I'm the Red in Your Veins

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There was something more macabre about the soft tilt of flower petals curled against the girl’s cheeks than the terrors she woke from; how her dreams had wept blood from the sky and how the mountains screamed as they burned— all was silent now, all was still. Those flowers taunted her with kissed mouths swollen with pollen, with faces pale and mocking and lacking that violent cardinal slash of murder. It had all felt so real that she had to shake bits of grass from her shoulders when she thought her fur might’ve been crusted with blood and taste her ragged gasp which carried only the sour of girlish fear.

It had been years; it had to have been ages that she was trapped in that nightmarish hell where an untouchable world of royalty had fallen as easily as those petals from her skin. It had to have been years, for when her heart finished hammering and her hackles laid flat, Arya could see that the world had gone on without her. Great mountains bracketed the valley of flowers she stood in; gone were the jagged, snow-crisp peaks of home, of anything familiar. 

Arya had never been on her own before, never had to be, but before the bile of dread could rile her belly, there was something on the wind. Someone. There, across that great valley, came the beast that even her nightmares feared; and she ran straight to him. "Callanwolde.”

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Hearing her name roll across those savage teeth felt as sinister as the battle-worn breath on her skin; it was wrong; it didn't belong there.

That chill didn't stop her from breathing in the familiar scent of rot and grime in his fur. Arya had never feared the beast. The points of a crown were sharper than his teeth. He pulled back no sooner after they'd met, but not without leaving a faint smudge of red against her pale breast. 

Her red letter. 

"What's happened? This isn't our land; everyone's gone." Arya gazed up at those gnarled scars that reminded her of the stories an ancient tree would see over the eons she'd been asleep. "Everyone but you."

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Had the Highborn not woken under such strange circumstances, perhaps Arya would've turned a tempting tilt of her chin. You should. She might say before satisfying her own indulgences owed to her by the brutal wolf enslaved to her family, as was her birthright to do so.

He would provide, and she would take. 

But in all her intrigue, Callanwolde alone couldn't offer her the stability of her family's nearness nor the bravery needed to be so boldly selfish in her whims to unspool his thoughts to dine upon.

 Perhaps, though, they needn't make such haste. Arya took a step toward him, inclined to be brought to the rest of her family. "Whatever this...this new world is, it doesn't seem to trouble you. You could've easily stolen away." The girl danced the line of curious patience with a dog trained and beaten to bite all but her. Arya had always been enticed by his teeth all the same. "Why didn't you?"

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Callanwolde's servitude was something Arya had always thought as equally sad as it was fascinating. He gained nothing, was rewarded by nothing, and by the Highblood's pointed standards, he was nothing, and yet when presented with an open door, the beast had planted his heels. For what, the convenience of knowing which hand the abuse would come from?

Even she was not so blind to call it loyalty but perhaps too naive to think it might have anything to do with her. The beast's gluttony for punishment was indeed a curious thing to the Highblood.

With the whisper of a sweet name that sounded out of place coming from a beast marred by death, she fell into step beside him. Then, the weight of his touch came like a stained ax across the nape of her neck, like he had every right to touch her. Arya didn't shy away. "Alright, then." How frustrating must it be to be bigger, stronger, and more powerless than he ever had been? "Don't be seen." The words came whispered in care of his boldness, a warning of punishment that might be doled by the hand of those he was so familiar with as he brought her across the valley.

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The absence of forbidden fingers across her fur was felt just as strongly as his grazing touch when the beast withdrew from her. She didn’t seek to close the distance he created.

Arya wasn’t hungry, for her belly still swelled with unnerved butterflies, but it didn’t stop her from saying, “Ptarmigan,” for the sake of watching him hunt in all his brutal ways.

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It was not with bated breath that Arya watched the beast hunt—if there was one thing Callanwolde could do well, it was kill; instead, it was with suspicious awe. In his element, he made even the retrieval of a meal a spectacle, and as he carried those dripping bodies back to her plate, she wondered how often he imagined doing the same to the Highbloods he served.

“I’m not hungry.” The white wolf would say softly. It was selfish of her to let steam out of the pot for the sake of watching him do something for her, but she wouldn’t apologize for encouraging this simple act of instinctual violence in the beast, nor would she begrudge the waste. Arya watched the blood dribble from his chin before she met his eye. “Tell me what it’s like to kill something that wants to live.”

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Arya didn’t flinch from his lack of manners, for that too was something that fascinated her. He didn’t shy from the carnage or eat with care; he was a beast through and through, pretending to be nothing he wasn’t.

Perhaps that’s why she had become entranced by him from the first day she laid eyes upon his ragged dark fur. He was too candid to have two faces. There was only one, one that wept with blood and ptarmigan meat.

“I don’t know how.” Something she’d always said without shame, but this time, she didn’t like the way it felt being said to him. When the beast stepped closer, she planted her feet. “Funny where the power falls between us two.”

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