that we have them. Would that you would allow us.”
“Us...?” You echo, blinking.
Price chuckles, and oh, the sound becomes him. Rich, warm, Like the softest of sighs beside a crackling fire. You want to wrap yourself in it as much as you do with Gaz’s smile, with the silent fondness in Ghost’s eyes, with the playful curve of Soap’s mouth.
“One for one.” Price tells you, swiping an errant tear from your cheek. “We share our bounties, our spoils, our victories and our grief and each other. Should you want that: That includes you as well, princess.”
You cannot speak. You have no words. There is nothing to say that would encompass the emotion that swells inside your chest. Joy, hope, relief, fondness, fear, but most of all...
A tender, blooming thing that almost feels like love.
“John.” You hiccup, your tears coming in streaks now. You clutch at him, fingers finding the grooves and straps of his armor as he leans into you with a cooing sort of hush.
“You are ours, my lady.” He tells you as his lips descend. “As we are yours.”
He kisses you there in the glade, where sunlight glints off the water and you feel hope blossom within you for the first time.
You return to the castle pressed to his back atop his steed, endure the fretting of your maids and the scolding of your father, holding fast to the whisper Price had left you with.
“Pray thee, leave your door unlocked my lady.”
That night, they come to you.
One at a time, to avoid detection, they slip into the shadows of your chambers as you wait atop your bed, knees drawn to your chest and the gauzy white fabric of your nightgown bundled about your legs.
Price is there first, not bothering to knock as he slips inside. He’s still fully clad in his armor and fur cape piled high atop his shoulders. You watch him from your bed as candlelight dances off the grooves and metal plates as he shifts, watching you in turn.
When he smiles, his eyes are fond.
“You’ll help an old warrior out of his armor, won’t you, my lady?”
Shyly, you nod and stand, moving to him so your fingers find the clasps and buckles hidden in the folds of his frame, lips parted in silent wonder as with each piece that falls away more and more of Price is revealed to you. Old scars, treasured lanes of skin, a hairy chest that you pause to tremble your nails though. The hum he gives you is knowing, hands warm over yours as a breathy sort of exhale leaves your lips.
The door opens, and you startle.
“Shh.” Price hushes you. “It’s merely Ghost.”
Ghost shuts the door behind him with a gentleness you did not know he possesses, eyes turning towards where you and Price stand by your vanity. You see him hesitate for a moment, shifting, until at last you extend your hand to him.
“Ghost.” You whisper, and at Price’s quiet voice in your ear: “Simon.”
He comes, and as you lift your hand to his face he leans into it, long blonde lashes fluttering as he tips his cheek into your warm palm.
“Princess.” He practically purrs, and you shiver as it sends a bright delight dancing through your spine.
“Won’t you let me see you, Simon?” You ask in hardly a whisper. “Won’t you let me see the man who’s sworn an oath to me?”
He nods, and you press against him as he slowly unfastens the back of his helm, allowing it to slide over his head and at least reveal his features to you. Pink, silvery scars dance upon his cheeks, running across his lip, up across a twisted brow. Part of his mouth is torn into a lasting grimace, severe and terrifying were it any other man. To you, however, to you- it’s Simon.
Your hands land on either side of his face, and you feel his shoulders loosen and unwind.
“Kiss me.” You whisper, and he does- gently at first, but soon starved, the force of it making you lean back as an arm loops about your waist. Price presses in from behind you, the radiating warmth of both bodies is enough to melt away at the lingering unease inside you. As Price’s hands land on you in turn- fondling, stroking, petting your hips, your thighs, your breasts, and his nose presses against your hair with a husky sigh dizziness grips at you. You feel feverish, lost in sensation, asunder amidst the low breaths and groans of both men as they lay their hands on you for the first time.
You realize, as Ghost’s lips trail against your jaw and his mouth works against your neck, that the others aren’t even here yet.
Right on cue, the door creaks again, and this time two hushed voices speaking to each other pause mid sentence at the sight of you pressed between their two older comrades.
“K-Kyle...” You gasp, eyes glassy as Price bunches the fabric of your nightdress and hikes it up your thigh. “Johnny-”
“Steamin’ Jesus.” Soap breathes, chest hitching as your lips form a watery little gasp “Ah-”
“Save some for us, cap?” Kyle asks with a cheeky grin, moving to remove his cape and armor as well. Price merely grunts, moving his head as Simon does- and you realize belatedly from the noises that follow that Ghost’s mouth has found Price’s as well. You’re not sure why the mere thought has you moaning aloud, something wet and delicious clenching between your thighs, but the next thing you know Soap is at your feet, lifting your hem and his eyes pleading.
“Let me taste ye, princess.” He sighs. “Please-”
“I-” You try, finding it hard to form a full thought, lost in waves of sensation and emotion and desire. “Johnny-”
“Shh.” Gaz hushes you, reaching forward to tilt your face just enough to offer a gentle, chaste kiss. “Let’s move her highness to bed. I suppose we’ll all be more comfortable there.”
The others murmur an agreement, as do you when Gaz pauses for your answer.
They arrange you on the bed, with Price at your back as you sit tucked up against his bare, hairy chest. The others are quick to join you, disposing of their armor with the reverence of seasoned warriors. You watch them in the candlelight, trace each bare swath of skin that catches the warm flickering light. Your eyes roam across bare, toned shoulders, old lasting scars, the dip of hips and the curve of spines. You look at the curve of Soap’s ass, at the pale smattering freckles across Simon’s shoulders, at the warm, rich tone of Gaz’s skin and the sinews that flex underneath. You can feel your heart thrumming high in your chest as Price pets at you, chuckling at your wide, glinting eyes.
“I think our princess enjoys what she sees.” He comments to the others, and you watch as Gaz gives you a wink as he pulls his shirt over and tosses it to the side. Behind him, Ghost and Soap linger for a moment, hands on each other and heads bent as something old and fond works its way between them both.
“Gaz..” You sigh as he clambers onto the bed, his lips finding yours. He tastes warm, rich like honey ale and chestnuts as you lean into the kiss, allowing him to deepen it with a low, appreciative hum.
“Sweet girl.” He murmurs, one hand tipping your head so his breath spills across your cheek. “How I’ve waited for this.”
“We all have.” Simon comments as he and Johnny join you, the bed dipping under their combined weight. There’s scarcely enough space for the five of you, but it only serves to press you into a warm, musky tangle of limbs that surround you on all sides. Hands find your hips, your stomach, your thighs, your shoulders, your mouth-
Something akin to a whimper bubbles up your throat as the onslaught of sensation finds you reeling, grasping for something to cling to amidst a tidal wave of desire. Above you Gaz pauses, eyes dark in the dimness and glinting gold from the candle flames.
“Tell us what you want, sweetness.” He whispers, and when you try to form words he chuckles at the glassy look in your eyes, trying to blink away the vestiges of reverie.
“I-” You manage before wetting your lips. “I’m not...I’ve um. I’ve never...” You trail off, meaning clear, but the implication alone is enough to make Soap groan long and loud from where his chest is plated across your legs and his nose is buried into your stomach.
“Let me, hen.” He practically begs, voice hoarse with need as he props his scarred chin up on the soft curve of your stomach. “I’ll make ye feel good, I swear it. Make ye make all sorts of pretty sounds, promise-”
You’re not exactly sure what he’s asking for, given your limited knowledge on exactly what is expected of you, but when you nod Soap moves faster than you can blink, leaning up on the haunches and swiftly rucking your gown up to your hips to expose the bare flesh of your underside.
“I-” You gasp, squirming a bit as you realize just how exposed you suddenly are. Yet any protest you have dies on your lips as Soap hauls your legs open with hardly an effort of his brawny arms, and-
and suckles directly onto your folds like a man starved.
You yelp at the sensation, and it’s enough to make Price chuckle behind you where he gently holds your arms to keep from instinctively batting at Soap. “Shh, let him have his fun. Lord knows you’ve tortured him enough.”
You squirm in embarrassment as Soap deftly flicks his tongue up against the top of your folds, nearly bowing as an unexpected quiver of pleasure dances up your spine. It erupts as something between a gasp and a mewl, eyes blinking up at the ceiling as Soap’s wet, warm mouth moves on you, coaxing wetness from your center and collecting it onto his tongue- if only just to push it inside once more.
“Easy, Johnny.” Ghost chides from Soap’s side, leaning so he’s behind the Scot instead. He drapes his full frame against Soap’s torso, and the younger man moans at the contact, of being smothered down just as he laps at your folds as if it will be his own final supper. Simon looks up at you with a smug, knowing sort of smile, one hand reaching down between Soap’s legs and moving until Soap shudders, his back bowing inward with a long, low moan.
He’s stroking him, you realize through the haze of burgeoning pleasure that licks up your spine. You wish you could do the same. You want to know what he feels like, how heavy his manhood is in your hands, the sensation of his velvet tip rubbing against the pads of your fingertips.
“Look at these.” Kyle interjects your train of thought, leaning against your side so his hands come to rest on the swell of your breasts with an appreciative hum. “If I had known these were hiding under your bodice, I would have undressed you sooner, my lady.”
Price makes a sound of agreement low in his throat, as one hand comes to cup a breast opposite of Gaz’s palm. Calloused fingers flick and rub a nipple to stiffness, all while you gasp and mewl under their practiced hands. The air around you feels syrupy warm, sweet and musky and you drown in it, in the sensation of fingers and hands and palms against your flesh and-
“Oh-” You blink up at the ceiling as Soap introduces a finger inside your entrance, hips arching at the unexpected sensation before he curls the digit just upwards-
“Christ, love.” Price groans into your shoulder, and you can feel his own manhood nudging the small of your back from where you sit braced up against his hairy chest. “Not gonna last if you keep making noises like that.”
“It feels good.” You slur, eyes glassy and body entirely pliant underneath their touches. “John...”
“C’mere.” He cranes your head to kiss him, his beard grazing against your face as he presses his lips to yours slowly at first, almost chaste. It’s slow, romantic, deeply indulgent, like he’s savoring rather than mastering. It only serves to make you melt further into his arms, and as you do you feel his approving hum vibrate against the gasping corner of your mouth.
Soap introduces another finger just as Gaz’s mouth sucks a nipple into his mouth, and the tender flame that had been licking itself into existence suddenly burns that much brighter. You begin to squirm, hips rising up off the bed chasing an end you don’t yet know as you pant into the warmth of Price’s mouth, all while he mutters sweet, praising indulgences at you.
“That’s our girl. There she is. Going to come, aren’t you sweetheart? Gonna spill all over my lad’s fingers, ain’tchya? Gonna let him drink it down and clean you up with his tongue just so we can see how many we can get out of ya, hm? There we go, there we go.”
Your legs lock around Johnny’s mohawked head just as the wave crests over you, forcing Johnny to stay locked with his lips to your clit and his fingers buried deep inside you, shattering against the men pressed around you with nothing but a broken little whimper. Your cunt clenches down in waves, milking the digits trapped inside you until at last your head flops against John’s shoulder, breasts heaving with exertion.
“There’s a girl.” Gaz purrs, nosing up against your racing heartbeat as he forces your legs to relax, releasing Johnny only so Gaz can rub your release into your oversensitive clit.
“Give us a taste, Johnny.” Ghost rumbles deep from down the bed, and you catch Soap’s expression as he leans up to answer- face shiny with your arousal, eyes half lidded and heavy with pleasure, looking absolutely drunk off of your release as Ghost tilts his head to lick a broad stripe up the corner of his wet mouth.
“Oh my god.” You whisper, and you’re not sure if it's a reaction to the lewd sight before you or to the earth-shattering climax you’d just received.
Simon fixes you with a lidded, hungry stare, a low chuckle rumbling in his chest.
“Oh pet.” He murmurs. “We’ve only just started.”
“Simon’s right.” Price tacks on from behind you with a grunt, and suddenly you’re being rearranged, lifted and bent so you’re suddenly flat on your back on the magnificent bedspread, blinking dazedly up at the canopy.
You feel the bed dip and move around you, and when you try to lean up a single, massive, scared hand presses gently on your sternum to lay you flat again.
“None ‘o that, pet.” Ghost murmurs, but it's achingly gentle, a cooing reassurance to whatever is going on at the edges of your senses.
The shape of Price looms heavy above you, and your eyes travel down to where he’s holding himself wedged between your thighs, gripping the length of him that extends from a dark thatch of curls with light wisps of gray intertwined. His eyes are dark, lidded, and you can’t help gut shiver under his stare, feeling splayed open and exposed from tip to toe as he allows his length to flop heavy onto your stomach.
“Look a’ tha’.” he hums, accent deepening as he slowly ruts himself against the supply flesh of your tummy. “Think I can get all the way up to your womb, love.”
You’re not sure why the words make you squirm eagerly under him, lip caught in between your teeth as you nod unabashedly at the lewdness that drips from his voice. It seems to please him nonetheless, his beard twitching into a smile as he presses one leg up and open.
“Captain’s first.” Gaz coos suddenly from your other side, and you turn to find not him, but Soap gasping, face flushed and hand tight around his own shaft as Gaz ruts into him from behind.
“It’s only right.” John chuffs from above you before nodding to Soap’s lidded eyes and mouth twisted in a pout. “Go on, princess, give him a kiss f’r me.”
You do, and the moment you do Soap surges into you moaning and needy, almost rolling on top of you as he ruts into your side, the weeping tip of his cock smearing against your skin.
“Fuck, bonnie.” He groans, voice raw with pleasure. “So soft, so warm. Ah wet my fist every night thinkin’ about ye, thinking aboot those eyes behind yer veil, yer lips, how you taste-” You reach down between you, fumbling for a moment before encircling his length with your palm, and Soap tucks his head against your shoulder with a long, low moan before rutting into your closed fist, rocking back and forth between you and Kyle behind him.
You pause when you feel John shift, dragging his cock between the slickness of your folds and notching it at your entrance. Waiting.
A hand pets at your damp brow, and you turn to find Ghost standing over you on your other side, eyes fond but mouth twisted in a smug, pleased smile as he fists his length just above your face.
“Deep breath, pet.” He murmurs, chuckling low when he sees your eyes widen at the sheer size of him in his fist. “Captain’s big, jus’ not as big as me. Need t’ stretch you out first before I can have my fill.”
“Plenty big.” Price growls above you, pressing one leg up and leaning over you before slowly, achingly sinking himself into you.
It’s a stretch and an ache, and when your face twists Simon blots out the candlelight in the room by leaning over you with a long, deep kiss that distracts you from the slow, unyielding push of Price inside you.
“Look at you.” He huffs warm against your face, tilting your head to meet his lips. “Takin’ captain’s cock like a perfect little princess. Must feel nice and warm inside, yeah?”
You whimper something to the affirmative, and feel his hum as his tongue leaves kisses behind your teeth.
“Easy, love.” Price grits. “Bloody hell you’re tight. Should have had Gaz finger you open a bit more, yeah?”
“Still can.” Gaz cheerfully pipes up. “But it’d mean you’d have to pull out, cap.”
“Like hell.” Price growls abruptly, and his grip on your thigh is almost enough to bruise. The barest hiss of pain has him relenting, but before he can murmur an apology Simon tilts your lips towards him with a little coo, melting you against his massive frame.
Price starts off a slow rock of his hips, gently grinding himself in as far as he can before pulling out just enough to send a delicious thrill of friction up your spine. It coils low in your belly, dances beneath your lungs, and when it comes out as a breathless moan Soap and Ghost are on either side of you to catch it.
“There we go, there we go.” Price groans, deep and satisfied as you relax enough for him to build up a pace enough that the slap of his hips meets the backs of your thighs, pressing your legs up so he can fuck down into you, sweat beading on his brow and breath coming in short, warm huffs of air against your skin. “Atta girl, just like that. Taking it- Christ- takin’ it so fuckin well, love.”
He catches your eyes just as Ghost shifts beside you, smiling wickedly as Ghost strokes himself just above your face.
“Open up, princess.” He murmurs, voice churning deep in his chest as your lips dutifully pop open enough for your tongue to sneak out and give the barest lick against his tip, catching briny precum upon it. “Good girl.”
“Haven’t had yours, have you Simon?” Gaz grits from behind Johnny, and even though you can’t see him you can tell by his voice that he’s likely close, rutting feverishly against Johnny’s backside just as the Scot beneath him ruts into your fist, chasing his own blissful end.
“No.” Simon affirms, eyes coal-dark above you as you manage to pop the head of his cock past the ring of your lips with a breathy sort of mewl. “But I will.”
You shudder at the implication of it- at the idea that all four men will have you by the time the sun rises. None left without, none left for wanting with you as both their chosen prize and their beloved charge. You’ve damned them as much as they have you, the five of you condemned for the sin of touching what shouldn’t be yours.
If it is a sin, then why does it taste so sweet?
You shudder as Price ruts into you, hips slapping as he slides home on every thrust, grinding up against your womb as if somehow the mere act will allow seed to take. You feel dizzy with it, lost in a tangle of warm limbs, of coiling sensation, of pleasure lighting up the underside of your skin. You want to lose yourself in it- in this, in the hazy, dream-like desire that’s possessed you all in the warm candlelight of your chambers.
“Going to cum, aren’t you, sweetheart?” Price pants, and you nod feverishly, wrapping your legs around his hips and digging your heels into his spine. You watch the moment his eyes shutter, his groan turning into a growl and his pace quickens, pounding into you without restraint as you moan into the vein on the underside of Ghost’s cock.
When Gaz’s thumb finds your clit, you see white.
There’s ringing in your ears as you come down from it, feeling your cunt clench in waves over Price’s cock inside you, spilling his seed as he huffs into the swell of your breasts with a long, low groan of utter satisfaction. The muscles in the small of his back shiver, and you feel his release coat your insides with a warmth that has your hindbrain purring with satisfaction.
He’s slow to pull out, head dropping forward as the broad expanse of his hairy chest rises and falls with purposeful breaths. You don’t feel your arms reach for him, but he falls into them anyways, onto the opposite side of where Soap and Gaz curl with their own post-orgasmic bliss.
“There’s a girl.” Price murmurs, sweet and indulgent as you nuzzle into him, warm all over even as his spend leaks out from you. “Our sweet princess.”
It takes you a moment to notice Ghost lingering at the edge of your huddle of bodies, backlit by the candles. With his strong, scarred, imposing stature, you almost miss the heartaching, utter fondness in his expression.
“Simon.” You whisper, stretching an arm to him, and he only chuckles as the bed dips under his weight. He crawls up the length of your body until he finds your lips, mouth moving slow and indulgent against yours.
“Don’t drift off yet, pet.” He murmurs, voice low against your mouth- and from beside him you hear Gaz chuckle, shifting so a hand wraps around your thigh and lifts, exposing you to Simon once more. “The night is still young.”
When he sheathes himself inside you, you moan his name up to the stars.
---
Dawn is slow to creep upon you all that morning, as the four of you rest in a sweaty, messy tangle of limbs upon your bed, basking in the afterglow of mutual satisfaction. You know come morning you’ll be sore all over, likely covered in marks with no way to hide them from your father.
You voice as much outwardly, blinking up at your canopy as you curl into Gaz’s front, his hand stroking the bare skin of your back. Behind him, Price slings a hairy arm over the younger man, and behind you Soap curls around your back as Simon tucks himself around the smaller man.
“You need not worry about that.” Gaz offers simply, and when you blink at him, he smiles.
“Did you truly think we’d allow you to be sent off to a convent after this?” He asks coyly. “Or married to a spoiled prince? Or banished or worse? No, sweetheart.”
You struggle to parse his words, blinking through sleeplessness and honey-like haze that besets you all in the afterglow.
“You’re not going anywhere, pet.” Ghost adds from your other side. “Not now, not ever.”
“Besides.” Soap yawns, and tucks his chin over your shoulder, arms wrapping around your front. “The king is a tyrant anyways. Pro’lly never lifted a sword in ‘is life, the bastard.”
“Won’t take much to take care of him.” Price affirms, and you watch as he sits up to reach for his pipe, lighting it so the smell of herbs wafts towards the ceiling. “A few drops in his cup, he’ll be dead before he ever knew we were here.”
Their brazenness should frighten you. The nonchalance with which they speak of treason, of rebellion, of death should shake you to your core. yet in its place you feel a delight unknown, a hope for the future you’ve yet to encounter.
“Then-” You breath, eyes alight with a daring sort of wonder. “Then I’ll be queen.”
“And we shall remain your faithful knights.” Gaz murmurs, reaching a hand to stroke the planes of your face. “Now until forever.”
“Said like a right vow there, Gaz.” Soap chortles, squeezing you affectionately.
“Who says it’s not?”
“Ecce fides mea quad non duquam aliquam in uxorem nisi te per totam remanentem vitam meam.” Ghost murmurs, causing you all to turn to look at him. His eyes are lidded, half asleep as his pale blonde lashes frame the rust brown of his irises.
“Behold my oath that I will take no one as my wife except you.” He repeats. “For all the rest of my days.”
When you kiss him, it seals the vow against his lips. As it does for them all in turn as they echo the words, renewing their knightly oath with a vow of everlasting love.
By the end of the day, the crown rests upon your head.
---
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(Poly Werewolf 141 x Witch! Reader, Werewolf shifting, Sex dreams, Brief Smut, Female Reader, Fluff, Domesticity, Magic)
---
It’s Autumn when you first hear the whispers of the wolves.
“Strange beasts.” Whisper your neighbors at the market, bending low in hushed tones to whisper to you at your stall, where colored glass hangs from the beams above and waxed bottles lay piled on shelves. “They said they saw them by the old forest.”
You pay no mind to it, at least at first. In a town as small as yours, there’s always a tall tale of some kind- a whisper of a ghost or strange sound among the trees. They’re only fables, things meant to scare children into bed and keep them mindful of their parents. At worst they’re spoken of by the priests, a warning against those who don’t turn to the faith of their gods. Yet you- you know. You know that some stories are far more true than they seem.
It was years ago that you stumbled into the village, reeking of ash and smoke, hungry from days on end of running through the woods. In lands far past the village your own coven lay as nothing more than cinders and ruined homes, your sisters and mentors dead by crusaders’ blades. Only you had been able to escape, young and small as you were, able to run away undetected as your sisters burned. The memory of their screams remains forever engraved in your mind, echoed through the trees as leaves crunched under your bare feet and you left behind all that you were.
You became the lost girl from the woods, the strange child who didn’t speak of her past, and instead silently buried her magic in a coffin beneath layers of ember and ash. In time you’d become to your neighbors the girl with the healing hands, the one who offered ointments and herbs to cure the ails that plagued them. All the while you kept your magic dormant inside you, a tender flame awaiting a breath of life.
So you listen pleasantly to the murmurs of the beasts, assuring the villagefolk you call neighbors that it must have been some wandering creature that ventured down from the mountains in search of prey before the frost sets in.
Yet then there’s the mention of livestock going missing. A sheep here, a hen there, of horses being spooked and wild eyed at dawn as if something frightened them. You try to brush it off as mere coincidence. Wild animals are hungry at this time of year, stuffing their bellies full before settling in for the long sleep. There haven’t been wolves in this village since before you were born- hunted to extinction for the safety of everyone inside the stone walls that surround it.
“You should stay inside the village, lass.” Says a regular customer of yours who visits you for a salve to keep her aging, aching joints at bay. “It’s safer inside the walls.”
You assure her that your small cottage down by the lake is perfectly safe. With its large, iron crossed door and the secret hexes you’ve engraved into the frame, it would take a truly massive monster to knock down your sanctuary and cause you to flee. It’s more than that, however. It’s the fact that you can’t possibly imagine yourself around so many people. It’s not safe to be in a place so crowded, in a place with so many eyes. If someone were to find out who you are...what you are....
Instead you hang herbs from the rafters in your cottage, you boil tinctures over the hearth as birchwood spills from the chimney, and you sometimes watch the edge of the woods wondering if perhaps the creatures there feel as lonely as you do.
Things change after the Harvest Moon.
“The size of a horse!” A man in the market outside the church gasps, pale as a sheet and his clothes askew. “Its withers stood above my head! Dark as the night and its face-!” The man shudders as his fellows try to comfort him, draping a cloak about his shoulders. “It looked like the reaper himself, shaped like a skull!” He paces back and forth, and it's only once he turns that you stifle a gasp at the blood splattered across his shirt and down his sleeves. It isn’t his, you realize grimly, and he lifts his head to shout at those gathered around him.
“It took Thomas! H-he tried to shoot it a-and-”
The crowd gasps, and you hover at the edge, something unknown and dreadful simmering low in your stomach. The man seems to have nearly collapsed from fright, eyes wild and darting as if the beast pursues him still. His mouth works in silent words, and it takes you a moment to realize what he’s saying.
Four of them, four of them, four of them.
Eventually the magistrate comes to escort the boy away and restore order to the frightened crowd. He tells you all that the wolves are not nearly as fearsome as the boy proclaimed, and that he and the village hunters will patrol beyond the gate to make sure the village is safe. Even so, it does little to tame the restlessness of your neighbors, who gather and whisper in the quietest of tones, murmuring the words they’re all thinking:
Werewolf.
As the sun lowers behind the trees, you hasten along the lonely forest path home and watch the long shadows grow dim in the waning light. A cold October wind sweeps under your cloak, lifts your hair to the breeze where your breath spills forth in a sigh of steam. In the growing darkness the forest seems quieter, more foreboding as the aspen and pine creak against the wind. An awareness prickles at the edges of your senses, a warning whisper that curls around you in the sudden silence.
You’re being watched.
Heart in your throat, you turn ever so slowly, hands shaking as you finally see it between the trees:
A shadow.
You don’t realize just how massive it is until it stands from where it’s crouched on the forest floor. With horror clawing its way up your throat you watch it rise, rise higher until its shoulders are halfway up the twisted trunks on either side of it. Its paws are easily the size of your head, its withers rise up to your eye level, as large as any bear you’ve seen and Gods-
The strength in your legs leaves you, and as the beast takes a single step forward they fail completely, sending you down into the leaves beneath your feet. A whimper threatens your throat as you urge your frozen limbs to move, to regain themselves and carry you down the path to the assumed safety of your cottage.
Beyond the thunder of your heart beat your mind screams higher than the whistle of the wind: RUN! RUN!
Yet as the beast creeps closer you can’t bring yourself to stand, fearing you’ll die of fright before the killing bite snaps your neck. Even the magic at your fingertips with your vague memory of spells and incantations feels like mist slipping through your hands. With each step the wolf, the monster, takes another step- deathly quiet even as it feels like the ground trembles beneath you. Unblinking, it stares at you, perfectly crouched, ready to strike. You can feel tears threatening at the corner of your eyes, your breath coming only in tight, watery little gasps.
“I-” You try, tongue liked lead as you try to speak, a mere whimper escaping instead: “Please-”
At last the beast comes to stand a mere few feet away from you- ebony black eyes at the level of your own with its head bowed. Its gaze seems fathomless, as if you’ll drown in the sheer darkness of it- never to return. Just like the hunter said, its massive snout and head is jet black except for a white patch that travels the length of its massive jaw. Horrifyingly, it almost looks like a skull.
Not like this. You whisper to the heavens, to your ancient deities, to the earth itself. Please, not like this.
Yet then the monster’s eyes break from yours, and it takes another step, massive nose lowering to the basket with your market gatherings of bread, cheese, and fruit. In a fit of utter mystery you watch as the creature’s tail lifts just marginally, almost like a dog, slowly sweeping back and forth as it snuffles through the goods.
Like the spell has been broken, the paralytic fear inside you evaporates like a puff of smoke. Magic attempts to wind itself through your veins and you raise your hand towards the beast, scooting backwards as a stuttered spell travels the length of your tongue.
Yet then your foot crunches a twig and the beast’s gaze snaps to your horrified features, once more locking its startling, glimmering black stare on your form. The spell freezes on your tongue, words stammering uselessly as your palm glimmers faintly with magic, flashing dimly as you try and fail to defend yourself.
For a heartbeat you think at last the wolf will finally leap, will abandon your meager offerings and seize you between its teeth in a swift death grip. Your bones will crunch between its fangs, your scream cut short as it echoes forth between the trees.
Instead, the creature keeps its gaze locked on you before lowering its mouth to gently, delicately, grip the handle of your basket. Before you can question it the beast leaps toward you, clearing your head in a single bound as you scream and clutch at yourself in terror. By the time you realize you’re still alive, by the time you turn to chase the sound of thundering steps behind you-
The wolf is gone.
It feels as if it takes you hours to stand, and even then your legs shake and tremble like a sapling in a gale. It’s all you can do to stagger down the dark forest path to the door of your cottage, latching the heavy bar behind you to keep out any other beast that may find you here. You sink to the floor, shivering and wrapping your arms around yourself as the memory of the wolf races behind your eyes with his bottomless stare.
You shutter all the windows, latch every entrance and exit as your heart races up into your throat like a rabbit running from a fox. You turn on every light you can find and curl into your straw tick bed, tugging the blankets over your head and trying vainly to fall asleep.
and yet you wonder, even as midnight draws dark upon your cottage...
Why the wolf spared you.
Against everything, you wake to morning light streaming through the gaps in the shutters and falling golden upon your sprawled frame. Birdsong echoes as a chorus in the canopy, a gentle autumn wind rustling the branches outside. For a moment you forget about the events of the night prior, caught in a strange daydream where your fingers run through a dark, soft mane and someone whispers an echo of your name.
You’re frightened to leave the sanctuary of your cottage even in daylight, peeking beyond your curtains towards the small lake and stream that runs beside the path to town in case a shadow dances among the trees. Yet there’s nothing but a bevy of deer that gently lap at the water of your little lake.
You should report the incident to the village guards, you think as you dress yourself and eat. Perhaps by doing so you can aid the hunters in their pursuit of the beasts, keeping you and the rest of the village safe from further encounters.
Yet something sits ill at ease inside your stomach at the thought- a sense of wrongness at the idea of reporting your strange encounter. Perhaps it's because of the fact you’re seen as an odd sort of outsider to the rest of the village- one of the few that live beyond the walls and their safety. A part of you wonders if somehow the village-folk will view your encounter with suspicion. After all, why were you spared when one of the young hunters was not?
More than that- what reason do you have to share what has happened when you were left unharmed?
When at last you step out into the crisp autumn air, water pail in hand, you scream.
There’s a wolf flat to the ground, head resting on the grass and paws crossed as if he has deigned it a perfect place to take a gentle rest. It’s different from the one you saw the night prior- a scruffy sort of brown compared to the raven black of the wolf from before. He’s smaller too- still so much larger than the size of any wolf you’ve ever heard of, but not as massive as a draft horse. There’s an odd ruff of fur that travels the length of its spine, almost like a mane. At your scream the beast’s ears twitch, his great head lifting to observe you with startling blue eyes- only to lower once again. It makes no motion towards you, not moving at all even as you try and fumble for the door handle behind you.
“Stay back!” You gasp over the hammer of your heartbeat. “L-leave me alone!”
Yet rather than pounce, the creature’s ears tilt back and it whines- almost as if it understands you. Almost as if it’s a pup that’s been scolded for stealing a piece of meat from the table. It startles you, makes you blink in utter confusion as your mind desperately tries to process what exactly you are seeing.
“You-” You try, voice dry in your throat as the wolf's massive tongue rolls out and it pants, staring at you. “You’re...not going to eat me, are you?”
The beast snorts as if you’ve offended it, and then turns towards its shoulder before depositing something in front of it.
Your basket.
You stare at it for a long, long moment, thoughts churning uselessly before you look back to the wolf.
“You...can understand me, can’t you?”
At this the wolf yips, tail wagging and eyes glimmering.
“Then...” You try again hesitantly. “Can you...change? Back I mean, into a person?”
The wolf whines, low and whimpering, lowering its great head back down and its ears once again flattened to its head, brow drawn up in an almost human-like concern.
This makes no sense. You’ve always been taught werewolves can turn back at will into their human form outside of a full moon. It’s what makes them so dangerous- their ability to walk among humans and pass as one of them. So then why...?
Suddenly the wolf’s ears flick, and it looks off towards the narrow path that leads through the trees down into the village. All at once the fur on its back rises, lips drawing back in a snarl. You don’t see anything when you follow its gaze, staring through the trees until at last the distant sound of voices begins to float through the branches. You look at the wolf, but he’s already turned, glancing back at you over his shoulder. There’s a strange sort of loneliness to its stare, and he pauses for just a moment before three giant strides take it off into the trees. After a moment, you hear a single, bone-chilling howl rise from beyond the treetops.
One that is echoed by three others.
You huddle in the warmth of your cottage for the rest of the day, sheltered by brick walls and the flickering hearth. From the gaps in the shutters you watch as the sun rises high in the sky and the lake remains eerily still- absent of the usual creatures that wander its bank. All the while your heart flutters in the gap between your ribs and throat, a small bird caught in a cage as it desperately beats its wings with fear.
So you choose to pore over your grimoires, searching in ancient texts for anything that might provide an ounce of knowledge into these creatures. Your mind churns with what you know, and the absence of what you don’t. You don’t understand- nor could you. Despite the interactions you had with both wolves, it’s not as if either can speak. They should be able to transform back at will, the books say. Yet for whatever reason it seems as if they’re trapped within their beast-like forms, unable to walk on anything than four legs. It should scare you. It should frighten you half to death and it does- the idea that such monsters could easily snap your neck and swallow you whole. Yet neither beast had shown any inkling to do so, happy instead to observe what they could of you and then bound off into the woods.
The sun sets, and you hang herbs to dry among your rafters as the pot boils on the stove. Questions remain, haunting every breath, every footstep in the silence left behind by man and beast alike. You can’t help but wonder if...
You clasp a hand over your mouth to silence a scream at the scratching at your door, followed by a low, whimpering whine.
Every instinct beckons you further into the cottage- up into your loft where your quilt covers your head and you shiver against the growing darkness. Yet the thing at your door whines, scratching insistently and even barking so as to demand your rapt attention.
When you creak the door open you almost don’t see anything in the darkness, where the moon is veiled behind dark, inky clouds that roll across the sky. Even then you jump at the wet nose that peeks through the gap, snuffling and pressing up against your hand insistently.
You can hardly see him in the pitch darkness beyond your door- coat ebony dark just like his glinting eyes. Yet there’s a gentleness to them, a human-like emotion contained within that you can’t entirely discern.
“I-I don’t have any more bread.” You try, unsure of the beast’s wants. “I’m sorry.”
The wolf barks, demanding and insistent, and you try to take a step back inside your cottage to close the door- to no avail. “What do you want?” You try with increasing desperation, and the beast snorts, withdrawing entirely from your door just so it can jut one massive paw into the gap. It takes you a moment to notice, but when the wolf withdraws its paw you see it- the dark, crimson stain left against the floor.
“Are you hurt?” You ask instantly, drawing the door a little wider, and much to your shock the wolf leans against it, flinging the heavy wood open and stepping fully into your home.
He can barely fit through the door, having to lean his massive head down just to pass beyond the threshold. As he sniffs and circles you his tail sweeps herbs and cutlery off your kitchen table, scattering them and sending them crashing to the floor. Yet he pays no mind, shoving his massive snout under your hand with an insistent whine.
You’re kept upright only by his massive form circling you, each footfall creaking the floorboards so much you think perhaps they’ll snap in two. You try to look for where the beast is injured, but in his dark fur you can’t see any trace of blood, find any wet slickness with your hands.
“W-wait-” You try. “What are you-”
Before you can finish the thought the beast suddenly leaps away from you, out past the door into your garden, where he stands and looks back and forth between you and the forest. Waiting, watching, or perhaps...wanting.
You hesitate at the doorstep, dressed in nothing but your chemise and feeling the autumn wind blow across the threshold. It lifts the hem of your dress, flutters it in time with your anticipatory heartbeat as you stare at the wolf, and the wolf stares back.
Come. He seems to say. There’s little time to waste.
You shouldn’t.
Even so...
You gather with you what you can- fresh bandages, herbs to stop bleeding and help the pain, your cloak and boots and a lantern to light your way. You blow out the candles to your home and hover on the front step, wondering how on earth you’ll find what the wolf is leading you towards in the dark.
To your amazement the wolf lays flat on the ground, looking at you meaningfully.
You blink, unspoken questions seemingly answered.
The wolf is broad enough that it stretches your legs just to ride atop his shoulders, fingers dug into his thick, warm pelt as you lay flat atop him. With a bark, he races forwards, three great strides taking you off into the forest where branches whip against your face and shoulders. The wind whistles past your ears, and you dig your heels in harder to simply remain atop his rolling withers, face buried into his neck to keep it safe from the brambles and twisting tree limbs that seek to rip you from his back.
He runs without stopping, stamina seemingly endless as he carries you deeper, deeper into the woods, far past where you forage for herbs and mushrooms. Deeper still, to the ancient trees and knotted hills where the townsfolk whisper of strange stories and those that don’t return. The wind chills you to the bone, cloak flying as you too seem to sail through the air, the wolf’s paws hardly touching the ground as he races towards an unknown destination.
The moon reveals itself from behind its gossamer veil, bestowing gentle slants of moonlight through the trees as the wolf begins to slow, nose sniffing the ground before trotting forward into a thick grove of juniper as the leaves crunch under his massive feet. You rise from his back, lifting the branches out of the way as he approaches a crag in the distance, tangled with overgrown ivy where water seeps down from a nearby stream. He pauses at the edge of a clearing, barking once and listening.
A bark answers him in turn, and it sounds familiar just as the wolf from earlier in the morning darts from between the rocks and bounds up to you both, whining and sniffing at your bare legs and licking at your hands. You’re carried into a shallow dip between the boulders, where a jutting rock over your head shields you from the stars above. You can’t see, reaching instead for your lantern and lighting the wick inside.
You freeze when a growl emanates from within the cave, sending a primordial fear washing icy through your limbs. When you lift your lantern it reveals two massive forms huddled in the dark, one of them collapsed on its side and the other with his skull-white head set upon him, teeth drawn back to reveal the gleaming white of his dripping fangs.
The wolf from this morning, the strange ruff-like wolf with the playful blue eyes, shoves his nose up against his snarling friend in what you take as a gesture of reassurance. It seems to settle him, if only marginally, allowing you the space you need to slip from your wolf’s back and creep forward, raising your lantern as you go.
“Oh.” You breathe as you draw towards the fallen wolf. His russet fur is stained dark with blood in places, gashes strewn across his shoulder where a spear juts from muscle. “Oh you poor thing.”
He peers one glassy eye towards you, too weak to lift his head but offering a half-hearted low snarl.
Careful. Help, but be careful.
He makes a pained noise as you lay your hands on him, inspecting the wound. It’s cut deep, almost to the bone, and the notched tip of the spear makes it hard to yank free. It needs to come loose before you can do anything else, lest you agitate it further by tending the wounds around it. Yet the thought of yanking it loose only to have your neck snapped in half makes your shoulders shake and your skin break into goosebumps in the damp darkness of the cave.
“Trust me.” You whisper to the injured wolf- more of a prayer than a plea. He only looks at you, unblinking until at last he closes his eyes again in resignation. Behind you, the youngest of the wolves paces anxiously, whining and keening and stopping to bother his two friends in equal parts concern and reassurance.
Trust me. You plead again skyward, setting your hands on the broken grip of the spear and pulling.
The injured wolf snarls with such ferocity you nearly collapse backwards, but instead pour every ounce of fear and panic into your straining arms, grunting and panting until-
The spear comes loose and you tumble backwards, caught in your own cloak as blood splatters across your chemise and boots. When you look down, the iron tip is as large as your hand, made to kill things much larger than you.
The grunt of the injured wolf draws you back, and instantly you discard the weapon to race forward, pulling your clean rags and pressing it to the oozing wound even as blood drips over your fingers and rivulets down your arms.
“There.” You murmur towards the beast under you. “That’s the hard part done. Just rest now. Rest, and everything will be fine.”
Oddly, the beast lifts its head to you, for the first time focusing on you with a clear gaze. He holds your stare for a long moment, as if searching for something, before at last resting his head again and allowing you to resume your task.
It takes you most of the night to tend to the wounds, mixing an herb paste to stem the bleeding and quietly whispering incantations over the stitches you sew into his side. You don’t fear the wolves finding out about your magic. There’s no one they’d be able to tell anyone anyways, and you think it’s only fair they keep your secret as much as you’ve kept theirs too.
By the time you’ve finished you’re stained elbow deep in red, and you think your chemise is entirely ruined with the amount of blood that’s seeped into it. You’re exhausted, but satisfied with the blood you’ve managed to scrub away from the wolf’s pelt and the stitches that dance up his shoulder. When you at last sit back, he lifts his head and tucks it under your hand in a quiet but sincere gesture of thanks.
The other three wolves, who all have waited patiently while you worked, creep forward to check on their injured friend, licking at his stitches and nuzzling at his head. He seems grumpy at the display of fondness, chuffing quietly and grunting but otherwise tolerating their prodding and nuzzling.
You watch them at a short distance, gathering your supplies and huddling into your cloak. The frigid chill has long since seeped into your bones, and you shiver as you try to retain whatever warmth you have left. You long for your blankets at home, dreaming of laying next to the embers of the fire and sleeping until the sun rises high in the sky.
A nose nudges you, and you peer your eyes open in the dwindling lantern light to the dark-haired wolf nudging you in the direction of his injured friend. You acquiesce, gently hovering by his side until the dark-haired wolf settles on your other side, tucking his huge, warm form next to your cold, shivering one. His tawny brown friend is quick to join, circling several times before he lays across your numb feet and rests his head on your shivering thighs. The white-muzzled wolf tucks in behind him, arranging himself so he watches the mouth of the cave vigilantly, keeping watch as the forest turns soft hues of purple in the early dawn light.
Exhausted, now warm and blissfully comfortable, you twist into the massive forms of the wolves around you and allow sleep to find you between the soft snores of the beasts you once feared.
When you shut your eyes, dreams find you.
There’s voices you don’t recognize, touches of others warm against your skin. They surround you, tender and reverent despite their obscurity. A brush of your hair against your cheek, a warm breath across the nape of your neck, gathering you to them and bestowing tenderheartedness against the gentle fibers of your soul. They feel familiar somehow, but in the midst of your strange woolgather you can’t discern who they are.
“Hush, sweetheart, back to dreams.” They whisper, even as they kiss up along your jaw, down the swell of your breasts, fingers splayed against your stomach as a breathy sort of moan travels up your throat. It’s warm, like honey against your skin, sweet and cloying against your senses. A mouth presses fluttering, sucking kisses down the length of your collar bone, another sliding his fingers through silky folds and coaxing your arousal into a tender flame. Yet every time you try to stir, every time you try to chase sensation it only slips away again- like mist through your fingers even as those same voices whisper a distant echo of your name.
You wake within the confines of the cave alone.
Yet as the days come to pass, you discover you are far from the only one in the glade you call home.
You go to the market the day after, and allow your neighbors to fuss over you. The woods are dangerous, they warn you. You should stay behind the safety of the village walls. You ease their anxieties, offering them their usual tonics and herbs, and as the sun wanes once again you withdraw to your cottage- only to find a slain hare resting neatly upon your front step. A gesture of thanks, you think, one of many to come.
It stays as such. A turkey, a hare, a fish from your lake, sometimes even wildflowers that grow vibrant in the late autumn light. It’s rare that you see the wolves themselves- often catching their shadows darting into the trees and watching from a distance as you bend to collect the gifts. They’re wary at first, uncertain after you were shown their den deep in the woods. Perhaps they are afraid you will yet change your mind and go to the village guards. You know that even if you did you too would face the end of a spear for helping them, for offering your hands of healing.
Yet after several days of watching, soon the wolves creep closer. You can hear them at night, sniffing around your herb garden outside, snorting at the iron cross above your door to ward off evil, and even romping in the moonlight as strange dreams find you once more. In the darkness, the rustling of the ferns and swish of low hanging boughs brings an odd comfort, and lends itself to the dreamscape you lose yourself in when you close your eyes.
It’s always the same men, the same touches and muted whispers you can hardly hear. It’s always the same distant pleasure, touches that feel like they press through silk into the recesses of your thoughts. You chase them like one would a prism of light, reaching out your hands in desperate hopes you can hold it for just a moment before it disappears.
“Sweet girl.” They whisper in your dreams, as you contain a watery gasp at the fingers that press between your thighs. You can feel yourself leak down onto them just as another hand smoothes down the curve of your spine, pressing you into a delicious arch with an appreciative groan. “So good for us, so pretty-” Your mewls are caught on the digits caught between your teeth, pressing down against your tongue with a sinful, primal growl- like a beast lurking between the trees.
Touch me, touch me, hold me.
You reach out your hands, trying to hold the pleasure in the cup of your palms for just a moment-
and wake up with wetness between your thighs, and the sound of a mourning dove cooing in the rafters.
Names linger upon your lips, and you find when your mouth forms them they slip away with a sigh.
You give the wolves names as well.
To the wolf with the skull-pattern snout, you call him Ghost. He’s the quietest out of the four, but strong and steady, towering over the rest with a grand stature and strength coiled beneath his jet-black coat. He’s more distant than his counterparts at first, slow to warm to you and suspicious. Yet the more time you spend with him, the more he comes to you with a silent demand of ear scratches and your hands running over his dark mane.
His younger counterpart with the strange ruff you call Soap, as one afternoon you watch him splash in the lake nearby and come out sodden and dripping but his maw wide with something akin to laughter. Mischievous, he’s quick to pull his friends into a bout of wrestling or racing through the trees, emerging victorious and requesting your laughing praises as his reward. Out of them all, he’s by far the most demanding of your affections, whining if you are preoccupied by others and quick to shove his snout under your hands.
To the raven-haired wolf with the mahogany eyes twinkling with a slyness you can never put to words, who leans into your hands with a pleased, rumbling growl you call Gaz- meaning gentle in the old languages of your grimoires. When you speak to him, it feels like he understands more than any of the others, and sometimes you spend long hours in one-sided conversation as he blinks back at you with soulful, knowing eyes. More than that- Gaz is sly, quick to steal away a piece of prey from Soap or Ghost when they turn their backs, blinking innocently at them with a slight tilt of his head as if to say “What, me?”
Finally the older wolf, the one who lays still the most due to his healing wounds, who seems to have paid a heavy tribute to survive as long as he has, you call Price. He’s not as scarred as Ghost, but within him he seems to carry a sort of inner knowledge, a weight that bears heavy down upon his massive shoulders. You spend many afternoons tending to Price’s healing wounds, to which he rewards you by gently nuzzling against your hip until you succumb to a nap against his massive frame.
It’s Soap who accompanies you on long walks in the afternoon sunshine, darting between the trees to chase prey and often returning with something for your hearth. Gaz watches you dig for herbs in the soft soil of the forest, sometimes using his massive paws to expose roots that grow deep within the mossy earth. Ghost patrols the border of your glade at a distance, always vigilant for unwanted visitors and quick to alert the others if hunters are nearby. Yet he always returns at the end of the day, huffing with a begrudging sort of humor and allowing you to stroke the dense fur of his pelt. Price often lays near your front step, resting and healing from his injuries. When you nap in the warm sunshine, Price tucks himself around your form, curling protectively against your figure as you dream.
And dream you do, for as the days pass the dreams become clearer still. Sometimes you can catch glimpses of the men the voices belong to. A flash of lightning blue eyes, smooth dark skin, a jagged pink scar curving up a pale spine, a glimpse of a worried brow staring down at you despite the fondness in his eyes. You rest your head on his hairy, soft stomach, his hand carding through your hair as you move with the impact of every slapping thrust behind you.
“Taking him well, love.” He whispers, and you whimper at the unattainable need coiling low in your stomach, a desire that can’t be quelled here where you’re caught between wakefulness and sleep. You whisper as much to him, a plea to release you, to give you the words you need to find the end of your desire. Yet he only smiles, hushing you as the hands bracing on your hips dip lower between your thighs. You hiccup, writhing, needing, on the cusp-
and then you wake up.
You spend the day in town if only to avoid your newfound company after realizing you make noises in your sleep.
You spend fewer days in town thanks to the wolves who have made your cottage their home, but when you do you hear the constant murmur of hushed whispers. Tracks found in the outer pastures, a sheep slain and left to drown in its own blood, dark shadows and strange howling at night are among the stories you hear. They sit uneasily inside you, knowing the danger your newfound friends are in, but to raise your voice against it is to cast suspicion upon yourself- a danger which you can’t abide.
Ill at ease are you too with the whispers you hear behind your back. There’s fewer customers at your little stall now, and those who visit do so quickly and do not linger. Something has changed inside the village. There’s a paranoia now with every passing day the beasts are not caught and slaughtered. It infects the minds of the weak and afraid, and casts shadows of doubt upon their neighbors- including you.
“Step carefully.” The guard at the gate tells you as you walk out of the village, but when you turn to him, he refuses to meet your eyes.
The shadows in the woods seem longer that night.
That night, you dream of them once more.
Sometimes it’s just this- curled between them, up against phantom limbs and faces you can never clearly see. The veil of dreams hides the true memory of their appearances even as you cling tighter to them, relishing the warmth they offer. To you they whisper soft endearments, offer chaste kisses and embraces that fill the longing emptiness inside you.
“We’ll protect you.” They whisper, stroking your hair, tracing the curve of your bare spine. “We will keep you safe.”
You wish you could do the same for your wolves.
It’s not safe for them here, you think. It’s only a matter of time before someone sees your wolves and tracks them. Together the four of them could slaughter all of the hunters in the village without so much as a scratch, but if one of them were caught alone the way Price was, if the worst were to come to pass...
“You should leave.” You whisper to them one night. Their massive forms take up almost all the space in your cottage. It smells like animal, like musk and earth and warmth as they each come to rest near the hearth and you curl up between them. Gaz’s soft pelt sinks against your fingertips, and you stare into the flames listlessly, speaking words you know they can’t return.
“It’s not safe.” You go on. “You should go to the mountains, up the valley, further into the forbidden lands.” Yet even as you speak the words, you can feel your throat swell with emotion at the thought of them leaving you behind. It breaks before you can stop it, and you sob as you turn your face into Gaz’s shoulder, listening to the worried whines of the wolves around you.
“I don’t want to say goodbye.” You cry. “But you can’t stay. If...if somehow you get hurt...”
Soap shoves his massive snout under the crook of your arm, and even Ghost gently bends his head so you can tuck yourself against his jaw.
“I can’t be the reason you die.” It goes unspoken, but your meaning is clear. Yet none of the wolves make a motion to leave you, instead curling further around you like you’re something precious, something to be kept safe no matter what.
You didn’t realize how lonely you were until you met them.
Lonely are you still in the village- but now you feel more afraid than anything. There’s a word whispered behind your back now as you pass the others, a hatred in their eyes that pierces your fragile heart.
Witch.
It’s a term thrown as an insult, but these days it feels less like a passing bite and more like an accusation- one ending within a fiery blaze that will burn you down to ash. The terror of it all is that it’s true. You don’t attend Sunday mass because the inside of a church feels too warm, too crowded, and you can feel so many eyes upon you. You don’t recite the scriptures, you don’t join your hands in prayers with the others. You live so far away from the village, out of sight and beyond their scrutiny and it makes you a target.
It’s a rainy afternoon as you travel back to your cottage, and despite the drizzle you can hear the sound of someone behind you.
Following you.
A voice that is not yours whispers to you inside the recesses of your mind, echoing a warning, a command:
“Run.”
You’re not sure why but you do, breaking into a sprint as mud finds its way into your boots and the rain lashes against your skin. You run as fast as you can- towards the safety of your cottage, towards your friends, towards the wolves-
Your pursuer catches you- faster, stronger as he wrestles you to the ground. You scream, thrashing as the man above you brandishes a knife that you can see your horrified eyes on the reflection of the blade.
“Witch!” He hisses down at you, a single hand keeping you pinned by your throat so you choke for air. “It’s you who cursed our village! You’re the reason behind all this- I know it!”
Tears burn at your eyes, and you whimper a broken sort of sound- something like a plea, but more akin to a prey animal in their dying throes.
“Once you’re dead, everything will be set right- and those beasts will go back to wherever they came from.”
The knife descends, and you call out to them- the men from your dreams, the ones who whisper your name with tender touches and beloved kisses.
There’s a roar from the woods, and the man leans back just as a massive form leaps from the trees. He’s torn away from you with a cut off scream, and you cough and splutter, eyes burning as you try to regain your breath. Through your tears you see him- you see Price standing above your attacker, his lips pulled back to reveal his dripping fangs bared in a horrifying snarl. One paw immobilizes the man under him, who shouts and screams just as Price’s teeth lean down to his neck for a killing bite.
“No!” You cry, and Price’s ears flick to you, pausing before turning his steel blue stare towards your trembling form.
“Don’t.” You manage, rubbing at your throat. “He’s just scared. He didn’t-”
Beneath Price’s paw, the man whimpers, trying to shield his face.
“Don’t hurt him.” You beg again, wincing at the hard scrape of your throat. It’s enough to summon Price to you, circling you protectively and licking at your face. The man scrambled to his feet, crying out in terror as he races back towards the village.
You pray he will take this as a warning, but inside you know:
It’s time.
You turn to Price, throwing your arms around him with a shuddering sort of gasp, fingers curling into his thick pelt as he offers a low, comforting growl to you in turn.
“You need to leave.” You whisper urgently, turning your head to stare into his eyes. “All of you. I can buy you some time, but it won’t be long before they’ll be back.”
You watch as he bares his teeth in a snarl, and despite the languages lost between you, you understand even so.
“Let them come.”
You race with Price back to the cottage, where the other three members of the pack whine and pace around you, barking as if they’re communicating among themselves. All the while you watch the sun sink lower behind the naked branches and hear the ever present ticking of a clock inside your mind.
You’re running out of time.
You gather what you can: Grimoires, a bedroll, a few changes of clothes, your bag of tinctures and potions, things needed to keep you alive, things to help protect you if the worst comes. You have no plan beyond escaping, beyond vanishing into the woods before the villagers can track you down and find you. With every minute that passes you fear you’ll hear the sound of them coming through the woods, and with every minute you pray the wolves are already gone far beyond the trees, even if it makes your heart ache endlessly with their absence.
At last you pause, bundled in your heaviest cloak and warmest pair of boots, tracing the runes and sigils you’ve carved into the beams of your beloved little home. There’s magic imbued still within them- a comforting sort of miasma that welcomes you warm into its embrace. It feels like where you belong- like home, like something that hadn’t felt quite so until it had been full with the forms of your beloved wolves.
A single, lone howl raises its voice towards the sky.
You know the voice of Price when you hear him, and soon to join him are the voices of Soap, Gaz, and the deep, lonely tenor of Ghost underneath. The volume of it shakes your home to its foundations, rattles the rafters and with it the bones inside your fragile frame. Beyond it you can hear it, just barely, the sound of approaching voices. Beyond the trees, the torchlight glows bright in the darkness.
“You need to leave.” You cry to Ghost outside as he stands at the edge of the trees, ruff bristled and his teeth gleaming in the orange moonlight. “You can’t stay- they’ll kill you!”
Yet Ghost does not answer, does not even flick his ears in your direction even as you tug desperately at him.
“Run!” You try at Gaz instead, but Gaz ignores you, ears pointed forward, alert and undeterred.
“WITCH!!”
It raises and snaps like a whip, crying out from the trees as a cluster of shadows walks through the trees, torches held aloft. The villagers stalk forward as one, filtering between the trembling trunks and twisted roots, further into the sanctuary of your glade. In their faces you see fury, betrayal, you see fear as they spot the wolves standing between you and them, expressions contorting into that of hatred.
“BURN THE WITCH!”
Your heart leaps into your throat, a scream threatening to burst from your lungs. There’s so many of them, guards, huntsmen, and villagers alike coalescing into a single mob intent on your own destruction.
And that of your friends.
They snarl in return, your wolves, barking and exposing their fangs for all to see. You can spot crossbows in the crowd, spears held aloft as the iron tips glint from the flames. You know they’ll embed themselves into the hides and pelts of your friends, and you will become awash in flame as the fallen forms of your wolves fall at your feet.
They’ll kill us all.
It’s that thought that pushes you forward, shoving you way past Soap and Gaz who stand protectively in front of you, snarling and bristled, seconds away from throwing themselves into the fray. You hear them yelp as you race forward, teeth snapping as they try to catch you by your cloak and drag you back to safety.
The villagers draw back, gasping and screaming as you plant yourself before them, arms spread wide to keep them from your pack just as an autumn wind curls itself about your form, lifting your cloak and parting the clouds so the moonlight streams down onto your shoulders.
“You are in MY woods.” You tell them, voice pitched low as the wind whistles and the treetops shiver above you. “You’ll take not one step further.”
There’s a hush over the crowd at that, at the promise of danger in the timbre of your voice, at the fire in your eyes. They look between each other, as if daring one another to be the first one to take a step forwards towards the witch who enchanted four monstrous beasts and brought devastation upon their homes.
Then, a voice from the crowd: “KILL THEM ALL!”
It startles one of the hunters at the front of the crowd, who lifts his crossbow and levies it straight for your throat.
And you, you remember the runes and sigils engraved into your home. You remember the magic you’ve woven into the soil you stand upon, into the very air that billows around you.
And, silently, you remember the first spell you ever learned.
“If I burn-” You murmur, hand outstretched as a low, simmering heat rapidly boils through your veins and threatens to ignite you from the inside out. “Then you burn too.”
All at once, the ground in between you and the mob erupts as a path of flame carves its way past your feet, cutting you off from the villagers in front of you. They scream, leaping away as flames lick at their boots, crying out in terror as the truth of your magic finally unveils itself with horrifying carnage.
“These wolves are under my protection!” You shout forth, hands extended as flames leap around you but offer no harm. “You will not harm them!”
Amidst the flames, amidst the gale that lifts the hem of your cape, amidst the glinting eyes and dripping fangs of your wolves behind you- you become the thing that they accuse you of. You become the thing from their nightmares, the one who brings devastation upon their land, who lays waste to the peace they’ve built atop the graves of your kind. You become the witch, who stands with the fire burning bright in her eyes, her hair wild in the wind and retribution clear in her furious gaze.
They scream, the villagers, falling over each other in their bid to escape from the encroaching fire. Weapons are discarded, shields left to singe within the blaze, and you watch as they flee away from you, away from your protected glade and the creatures who dwell within it.
When at last the remaining few grow distant into the trees, you feel the strength in your legs give way. Your knees hit the scorched earth, arms trembling with your weight as the draw of magic on your body saps away your vigor and leaves you panting and shivering.
It’s Ghost who comes to you first, offering a low, throaty grumble as he nudges you with his wet nose. You lean onto him, take his muzzle between your hands and stare into his golden eyes like you did once so long ago. It’s in his stare that you see the unspoken words he cannot say, but find you all the same.
You climb atop his broad shoulders, and give one last look to your cottage with its sigils and runes engraved into the beams, with the herbs planted in the garden and hung from the rafters. And you know that by leaving it, so too do you leave the person you pretended to be.
The four of you travel deep into the woods, with the knotted knells and twisted roots of ancient oaks. Further still do you travel up into the hills, where heather grows between the rocky slopes and you traverse paths made not by man, but by creature alone. Up into the mountains you pause to take in the rising sun that spills crimson across the snow-white peaks. It’s there that the four of you rest, and you curl into the forms of the wolves you’ve come to love- the wolves you plan to keep.
It’s there, surrounded on all sides by the scent of musk and fur, that you dream of them at last.
You see them, each of them with their own smiles and faces. You hear the sound of their laughter in distant twilight, and their voices soft with a tenderness you can scarcely comprehend. You move as one, as if you’ve memorized the maps of each other's bodies long ago. You know the sensation of every touch, every voice, every noise and breath against you. You know their desires even in the silence, drawing them into you like you’re the kindling to their flame. Lips kiss at your feet, your thighs, the flesh of your stomach and against your closed eyes.
They draw forth your pleasure with gasping kisses and the deep, pushing rolls of their hips. Even in dreams you feel them spread you open, take apart all your inner lacings so nothing is left but your own desire gushing forth. You feel the touch of their hands as they grasp a leg to lift it higher, as they grasp your waist to keep you flush against them. You feel their breath fan across your folds with a whisper of their reverence, and you know just how much you are wanted.
They speak to you in words you can’t yet hear, but you watch their lips form your name over and over, as if it’s a prayer they speak unto the glittering heavens.
In your sleep, you at last, at last, speak their own names for the first time.
The voices become clearer as wakefulness slowly rouses you, slipping between your thoughts like sounds beneath the surface of a lake.
“Should we wake her?”
“No, let her sleep.”
“Ye ken, I’ve always wanted to say this but- she’s so soft when she’s asleep.”
“Mind yourself, Soap. Don’t get any ideas.”
You eventually come to with a groggy sort of whine, extending your frigid limbs to stretch- only to find that the furs and manes that surrounded you the night prior are replaced instead by a tangle of very solid, very naked, very human limbs.
Any remaining semblance of sleep fades in an instant as you jolt wide awake, a gasp upon your lips and ready to defend yourself if need be. Instead, a gentle hand catches your wrist and keeps you where you lay. You freeze automatically if only because the touch itself feels so...familiar.
You blink, turning towards the owner of the hand, eyes wide and lips parted as you meet a familiar set of soft, soulful brown eyes.
“...Gaz?”
Oh. When he smiles, it feels like a sunrise.
“Kyle.” He tells you softly, and presses a chaste kiss to the back of your knuckles. “Or at least that’s what you said in your sleep, doll.”
You blink at him, a thousand questions on your tongue before you’re interrupted by a chin tucking over your shoulder.
“Aye, and he’s not the only one.” A brawny pair of arms wraps around your middle, dragging you back into a firm, warm mass of a body. “Said my name too, Bonnie.”
You know his voice even without looking at his lightening blue stare. “Soap.” You breathe. “How...?”
“Seems you broke our curse, love.” You look up to realize your head is resting on a warm, hairy thigh, connected above to a pair of heart-achingly gentle eyes and furrowed brow.
“Took you long enough.” Another body grumbles, tucking in behind Johnny and slinging a massive, tattooed arm over you both.
“Simon.” Price warns, but Simon only chuckles, warm and fond and oh how it fills an aching corner of your soul you never quite realized was empty.
“You- you’re all human.” You whisper in awe, sitting up on your elbows and turning to look at each face individually for the first time. “I thought-”
“We thought so too.” Gaz interrupts gently, stroking a hand down your shoulder. “We all pretty much resigned ourselves to stay wolves forever after we were cursed.”
Cursed?
Price can see the question in your eyes, breathing a heavy sigh before adjusting the both of you so you can face him better. His large, calloused hands wrap gently around your frame, scooping you up so you balance on his lap and stare into his steel blue eyes.
“We stumbled upon a coven, years ago.” Price tells you. “Hunted on their land without permission, and incurred their wrath as a result. Several of the witches put a hex upon us.”
“They said we’d remain as wolves until we found our mate, until she said our real names.” Soap pipes up, arms crossed under him and head propped up to look at you.
“Then I...” You whisper, looking from him to Price. “I broke it. I broke the curse.”
Price’s smile is soft, achingly tender, and you feel as if you could curl up inside it like a ray of sunshine, basking in its glow until the sun goes down. When you turn to look at the others, you see in their eyes too- the same expressions you saw in your dreams. Endlessly doting, reverent, and full of love.
“Then...” You whisper breathlessly as the true meaning of Soap’s words wash upon you with blessed, endlessly hopeful realization. “Then I’m-”
“Our mate.” Gaz offers, and leans so that his head rests upon your lap, staring up into your eyes with his own, soulful brown gaze.
Oh.
Words escape you. What is there to say? You’ve been so lost for so long, staring out the windows of your cottage and praying for a day like this to come- for someone to come and take you away to a place where you are endlessly cherished and adored for all you are. Now that day has come, and it’s come in the form of not one, but four beings you’ve come to cherish inside your own heart.
“That’s why you never left.” You realize aloud. “Why you stayed.”
“We’ll stay as long as you keep us, pet.” Ghost offers, solemn and sincere.
“We want to stay.” Soap adds quickly. “We- we talked about giving you our mark to prove it.”
“Only if you want it.” Gaz interjects.
“A mark?” You ask, trying to recall what your grimoires had to say about werewolves and whatever the men around you seem to be referencing, recalling with a sudden flash of realization. “Oh.”
“A mating bite.” Price clarifies to your wide-eyed gaze. “From all of us.”
Soap seems to recognize your confusion, because he scoots a little closer, if only to look up directly into your face.
“We’re a pack, bonnie. We’ve been bonded for a while but...it never felt complete until we found ye.”
Emotion floods through you, a deep wash of sensation so fierce it makes your chest tighten and a sob curl in your throat. The loneliness, the grief, the isolation and even the fragile hope- it all seems to coalesce into a single, unnamed emotion that has you reaching for them- for the men you’ve come to love.
Their arms settle around you, hushing and cooing as you cry openly into their bare forms. Loud, sobbing hiccups and cries break down the crumbling walls inside you, releasing a torrent of endless tenderness and an emotion you’ve come now to understand is love.
“I didn’t know where I belonged until I met you.” You weep, fat tears rolling down your face as Gaz tenderly smears them across your cheeks. “I-I’ve been alone for so long-”
“You never have to be alone again.” Price murmurs into your hair. “Not with us, love.”
It feels like magic, you think. It feels like the freedom of something trapped within you for so long, fragile and waiting to spread its wings. The years of being alone slowly lift from you with each sob, and with each shuddering sigh they dissipate into the frosty air, up into the clouds. The forms of the men around you warm you through, imbibe in you a fathomless sort of hope to which there is no end.
They hold you, they keep you, they whisper loving praises onto your skin and lips. In the light of dawn you descend into further unknown valleys, and build there the home you’ve always dreamt of. Under moonlight you race with them through the trees, you awake with them in your bed, you forget all your fears and sorrows and feel your magic woven into every breath, every smile, every laugh of joy.
@auberghyn “Need me a feral maiden x Ghost and he’s just like alright you do all the work, and he understimates her horniness”
know I said it write this by the end of NYE but you also listened to me goon about toxic!price the past few days so…
You’re not subtle.
You thought you were subtle, at first your steps were light, your skirts gathered in one hand as you slipped from shadow to shadow. But he’s a knight, a hunter on two feet, all chainmail and scar tissue and soldier’s instinct. He noticed the moment your gaze started sticking to him longer than was polite.
He noticed when you started following.
At first, Ghost pretends not to. He walks the outer wall, the training yard, the inner bailey, never once glancing back. The great skull painted over his helm stares straight ahead, impassive. But his strides slow a fraction near corners, he takes turns you can’t resist peeking around, and every so often he pauses long enough that you nearly plow right into him before he moves again.
It’s a game you don’t know you’re playing.
It’s a game he very much knows he’s winning.
You follow him down a side passage you’ve never taken before: narrower, quieter, the usual racket of the keep fading behind you. The air is cooler here, stone sweating with the kiss of evening. Torches burn lower, further apart, throwing more shadow than light.
He doesn’t turn.
You bite your lip and keep your distance, fingers worrying the edge of your sleeve. You know it’s foolish. Servants don’t follow knights. Maidens don’t stalk men in iron through empty halls. But you’ve been watching him for weeks, watching the way he moves, the way people move around him, like he’s a blade they don’t want to back into.
You want to press your thumb right to that edge and see if it cuts.
He rounds another corner. You hurry to keep up.
The corridor stops in a blank wall, ancient stone and a barred arrow slit overlooking the outer moat. No other doors, no other turns. No Ghost. You blink, breath catching, and start to turn around-
-and nearly hit his chest.
You must’ve made some small sound, because his head tilts the slightest bit as you run right into him. One moment the passage was empty, the next he’s simply there, a wall of mail and leather and heat.
You suck in a sharp breath, stumbling back. His gloved hand catches your elbow before you can properly retreat, steadying you.
He doesn’t say anything at first.
The skull on his helm stares down at you. Closer than you’ve ever been. You catch the faint scent of steel, oil, and something warmer beneath it: sandalwood, leather, the ghost of smoke.
Your heart starts beating a little too fast.
“I- I was just-”
“Following me.” His voice is low, roughened by disuse, like he doesn’t waste it on small talk. Up close, it vibrates through your bones. “Third evening in a row now.”
Heat rushes to your face so fast you feel a little dizzy. “I wasn’t- I mean, I didn’t mean-”
“Careful.” His fingers tighten briefly on your elbow, not enough to hurt, just enough to remind you how easily he could. “Don’t start lying now. You’ve done a fine job of tellin’ on yourself so far.”
You swallow. “I’m not… hurting anyone.”
“Not yet.” His head tips, considering you. “But these halls are empty. No one comes down here much. An unescorted maiden trailing after a man like me?” He clucks his tongue quietly behind the mask. “A man might get ideas.”
Your pulse stutters. You can’t tell if it’s fear or interest. Possibly both.
“You’re not… just a man,” you manage.
“Mm. No.” There’s a hint of dark amusement in his tone now. “I’m worse.”
He takes a half step forward.
You take a half step back.
He follows.
You retreat until your back meets stone. Cold seeps through the thin fabric of your dress. He plants one hand on the wall beside your head, bracing there, blocking most of the light from the nearest torch. Suddenly it’s just him, and you, and the sound of your own breathing in your ears.
Up close, he’s huge. You knew that before, watching him from the courtyard, seen the way his sword rests easy in his hand, how his shadow swallows half the training yard. But pressed between him and the wall, you feel it. Feel the size of him, the heat of him, the way the air seems to thin out.
“Tell me,” he says softly. “Do you follow all the knights like this, dove? Or am I special?”
You bristle on instinct, lifting your chin despite the way your legs want to tremble. “If you thought you were just anyone, you wouldn’t have led me here.”
Something in his posture shifts. You can’t see his face, but you sense the change, like his attention sharpens another notch.
“Lead you here.” He tastes the words, like he’s turning them over. “‘s that what you think?”
“I know you saw me,” you say, fingers curling in your skirts. You’re too worked up to pretend anymore, too cornered, too aware of how your body has been buzzing for him, of him, around him for days. “You could have gone back to the main hall.”
“Could ‘ave,” he agrees.
“You could have sent me away.”
“Coul’ve done that too.”
“But you didn’t.”
Silence stretches. His hand flexes against the wall, leather creaking softly.
“No,” he finally says, voice gone low. “I didn’t.”
You breathe in, slow, trying to steady yourself. It doesn’t work. You’re more aware than ever of every inch of him, how close his chest is to yours, the gap that’s only there because he’s holding it.
“If you keep following men like that,” he murmurs, voice dropping to something almost dangerous, “one of them might decide to… do something about it.”
The way he says “do something” leaves absolutely no doubt as to what he means. His accent wraps around the words like a hand around a throat.
The warning should cool you. It doesn’t. It lights a fuse.
“Is that supposed to frighten me?” you ask. Your voice comes out a little shaky, but the words are there, stubborn.
“It’s meant to make you think,” he murmurs, voice scraping over the words. “You’re alone. And I’m not a gentle man, love. Not patient, either. If you were smart, you’d watch whose shadow you chase, unless you’re looking to be fucked against these stones ‘til you can’t walk straight.”
He leans in. You feel the shape of the helm brush your hairline, the painted skull grazing your temple. His breath is hot against your cheek, the air crackling.
“If you’re not careful,” he rasps, voice dark and hungry, “I might just haul you up right here, lift your skirts, pin you to this wall, make a mess of you. Leave you dripping down your thighs so everyone in the keep knows who’s ruined you.”
Your breath hitches so sharply he hears it.
His hand on your elbow tightens, not cruel, but enough to make your knees threaten to buckle. “D’you understand me, dove? Next time you follow, you’d best be ready to take what you’re begging for.”
Your heart is a drum gone wild, shaky, burning, wanting. It would be so easy to stammer, to flee, to pretend you hadn’t dreamed about this in the dark, aching for him to lose control.
Instead, you swallow, breathless but steady, and say, “Good.”
He goes still.
“Good?” he repeats.
“Yes.” Your fingers, traitorous and bold, lift to toy with the edge of his pauldron. The metal is cool under your touch; he is not. “That’s what I was hoping for.”
You can feel the way that sinks in.
The air between you changes, goes thicker, heavier, more charged. His grip on your elbow slackens, not because he’s letting you go but because something like surprise has knocked some of the tension out of him.
“You were… banking on it.” It’s not really a question.
You meet the black slits of his helm dead on. “I didn’t follow you because I was lost.”
He stares at you.
For the first time since you’ve known him, the knight who moves like he’s already thought a dozen steps ahead clearly hadn’t prepared for this particular answer.
The silence after your words is thick enough to choke on.
You feel it when it lands- good- the way his breath stutters behind the skull, the way his body goes rigid like you’ve just shoved a blade under his armor and twisted. For a heartbeat, neither of you moves.
Then something shifts.
Slow. Dangerous.
His hand drops from your elbow, not in retreat, but in recalculation. Like he’s reassessing the threat, only now he’s realizing you’re not prey at all.
“Careful,” he murmurs. The word isn’t a warning anymore. It’s an appraisal. “You’re speakin’ like you already belong to me.”
You smile, small and wicked, and let your fingers drag deliberately down the front of his cuirass. “You told me what you’d do to me if I wasn’t careful,” you say softly. “I’m just saying I didn’t come all this way to be spared.”
The air tightens. His shoulders lift with a slow inhale, and when he exhales, it’s right against your mouth; hot, restrained, strained.
“You think,” he says, low and rough, “that because I haven’t put you on your knees yet, I won’t?”
Your pulse jumps. Your thighs press together on instinct.
You tilt your head, exposing your throat to him without even thinking about it. “I think,” you say, voice dropping, “that if you wanted me kneeling, you’d already have my chin in your hand.”
That does it.
A sound rips out of him- half laugh, half curse- as he finally reaches for you. Not gently. One hand slides hard to your waist, fingers digging in like he needs to feel you’re real. The other braces behind you, pinning you flush to the wall.
“You’re askin’ for trouble,” he growls, mouth close enough now that you can feel the heat through the mask. “Dirty little thing, followin’ a knight into the dark and hopin’ he loses control.”
Your body reacts before your brain catches up, hips tipping forward, breath hitching. “I’m counting on it.”
He exhales, long and slow, and finally relents, steps back and drops onto the bench behind him with a heavy thud, spreading his knees just enough to be an invitation. He leans back, bracing his arms, deliberately casual.
“Alright,” he says, voice rough with confidence he hasn’t earned. “You’ve got teeth. I’ll give you that. Go on, then. You do the work.”
The arrogance of it makes something sharp and hot coil low in your belly.
You don’t hesitate.
You climb into his lap, skirts shoved up and out of the way, bare thighs locking around his hips. His breath punches out of him as your weight settles, heat against heat, softness against solid muscle. You roll your hips once, slow and deliberate, and feel exactly how hard his cock already is beneath you.
“Oh,” you murmur. “You were ready.”
He chuckles darkly. “Been ready since you started stalkin’ me.”
You grind down harder, deliberately cruel. “Then you should’ve known better.”
You reach between you, fingers deft as you free his cock from his trousers. He hisses when cool air hits him, when your hand wraps around him; thick, heavy, hot in your grip. You stroke him slowly, watching the way his jaw tightens beneath the skull mask, the way his thighs tense like he’s fighting the urge to thrust.
“Fuck,” he mutters. “You don’t hesitate, do you?”
“No,” you say, breathless with anticipation. “I don’t.”
You line your cunt up and sink down onto him in one smooth, claiming motion.
He groans, deep and unguarded as you take him inch by inch, hands flying to your hips on instinct before he catches himself and slams them back down on the bench. Your cunt stretches around him, heat and pressure stealing the air from his lungs.
“Saints,” he rasps. “You’re tight.”
You rock slowly at first, dragging him through every tight, dripping inch of you, the head of his cock pressing deep with each grind of your hips. Your nails dig into his shoulders for balance, clutching at the thick leather where armor used to sit. He growls low in his throat but doesn’t move, trying so damn hard to obey, to stay still, to let you use him.
You lift and drop, hips snapping, thighs trembling as you chase the high you’ve been aching for since you first saw him on horseback, towering and silent and deadly. Each thrust down has your cunt swallowing him whole, sucking greedily around his cock, the stretch brutal and perfect.
It’s messy- obscene- the lewd slick sounds of your bodies meeting echoing off the stone like blasphemy. You’re soaked, flushed with effort, your movements wild and needy, more beast than girl.
The slap of your ass against his thighs gets louder, wetter, the rhythm sharper as you fuck him, the sounds echoing off stone walls that have seen prayer but never this kind of worship.
Ghost’s head tips back against the stone wall, a curse hissing through clenched teeth.
“F-fuck- dove…”
His breathing breaks, ragged and uncontrolled, groans spilling from behind the mask now, too wrecked to care. He clutches the edge of the bench, white knuckled, thighs trembling beneath you.
You lean forward and ride him harder, faster, taking everything he’s giving without asking. The muscles of his abdomen twitch under your touch, his cock twitching deep inside you every time you clamp down.
You swear he’s shaking.
“You’re gonna ruin me,” he grits out, voice cracked, desperate, like he’s holding himself together with nothing but a prayer and the bite of his own teeth.
You lean in, mouth brushing the shell of his ear, and bite down just enough to make him jolt.
“Good.”
And that’s what shatters him.
With a growl ripped straight from his chest, his hands finally snap up to your thighs, calloused palms gripping hard, anchoring you in place as he slams his hips up into you without warning. The force of it knocks the breath out of your lungs, your moan turning high and broken.
“Fucking hell,” he rasps, voice wrecked. “Look at you riding me like you’ve waited your whole life for it.”
You don’t stop. If anything, you grow more frantic, bouncing in his lap as he fucks up into you now, the pace savage, relentless, no longer restrained. His cock hits deeper like this, the rhythm brutal and perfect, and every thrust drags a sob from your throat.
Your hands slide to his neck, clinging to the edge of his mask, fingers curling beneath the strap as your head drops back.
“Harder,” you gasp.
“Greedy little thing,” he growls, “you want it like that? Want me to break you open?”
You nod, body shaking, words lost to the way he’s splitting you apart from the inside.
He slams into you again, again, the bench creaking dangerously beneath his strength, your body bouncing helplessly with each brutal thrust.
“Taking it so well,” he grits out. “Drippin’ all over me. Gonna fuckin’ stay stuffed full of my cock until you’re crying for mercy.”
The coil inside you snaps.
You come with a cry- loud, wrecked, sobbing out his name as your body seizes around him. Your walls clamp down tight, milking him, dragging a raw curse from his mouth as he slams deep one final time.
“Fuck- fuck- fuckin’ take it,” he growls, voice breaking as he comes, hot and deep, hips jerking, his hands bruising your thighs as he spills inside you, thick and overwhelming, filling you to the brim.
You collapse against him, boneless, trembling, sweat slick and gasping for air. His arms wrap around your back without thinking, holding you tight, still buried inside you, cock twitching with aftershocks.
Ghost rests his head back against the wall, breathing hard through his nose. For a moment, the room is silent but for the sound of both of you trying to breathe.
Then he stirs beneath you, one arm shifting as he braces to lift you, to pull out, to help you down and maybe carry you off to somewhere soft.
But the second he tries to move you, your fingers tighten, thighs clamping down around his hips with surprising strength.
He freezes.
“Where do you think you’re going?” you murmur, voice saccharine sweet.
He leans back slightly to look at you and you’re smirking. Smirking. Flushed, breathless, soaked in sweat and slick and sin, and somehow still cocky enough to look like you’re in charge.
His brows lift just barely under the mask.
“…You’re not done?” he rasps, voice hoarse.
You tilt your head like a cat toying with a much larger animal. “Not even close.”
And then, with full eye contact, you grind down again, slow, mean, dragging him through the overstimulation, your walls squeezing him back to life.
Ghost jolts beneath you like you slapped him.
“Saints,” he breathes. He’s still sensitive, raw, but your cunt is warm and greedy and too fucking tight, and he can already feel himself getting hard again, like his body’s decided it doesn’t matter if his soul survives this or not.
“I’ve barely gotten my fill,” you say, tracing your fingers over the edge of his mask like a crown. “You think I climbed into your lap for one round, Sir Knight?”
He stares at you- stares- because he just fought a war and you’re talking like it was a warm up.
You don’t let him speak. You lean in, mouth at the ear of his mask, and whisper: “You said I could do all the work. So sit back and pray, darling. I’m not through with you yet.”
His breath catches. His hands twitch.
And somewhere in the depths of his ruined brain, a little voice mutters what the fuck have I gotten myself into.
You roll your hips again, feeling him throb back to full hardness, and his head tips back with a guttural groan. You’re soaked, aching, insatiable. He’s trembling now, not from fear, but from the sheer effort of holding on.
“Dove,” he rasps. “You’re going to kill me.”
Your grin is all teeth and triumph. “Then die pretty for me.”
And Simon “Ghost” Riley- personal knight to King Price, soldier, slayer of men, grim reaper in chain mail, proud bastard that he is- whimpers.
You're one of my favourite writers on here and I've noticed you're anti-ai which is cool. Recently I put some of my own work into a scanner for spelling as my google doc just wasn't responding and it came up with a 98% ai generated warning?
I absolutely wrote this on my own from what I thought was an original enough idea but now I'm worried about sharing it if people are going to think I got a bot of some kind to write it. I know that the em dash is now unfortunately meant to be a giveaway that it's ai, since ai like to use it but now I'm concerned my love of ellipses and commas is also coming of kind of botty?
How do I make my writing better and less like a soulless machine spat it out? Your writing is always so amazing and immersive.
It's not you, anon. Your writing is just fine. The main issue is the way that some of these natural language processors were fed stolen corpora. To build their AI systems, some creators used purposefully good writing - stolen works from corpora hosting sites like AO3 and Wattpad and even Project Gutenberg - to train their syntax models to reproduce clauses.
Everyone should be able to tell that your work is not slop. AI slop is bad for a number of reasons: it is unethical, soulless, theft, and extremely damaging to the environment, but it is also very weak writing. There is no depth. There are no painful stakes. There is no joy. It just reproduces a basic, milquetoast plot and calls it a day.
My mother-in-law died a few years ago. But, before she did, she taught me how to knit. We got so good that we were knitting heirloom sweaters with each other, following crazy tough patterns and having a blast doing it. I miss her a lot, and more than anything, I miss her lessons. The one lesson that really sticks with me is that she always told me to leave at least one mistake behind in my work. She said that I could be a wonderful knitter, and that I could even knit a perfect sweater, but that I would never be able to out-do a machine. That's just the truth. A machine is always perfect. No mistakes. So, when you receive a garment from someone (which is like receiving a piece of someone's soul, jsyk), and it has an error near the hem or in some corner somewhere out of sight, you should cherish it. That mistake - a purl instead of a knit, or a skipped color in a pattern - is a rebellious display of your humanity. You fucked up strictly because you are NOT a machine.
So, write messy scenes. Write people struggling and failing and hating and scrambling and being in pain. Write fumbles and laughter and misspoken lines muttered through hopeful lips. Write misunderstandings and bad accents and fading dialects and lost languages. Write your characters with errors, and show off just how human they are. Write what's real. Don't shy away from the truth.
I think - sometimes - authors are reluctant to write what they actually think should happen inside of a scene. They think to themselves, no, I can't have her pull a knife. That's too violent. It's too extreme. Too messy. Perhaps I should do less. I should make this "more normal." But that's not the Truth. The Truth is that if you believe in your gut that your character would pull a knife - do it. Don't hold back.
ChatGPT will hold back. Every time. It will never push the boundary of the Real. It will never challenge what the expected outcome of a scene would be. It will never show a character being irrational or feral. It will never write the unexpected way. But you can. Whether or not you should will be up to you.
But, more than anything, trust your readers. Tell them the truth. Show them your hand. Leave all of your cards on the table, spread and visible for them to see. Be vulnerable to them, and they will feel it when they read your words.
Maybe one day computers will be able to create a form of art that communicates true feeling and raw emotion, but I don't think that day is here. I also doubt - much like handmade sweaters - that the intrinsic value of the work that you are doing will ever degrade. Sure, you can get a quick knit off Shein for $5 plus shipping, and it might keep you warm, but it'll never be the real deal, and I can guarantee that those clankers never twisted a stitch.
Things that are good are good because they are real, not because they are perfect.
With Ghost- shoved between your thighs, your pants dangling from one boot and your back flush to the wall of the storage unit next to the armory. Your hands wrap around his neck for balance as he ruts into the slick wetness of your folds with a slow, deep, aching grind. The tip of him feels lodged up against your lungs, and every breath of air it forces up escapes as a choked, mewling groan into his gloved palm. The other forces your legs open, keeps you spread to accommodate the sheer size of his body trapped between your aching thighs. Low, wet breaths huff through the fabric of his mask and he stares, flaying you open with only his gaze.
You can’t look away, not with his hand trapping your face like this, unable to turn your gaze from his piercing stare. Despite your remaining gear and layers you feel sliced open to your rotten underbelly, your souring insides spilled open for him to see. It sends a pulsating heat slinking through your veins, extending out to every limb with a fissure of pleasure you can’t control- and with every thrust Ghost nurtures it into a pending cataclysm, an advection that feels seismic against every twitch and coil of your guts.
“No.” He growls when you finally can’t take it anymore, scrunching your eyes shut against the rust brown of his gaze. It feels like old blood, like a wound not scrubbed clean, and the sensation is so familiar it hurts. “Eyes on me, Fix. On me.”
On me. The phrase that lights a beacon you follow in the fog, the lighthouse in the storm, the call in a night with no stars. You can’t ignore it if you tried, sinking in like a gravity well where even light does not escape.
Ghost adjusts his stance, pausing to shift his weight before thrusting back up into you again. You think your eyes roll, but behind the veil of stars you aren’t entirely sure. It feels so close and impossibly too much at the same time. When you dig your nails under the fabric of his mask, sinking into the bare flesh of his neck Ghost growls, deep and primal as the hand holding your thigh threatens to bruise. The weight, the heat, Gods the smell of him- ash and fire and rain from the downpour that caught you all surprise on mission. He’d lifted a hand above your head for only a moment to shield you, and had dropped it before Price and the others could notice.
You’re not sure how you’re supposed to cope. You’re burning, rotting from the inside out where he’s planted the seed, but the smell of decay remains an intemperance you cannot resist.
“Ghost.” You manage behind his palm, brow scrunched in delicious pleasure that verges on the razor thin edge of too much. You almost whisper ‘Please.’
He’s close too, you can tell. You’ve done this enough times to know his tells. In darkness, in shadowed corners, behind closed doors where no one can ever see you know the shape of him. You know the motion, the scent, the sound. You know it when his breath starts catching a little, when the flesh of his stomach jumps and his thrusts become bruising with intensity.
Your hand sneaks down to your clit, and Ghost notices instantly.
“That’s it, Fix.” He breathes, voice dragging deep in his chest. “There’s a girl.”
Fuck.
It doesn’t take long. Yet even as you come you can’t look away- trapped by his gaze as you fracture open under his stare. There’s a whimper, a broken little noise swallowed by the meat of his palm and you jolt as the crest peaks, snapping and flooding through your veins with white-hot ecstasy that deafens the world from the blood rushing in your ears.
“Fuckin hell.” Ghost snarls as you clench down on him, and he sheathes himself full into you, his balls twitching as they grind against the swell of your ass. The gooey warmth of his release floods your insides and you can’t contain the purr of appreciation that escapes you as he grinds himself into it, working himself through the peak of his climax.
Those rust colored eyes never falter.
Though, you’ve always thought they reminded you of a smoky bourbon- one that burns against your tongue.
(p5/final part of fae poly 141 x cursed human reader || masterlist || cw: ANGST) peep the chapter title in the masterlist :D
It came as a quiet- one so deep and vast that even the winds forgot to blow.
The castle knew before anyone. It held its breath, the great hearths snuffing down to embers, the stones cooling beneath its bones. The will-o-wisps blinked out, one by one, not in fear, but reverence- so that today, no one will be led astray. The trees along the garden paths stopped their whispering, leaves still mid-quiver, branches creaking as they turned inward toward the heart of the estate.
Thrain raised his head beneath your chamber window.
The stag, so old and rooted in legend no bard had sung his name rightly in an age, stared skyward as snow began to fall. Slow, soundless. Not cold. Each flake shimmered faintly with magic, with memory. With you.
Inside, the chamber was dim and quiet, lit only by the pale glow of starlight seeping through frost-laced glass. The scent of lavender and winter clover hung in the air, soft and faded like a lullaby remembered from childhood. Curtains, woven with moon-silver threads and embroidered with wards to keep the darker dreams at bay, shifted gently in the breeze that wasn’t there. The room itself seemed to breathe slower now, as if matching your rhythm- one long inhale, one longer silence.
You lay nestled deep beneath layers of velvet and fur, of wildflower-threaded quilts and fae-woven linens that shimmered faintly with old enchantments. Johnny had insisted on them each morning, draping warmth around your ever-fragile frame even when spring had melted the snow and kissed new green into the garden paths. It was his way of trying to keep you rooted here- on this side of the veil.
Your breathing was soft and faint. The curse had slowed in its cruel unraveling, tugged back again and again by the desperate, tireless magic John poured into you. Every drop of power he possessed, every ounce of his life force, siphoned away over the years in hopes of buying you another day, another breath, another smile. It worked for a time.
But nothing lasted forever, and John knew that.
He had known before the sun set.
He sat beside you, unmoving, save for the way his hand combed endlessly through your hair- gentle, reverent, trembling. His other hand held yours, your fingers loose and still, warmed only by his touch. Your head rested against his chest, your face tilted toward the hollow of his throat like a child tucked beneath a parent’s chin. You hadn’t spoken in days, not truly. Only murmured fragments- echoes of half-remembered songs, unfinished questions, and once, the name of a star he hadn’t heard in years. You’d sounded so happy… John’s heart had wanted to tear itself apart.
You were quiet now in the way ancient things are quiet. Like a garden gone to sleep beneath snow, like a book with no more pages left to turn.
John whispered stories to you anyway.
He spoke of the first time you met- how he thought you were too stubborn to survive the fae court and too soft to ever bend it. How wrong he’d been. How the court, the world, and even he had been reshaped around your steady, patient will.
He told you how Simon had found you one morning feeding the ghosts of the orchard, and how Kyle still carried your pressed flower charms in his armor. He recounted Johnny’s latest disaster in the kitchens and how you’d once laughed so hard at him you cried- and gods, how he wished he could hear that sound again. He told you all of it, weaving memory into magic and memory again, as if with enough words, he might stitch your soul into staying.
And as he held you, his voice frayed around the edges.
"I love you," he said. Not for the first time. Not for the last. The words cracked like porcelain dropped from too high a shelf. “Still. Always.”
Your breathing, already shallow, paused, and he stilled in turn.
Then, you sighed- just once. A sound as soft and weightless as the falling of a single petal from a long-dead flower, peace in each strand. A sound of release, a breath unburdened.
And then- you were gone.
No thunder nor flash of light, and no violent wrenching. Just absence- the soul's candle guttered in silence.
Your fingers slipped from his. Your warmth, so long faint, faded fully. Your face went still in the most peaceful way, a small smile carved on your cheeks like something ancient had simply returned to the earth it loved. The faintest glow that had always clung to your skina your humanity tempered with magic, your life steeped in love- shimmered once, and then dimmed like a star blinking out.
John did not move.
He couldn’t even if he wanted to.
The grief did not crash into him; it hollowed him, slowly, like the sea does to cliffside stone. He stared down at your face, memorizing what he already knew. The curve of your lips. The flutter of lashes against your cheek. The small scar on your jaw from where you’d once fallen in the Queen’s Gardens.
John did not weep even if several tears tracked down into his beard. His hands, too strong to tremble in battle, now trembled with the soft weight of your body in his arms. He could not weep, for he knew this- this was your peace. He had done his best to find a cure, but- life was not kind.
A low, resonant groan echoed through the castle, neither man-made nor fae.
The very walls- alive with magic older than time itself- mourned you. A wail of stone and a s sigh of timbers. Crystals embedded in the ceiling chimed once and shattered and the lights in the sconces flickered to ash. The wind outside did not howl- but it bent, as if bowing low to the one it had once braided through wildflower hair.
And still, John did not let you go.
He held you through the coming dark, his chest silent but for the uneven quake of breath between shaky breaths, his magic still curled around you like a desperate tether. And for hours, he simply rocked you. As if in this moment, you were still alive. As if holding you long enough might unmake the inevitable.
But death, like magic, answers to no king.
And your body stayed still and at peace.
You had left with no anger in your heart, no hatred nor guilt. You left only love, quiet and worn and fierce- threaded through every inch of the man who now mourned you.
A soul as lovely as yours could never die cruelly.
It simply… drifted home, and John understood that even if he felt something shatter so deeply it echoed across every realm.
You were gone.
No cry and no shudder, just the soft parting of a thread from a tapestry.
Later, it was Simon who walked in first. He did not speak, only looked at John- stone-eyed and trembling, and knelt beside the bed to touch your cooling hand. Kyle arrived moments later, lips parted as if he might beg you to wake. But his voice failed him and so he sat on the floor, pressing a kiss to your palm and weeping quietly into your skirts.
Johnny didn’t believe it.
He shook his head, muttering, “No, no, not yet, not today, she promised she’d stay-” over and over, until Simon caught him and held him still while he sobbed like a child.
The castle keened.
The bellflowers shriveled in their hanging baskets. The ivy browned and curled. The air itself bent with sorrow, and the spirits of the hallways- kindly, playful little creatures- huddled in corners, their small eyes wide with grief.
Outside, Thrain bowed his antlers low and walked slowly through the gates of the high keep. His hooves did not echo and no one stopped him.
He climbed the stairs, impossible though they were for a creature of his size, until he stood in the doorway of your chamber. And all the men- wounded and raw and grieving- stepped aside for they knew.
He had come for you.
With reverence, Thrain knelt beside your bed. He took in your face- still so gentle, still so full of grace, even in death. He pressed his massive muzzle to your chest and for a moment, nothing happened.
Then, with a breath of magic so quiet even the fae barely felt it- your soul slipped free like morning sunlight spilling through an open window.
It rose, soft and warm, radiant with the echo of every kindness you’d ever given. Every time you’d kissed a servant’s brow or sung to the garden or asked a crying will-o-wisp what was wrong. Every time you’d called Thrain your dearest friend, every time you’d held hands with the men, and every time you’d forgiven John with that smile- always that smile.
And Thrain caught your tender soul.
Delicate, light as wind through reeds, and glowing like the first star of twilight. He cradled it in a curl of his antlers, the shadows of your memory flickering through the air around him- your laugh, your hum, your gentle little sighs of thought. He stepped carefully back from the bed.
John sank to his knees, and he still did not cry. There was no breath left in him to do so.
Thrain walked. Out of the castle and through the mourning halls, the bowing dryads, the crumbling roses, the silent sprites. Through the gate, down the weeping forest paths, across the river that had frozen at the moment of your death.
He walked and walked, until no living soul would reach his pace and spot.
And when he reached it, the veils parted for him alone, and he stepped into starlight.
The trees there had no bark, only silver and the roots sang hymns and chants. The sky was soft and black and full of ancient light. Thrain stood at the edge of the great pool of souls, and he bent his head low.
He did not let you fall.
He lowered you with gentleness carved from centuries of patience and pain, until your soul touched the surface of the pool like the caress of a mother’s hand.
And the water welcomed you, for you were a memory that would never die. A memory that caressed the space between his antlers just before he returned alone.
And the men- your men- stood at the gates, waiting, and they bowed their heads as he passed.
And John, still dressed in the clothes he wore when you left him, touched the place in the air where your soul had once lingered and whispered, for the last time:
"I love you."
The castle echoed the words for centuries.
And the world, though emptier, remembered you in everything that still dared to be kind.
“Will you still love me when I forget what love is?”
It's a foggy morning in Manchester. Sunday, which according to Simon's schedule means he's due for his morning constitutional walk and sitting in the park while everyone else is at church. The park is empty except from him. Mist hangs like wisteria from dry branches, obscures the path like smoke billowing in from a distant battlefield. It's quiet as usual. He prefers it that way.
Which is why he's not expecting the figure that comes running through the mist up ahead of him, bare feet slapping against the stone path and the swish of fabric sweeping along the ground. At first it looks like something straight from a ghost story- a woman clad all in white racing down a misty path underneath a overcast sky threatening rain. It takes him a few moments to realize you're wearing what looks like a wedding dress.
Simon barely catches a glimpse of your face- wild, the whites of your eyes showing, expression open with something akin to fear, before you suddenly trip on the hem of your expensive looking satin gown and go careening towards the ground.
He's not sure what exactly compels him to catch you, kneeling as you pant and shiver against the cradle of his arms. You're out of breath, hands trembling, can hardly manage a 'thank you' before you're trying to stand again- only to wince at something twisted or sprained.
What the bleedin' fuck. Simon's thoughts finally catch up as you try to get your feet under you despite the tangle of your skirt. He's got a hundred questions, most of them flavored with curses, but instead he chooses: "You're hurt."
It's not a question so much as a statement. He can tell by the way tension runs through your form you manage to twist your ankle or something similar. A sniffle manages to break its way out of you, and at last you look up at him, meeting his eyes for the first time.
Fuckin' hell.
Despite the mascara running at the corner of your eyes, your smeared makeup, and the evident look of panic on your face, Simon can't think of a time he's seen someone so...soft. Pretty, even.
"I-I'm sorry." You babble. "I had to ditch my shoes, I'm sure he would have heard me if I wore them on the cobblestones. I was trying to get up to the main street to catch a cab and-"
"Christ, slow down-"
"If I can just stand, maybe I can still get there before he-"
"He?" Simon presses suddenly. "What, you bein' chased or something?"
As if to answer his question, there's a voice further up the misty path- a bellow of utter fury that has you shrink into his arms with a muted gasp.
Something dark and rotten curls inside Simon- an ominous sort of snarl that tugs his scarred lips behind the fabric of his mask. You're shaking, he realizes, and it's not from the cold.
"Here." He says suddenly, standing and helping you to your feet. One massive hand steadies you by your waist, and Simon glances around before dragging you into the bushes, out of sight of the path.
It's frankly alarming how easily you go with him. He can feel you resist for a moment, pulling away, before ceding and surrendering. Quickly, Simon tucks you away beneath the twisted arm of an aging hickory tree, positioning himself between you and the path.
"He's coming-" You try, but quick silence yourself when Simon hushes you. He can hear for himself- the sound of fancy loafers slapping against the stone path. There's a man's voice that calls out a name, rising in volume as he runs closer. All at once Simon watches the man pass by- catching only a glimpse of gelled hair and a fancy tuxedo before he's past and out of sight, footsteps fading.
Simon waits a few moments more before turning to you. You've managed to tuck yourself into his side, face wan with fright as you strain to hear any sign of your would-be groom returning.
"He's gone." Simon tells you, in a tone he hopes sounds reassuring, but he's not entirely sure.
You nod, finally beginning to release your near-death grip on his jacket, rubbing your bare arms for a touch of warmth.
"That your name?" Simon asks, repeating the name he heard moments ago.
"Yes." You whisper, quiet as a church mouse. "I...thank you...ah-"
"Simon." He offers, with a calm he doesn't really feel. He's not really sure what happened, but he's got half a mind to go hunt down the man chasing you and beat the story out of him himself. He's sure it isn't a happy one, judging by how you're trembling and swaying like a sapling in a storm.
"Thank you, Simon." You whisper. "I appreciate the help. I...should get going."
Simon stares blankly at you, glancing down at a bare foot peeking out from under your dirtied hem. He shouldn't get involved more than he already has. It's none of his business, really. Despite the itch in his hands and the distant irritation simmering in his stomach, Simon knows sticking his nose where it doesn't belong rarely leads to positive outcomes.
"He hurt you?"
You flinch. Simon notices instantly.
"You go to the police?" He asks before you can answer.
"I-" You try, fiddling with your skirt. "It's not that easy."
"Why the fuck not?"
It's the wrong question. Simon watches as tears swell up in your eyes. Christ, he's never done well with crying women.
"He's got ahold of our finances. If I leave then...I thought it would get better once we got to our wedding day but-"
You're sniffling now, chest catching, and Simon inwardly curses as you rub at your face, smearing your mascara even more than it was.
"Where were you going to go?"
"I-" You pause with a trembling inhale. "I was going to try and go back to our apartment to change and get some of my things, hopefully before he got back, but-"
"and then?"
You pause, mouth twisting in a grimace.
No plan then.
Simon sighs, tilting his head to look up at the overcast sky. It looks like rain, he thinks to himself. Beside him, you balance gingerly on your injured foot, satin shifting gently underneath the bending tree boughs.
Fuckin' hell.
"Come on then." Simon tells you before reaching and digging in his wallet.
"Wha-" You ask when he hands you his driver's ID, brow furrowing as you realize there's no picture.
"Keep that for now." He tells you. "Can take it it to the police if I try anything, not that I will. My place's not far from here."
"I...thank you?" You try, blinking in confusion.
Simon only grunts, parting the bushes back towards the path and giving his surroundings a cursory glance before jerking his head at you. "Can walk, can't you?"
"I think so."
You're limping even still, favoring your left side and trying to avoid putting weight on your right. It's painful to watch honestly, and again Simon sighs, hanging his head in a moment of defeat before moving towards you.
"I- woah!" You gasp as he lifts you. "Hey, I'm not exactly small-"
"and I can bench 25 stone." Simon interjects. "It's only two blocks. I'll deal."
You go quiet at that, again fiddling with your dress before shyly looping your arms around his neck for balance.
"Thank you, Simon." You murmur into his shoulder, and Simon tries to ignore the odd clench of his stomach when you whisper his name.
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