Morrigan

The punishment she had endured for straying from the Lagoon had been swift.

Had Morrigan not recognized the stallion who had approached her, she would not have believed him to be the same cur who had refused to use force to counter her disobedience that first day. It was as if something had been warped and twisted within him to match the wounds that had impaired the use of his leg. But the injury had hardly seemed to hinder the bachelor when he had seen the dark woman sizing up potential suitors the meadow had to offer. Before she could consider fleeing, Felony had hurled himself upon her. In the handful of seconds it took for her body to catch up with her mind, the mare's fate was already sealed.

Morrigan was submissive when she followed Felony back to the Lagoon, but her mind was already seeking a new escape. From experience, she knew that his seed would quicken within her - that by the spring, she would be heavy with his accursed offspring. After the hurt and humiliation she had endured, Morrigan was determined to deny the foal life - even if it meant sentencing herself to death. An unborn child needed sustenance to fuel its growth, and she had no intentions of playing the part of willing host to the cur's parasitic creature. She planned to starve herself - she would not eat a single bite of the brittle winter growth that was not necessary for her own survival.

By the time spring arrived, Morrigan was little more than bones wrapped in a disheveled black hide. And yet somehow, the foal within her continued to flourish, as if it was draining the mare's life force to fuel its own. Even as her strength began to falter, however, Morrigan refused to surrender. Turning away from the temptation of the tender new greens, she retreated into the depths of the Lagoon's shadows, sustaining herself on little more than her hatred of Felony and the monster she carried. Determined to defy him, to deny him.

But the dark shrew could not hope to win a battle against her own body. The knowledge of her failure was accompanied by the agony of labor; a tempo of torture that culminated with the arrival of the child itself. Rising from her bed of earth on shaking limbs, Morrigan turned unwillingly toward the small creature stirring feebly on the ground behind her.

Still damp from the passage of his birth, the colt was dark - his coat seemed as black as the shadows that shrouded his left side. Though he appeared as delicate as any child, Morrigan could see beneath the frail features that he would take after her in build - as thick of muscle and bone as her prominently Friesian blood had made her. He looked almost nothing like the mangy cur whose genes had contributed to his creation, and for a moment the dark mare thought she would spare him.

Then his head turned toward the dark figure of his dam, and Morrigan drew back with an exclamation of disgust.

Where an eye should have stared at her from the left half face, there was nothing - nothing save skin stretched over an empty socket. The woman's sides heaved as she backed away from the wretched creature, and she disgorged the remnants of last night's scant dinner while the colt began his struggle to stand. By the time she was able to to regain a measure of composure, both the scent of blood and the commotion following the child's birth had drawn the attention of a nearby predator. Lifting her head, Morrigan's eyes met the amber gaze of the wolf, and they stood unmoving, unblinking - as if in silent communion.

Until suddenly she turned and ran, leaving her own flesh and blood to suffer a fate far too horrifying to imagine. Closing her ears to his plaintive cries, though she could not help but to hear the shrill scream of pain that followed her as she fled.