It was a pointless endeavor, she thinks. Would it not be easier to simply lay down and let the cat finish her? But no, cats are not known for mercy. They enjoy the taunting of their kills, playing with their prey, and Malleah did not wish to suffer such an undignified death. If it would merely snap her neck she might do it, so great is her fear of the pain to come and the pain that still lingers. Her poor body is battered and bruised from a rough night - her tumble with Carnifex, her fall in the foxhole, and the claw marks on her hip and on her face. The cat can sense her weakness. It's eyes seem to glow with a certain predatory understanding of what will occur, how she will go down and it will feast until it's belly is swollen with wolf in contentment. Would Carnifex come searching for her tomorrow only to find traces of her fur and blood smeared on the ground? In a way it gives her grim satisfaction - he would feel guilty for leaving her. That much she knows. If he really WAS in love with her, he would hate not being able to make the decision whether to stay away from her or not, a decision the puma was about to take from his paws.

She falls into a fighting stance, head between her slender legs and maw dripping with blood from the gashes it has left on her face. It stings. Bad. Oh god, what if she managed to survive this crippled only to die from infection. What if it maimed her so that she couldn't walk, could only drag herself a few feet at a time and she starved to death? No, she couldn't think like that. Her ears pin back as the lion inches lower, its hind quarters smoothing out as it readies to launch itself at her and then a most miraculous thing happens. A barreling black figure emerges in a rush and both Malleah and the lion's attention spins to it. "Carni!" She gasps on a whimpered breath of relief and joy, tail jolting upward even before she snarls in warning as the lion leaps for him.

He is a sight that is magnificent to behold as he lunges right in at it, seeming larger than life to her eyes. Her heart slams into her ribs harder than before and she dances forward and backward in anguish at the moment - would he die? What would she do if he died? She might as well die if he did. But he is so big! Blood, it spurts around them and she sees darkness glistening on his fur as he snarls and rages and tears at the beast. It falls beneath him like a tree beneath a tsunami - a once mighty thing brought low by something even greater.

It gasps and it shudders and it dies. He does not stop. He continues to thrash at it, a wild animal, wanton in his blood lust, and she watches in amazement even as her throbbing paw rises so that it is tucked back into her chest and her body tilts to the side to accommodate the pain in her hip. As her adrenaline falters the pain rushes in. She isn't mighty like him. She is small, a wraith, a mere wisp of a thing and it consumes her as her breath comes in panting gasps, eyes blinking furiously against the burning of her maw. "Carni, Carni," she mumbles in a whine, as if he is her savior and he is her lover and she sinks back onto her haunches with another low whine, fearful of interrupting his crazed movements.