She is beautiful. She is divine. She is what he has sought for so long, kept a blind eye to for all these years. Back then, he had thought they were only two happened acquaintances, but now he sees the reality of their misshapen fate. He sees those years when she supported his rise with Ryatah to Minister, he sees how she grew tougher and coarser to abide by his rigid law of war, he sees how she supported him as he rose to king. This undeniable love was something that could only have come to pass now, that only could have been allowed to happen at the lowest of himself, the lowest of his history. Had she come sooner, he would not have ruled the Dale and bore the future Queen, he would not have this deadly fighting spirit over the loss of Ricochet, would not have this hatred and intense desire to be against Carnage. He would have fallen away, fallen short, been nothing and done nothing that the world needed doing. Perhaps his daughter was meant to be the new age of warrior royalties. Perhaps all the shifts in throne for the Dale were meant to allow an air of professionalism and self-regard to grow in the horses that were once so weak.

He feels the entirety of himself shake at the sight of her, how the autumn moon loves and smoothes along her body like silver-thread silk. He watches how it touches her and his pastel green eyes, vibrant with that otherworldly need to embrace the whole of her, and he is jealous of how completely it is given leave to consume her as he sits only to watch. The wolf envies how the moon grabs up and takes into its light the earth and the breezes thereon, how it comes into its fallen lover to sweep her off. He is enthralled and enraged at how he might not have what he longed to take for so long, so quietly, like a bum who shivers on the couch in some dark room with neon’s and curtains to reveal the smooth curves of his dark fantasies. He feels just as dirty, just as wrong, in this ogling state of gaze. He feels dirty and that is why he flinches. He is disgusting, thinking of Delicate, his treasure, in so terrible a light. He cannot see how she could want what he had to offer on these horribly lonely nights. He cannot see how she could be okay with seeing the wretch he could be, how truly calloused and savage he might become should she venture closer.

She comes to him then, in the midst of his self-revulsion, and a tickle of wind pulls at his locks, those black wraithlike things, to come to her. She withholds the beckoning only so much, but there is leakage where her will gives way. Where she cannot hold it back, he feels it like a burning, swift and aching for him to be closer. A single tentative step brings him a bit nearer, the shudder in his body not any lessened by the action. His eyes are squinted, his ears are pinned in despairing worry, his nostrils flare increasingly wide. He cannot hold back his hope very much longer, the hope that she does want this, him, them, wolf and wind. He murmurs a few words in vain, the deep threat and promise in his voice going unheeded. She comes ever closer ever quicker and he twists his back head so that her proximity would not entrap him any further. “Delicate... you,” and yet she begins her own words and with a jolt his gut knots, twists, pains him desperately. She says she wants this, the pain in his eyes and ache in his gut. She says she is not afraid of him, of the desire that threatens to spill over him and her both.

She must be lying. “Delicate... I cannot be tender, I cannot be gentle,” He moans, the tense thickness of his throat taut beneath her cheek as he must force his face away, must make sure his teeth cannot capture those beautiful withers. He cannot hold long, he knows, the desperate situation she creating far too rushing a tornado to resist much further than he already has. And yet she asks him to trust her, asks him. She does not say that she will test it out, that she will walk cautiously to pet the silk black of his hide. She does it and does it firmly. He is so confused, but when his eyes flick back to meet hers he can feel the world around him crumble, turn into the nothingness that love will make you see. Nothing outside, beneath, no. Nothing besides the lover who stands beside him. “Delicate....” And it is his last plea, for her before she brushes his muzzle and coos her light nicker into his cheek. Then it is that he whimpers to himself and rolls to the top of her back.

His breath takes in the glorious scent that he had been forced to neglect. His knees bend to squeeze onto the tightened muscles he had once forced her to earn. And all the rest becomes a muddle of emotion, of feeling, of something he realizes has been put off far too long. It is savage, even this first time, but he promised nothing less. He promised an all-consuming love and it is the fire in his breast that laps at her powers, her energies, her birth of wind and her womb. His breath becomes hoarse and he is again on the earth beside her, tracing those very same silvered curves he had been self-made to ignore until now. “Mine.” He murmurs in some feral afterglow. He means what he says, means what it is that they have just given one another. He sighs and wraps his large frame across the side of his love, his unbound wind.

Wind and Wolf are not so parted now.

______________________

THE BLACK WOLF OF THE DALE
Lover of Delicate, Mistress of the Wind.
Once love to Ricochet, Once love to Charlemagne.
Once Minister, Once King, Once Freki.
Forever a Father to Alayne and Bennet.