the longest night.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] They don't go far. Lukas doesn't want to take Danicka back outside again, into the darkness and the cold. The largest bonfire is out there, but the night is below freezing and she's shed her coat. He sees her in black so rarely. He's not sure he's ever seen her in black. He's never seen her like this, with a wreath of winter in her hair, barbaric, ritualistic, less a queen, more an embodiment of the season.

Her hand is in his, though, and not because she wants to touch him. There's submission in that. He doesn't like it. It reminds him of the way she used to never meet his eyes for long. It reminds him of her calling him not by name but by title at JFK International, as though all their months together, all their secrets shared, all their love made meant nothing.

He takes her to the far corner of the longhouse, where it's colder, dark, but away from the tiny door in the far end. The benches run all the way to the wall on this end; the fire's a good twenty feet away, and the light here is flickering and uncertain. Cold seeps through the small gaps between the stacked logs of the walls.

Lukas has yet to shed his outerwear. Unlike Danicka, he does wear black, and quite frequently. His coat emphasizes the breadth of his shoulders, falls past his knees. The details are lost -- the fine tailoring of his clothing, the brushed-steel clasp of his belt, the buttons and machine-stitched holes, all the marks of modern-day clothing. They may as well have fallen out of time, backwards into history. They may as well be an echo from their own ancestral past, a Shadow Lord and his silent, submitting mate in the dark ages. In the woodfire-scented shadows, he's imposing, dark, and the rage in his heart is a flame in the dead of winter.

It's a blanket that softens the bench, though, and not the skin of some animal. And a moment later, Lukas slides out of his coat and drapes it over Danicka's shoulders. The lining is satin, sleek and soft, warm with his body heat.

He sits down beside her with a quiet exhale, elbows on his knees, saying nothing. Under his coat, he's wearing slacks; a fitted, ribbed zip-up, which is open to the center of his chest. Under that, a plain pullover, cotton and soft. All of it is dark. Brighter lighting might reveal colors -- brown, grey, navy. In the darkness, it may as well all be the same.

Eventually Lukas turns to Danicka.

"Je mi to líto." Maybe it means something that that's the first thing out of his mouth. "Ale já jen pokáraný Genevre." A flicker of a grimace. "[i]Pro ji neúctu, do mi. Do přimhouřit oko do vy by bylo pokrytecké.[/]"

Another pause.

"And if I didn't apologize to her," he adds softly, "she would have been within her rights to demand greater reparations from you. Not that I would expect my own packmate to do so, but ... Katherine has as long a memory as you do."

[Danicka Musil] Gaia only knows where Danicka has been tonight. It's the winter solstice, arguably one of the more sacred days across the western hemisphere, one of the most precious celebrations. It's the sort of festival or feast that keeps people from losing their minds in the dead of winter, gives them something to look forward to, hope for, when everything is dark and cold and forbidding. In most cultures there is some element of gift-giving, a reinforcement of the need for sharing amongst whatever community one finds oneself in, becaues otherwise everyone falls. Everyone fails. Everyone could very well die if they do not come together.

He knows that his mate celebrates these sorts of days, the turning of seasons, with mortals he will likely never meet. He knows that she has been worshipping the spirits he can actually go see and speak to since her childhood, knows that for her, mixing the dough for kolache with her hands covered in flour is a form of prayer. He knows that sometimes an offer of a mouthful of wine means something, especially when given to an enemy. That there was a ritualistic method to offering it first to the least of them all, the shamed kinswoman, then the Cliath, then the packmate, then the Alpha. That she had a reason, however obscure, for taking drinks in place of the two Silver Fangs who refused.

Danicka, he can easily guess, did not come to the longhouse tonight dressed like this, adorned as she is, because it happened to be in her closet and she hadn't worn it for awhile. Even ages upon ages ago, it is unlikely that every woman in the village would have dressed like this, been crowned with leaves and flowers and given food and drink to sacrifice and share. Her rainment is as dark as she is golden, as her skin is pale, and the only promise of spring now seems to live in her eyes, which will not meet his for very long.

They walk to the end of the longhouse, sit on the bench with their knees angled towards one another, her ankles crossed underneath her dress. She quietly accepts his overcoat coming to settle over her bared, soft shoulders, covering the curled hair that lays over them. He modernizes her with this act, brings her that much more into the present, even if her submission still feels like it belongs in their tribe's history.

Or their own.

A few weeks ago, he told her -- asked her, pleaded with her -- to tell him when he hurts her. Not to go away, not to distance herself... just like she did when he straightened on his seat and apologized to his packmate on her behalf. But she could not tell him in front of Ed, in front of Kate, in front of Genevre, that he may as well have backhanded her when he uttered that apology. She did not want to call him lord again, fair or not, forgivable or not. Even now, away from the rest of them but still in the same general space, she holds herself with just enough of a straight back to look worthy, just enough of a duck to her shoulders and head to indicate submission.

For a moment it seems like she isn't going to say anything at all, no matter what she promised to him in their room at the W before settling in to watch a movie. This is a different sort of pain, and in Danicka's world, it is far worse. She loathes humiliation. She hates it more than any physical pain, and makes no apologies for this bizarre pride. She watches him, her eyes drifting to his every few words then away, away, because

if she looks him in the eye she may scream at him.

Danicka looks at the floor, breathing silently, her chest moving slightly with it under his coat.

"I was not disrespectful to Katherine," she says levelly, still without looking at him. "It was harsh." she admits, all but whispering in the steady dimness and growing quietude of the longhouse, "but I do not belong to her. She has no right to touch me, and I am under no obligation to bear it if she does."

She lifts her head slightly then, finds Lukas for a moment. "She was more insulted when you apologized for me than when I rejected her. And she was right to be."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] There's this, at least:

A year ago, Danicka would not have dared to tell Lukas exactly how he wronged her. Where he went wrong. Even six months ago, he would not have asked her to.

But there's this, too. The immediate, instinctive, reflexive flickering of his rage; the raising of his proverbial hackles to a perceived challenge. Lukas's pride is fierce. Even before he was Alpha, before he was a lot of things, he didn't take well to his rank, his position, his territory, his word being challenged. The number of insults he's let slide, the number of battles he's chosen not to fight, has had far more to do with control than with lack of anger and pride.

So he's angry now, too. She lays it out for him and his first instinct is to rear against it, to fight it, to snap his jaws, to demand

Since when do Shadow Lords...

But it's an instinct he quashes. There's a quiet, and he laces his fingers together, presses his knuckles against the center of his forehead. When he lowers his hands, he looks at her. The firelight paints his face in shadows and highlights; glimmers in his eyes.

"Tell me what you mean," he says.

[Danicka Musil] "You undermined her as much as you subjugated me," Danicka says softly, aware both of his rage -- and the rage crowding the alcoves of this shelter -- and the nearness of packmates and potential rivals, alike. How they behave in public, even near-public, is very different from what they can allow themselves in private. She keeps her voice low. She makes eye contact only for brief moments.

She leashes her anger, which is so pale compared ot his and so vicious compared to most mortals', just as he controls his own reactions. The two of them are both practiced and capable liars. To look at them from across the room, no one would think they are doing anything but having a simple discussion, a quiet talk as the night winds down. They would not suspect argument, hurt, the desire to shout.

"Katherine is many things, but she's not a fool," Danicka murmurs. "An apology from you to try and repair an insult from me meant nothing to her. You gave her something hollow and false." She is quiet a moment. "She dismissed the rejection and moved past it with what, to a Silver Fang, passes for nobility and grace. I don't believe either she or I were terribly angry over it; I'll be shocked if she was surprised that I am still not interested in friendship with her." Danicka takes a breath, looks at him, says the truth, the stark and bitter truth,

which is sometime all they have to share with each other. Which has always been there between them, as though they put mountains in their path towards each other just to see if they can and will climb over them nonetheless, survive them, command them, conquer.

"All you did was hurt me and piss her off, láska," she says, her tone gentler than the words. "And, apparently, maintain whatever image you felt you needed to in front of Genevre."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] A long silence follows that. He's not looking at her now. He's looking across at the benches and alcoves on the opposite side, some empty, some filled with sleeping Garou. His hands are still clasped, parallel to the floor now, the fingers intertwined.

It's hard for Lukas to hear where he's gone wrong, and how. It's hard for anyone, but perhaps most especially for a man like him -- a Garou like him. The Alpha of a pack; the Alpha of a Tribe. A Fostern, entrusted with the leadership of Cliaths. An Ahroun, entrusted with leadership on the battlefield.

A Shadow Lord and a son of Perun, to whom failure is forbidden.

After a long silence, he draws a short inhale. Then, simply, "You're right. But it wasn't about Genevre. It was because you're my mate. And she's my packmate. And it felt like my duty to do something. Intercede somehow. Smooth things over."

[Danicka Musil] If he were any other wolf, Danicka would not only be speaking to him like this, she would think that hearing this from her would be infuriating, humiliating regardless of privacy, and intolerable. But because this is Lukas, her Lukasek, and because of the night he held her and told her rather matter-of-factly about failing to take Eldership of the Ahrouns of the sept, and because she knows him --

because she has known him better than she has a right to, since the night they met in January, since the first time she saw him as a man

-- she thinks that somehow, it has to be easier this way. Private. With respect, because she shows it differently and less fearfully to him than she does to other Garou. With love, because she would not bother if she did not care, no matter how hurt or angry she was. With trust, because she would not expect him to listen if she didn't believe that her hurt or anger or her word meant anything.

This is what is beneath the masks of social graces and leadership, of what the Shadow Lords must seem like to their own tribemates and to all Garou who view Lukas when his mate is standing nearby. The balance is nearly fucking impossible to find, between image and reality, between protection and devotion, between all the demands that pull at him and the fears that lock her down. This is what they find when they have a few minutes to sit, to talk quietly, even if they do not touch.

Danicka has nothing to say to that for a little while. She watches him, gauging his reaction, mildly surprised on some level that he isn't lashing out at her after listening to that and simultaneously wincing inwardly at herself for still thinking that so easily.

"We are never going to be friends, she and I," Danicka says, without disclaimer. "And any peace that there may be between us will be a lie -- and a fragile one -- if it comes about because of the duty or intercession of another." She realizes that she has not said this, and her brow furrows slightly as she adds, gently: "I understand why you wanted to. And how it hurts you, as things are. But ..."

Danicka sighs, and reaches up to pull his coat tighter around herself, as though the cold has finally reached her. "I do not think there is a way for you to mediate between the two of us without one or the other -- or both of us -- feeling as though you're taking a side, fighting a war, determining who is the enemy and who is the besieged."

She stops there. She doesn't have to tell him the product of that feeling, the end result for his pack.

Or for them.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] After she stops, Lukas is quiet for a while. They can hear the popping of the fire; the murmur of distant voice.

And then, the fabric of his clothes scraping over roughhewn wood, against the coarse-woven blanket. Lukas draws his feet up onto the bench, back to the post. He faces Danicka now, shadowed, large and dark, and speaks low and earnestly.

"I think you're right in that whatever peace you might find will only come about between you and Katherine. Every time I intercede, I may very well be making things worse between the two of you. But frankly, I'm not jumping into help make peace between the two of you. I'm doing it because I don't want Katherine to lose her temper, or -- worse -- to feel like you're taking shots at her while hiding behind me.

"She's a Garou, Danička, and a very tradition-bound Philodox of the Silver Fangs at that. She does not, and will never see you as an equal -- no more than I consider Genevre or Gabriella or any other kin mine. And what's not an insult coming from one's peer may very well be one coming from one's lesser.

"Láska... I think you already know this, but I respect you because I love you. Katherine, on the other hand, has no such stake in your wellbeing. If she perceives an insult from you and turns the other cheek, that's a favor she's doing me or, worse, an insult she's swallowing because she's afraid I'll retaliate against her. And one of these days she'll either decide it's not worth it anymore.

"I want the two of you to stop fighting as much as anyone. But have the good sense to be careful, Danička."

[Danicka Musil] It says something -- as it always has -- that Danicka doesn't interrupt. The sheer number of times he has unleashed torrents of his thoughts in conversation is equaled only by the number of times she has waited it out, ridden the wave, listened to every word without retreating or lashing out before he was finished. There was a time when it's very possible she did so because she was trained to. There's every chance that Danicka does this because she gives and expects it as basic fucking courtesy, that if you are going to bother speaking with someone, you may as well do a decent job of holding up the pretense that what they say has a place.

She knows the difference between a lecture and a conversation. She knows that either way, it is her duty to be quiet, be still, and hear what is said to her before assuming she knows where it's going.

There are other factors to bear in mind: the phase of the moon, the importance of the day, the brightness to her eyes that could be firelight or could be wine she had before coming here, wine she had after coming here. And those factors may explain why, when Lukas finishes speaking, Danicka rolls her eyes and looks away from him, pressing her lips together when she finds the fire with her gaze and looks at it instead of him.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Now he's angry. Instantly, immediately, furiously so. It's in his silence, in the sharp clench of his jaw, in the way the darkness around him suddenly seethes.

"What," he says, low.

[Danicka Musil] The worst thing for her to do right now is laugh at him, tell him she knew that was exactly what he would, that she knew it would be that word, that intonation, that look on his face. But Danicka isn't going to laugh. She isn't amused.

She glances to her side at him, and it would be a lie if she pretended that his anger doesn't make her nervous, that she isn't afraid enough that her chest feels like it quivers slightly. It's a lie she tells very well, a pretense she keeps up as she looks at him because she thinks

she is pretty sure

that if she shows that she's uneasy right now, it will only frustrate him further. But because it's Lukas, and because it's been so long, and because not so terribly long ago he held her in the house he bought for her and let her cry onto his shoulder, she doesn't feel a sudden and undeniable urge to tell him whatever the fuck she thinks he might want to hear right now, whether it's submission or anger or... anything.

What she learned early on was that Lukas was difficult to lie to because people only believe what they want to believe. And all he ever seemed to want was the truth, even if he didn't like it.

"I am trying," she says evenly, and quietly, the whisper creeping in towards his ears through the cracks in the fury that surrounds him suddenly, "not to yell at you about how fucking insulted you make me feel when you try to teach me lessons I learned before you were even Changed. I am trying not to bite your goddamn head off because I'm so fucking sick of hearing about how you want me to behave for the sake of that mother-fucking Fang." Her eyes have flashed, and she is very nearly gritting her teeth, but she doesn't dare bare them.

She takes a breath, lets it out to slow herself down. When she speaks again, it's measured. Careful. "What would you have me do? I have two choices, Lukáš: I bear anything from her you find tolerable, whether it's what I want or not, show her and all the rest of them the perfect submission you know I'm capable of, and do so for the sake of the Garou I belong to, or --"

An eyebrow cocks. "I can be myself. I can be as careful as my self-respect will survive, do what I can to be civil with someone I despise for the sake of someone I love, and I can either earn her respect or her fury without your intercession or your lectures on how to handle Garou... and Fangs in particular." The eyebrow lowers, her voice briefly edged in sarcasm. "Because after all, I certainly have no idea what I'm dealing with."

A beat. A true frown. "And by the way? I don't respect you because I love you. I just respect you. And I think that came long before I fell in love with you."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Of everything she says, of all that, what Lukas chooses to respond to first is --

"I know that your respect has nothing to do with your love. And that's more, and better, than anything I can claim." A beat. "I don't respect most kin, Danička. Most the kin I know are silly, frivolous things whose only concern in life is mateship, children, and/or their pretenses of independence. Those who aren't, I don't really know enough to recognize. And I would've never recognized you as such if I hadn't been so damn drawn to you from the very start.

"I'm not proud of that, but it is the truth."

His knees are drawn up; his wrists atop. His hand folds into a fist. The thumb rubs along the outside of the index finger. Then he relaxes, exhales abruptly.

"I'm sick of fighting with you over Katherine. I know you have history with her, bad blood, reasons to despise one another. I know you'll never be friends. I know you're trying to make some sort of peace for my sake, and I know -- if nothing else -- things are better now than a few months ago, when you were cursing her to her face in a language she couldn't understand.

"But I'm sick of standing on eggshells every time the two of you happen to meet. I'm sick of wondering if you're going to be a bitch, or if she's going to tear your head off. I'm sick of telling you shit you already know. And I am sick and tired of the two of us ending up hurt and angry every single time.

"Do what you like. I won't interfere again. But if she raises a hand to you, don't expect me -- "

and he breaks off. Because that would be a lie.

[Danicka Musil] Again, Lukas says everything he has to say. Danicka is looking at him and doesn't try to look away at a certain word, though if he's watching closely he can see hints of reactions, every single one of them caught and suppressed, told to wait their turn. She doesn't cut him off. He does that himself, and she stares at him for a few seconds.

"I have absolutely nothing to say to you right now," she says after awhile, softly. "So I'm going to leave."

There seems like there should be more. But there isn't. She unfolds his overcoat from her shoulders and lets it sink back behind her onto the bench as she stands up. The wreath crowning her is not quite so perfect now, unpinned as it is. She looks at him still, but what she said holds true: she has nothing more to say to him now.

Words are the sources of --

Danicka touches his face. For a moment. Her hand is cold, and then it's gone. She turns to go.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] (so not gonna botch this one!)
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 5, 9, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6) [WP]

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] "Don't."

Before she's even taken her hand away. Before she's even began to turn away.

He stands up a second after -- not hurriedly, but deliberately and swiftly. His coat is left on the bench, and she can see the taper of his torso, shoulder to hip; the way his hand closes to a loose fist and his thumb sweeps the curve of his knuckles, then relaxes.

"Danička, je to ten slunovratu. Zůstaň se mnou."

[Danicka Musil] She's taking the wreath off her head, standing between him and the fire. Even with his eyes adjusted, even with his preternatural senses, her body is a slim silhouette of darkness because of the light behind her, the thick blackness of her dress. Her skin looks darker, warmer, because of the firelight. Her hair looks brighter. Her eyes are harder to read when she looks back at him, the crown of freshly cut holly and long-dead roses held in both of her slender hands.

He saw a great deal while he was talking. And said it anyway. That is no surprise, though it might be if they were different people, if they were not Shadow Lords, if honesty were not such an ironically powerful thing between them.

When she speaks, it's very quiet, pitched to carry between them. She speaks in English even as he slips into his native tongue, which always seems to mean something, which only sometimes does.

"How much hurt must I forgive or ignore because I love you?" she whispers. "Do you tell me how I have sinned and remind me of where your loyalty really lies just to see if I will stay with you anyway?"

Danicka stops there. Has to. Her brows tug together, the firelight casing shadows across her eyes, around her cheeks, for a moment. Then she proves that her voice can get softer, barely audible: "I will. Because I have never felt anything, if I have not loved you."

She looks at the wreath in her hands, her frown deepening. "But I already know whose side you are on, because she is not the one being lectured and cautioned every time we meet." There's an emptiness in her bearing, similar to the blank canvas she is able to become when her survival or comfort depends on it, but he knows it for a bone-deep resignation that has quite possibly been there since she was a child.

"Jsem dělat ne nenávidět být kolem Katherine prostě proto, že nemám ráda jí. Nenávidím to proto, že téměř pokaždé čas..."

Danicka shakes her head slightly, winces. The expression fades back into that soft, welcoming blankness. She does not look at him. She contemplates the roses. "...Připomínáš mi, že to tento není ve skutečnosti, že různé, do konce.

"A to je těžké."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Anger, disbelief, frustration, outrage and hurt flash across Lukas's face in turns, one chasing the next. Hurt, most of all; a sort of aching, twisting pain that makes him wince, makes him physically grimace.

For a long time he says nothing, has nothing to say, can say nothing. They stand an arm's reach apart, both of them in black or colors so similar to black as to not matter. She looks at the wreath in her hands and he looks at her until the words falling from her mouth preclude that utterly, make him turn away.

Then he looks at the opposite wall, almost lost in the shadow. He looks at the knots in the logs, and the tiny slit between two of them where the twist of the wood leaves a gap.

"Do you really," he says at last, softly, "believe all that of me?"

And he looks back at her. There's a tight band around his chest, closing in; it's crushing his ribs, curving them inward, collapsing the chambers of his heart.

"Is that really what you expect from me? How you see me?"

[Danicka Musil] This would be poetic punishment, this crushing feeling of pain and anger tightening the very muscles in Lukas's chest and face, an externalized mirror of what went through Danicka and was so quickly hidden when he apologized to Katherine on behalf of his mate, followed it with a private

for fuck's sake.

It would be perfect, if she had said it all to hurt him. To make him feel what she felt. To show him that he was right to be afraid in the beginning, to prove to him that she can, indeed, shatter him.

Except seeing him like this makes her faintly lightheaded. Except that with anyone else she would turn, leave, and possibly never come back. Except that with him, despite everything, she wants to make it all better. Unsay it. Let Katherine kiss her goddamn cheeks if she wanted to, just to keep all this from happening, to keep Lukas from looking like that, to keep his voice from sounding like this, if that would do it.

She takes a deep breath before she descends completely into such thoughts, before her bones turn to butter and her self to smoke. Before her will, her life, before everything she is and is becoming turns to so much waste because the thought of hurting him destroys her.

"My entire life," she says quietly, looking at him now, not dropping her eyes demurely away, "every decision I made was based on what punishment I was trying to avoid, whose reputation I had to guard. Even when I stepped outside the bounds it had to be done so, so carefully, with those two things in consideration at every moment."

Her voice is soft, but the consonants are struck in every syllable, the ts and ds tapping from the tips of her tongue. Her lips move with the sensitivity of her enunciation, which makes her words clearer despite how low her murmur is.

"What I think," she whispers, "is that you want me to be one way when we are alone together, but if we are around other Garou, I should go back to fear and apprehension driving every word I say, every gaze, every gesture, every step." Her voice is hardening slightly, but not getting any louder. "I think you see me as a foolish, frivolous bitch who embarrasses and shames you in public, because that is how you treat me.

"Sometimes."

She lets that hang for a moment, then takes a breath. "I expect you to be loyal to your pack, to your sept, and to the war above and before all else. I believe that to be with you, I have to accept that if there is any conflict between myself and any of those things, I must lose. But," she goes on, looking at his eyes, begging them to look back into hers, "as for how I see you... that's a very big question," Danicka falters. "And I don't think I can answer it right now."

She exhales, and it makes her shudder slightly.

Shiver.

"I don't believe everything I said is... how it really is." Her control is slipping. She's not stony, never icy, but it's entirely possible she has as much of a problem with crying in front of others as she does with crying on the floor. "I just want you to tell me so."

What she doesn't say is: and make me believe it.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] It's a moment or so after she looks at him -- looks for his eyes -- that he turns back to her.

Even in the smoky darkness of the longhouse, it's impossible not to see the clarity of his eyes; that color and lightness that was nearly preternatural. He looks at her as she speaks, watching her eyes, the movement of her mouth, the points where she draws a breath.

After; a silence.

"Danička," Lukas says then. "I don't ask you to do anything because I want to subjugate you. I didn't ask you to stop speaking poorly of Katherine in a language she couldn't understand because I wanted you to be a demure, submissive kinswoman. I don't ask you to let Katherine have her little empty gestures because I want you to bow to her. I just wanted ... some basic courtesy between my pack and my mate.

"But you're right. It wasn't the same tonight as it was months ago. You made me choose between you and my packmate then, and I didn't like it. Tonight, you simply refused to pretend that there's any love between yourself and Katherine. You weren't unnecessarily rude. You weren't trying to incite her. And I acknowledge that. All right? I understand that, and I've told you: I won't ask you to pretend again.

"Only -- don't turn this around as proof that I'll throw you to the wolves for the unity of my pack. Don't tell me you expect to lose in any conflict between your best interests and those of my pack. That's ... insulting to me, Danička, just as it was insulting to me when you assumed it was only a matter of time before I struck you."

He's angry now, quietly so; both of them are making an effort not to advertise their disagreement. His hands are tight and fisted, though, the muscles of his face pulled taut, harsh in the shadow.

There's his breathing, too -- swift inhale, slow exhale.

"That's not," he says softly, "how it is."

[Danicka Musil] She doesn't want to be here.

When she left the gathering of would-be witches and pagans and general earth-worshippers quite some time after sunset, Danicka wanted to be out in the woods where she engaged in whatever ceremony was necessary or natural between herself and her mate to seal them with ritual as they were already sealed by unspoken decision. She wanted to be with her people, loved and hated and distant, those who understand on any level what it is like to be a part of an unseen but horrifically bloody war, who know that spirits are not imagination but live in vials and in darts and are constantly affected by the physical realm, constantly affecting it.

Danicka wanted to be with Lukas, and knew he would be here, and that she could find him there, whether with his pack or on his own. She did not stop at home to change her clothes, neither into something more normal or even warmer. She wanted, on some level, for him to see her like this: priestess, or pagan, or daughter of something beyond the divisions of tribe and blood.

Briefly, she remembers the full moon she saw overhead last night, though the one over them now isn't even quite half. She remembers assuming that it was Cristobal's birth moon, thinking he must be an Ahroun and having no way to back it up or explain the assumption but gut feeling. The longhouse, the fire, all of it makes her feel like once again she's been thrown back into another time, but this argument

fight

is modern, and unthinkable in the grand scope of things. How could they love as they do, be together as they are, and have this, too?

"I have never," she says quietly, "made you choose."

Which is part of the problem: they say things that need answering, say so much that has to be responded to, and there's no room for it all in a conversation. The various threads and strings of words knot together, spin off, unravel, become even more tangled the more they try to untie it all, smooth out the kinks. She goes back to the beginning of what he says and she refuses it, fights with it, her face becoming more and more unreadable by the moment, the longer this goes on.

It isn't intentional, this time. But whether or not he knows that is a matter of trust and belief, and even Danicka would not fault him now if he saw her face turning distant and impassive and assumed she was shutting him out.

"And I didn't call this proof." She looks beaten. Not defeated, not head-down-shuffling-voice-fidgeting-hands. But resigned. Tired. "There's the war, and then there's everything else. I know that. I just don't want you to treat me like you're ashamed of me."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] An instant reaction, something like outrage: "Danička, how could I ever be --"

he stops. Because that's not what she said. She didn't accuse him of being ashamed of her. On some level, she must understand that this is impossible; as unthinkable as it is that they could even

fight like this. So viciously, so woundedly, tearing at each other as though it could heal their own hurt.

Lukas takes a step closer, broadshouldered, sleek and solid and powerful in his fitted, ribbed pullover, which molds to his shoulders and the sides of his chest, the taper down to his waist. Firelight picks out the faint fuzz to the fabric -- delicately knit wool, dark as his coat was.

"I'm not ashamed of you," he says, quieter. "I'm sorry I treated you like I was."

[Danicka Musil] How could I ever --

And she flinches, slightly, a flicker of expression rather than a physical, self-protective jerk of her shoulders and head. It's entirely unlike the full-on flinches of a stressed kinswoman she gave in the twelfth century every time those Garou and Kin she did not know or trust would lash out somewhere, show temper.

It is not the perfect, controlled stillness she would reveal to her brother or mother when she was younger in the face of their rage. In her family, in that house, flinching only made them angrier. It only made them want to hit her again

and again

and harder.

She does understand, though: she knew without him saying it that a part of him wanted to fuck her in his room at the Brotherhood and wanted everyone in the common room and other bedrooms to know that she was there, that she was his, that she was enjoying his mouth on her, his cock inside her. Neither of them ever said a word about it, but Danicka knew. Just as she knows now, even now, that he's not ashamed of her. That he didn't avoid making love to her in his room at the Brotherhood because he was embarrassed to be with her after all the trouble with Sam, with the pack, with Danicka. That he didn't buy that house so he could sequester her, keep her compartmentalized, out of his business, the war, his life.

She knows. But that isn't what they're talking about, really. Truth be told, if anyone asked her what they've been talking about, Danicka -- socially agile, conversationally adept Danicka -- would have distinct difficulty explaining.

Unless it's just this: you hurt me, and you angered me, and I'm sick and tired of it. Even that would be barely a fraction of the story, a few rings off the mark, barely scratching the surface.

Her eyes follow him as he steps forward. It's not wariness, not per say. It is, however, intense awareness. Danicka looks deeply at him, at others, figuring out what they want long before they even know it themselves, but what isn't as obvious is how much she sees what is going on around her. Before he saw a trace of warmth in her spirit there was a certain hypervigilance to her borne of years of abuse and care; like she said. Every step had to be considered. Every angle kept in mind. Every fear treated as real. She watches him come nearer as though she must know, at all times, exactly where he is, just how far, just how fast he could get to her. Danicka doesn't even do it consciously.

Where his shirt forms to his frame, her dress skims the surface of her skin, not quite clinging but barely more than another layer of flesh. It's thin. In the dark it's hard to see that her nipples are hardened by the cold and pressing against it. She left his coat behind, left her own by the door, and she's cold. Her shoulders and neck are bared, and it's freezing. Inside the longhouse it can't be warmer than the fifties, if that.

In her world, you bear the cold without complaint. You remember that you are last in your house, that the needs of the Garou and the pack and the war come before everything, trump every concern, destroy every other hope. In her world, though, love was not a possibility, not something she was capable of. And now that it's here, and she has it,

she has no idea what the rules -- which determine her survival, which determine everything in her life -- are.

She watches him, wanting to apologize, but she doesn't know for what. So she keeps her mouth closed, her wreath in her hands, and watches him.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Danicka says nothing. So after a moment, Lukas speaks again, quieter still:

"The War is paramount to me. Because it has to be. But the Nation is not the war. My pack is not the War. Not always. And ... " he struggles a moment. Finally, as gently as he can: "It insults my intelligence and my judgment to suggest I would always, automatically put my pack before you.

"I made a mistake tonight. But it doesn't mean ... any of the things you said, earlier. It doesn't."

There's a certain wariness to the way he approaches her, one step, a long wait; then a second. It's almost like he's coming at her

sideways

while she watches him to see if he will hurt her; if she should run. Figuratively, if not literally. Remove herself into her silence, into her watchfulness, into her perfect placid stillness, so far away that he couldn't possibly hope to catch up.

Lukas angles his approach now; puts his back between her and ... everything else. They're in the corner of the longhouse, away from the fire, away from the door. It's colder here than it is near the roaring flames. Cold is seeping in from the walls. She's cold, because she left her coat at the door and his coat on the bench, and she wore this tonight because on some level she wanted him to see her like this,

pagan,
half-wild,

something like a priestess or a goddess; which is something like what a cub in the 12th century -- who became an elder in the 12th century, and the progenitor of a long line that even now persists in the mountains of northwestern and northern Spain -- thought of her as. And called her,

just like once upon a time, on some level, he wanted all the wolves whose dens were near his to know that he had a mate, and he was enjoying his mate, and she was enjoying him, and they belonged to each other.

Now his eyes are clear in the darkness. They watch each other, alert, aware, not quite trustful. They say nothing now. After some time his eyes drop; to her arms, to the prickle of gooseflesh, which he can see in the oblique light, though the darkness hides her erect nipples and her will hides any hint of shiver.

He reaches forward, as carefully as he might a wary, wild thing ready to bolt. If she lets him, his fingertips touch the outside of her upper arm -- curve around her slender tricep. His palm is very warm.

"Pobyt," he says. "Zůstaň se mnou."

[Danicka Musil] Her brows furrow together slightly when he says again that it's an insult, but the frown is hesitant, brief, and incomprehensible. (Uncomprehending.) She doesn't answer.

She watches him still, the way he edges towards her like she's going to bolt. And at least her back isn't to the walls of the longhouse, the corner to be backed into; she is standing still between Lukas and the fire, between the bench they sat on and the faraway entrance. Some part of her is instinctively, habitually considering escape plans. Running around the fire, going for the door, which wolves she'd have to pass, whether alerting their attention would be an acceptable risk. She can't help it, but she's not ashamed of it. She just doesn't advertise it, knowing it would only hurt him if he knew that she still thinks of what she might have to do to survive him.

And yes, some part of her is debating even as she stands there that maybe it would be better if she just shut her mouth, bit her tongue. If she shouldn't bother telling him that hurt or this is unfair. Maybe she should let it go, or at least pretend to, because arguing with him goes nowhere, does nothing, changes nothing. It isn't quite the truth, but it's still a temptation to believe it. Arguing with him, when she loves, is so much work. It makes her so tired.

Because she cares. It was easier, before she started caring about holding on to something in her life. Him.

In a wolf pack, the alpha pair mates, and the others do not. They aren't permitted to. They aren't a part of the process. If they mate they create their own families, their own packs, they separate. There is only one Garou in the Brotherhood now with a mate, and as far as Danicka knows he was the only one in the Brotherhood back in April with a mate. It's a mark of status, at least as far as instinct goes: he earned his rank. He challenged for his mate, took her from her original family, her family's packs, and he could not have done that if he were not strong and renowned and worthy of taking a mate.

He may very well be the only Garou in this entire longhouse right now with a mate, with one to call his own. Somewhere, there is pride for that, maybe even envy of it on the part of others. She is well bred. She is beautiful. She looks, tonight, touched by spirits somehow. She doesn't even realize that even the Garou know

Wyrmbreaker's mate, they say she's clever

they say she's brave

they say she's stronger than she looks, and she gives good advice.

She might be horrified to know it.

Lukas comes close enough to touch her, and Danicka does not flinch away or jerk her arm from his touch. She looks down at his fingers on her and then back at his face, back up at his eyes. Then, with a certain eerie gravity to her voice, however quiet it is and despite how much he might need to hear an apology now instead, an expression of trust:

"Ale to je velmi chladno, má lásko."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] "Vím. To je důvod, proč chci, abys zůstala se mnou."

Because it's so cold. Because the night is so long, and the season so dark that some part of them,

some part of their primitive minds that doesn't care about modern science and astronomy and solstices and the tilt of the earth; that thinks mate, warm, safe, good when they sleep together and mine, mine! when their bond is somehow threatened; some part that's remained the same through the past ten thousand years, that dreamt up rituals for the dead of winter to beat back the dark, to bring back the light -- the same riituals that Danicka might've seen last night had she stayed any longer in the 12th century, and the same rituals that Danicka's mortal friends mimicked tonight --

some part of them must wonder if the sun will ever be warm again. If the days will ever be long again.

If they'll ever be okay again.

"Pojďme někam jít," he says. His hand falls from her arm, but he holds it out to her instead: a palmful of shadow and light, flickering in the glow of the fire. A pause; enough for thought.

"Pojďme jdeme domů."

[Danicka Musil] "Ne," she says, the both of them falling into a language no one around them can discern well enough to understand what the fuck is going on between the couple that was, just a moment ago, looking like one was about to run and the other was about to lunge.

That single word could break him, break this fragile thing that is not quite peace or even understanding between them. She says it so gently, shaking her head slightly. It could mean

No, I'm not going with you. I don't want to. I won't.

But Danicka reaches up and puts her fingertips on his lips. They smell like the honeyed bread she was offering to fire and wolves earlier. They smell like holly and dried roses from the wreath she's been holding. "Jste měl říct, 'budu vás udrží teplo'," she whispers, as in instruction.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Ne makes him flinch -- makes his eyebrows draw inward and his eyelids flicker and his mouth twist, faintly. He's facing the fire. She can see him more easier than he can see her.

And then she puts her fingertips to his mouth. To those lips, which untwist, settle back to a line; then part as she speaks again.

He draws a breath past her hand. Then he kisses her fingertips, kisses them without raising his hands, gently, lovingly, worshipfully.

"Budu vás udrží teplo," Lukas says; less a repetition, more an invocation.

[Danicka Musil] His face is so firm, so much like the mountains, so easy to see as cold and distant and hard. Danicka is softer to the touch, softer on the eyes. The first lupus-born wolf she ever met -- a wolf who now is forbidden to get anywhere near kinfolk, because he ate one -- called her soft. Wind on leaves, seeming fragility, and she felt more clearly seen by that Theurge's eyes than she had by any Garou for a long time.

The dim light in here strikes off her hair, turns it brilliant gold. It catches on the stray hairs and illuminates them, gives her a fuzzy, bright aura when he looks too close. Her eyes are a darker green than usual in this light, just like they were on the summer solstice -- all deep woods and mysterious shadows -- but the firelight brings out the other flecks in her irises more. She looks past her widened pupils with thin rings of lush green and saturated amber.

If Cristobal had seen her for the first time like this, wreathed and clothed in darkness, lit only by the fire, he would have forever kept that image in his mind when encountering Shadow Lords. He would have thought her a god. Not wondered. Not guessed. Believed.

But she has no idea, really, how Lukas sees her. If he really does think her frivolous, a bitch, an embarrassment to him when she chooses not to show the basic courtesy he knows she's capable of even with those she hates. If he really does believe that she has and will continue to try and pit him against his pack for her sake, to prove something of his devotion -- or prove his lack of it. If he understands how little she expects, in the end, how unsurprised she will still be if he throws her to the wolves, and how confused she is when he says this is an insult.

It's been half a year that they've been mated -- less, that it's been official and honorable -- and they have a den now. They have a bed they've slept in once, made love in over and over. And that was the last time he touched her, before she came tonight and his hand brushed hers as she offered him wine.

"A je to taková dlouhá noc," she whispers, almost wistfully, as though -- at least in ritual, in pretense -- she is still protesting what he keeps asking for:

Stay. Stay. Stay with me.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] There's something luxuriously primal about the way he kisses her hand now.

His own are by his sides, loose and relaxed, palms toward his thighs but held a little ways away, unconsciously athletic, ready. He doesn't touch her with his hands. He doesn't need them. He nuzzles against her fingers; ducks his head to nudge her hand against his face. Against the line of his jaw, and the plane of his cheek. His mouth to her palm, then, kissing her again, warmer, slower.

For a moment his eyelashes kiss his cheek; his eyes close. Then reopen, brilliant in firelight, seeking and finding hers.

"Budu nechat vás bezpečí," he murmurs against her kiss, like ritual, or promise.

[Danicka Musil] Her hand does move to his cheek, cup his jawline. Her thumb strays over the lower edge of his bottom lip, is there when he opens his eyes. He gets past the first, he gets

Budu

and Danicka presses her thumb to his mouth, does not let him finish the promise that, ultimately, he knows he could not keep even if he were permitted to get it past his lips. "Ne," she says, as gently as before. Again, as though to teach him:

"'Je to nejdelší noc.'"

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Lukas's hand does come up now, catching hers, pulling her thumb from his lips.

Replacing her hand against his breastbone, and the beat of his heart.

"Je to nejdelší noc. Budu nechat vás bezpečí dnes večer."

[Danicka Musil] He insists, and when she hears the rest of it, not knowing that before that dnes večer wasn't there, Danicka's face pulls in an expression of ache. He makes her touch his heart, and she looks much as he did not so long ago, when his chest seemed to cave in and his ribs felt like they were breaking inward, piercing his lungs, lancing his heart.

This is not the effortless, seamless ritual of the summer solstice. They did not fight that night, and the words came easily, and it feels broken to her. The day. The night. Something is wrong that has not been entirely healed, repaired, or even cleansed, and she cannot change it because she cannot name what exactly isn't right about all this.

Pobyt. Pobyt. Zůstaň se mnou. echoes like a drumbeat, a heartbeat, in her mind. When she got up to leave the first time, when he stopped her because it's the solstice, and he wanted her near. When over and over he's pulled her back because it's the longest night, and he wants his pack and his mate near and close and warm and safe.

Despite the fact that she cannot be close and safe when they are nearby. Despite the fact that she does not want to be with them. Despite the fact that she was angry, and hurt, and did not want to be in this fucking longhouse another moment except for the fact that

it's the solstice. And he kept saying

Stay. Stay with me.

She looks at him, her brow furrowed and a wrinkle between her eyebrows that doesn't leave. It's ache and frustration both, longing blocked by something she can't quite explain and is far from able to overcome. Eventually Danicka exhales, and her face smooths, and she slowly pulls her hand from him, turning enough to cast the wreath in her hand into the fire as though it were meaningless. Which it may very well be, in the end. Just holly. Just dead flowers. Just a circle. Just a symbol.

"Let's go," she says, barely audible.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Lukas, irrationally and illogically, has to tamp down the urge to snatch the wreath out of the fire; out of the very air. He could, if he wanted to. He's fast enough, agile enough, deft enough. He could catch a throwing dagger out of the air if he wanted to. He could catch the wreath.

But he doesn't. Because it's illogical. And irrational. Because it's just a bunch of holly leaves and dead flowers; just a silly symbol

of the season. And the night. And her position; who she is, who she can be, who she is tonight, on the longest night, in the darkest season.

The fire flares briefly higher. The dried roses go first; then the holly, releasing a distinctive, albeit faint scent. Lukas looks back at Danicka as she says let's go, so softly that he can barely hear her. And he doesn't move.

A silence.

"Já nevím ... kde jste."

That's what he says, at last. Which makes no sense, of course. She's right there. She's right in front of him, tactile, tangible. He could reach out and touch her. He could reach out and feel the softness of her skin. The coolness, because it's cold in here. He could press his hand to the center of her torso and feel warmth there. He could feel the softness of her breast, and the hardness of her nipple. He could.

He can't.

She feels a thousand miles away; or perhaps simply shifted, as though their realms of reality didn't quite coincide. Something's wrong. The night is fractured somehow, and he can't repair it. He can't even see the break, except where it is most glaringly obvious.

"Nevím, jak jste k zastižení. Nevím, co je špatně. Nevím, jak dát věci do pořádku. A já nevím, proč je tak důležité, že se věci hned mají dnes večer, kromě toho, že je to nejdelší noc, a nejdelší den bylo, když jsme byli nakryta."

He ends not because he's come to a logical stop, a proper and eloquent finish to his thoughts. Lukas stops there because he can't think of anything else to say.

[Danicka Musil] That's always been something of a crux between them, a core of trust: that he will not do so much that he can do. That he restrains his strength, his will, his power over her by choice rather than request. Even when he needs reminders, even when he forgets, even when she has to ask him, it has always been -- and is -- a cornerstone of what they have. He could catch the wreath. He does not. He could force her to stay when she wants to go. He does not. He could control her life down to every last facet, if he put enough energy and planning into breaking her utterly of her will.

He does not do that, either.

The wreath burns, not quite the sacrifice of the bread and wine from earlier but a sort of signal of an ending. The roses turn almost instantly to ash, symbols of longlost summer. The holly releases its odor, one of the first and most potent offerings mankind ever made to its gods. The thread holding it all together shrivels into a char, a black snake, then is gone. The thin wire it was all built on, framed on, will take much, much longer to change in the core of the bonfire.

Some things last longer than others. But everything goes away.

The fact that she flings it so carelessly is a signal, too. The role she played tonight for mortals is done. The outward manifestation of what she is, what she can be, is retreating back into her center, where no one can see. The ritual, flawed and disjointed, falls apart as easily and as naturally as roses thrown into fire.

She winces slightly when he says he doesn't know where she is. Because it hurts him when she goes away. Because he knows he cannot get to her when she does, cannot reach in and pull her back out, can't even find her unless she wants him to. It is -- has been -- one of her only powers, her first and strongest defense mechanism against everything that could be done to her, taken from her.

To find a place, a safe place, deep inside, where no one could touch. And stay there, out of harm's reach, for as long as she wanted to, no matter what else happened.

Lukas could touch her and she would be soft, and warm, and alive. He could lean in and smell her and her scent would be the same. He'd smell woodsmoke and sweat and her ancestry, know her for a creature not only of his tribe but of his homeland and his forefathers' homeland, her line forever mated to his somehow. He could touch her, feel her, smell her, lick her neck and bite her shoulder and hear her breathing, her heartbeat

but the question is whether or not she would feel it. Whether or not she would let herself. Whether or not she would want to. And that is why it pains him so when she retreats. That is why she wonders how she can do it, wonders how she can make him believe she doesn't mean it to hurt him, she doesn't do it to punish him, not anymore, not even if once upon a time she might have, just to save herself. Not anymore. Not to him.

I love you, she wants to say, I can't bear it when I hurt you. I just don't know how to feel safe.

Which is a profound enough truth that when she thinks it, she swallows hard, parts her lips to exhale in a small puff of silent air. "Já důvěřovat vám," she says softly. Then, apologetically: "Jsem prostě ne moc dobrý na to.

"Omlouvám se za to," Danicka adds, this time with her words matching her tone. She lifts her eyes to his, having let them stray downward slightly. "Nechci, abyste omluvit kvůli mě," she whispers, as though expecting anger. "Bolelo to, velmi špatně. A nevěřil jsem nic dobrého z vás na chvíli po tom." A beat. "Nechtěl jsem to."

And another pause. When it breaks she speaks with something like relief, as though the truth is coming out and she is utterly exhausted from the work it takes to get it from emotion to thought to word. It does not come easily for her. "Nemohl jsem."

This time Danicka is the one to move towards him, but not at a step, not sideways, not warily. She crosses the remaining distance -- though it is only a few inches, now, even after she pulled away to start towards the entrance -- and seems like she is about to touch him somehow. Before she pulls up short, right in front of his chest.

In religion, the dark night of the soul is the crisis of faith. The feverish prayers begging for mercy, the kneeling of Christ himself in Gethsemane pleading, pleading, aching for the touch of the hand of God to remove the pain and the struggle of belief, fighting with every breath for the trust that used to come so easily in childhood. The dark night of the soul is marked by an inability to reach that which is beloved, that which is a touchstone, that which is

...necessary.

It is a long night.

It is the longest night.

Danicka looks up at him. "Prosím, nezlob se se mnou. Ty jsi první." A short, mirthless huff of laughter. "A já nevím, co dělám."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] It is the longest night.

It is the beginning of true winter, and though the days will grow longer now, and the nights shorter, the sun returning day by day to the height of the sky -- the cold is yet to come. It'll only grow deeper as the season progresses, and though the promise of spring is in the sky itself, the truth is all they really have is faith.

Faith that the freeze will thaw, and the cold will recede, and the warmth will come again.

Faith that spring will come, and with it the rain.

Faith in the light, and the warmth, and the effortless ease with which they slowly, unwittingly fell into one another's gravity

like orbiting suns in a limitless void.

She comes closer, not a single wary step but several, or at least one, two, three. She pulls up just before she touches him. They speak to each other in their native tongue, or at least the tongue of their ancestors. Which is fitting, too, because his blood recognizes her. They come from the same root. Their fates were entwined before he even knew she existed, by the simple fact that every cell in his body, every drop of his blood recognizes her.

Lukas does not say anything now. He steps forward and closes that final inch. His feet bracket hers; his calves to the outsides of hers, and his thighs against hers. His body to hers. His chest to hers, and his hands loose at his sides; the right rising after a moment, curving over her forearm, gently. He bends his head and presses his lips to the top of her head. Turns. Rests like that a moment, cheek to her hair, eyes closing.

"Jsi moje. Jsem tvoje. Nejsem naštvaný nyní."

Moving a little, now, nuzzling gently against her, slowly.

"Myslím, že rozumím ty lépe."

[Danicka Musil] Faith is a lovely thing. In the wheel of seasons, which has never failed. In omnipotent, perfect beings that remain unseen, and so can never disappoint. In the sun, which is so longlived that mere mortals need not fear its death and so can trust it.

But faith in people. Who fail and disappoint, who falter, who forget, who live such short, brutal lives that they are trying to cram eons of existence into by way of knowledge where they cannot fit experience.

Faith in people is hard, and covered in the marks and scars and blood of the struggle it takes to hold onto it. Faith in people is never quite so pristine, unbroken, or resilient.

They are not close enough now that they press together without visible seam. But: when she breathes, her breasts touch him. When he breasts, his chest moves outward and makes contact. Lukas touches Danicka's arms, kisses her head as though crowning her yet again. But lays his head down, rests against her in a way that terrifies her

because people can see him

because they can see that he cares for her, that he loves her, that he may even need her

and she is afraid, because this is vulnerable. And he could be hurt.

Her breath is strained for a moment because of it, shallow and eversoslightly quickened. She closes her eyes a moment as he rubs his face against her, gets closer, treats her as an animal treats his mate, all intimacy and scentsharing.

"Let's go?" she whispers, so close that only he can hear her, her eyes open, her breath touching his skin. "Please, Lukáš let's go. Okay?"

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Lukas doesn't reply. He lifts his head a little, though. His lips touch her hair again, and he can smell the faint perfume of longdead roses there; can smell hollyberries, and woodsmoke, and beneath that, her shampoo; and beneath that, her.

Always, her.

He turns; retrieves his coat. Lays it over his arm as he comes back. His other arm he slides around her waist, though she's afraid of this show of affection; though she's afraid because people can see; because people could look this way and know in an instant that he has not claimed her because she's beautiful, and wellbred, and a damn good fuck, but because

he loves her. And this makes him vulnerable.

He's not afraid, though. Not right now; perhaps not ever of this, his own vulnerability. He's afraid of exposing her, of making her feel naked and defenseless, violated by the knowledge of others. So at the door he lets her go, and holds her coat for her like a gentleman as she slides into it, not allowing his hands to linger long. A moment later he swings into his own coat, takes his scarf from his pocket and drapes it doubled over his neck, drawing the loose ends through the loop; pulls his gloves on, does up the buttons.

He holds his hand out to her, then. When the small door of the longhouse opens, the bitter cold outside hits like a solid force, like a slap.

[Danicka Musil] Her scarves are all at home, her gloves. The only thing in her pocket are her keys. Danicka does not even have her iPhone on her, and that is possibly the most telling absence. Her car is not in the parking lot, though Lukas may not have guessed that yet, despite the brightness of her eyes. Danicka's always held her liquor well, and the fact that she is slightly drunk has not bcome so obvious that anyone seeing her would be able to tell a difference.

When they step outside, her hand is in his, smaller and slimmer and uncovered. Her coat is not buttoned but held around her with her other hand. The wind lifts her hair slightly, pushes it off her face and then across her cheeks, the loose strands pushed this way and that. She has no lipgloss on, nothing at all on her skin.

Her hand tightens in his as the door closes. And she looks at him, over and up. "Bereš mě domů?"

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] When the door shuts behind them, they're alone in the white dark.

Snow blankets the clearing where in autumn she ate off his plate balanced on his chest; where in summer she led him into the dark and into the wild to mate like the animals they are. Now all is still and crystalline: ice on the evergreens, the leaf-dropping trees bare to the cold. The grass is lost. The light of a half moon hanging low in the west gives a pale blue cast to the landscape, in which the snow gleams with the sort of vivid-dark brilliance of a dawn sky.

Danicka has no scarf, no gloves. Her coat is undone. She asks if he will take her home, and he nods, letting go her hand to step in front of her. To step close. He bends his head to her, does up the buttons of her coat for her, one by one, carefully but swiftly. At the last his brow touches hers, and his palms turn against her shoulders, her upper chest. His touch rests against her body for a moment, and then he wraps his hands over her shoulders. Kisses her brow.

Before he takes her hand again, he draws his glove off with his teeth. It goes into his other pocket. Skin to skin, he laces their fingers; tucks her hand into his pocket, where the warmth of his skin and the warmth of his body creates a refuge against the cold.

"Chci, aby vás na náš domov," he says. The snow is freshfallen, not yet melted by sun and refrozen by night. It is soft beneath their feet, sinking away with every step.

[Danicka Musil] She walked across the field of white clothed all in black, the moon reflecting off the snow, off her hair, off the glossy black buttons on her coat. She was alone, smiling, carrying a basket she has now left behind and does not care about losing. The wine is not really for her, or hers. Nor is the bread.

Danicka is not looking at the snow, though, or the moon, or the distant trees motionless because there is so little wind tonight. She looks at him and when he turns to button her coat, she puts her free hand on his and stops him.

"It's alright," she whispers, though for him it may not be. For whatever reason -- and what reason can he ever consistently attribute to her? -- she wants it like this, keeps it like this. But she does touch his brow with her own, and her eyes close when he kisses her forehead.

She takes his hand when he gives it.

She entangles their fingers and rests her hand in the warmth of his, in the warmth of his pocket, and the hem of her dress kicks slightly through the thin snow, leaving a pale and shallow wake.

"Vím. Je připravena pro nás."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] "Ano," he agrees, soft.

They are neither of them truly kind people. They are not nice. They are not merciful. They are not forgiving.

In a matter of days, Lukas will ask for his Theurge's help in summoning and binding a stormcrow to a young kinswoman to ensure that she did not endanger the welfare and interests of his pack further. A few weeks ago, he bit another Garou to the brink of death over and over, and then finally past it, in order to win a challenge of dominance.

He has a right to do such things. One might argue -- his tribe certainly would -- that he is right to do these things. But that does not change the inherent ruthlessness of their nature.

And her: well. This is the woman that once shouted at a warrior of a warrior tribe in a warrior breed that he was a coward. That he was sniveling, and weak, and pathetic. This is the woman that struck a twelve-year-old boy in a time in which twelve is nearly a man, and a man was utterly above a woman.

This is the woman that drove a dagger into the back of a Dancer. This is the woman who shot, once upon a time, at a hideous vampiric monstrosity in the street.

There's a hardness inside them, more visible in Lukas but no less present in Danicka. Her breeding speaks of softness, of warmth, of spring, but her mother was a terror of a caliber that few Garou ever aspire to. That Lukas may never live to see. That woman terrorized Danicka for most of her young life, but that does not change the basic fact that

she also bore Danicka. And her blood is in Danicka's veins.

Despite that -- or perhaps even because of that -- they can be so tender to one another. They can be so achingly gentle, so protective, so warm, so close. He holds her hand in his pocket. He worries that her coat is unbuttoned, and he looks at her feet in the snow and thinks that her shoes are too thin. He thinks about sweeping her up and carrying her, though he knows that's unnecessary, and ridiculous, and

he did it anyway once, in the summer and in the morning, when he saw the rocks and brambles that lay on the ground they ran through the night before.

Lukas doesn't, though. It's not a long walk from the clearing to the embankment to the road, and when he gets there his car is waiting. The lights flash in the night. He opens the door for her, and only then takes her hand from his pocket, handing her into the passenger's seat.

A moment later he sinks into the driver's seat. The leather is frigidly cold. The first thing he does upon turning the ignition on is turn the heater on high and redirect the still-cold blast of air to the defroster vents.

Then, waiting for the engine to warm:

"Do you want to go there?" He looks at her. "To our den?"

[Danicka Musil] He agrees, but he doesn't know that she's been there since he was last there. The thought gives her pleasure -- not just that she has done so, but that he does not know. That itself is a sort of ruthlessness, her enjoyment of secrecy.

Last night she took an ancient dagger that is dust now, if it was ever real, and drove it into the back of a warformed Philodox. Lukas doesn't know that either, doesn't know that Danicka has a streak of viciousness, brutality, and savagery that comes out in ways he would never expect from her. He knows her wildness as something slightly confined, kept secret between the two of them, something he sees most often when he's inside her, when she's climbing over him and putting her hands on his chest, her green eyes flashing.

He's seen her with a gun, which can do more harm than a small knife in the hands of someone barely strong enough to wield it. He's seen how she reacts to Garou who are in glabro (bolting) or hispo (hiding) and he knows that when they take on crinos, she loses her ability to cope. The idea of Danicka doing what she did last night may be beyond him.

Or.

Lukas may find that even though he should be, he's not surprised at all.

Danicka holds his hand gently, and does not tell him yet about Cristobal, about the twelfth century, about the line of Garou in Europe who carry still the mark of a handpaw across their faces, whether in birthmark or scar or tattoo, hinting at their lineage. Which Danicka, with words and promise and magics given to her by her mate, helped hold back from the Wyrm's influence.

She knows something about balance. About holding onto honor and rightness no matter how brutal one must become. Her brother is not tainted. Her mother never was. They were not gentle or perhaps, even good. But they did not fall. They fought -- and Vladislav still fights -- the same war that Lukas does, albeit in a more twisted way and with more warped methods. But those are thin, thin lines. Danicka knows where they are, as fragile as webwork and just as difficult to see unless the light hits them just right.

Her coat is undone, her shoes too thin, but she walks through the snow without any more complaint than she offered inside the longhouse, wearing only her gown. After a few steps, she lets her hand fall and lets her coat open. It makes her suck in a breath, but that's all. He must worry. He must think of carrying her, holding her against his warmth and thus keeping her safe

and keeping his promise, which is the one she has never wanted, never asked for, thanked him for not giving when they both know it is impossible to truly keep for long.

A little time goes by, and then she's sliding into his car, tucking her dress with its snow-wet ends in after her before he shuts the door. She buckles herself in as they're sitting there, waiting for the M3 to be ready to go. She turns to look at him, frowns gently.

"I thought we already --" a slightly deeper pull of her eyebrows. "Of course I do. Why are you asking?"

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] "I said I wanted to," Lukas explains quietly. "You said it was ready for us. I wanted to make sure that meant yes."

He leaves the gearshift in neutral, depresses the accelerator slightly. The tachometer dial rises, and they can hear the engine noise shifting slightly, ramping up ever so faintly to rumble louder through the frame of the car.

"I just wanted to make sure it's what you wanted, love."

[Danicka Musil] Her hand crosses the center console and touches the top of his right leg. She looks at him until he looks back at her, if he's ever looked away. "I moved some of my clothes there," she says. "And some of your books. I bought another computer to keep there. There's a little food.

"I want to be there with you, Lukáš."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Lukas has not, in fact, looked away. He has little reason to. They'll be sitting here for another minute or two while the cold engine warms. And anyway: she's Danicka. She's his love.

The muscle of his thigh flexes faintly, unconsciously, under her hand. Then he covers it with his, covers her hand completely as though to keep her warm. Safe. There's a sort of dawning in his eyes: realization, gladness.

"You went back," he says, quietly pleased. His hand closes over hers for a moment, a gentle squeeze. Then he reaches past her arm to pull the car into reverse, slinging his hand over the back of her seat to twist around and back up.

[Danicka Musil] Danicka's hands are rarely cold. Normally the only part of her that's chilled enough to need comforting when in bed are her toes, easily warmed when Lukas covers them with his leg. Tonight, right now, her hands are cool to the touch, affected by walking out in the frigid weather. One of them is warmer than the other, though: the one he held, the one he kept close in his pocket with their fingers interlaced.

She gives him an odd, sort of lopsided smile, the quirked grin nobody else ever sees, nobody has seen since she was much, much younger. "Of course I went back," she says softly, as gently bewildered by this as his question as to whether she wanted to go to their den tonight. As though there's no question, really, about whether she would go there with or without him, whether she would want to be there smelling him in the sheets and thinking of feeding him there

reading to him

waiting for him.

Lukas lets go, and Danicka withdraws her hand only after they leave the parking lot. It's a long drive back to Chicago. She talks for awhile: tells him about the gathering she was at, about the offerings of wine and honeyed bread offered, about how sometimes human beings come so close to understanding what they're doing that it makes her ache. And sometimes how she thinks she can almost feel a thickness in the air, the press and closeness of the spirit world.

But she says this in whispers, like a confession, half-ashamed that she should dare to imagine such a thing.

They're all just musing thoughts, in the end, a recollection of her night, an admission that she's slightly drunk. She lays her head against the window and laughs as he does, if he does. She drowses. Halfway back to the city she's asleep.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Lukas listens, of course. He asks questions here and there -- how she found out about such gatherings; if she went to them on the last solstice, too, and the equinox. And when she speaks of the closeness of the spirit world sometimes, whispered like a confession, he glances at her.

Quietly, "People ... I mean, most Garou, they think the barrier between worlds is a static thing. But it's not. It changes. It's dynamic. Even if humans don't understand what exactly it is they're doing, what they do can affect the wall between worlds. And if their intent is genuine, there are still spirits that will come to keep the old covenants."

Then he glances at her again, a faint, self-deprecating smile quirking up one corner of his mouth.

"That's what the Theurges say, anyway."

--

She falls asleep halfway back to the city. He redirects the vents to warm her, and drives silently on.

--

They don't go back to the heart of the city, though. They bear south, and though it means a slightly longer drive, Lukas stays on the freeways to avoid waking Danicka prematurely.

When they slow to a gentle stop, they're pulling into the driveway, and the door of the detached garage is rolling up to admit them. There's room for two cars in here; there are also a few shelves, some cabinets, all of them empty.

The garage door rolls back down behind them. And Lukas gets out of the car, letting in a puff of cold air. A moment later he's on Danicka's side, opening the door for her if she hasn't already. In the chilly, changed air of suburban Chicago, the scent of woodsmoke that clings to him is more noticeable. He holds his hand out for hers, wrapping his fingers around.

"Chcete se sprchovým koutem a jít do postele?"

[Danicka Musil] There's a reminder: she has been a part of this religion, this attempt at a religion, since she was a child. But then she tells him that some of the people are actually kin from neighboring cities or states, that most of them are humans but that, like in New York, those like her do what they can to nudge them in the right direction. Spirits are real. The worlds are connected. What we do here echoes past the boundary, and vice versa.

She would not talk about this to another Garou. And she would not expect another Garou to tell her what he does, without threat or intimidation as a Theurge she was raised with would. Danicka touches his leg again when he speaks of covenants. It only falls away when she goes slightly limp, when her breathing goes steady.

When they turn onto their street she wakes up. It's as though she knows they're close, feels some change in the air, or senses a difference in Lukas. She opens her eyes blearily, slowly, having been asleep for perhaps twenty minutes or more. Danicka lifts her head from the window and carefully moves her head around, rotates her neck, rubs at a stiff spot. She looks out the window and knows

We're almost there without him saying so.

Danicka smiles as they pull into the driveway, then into the garage, where it is still and dark and silent. She unbuckles her safety belt and waits for him, since he's coming around, then steps out. Her dress falls around her ankles again, and she takes his hand. "Ano," she whispers, and goes inside with him, up two sets of stairs. She doesn't stop to show him the food in the fridge or pantry, the dishes in the cupboards.

She does shed her coat, though, and leaves it draped over the arm of the rocking chair. Her shoes are stepped out of at the bottom of the stairs, left off to one side. As they pass through the living room she looks at the now-dried handprints above the lightswitch by the door. She smiles at it before heading up. Now he can see that the back of her dress is laced tightly up her back, thin ties hanging down in loops. No zippers. No buttons. No signs of modernity other than the fact that in another day and age, this sort of dress would have gotten her hanged for harlotry.

When she gets to the top of the stairs, though, Danicka turns, waiting for him though he's only a step or two behind her. The hem of her dress is wet and extra-dark from snow, her feet bare.

"We should sleep on the floor," she says, out of the blue. "Pull all the blankets and pillows down."

What she doesn't say is: and make a nest.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] He'll see them tomorrow, though. The dishes she bought, which are likely far more eclectic than any he'd consider buying. The food in the fridge: eggs and cheese and ham, perhaps, for omelettes in the morning. Toast. Butter. Jam. Fruit. Perhaps a pizza in the freezer. Flour and sugar and salt in the pantry.

The small things that slowly turn this house into a home, a den, a place that is theirs, that could support them, that they could live in

even if it's only for a night at a time.

His own coat, he tosses on the couch. Scarf and gloves too. There's a closet across the room, built into the sloping space under the stairs, but he doesn't bother to hang their things up. They don't need to hang them up; this is their space. Following her up the stairs, he smiles to see the wet hem of her dress. And when she slows at the top, he reaches out to take her hand, gently.

"Rád bych to."

He takes her to the bathroom via the smaller bedroom, which the desk and his laptop and her new desktop computer turns into a sort of study. He sees the last with a sort of quiet gladness, though he doesn't comment on it.

Not immediately, anyway. It's not until they're in the bathroom, and the door to the spare bedroom is closed, and he's turning her around to unlace her that he says, "It makes me happy that you've brought things here." He's quiet; this too is a confession. "Especially because I didn't know you were bringing them."

That doesn't make a lot of sense. He knows this, and he laughs a little. Her dress loosens on her body, little by little. He leans down to kiss her bare shoulder.

"This is our den," he murmurs, like a ritual.

[Danicka Musil] There are preserves in the kitchen. Candied oranges, ready to be made into filling. She has not baked here, but she has more room in this kitchen than in the one at her apartment, and she plans to. It's winter now, entirely, and there is a part of her that is driven to feed, to make things warm, to offer her mate mouthful after mouthful of sustenance to keep him strong when prey is scarce.

Or maybe

it's just that it's easier to bake in winter, when the oven's warmth does not add to the brutality of summer's saturating heat.

They go through the second bedroom; doesn't really matter which room they go through, as the two are joined. Maybe he wants to see the computer, the World of Warcraft atlas beside it, well-worn and aging. Maybe he wants to see the little lamp she's set on the desk, the base brushed metal and the lampshade a soft cream color.

Danicka's dress brushes over the carpet as they walk. She runs her fingers through her hair as he closes the bathroom door, and she looks over her bare shoulder at him. When he stands behind her, Danicka pulls her hair to one side, away from the ties he has to unknot and unfurl and loosen enough to pull the dress down from her. When the black fabric begins to split as the laces come undone, he sees nothing but a criss-crossed V of bare skin.

She's looking at the door to their bedroom as he undoes her dress, the gestures of it all filling her with a sort of ache. "It makes me happy to... have a place I can go that's sort of secret," she confesses, a bit more shyly than his own. "I don't mind being alone here."

The sleeves of her dress start to slide downward. "I like knowing the only person who might come here is you."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Lukas is quiet behind her, his hands deft but unpracticed on the lacings of her dress. He pauses briefly when she answers confession for confession; again when she tells him what she likes.

Then, no more pauses. He undoes her dress, and there's nothing but skin beneath, pale with winter, without the golden glow he remembers

(so well.)

from the warmer months of the year. Those seem far removed now -- July, August, the heat of the summer season, the days that went on forever, the dawn that touched the horizon at 5 in the morning, 4:30 in the morning, while they made love on a hotel bed with the curtains open and the air conditioner on and her hair spilling over the edge of the bed, golden as her skin.

"This is our den," he affirms again, soft as a whisper now; somehow, it's an agreement to what she's said.

Lukas tugs the dress off and lets it pool at her feet. He steps forward, then, his chest against her back through the smooth, finespun wool of his pullover. A moment. Then he moves behind her, and he pulls the sweater off; the thermal undershirt. Drops them. Now it's his skin brushing her back, the sparse, dark hair on his chest tickling against her spine, as he undoes his pants, lets that fall as well. Then his boxer briefs.

Naked now, he steps against Danicka; wraps his arms around her. Later he'll hold her like this in a nest they'll make from the bedding and the blankets and the pillows. Even now, briefly, he bends his face to her, leans his brow against her hair, tightens his arms to draw her firmly against his body.

The smell of her, and the feel of her, and the nakedness of her together arouses him relentlessly. After a while his hands start to move; start to slide slow and lazy over her skin. He finds her breasts and cups them, cross-handed, caresses them, squeezes her gently in his palms as he grows hard against the small of her back. Now he's nuzzling against her ear, against her neck and her shoulder, laying small, silent kisses against her skin while his hands grow bolder, while the left drifts from one breast to the other and back; while the right smooths downward to cup her between the legs. And then to stroke her there. And then to pleasure her, slowly and surely, touching her as though he knows exactly how.

[Danicka Musil] Of course there's nothing underneath. No lingerie tonight, no corset tight around her ribs, no seamless panties clinging to her hips. The dress slinks down her body when he gives it the gentlest push. She tucks her arms in close and hunches her shoulders at first when he draws the sleeves down, but after that it falls, it just falls in a soft, whispering heap to the tiled floor around her bare feet. And he steps against her, first wool and then flesh.

She has goosebumps. It isn't frigid in their den, but it's cool. He's close, though, close enough to make her breathing start to quicken and her skin to prickle in response. Danicka exhales slowly, carefully, as the front of him touches the back of her, as his flesh comes in contact with the subtle curve of her ass, the slope of her shoulderblades. For a few moments, at least, this is all: the brush of one body against another, before he pulls her closer, before he holds her and feels her ribcage expanding under his forearms.

Before he presses against her and begins to let his hands roam over her. Danicka's breaths come faster now, still quiet but panting almost immediately. Even the pass of his hand from one breast to another makes her stifle a quiet moan, her head tipping back against his chest. She lets her thighs part for his hand before it even gets there, before he finds her hot already, before his fingertips touch her and find the beginning traceries of wetness. When he dips one finger slightly into her and draws that moisture over her clit, circling it,

Danicka shudders, her knees very nearly buckling, her hips moving slightly to press her cunt against his hand.

Her eyes are closed, now, her mouth open to breathe with pleasure. "Take me to bed," she all but gasps. No matter that they haven't showered. No matter that they were going to build a nest. "Lukáš, baby, take me to our bed."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] There are times when a reply is rendered utterly unnecessary by proximity and touch, and this is one of them. Lukas says nothing to Danicka's request, or plea, or command. Nor does he immediately move toward the bedroom and the bed.

No, he stays where he is, naked and whole and hot against her back, his hands all over her; his body all around her; his mouth roaming her neck and her jawline, the smooth arch of her cheekbone warming with the flushing of her skin. He goes on touching her while her eyes close and her mouth opens, and the still enclosed air of the bathroom shivers with her sighs, their breathing. He goes on touching her with his right hand between her thighs, his fingers on her clit, and his left on her breast.

Even if her legs start to give way. Even if she leans back against him, pliable in his arms. Even if she starts to writhe and arch in his arms he goes on touching her, carefully and relentlessly until

his mouth is savage and plundering at her neck, his lips biting at her skin. Until her breathing is ragged and staggered. Until all at once he takes his hand from her, sweeps it beneath her thighs instead, lifts her in one smooth pull of arms and back and loins, and turns sideways to fit them both through the door.

He doesn't lay her gently onto their bed. It's too far gone for that. At the side of their bed he simply drops her amidst coverlets and comforters and pillows and mattress, all the soft warm things he's covered their bed in. The lights are off in here; a slanted rectangle is cast onto the floor through the bathroom door. The carpet still looks and smells new, albeit inexpensive. The bed, however, is already beginning to smell like them

when he climbs over her

and opens her legs

and sinks down between them to brace his elbows against the mattress, and kiss her mouth.

They move -- he moves as though he were already fucking her, grinding his cock over her in long, hard strokes while his mouth eats at hers. He kisses the breath out of her, gives it back changed from his lungs, strays down her neck and bites softly at her shoulder while he pushes against her clit. If she bucks under him, he takes her by the hip with one hand. Holds her still; holds her close. Holds her where she is while he draws his hips back, angles them, nudges against the opening of her cunt.

His groan is quiet and harsh in her ears as he starts to push into her. When he bites her again, it's harder, a prolonged, firm grasp of his teeth on her flesh, an animal mounting his mate.

[Danicka Musil] Lukas touches her instead of saying No or Wait or Not yet or even promising Soon, a word than in any language makes her shudder when it falls from his lips. She does writhe, and she does arch, and her legs do give way, forcing her to press her weight to his chest, trust his strength to hold her up, fall apart in his arms while he plays with her. And it is that: play.

She hasn't forgotten the longhouse, the savage slash of hurt through her, the frustration, the fear that she had said too much, done too much, hurt him back and now, now it was going to be over. The thought of it was so unbearable she put it from her mind at the time even, thinking instead of their den, of how happy they'd been here, of how it couldn't be over, it couldn't be so wrong that they couldn't put it right again. She'd clung to this -- the thought of their den, of their bed, of their now-dried handprints marking their territory -- while standing in front of the fire, while walking with him and trying to sort out why even their peace felt tentative and fragile.

There has always been an element of play between them, even as dark as things have seemed, even as tense as their interactions were. For a long time it was verbal, and it was a dancing, violent thing between them. They did not play like children but played chess with their conversations, played poker, tried to see who could bluff the longest, who could keep from tipping their hand while making bets on how much they could stand to lose. And they played the first night they were together, however stripped-down and brutal it was, even if it was just a mirthless moment of asking how many times he could fuck her before she left him, even if it was just her tossing a condom at his chest.

They play. Only this time it's Lukas playing with her, teasing her into a pliant wreck, making her moan softly, finally, her ass rubbing gently back against him in rhythm with the stroke of his fingers. As though this was some signal he was waiting for he hooks his arm under her and lifts her up. Danicka turns towards him even before he's got them through the door, putting her hand on his face and kissing his mouth with all the pent-up longing she's been carrying around since the start of the night, since sunset, since shadows fell and reminded her of him in a twist of poignancy and affection.

She's still kissing him when he gets to the edge of the bed, and pulls away to breathe -- air that gets knocked out of her slightly when he drops her. She arches against the bedcovers with a laugh, legs stretched lazily, one knee bent, arms reaching for him as he comes down over her. It says something about how natural this is, how natural it would have always been if they'd never fought it, that when Lukas first plants his hands on the covers to climb on top of her he finds Danicka's legs winding around his waist already, her arms around his neck, her head tilting back to receive a kiss he hasn't bent to give her yet.

It says something about how new this will always be when he grinds against her and she moans like she's never felt his cock before, like she's been waiting for it most of the past year. Her hands cover his face, hold him where he is so he doesn't stop kissing her like that. She holds him until she can't, until she has to take her mouth away and gasp, back arching and hips bucking underneath his more wantonly than they did -- than they could -- when she was standing up in the bathroom. She squirms against his palm when he holds her down, tries to pull him against her

or into her

with her legs enfolded around his lower half. Her hands are still in his hair when he starts to slide into her, tightening reflexively even as her lower body seems to turn molten. The sounds coming out of her as inch after inch pushes inside of her are gasping, whimpering, wordless pleas, unless

Aah --!

or

Oh... oh....

have acquired some new meaning in some as-of-yet undiscovered language.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] Whatever language Danicka is speaking now, it seems to communicate one thing to Lukas. He responds in the only way he knows how, which is also the only way he can, which is to keep her laid out between his hand on her hip and his teeth in her shoulder, to hold her as she is in his hands, in his mouth, in his eyes and in his mind as he

slides into her, inch after inch, slowly and carefully, slowing when she arches or whimpers, not stopping until he's inside her, buried, home.

He releases her then. His hands to her hair, plunging into the blonde. His mouth returning to her neck, her chin -- closing over her lips, sealing her moans into his mouth.

"...mmm," he murmurs against her, something between a sigh and a growl. His hands leave her hair, then, seize handfuls of the sheets. The first slide of his cock inside her, withdrawing and then rocking in again, is heavy but slow, oddly gentle for all his strength and want and need.

It makes him gasp. It makes his breath rush against her skin, shuddering.

He doesn't apologize for what happened in the longhouse. He doesn't apologize for all the ways the night could have gone and didn't; for all that he wanted it to be, and wasn't. He doesn't apologize -- at least not in words -- though the way he loves her now speaks for him, perhaps.

Again he thrusts, more firmly than the last, sliding deep, his hips impacting hers hard enough to bounce her breasts gently on the slope of her chest. As though to protect her, his hand covers her chest, holds her breast in his palm, her nipple erect against his palm. Again: enough to make himself exhale a wordless sound, Ah, as his head bows of its own accord, then rises.

"Hold on to me," he pants. His mouth to hers is not a kiss -- it's just contact, mingled breath, opened lips to opened lips. "Take me in, baby. Vezmi si to."

It's a rhythm now, building, tidal. He rocks into her again and again, heavily, solidly, unflaggingly, a rush of an exhale on every thrust. When Lukas finds her eyes, Danicka can see the knit in his brow; the flare of pleasure every time he moves. She can see the way his pupils are opened, are wide, are black in a rim of radiant blue. She can see what effort it is to hold back; go slow; love her

just like this.

[Danicka Musil] On the night they mated, the sunset after the longest day and the start of summer, she lured him into the woods and trapped him there in a copse. Danicka made him her mate by climbing onto him and riding him, pinning him to the earth with her hands on his chest and her hips rising and falling on top of his. She made him her own with her verdant eyes locked to his glacial ones, then tipped her head back and bared both their throats and bellies to the sky as though in submission.

Not long after that she bent over for him, put her hands on the hard ground and arched her back as he came up behind her and pulled her onto him, found a home in her again, folded forward and covered her. She remembers now, as his teeth leave her skin for a moment, the way he wiggled his hands underneath her palms to protect them from the rocks and the sticks in the ground. She remembers the way his hands bore almost all of her weight as he drove himself into her again and again, and she remembers the way he wrapped his arm around her and she took her hands off the earth,

trusting his strength

but not for the first time, and not for the last.

On the equinox they rested, finding a spot like the one where they mated and curling close together. It was in the wake of Danicka nearly leaving the bonfire mentally because a Garou had lost control of himself and gone tearing into the woods in crinos. It was in the wake of her kneeling beside him, eating off a plate on his chest, refusing to lie beside him because everyone could see, then, what they mean to each other

and to her, that may be the most private thing in her life, the most treasured, the most secret, the one thing she truly possesses that cannot be taken from her... so long as no one knows just how dear he is to her, how much comfort she takes in curling against his side and closing her eyes.

But out in the trees, hidden away, she started to feel safe again. And she laid her cheek against his chest and looked at the stars, listening to his heart throbbing in time with the distant, invisible pulsing of their fire. They didn't have sex, but they did make love. Danicka dozed on him, trusted for once that he would -- that he could -- keep her safe. She woke bleary-eyed and half-chilled when he pushed her hair back and whispered her name like a caress, telling her they should go back, it was getting cold.

Now it's the winter solstice. His birthday is in a few days, and she knows this without reminder, remembers it from years and years ago. It's been half a year since she said, regardless of the laws of the nation, Mine and he answered: Mine. And he is covering her, filling her, making himself go slow, making his body as loving as everything else he wants to give her, making himself hold onto the sheets instead of her hair as his hands flex and tighten because

they must.

Danicka tilts her hips to meet him when he slides out, pushes back in. She gasps for air against his mouth, pants for it, kisses him over and over again as wet leaves her pussy, slicks on his cock and spreads around her cunt. She does not tell him she likes the mess he makes of her, she likes the feeling of being hot and sweaty and filthy and sticky. She does not tell him she doesn't mind that they smell like woodsmoke, that she likes that she smells like sweat from being wrapped in an overcoat in his car with the heater pointed directly at her as she slept. She doesn't tell him that the first time she felt him come inside of her she wanted it more, and again, to the point that it was a struggle to force herself to Be Smart and remind him to use condoms.

But she does whimper when he puts his hand on her, when he speaks to her, when he bows his head and fucks her a little harder, a little deeper, tells her to Take it. She arches her back and rubs against him, fucks back up towards him, becomes as wanton and uncontrolled and led by desire as she ever is, while he

holds back, goes slow, loves her the way he wants to

and watches her lose her mind underneath him.

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] In truth, Lukas hasn't been forgetting prophylactics again and again lately. He remembers, most times. He remembered tonight. He thought of it. They need to Be Careful. They need to Be Smart. They need to avoid any opportunity, any chance for pregnancy, for cubs, because that inevitably leads to a slow and unbearable separation.

He thought of it -- but then she was there. And they were naked. And his hands were all over her, and he was rubbing against her and eating at her and every logical, reasonable thought flew out of his mind. All that remained was a single notion, brilliant as a supernova:

he had to have her. now.

And now they're on their bed, in the half-dark, moving and flexing and rolling together like animals, like carnivorous creatures in the night, like waveforms, like oceans, like themselves. He's inside her and they're going slow; she's going mindless and he's going mad; he wants her to take it, to take that cock as he gives it to her

(slow.)

and lets her feel it, makes her feel every inch moving into her, sliding out of her, spreading her slick over her pussy and between her thighs and up his cock and against his groin. They're making a mess of each other, a filthy mess, and they're leaving one another's scent all over each other and when he fucks her like this, slow and hard and deliberate like this; when he loses himself inside her and penetrates her and fills her up just like this

he smells like a wild animal. Like musk and woodsmoke. Like himself.

"Jsi moje," he says to her. Mutters to her. Growls to her, a low rumble in his chest, a bitten-back sound, hardly words at all. "Jsi moje," he says again, fucking her; harder now, solid thrusts of his hips that shudder her breast against his hand, that make his eyes flicker and burn with sensation, that make his free hand come back to her hair, to the back of her head; to lift her mouth to his like a thirsty man lifts a drink, like a starving man lifts a meal, and

he kisses her, ferociously, as though she were the air itself, ephemeral and wild and necessary.

When it parts, he bites at her lips, gently. And he tells her one more time:

"Jsi moje." And, "Jsem tvoje. Kurva mě, Danička. Dej mi to. Dovolte mi mít, že kundo. Udělej mi přijde, za vás."

[Danicka Musil] They both remember. They both let themselves forget.

Her hands run down his back, palms riding the curve of his shoulderblades and exploring the smooth arcs of muscle all the way down to his waist, to his ass, holding him there. She doesn't pull him harder into her but just follows the thoughtless, easy flex of his lower body with every rolling, heated thrust. And on every rolling, heated thrust, Danicka lets out a meaningless sound of pleasure, a pleading

ah

ah

ah

that turns into a hard groan when he pushes inside and pauses, grinds in a slow, hard circle against her cunt, which makes her shudder, which makes her toes curl and her back arch. It's good when it's like this, when they fuck not rough or fast but deliberate and firm, when they watch each other like they do. Danicka, gasping, lifts her head slightly only to look down between them, to watch him fuck her, to watch his cock shining with her wetness every time Lukas's hips pull back.

"Oh, yeah," she breathes, spreading her legs a little wider, "just like that. Stejně jako to, že láska. To je, jak chci to."

There's no pause then, no hesitation when he comes down over her, harder, faster, bearing into her with his body and growling mine, mine over and again. She whimpers in answer, tipping her head back, baring her throat, which may be careless, which may also be the most eloquent response she could give. Her eyes are closed and her mouth open when he captures it, kisses snarls and gasps into her, sucks on her tongue and makes her moan and shudder under him. Her hands run up his back again, faster this time, grabbing a hold of his shoulderblades as her legs tightening around his waist.

She fucks him back. She writhes. She bucks her hips and squeezes him inside, whimper-gasps at the brush of soft sheets and softer comforter on her bare ass as it bounces gently with every rocking pound of their bodies on top of the mattress. Her nails find his flesh, dig in as she starts to move like this, squirm like that, urging him to fuck her faster without letting the words themselves out. Danicka's eyes open and lock onto his.

"Jsem tvoje," she gasps, arching hard and brillaint against his chest, her eyes almost closing before they find their way again. "Jsem tvoje, Lukáš, kurva mě." A whimper, a toss of her head to the side. "Kurva mě usilovně. Dej to mi to trochu rychleji, lásko."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] They've been lovers for nearly a year now. They've been mated for half a turn of the seasons; it's been official for more than a quarter. Yet they've only had this home, this shared den, for a matter of weeks.

It's still new to them. It's still new to fuck on a bed that's theirs in a room that's theirs under a roof that's theirs; theirs and no one else's, not rented or shared or belonging only to one or the other.

It's new -- and it's familiar, as though this is where they belong, and have always belonged. It's familiar because he recognizes her now, from the soft pleading ahs that fall from her lips to the hard groans when he hits her deep and hard like that; to the way her hands sweep down the curves and arches of muscle and bone in his back to the way she grasps his shoulderblades and wraps her legs around him and

takes him in just like that.

It makes sense to Lukas in a way that he can't articulate, and barely thinks about. It makes sense that in the summer solstice they ran through the woods and mated in the wild. That he hunted her and she hunted him and they caught one another and she put him under her and rode him; and he put her under him and pounded her

while all along it was impossible to say where the axis of power really lay; and if there was one at all.

Because his hands were under hers, protecting her from the hard ground. Because she was giving herself to him, even while she rode his cock like she was using his body.

It makes sense that that was how the summer was, effortless and savage and hot and wild; that it was about claim; that what came out of her mouth then was you're mine, you're mine. It makes sense that this is winter now, and it's cold out, and they're not in the woods, in the deep wild, but here in the heart of their den, surrounded by warmth and soft things.

It makes sense that she lies back for him and takes him between her legs, against her body; that she lets him mount her; that she

protects him, somehow, with the embrace of her body. And with her trust. And with the words slipping soft from her mouth now, gasping:

i'm yours. i'm yours.

with every plunge of him into her.

It even makes sense to him that it was hard, tonight. That love had to be scratched out of the frost and the cold; out of anger and hardness and bitter betrayal and hurt. It makes sense that faith wavered; that there was doubt; that it was dark before the day, and cold before

the thaw.

She arches under him, her body warm, straining -- brilliant, like stars on winter solstice. He bends his head to her, wraps his arms beneath the arc of her spine and bends to her, catches her breasts in his mouth, one and then the other, sucking hard on her as he fucks her, harder now, partaking of her body, taking what she gives without apology, without restraint, without thought

and giving it back in the hard pounding flexion of his hips against the cradle of her thighs; in the way he fucks her, his cock slamming into her tightness again and again, harder now, faster, pounding her against the mattress, rocking her hips up to hammering down and into her, nailing her to the bed with the force and velocity of his thrusts.

His arms are still wrapped around her. Close, tight, holding her to him, close to him, dear to him. He holds her like that, like she's precious to him and necessary, like he'll fall

to pieces

if she's taken from him; holds her like that while he fucks her like that, mercilessly and uninhibitedly, while he sucks at her breast and bites at her nipple with his lips, tastes her with his tongue, his mouth, devouring her with every inch of his body.

[Danicka Musil] In the beginning, they both suspected a power struggle where there needed not be one. They refused to give in, refused to submit, refused to even be completely vulnerable. And no matter how many times she came after him, all but offered herself on an altar to his lust, he knew she was not giving herself over. Not really. Not completely. Not the way he wanted her. He knew, from the start, that even if he'd had her, she wouldn't have been his.

Not like she is now. Not like she has been since she took him calling her love as a half-gasped endearment during lovemaking and turned it into my love, named him for the first time as what he truly was.

Now, they belong to each other. They kiss as they always have, as they never did with others no matter whose lips locked with theirs. They share everything in their breaths, hold nothing back, hide nothing. And in this way they are not as vulnerable as they feared being. They give everything, and the other

gives it back

which is one of the only promises or vows they've made to each other that has truly mattered.

They cannot promise each other that they will not hurt. That he will not say the wrong thing at the wrong time, that he will not grow angry. She cannot promise that she won't dismay him, that she won't retreat into herself when she feels threatened. They cannot make promises that go against traits that are woven into the fiber of their beings, but they can promise to try. They can promise to give back what they are given, to not squander it or hoard it or give it away to any other. They can promise that here, with each other, they have some measure of safety in a world that is night and day trying to take that very thing from them. Take their very lives.

Danicka presses her body entirely against his, pulls him into her with the embrace of her arms and legs, moans aloud as he makes her breast his mouth's captive, cradles the other, licks her nipple with the unselfconscious lapping of hunger and desire and belonging. She meets him with counterthrusts, her cunt beginning to clench around his cock without intent, without thought. And her moans get louder, get faster, as the movement of his body does.

"Don't stop," she cries out, then harder: "Lukáš, don't stop!"

Because she's starting to whimper not once here and there, not in little gasps, but an almost constantly rolling voice of pleasure, a sort of begging sound that tells him that she's getting close, that if he just keeps fucking her like this, if he

"Lukáš, right there! Ano, kurva --"

gives it to her just like that, fucks her hard and fast against the bed, if he

"Fuck!"

just doesn't stop, then her pussy will start to quiver around him, will clutch at his cock even as he starts to pull back for another thrust, and Danicka will grab a hold of him with her hands on his back, holding him deep inside of her, squirming and writhing between his hard body and the soft sheets to use his cock, to get herself off as her orgasm starts to pulse

and throb

and leave her a bucking, softly moaning mess underneath him.

She shivers, her hips still rolling, her skin flushed pink from arousal, gleaming slightly with sweat. "Don't stop," she murmurs, her head to the side and her eyes closed, though her hands are limp now, falling away from his arms and shoulders, resting on the pillow beneath her. Her eyes open a moment later, head turning to look up at him. "Baby," she says warmly, like a caress, in time with her pussy tightening in aftershocks of lust around his cock.

"Baby, don't stop."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] This is what Lukas wants.

It may not have been what he wanted when he told her, again and again, stay with me. Or what he wanted when they left together. Or what he wanted when they pulled into their garage, and stepped through their front door. Or even what he wanted when he began to undress her and himself; when he began to touch her; when he slid inside her.

But it's what he wanted when he started to move inside her. When she arched like that, pressed her body to him, fucked him back and began to whimper like that

and moan like that

and tell him, again and again, that she was his. That she belonged to him, or perhaps more accurately: with him. Just like this. When she offered herself up to his mouth and his hands and his body like that, opening herself to him, letting him in, letting him fuck her, telling him

harder

and faster

until she was crying out until him, not longer distinct gasps and moans but one long sound, pleading and wanting and almost fucking there --

This is what he wants. Exactly this: to fuck her just like this, this hard and this deep, this thoroughly, while she comes beneath him just like that. While she grabs ahold of him and writhes against him and onto him, fucking him and fucking herself against him mindlessly, driven by want, driven by urge, driven by the feel of what's happening between them, and what they're doing to each other.

Lukas watches her, every moment, every second; he watches her with eyes fierce with want and glinting with awareness, with an almost preternatural alertness and drive. He fucks her, too -- long quick slams of his cock into her, over and over, until she clutches at him, grabs him with her hands and her legs, holds him right there with her cunt as she starts to fall to pieces

just like that.

He stops drawing back, then. He stays where he is. He keeps himself buried inside her, pushed deep, planted firmly inside her cunt as she starts to quiver, starts to pulse, starts to clench down on him in rhythmic pulses of pleasure that he matches with short, sharp thrusts, bucking against her as though he could push deeper and deeper into her; as though he could seal them more perfectly.

Lukas's breath is coming short and harsh and heavy, panting on every thrust; panting and shuddering when he feels her coming on his cock, when her cunt squeezes and grasps and pulses around him until he's not sure he can stand it anymore; until he's not sure she won't simply draw his pleasure out of him like poison from the wound, or breath from the lungs; until he's not sure he can keep from pinning her down and simply

fucking her until he comes inside her. He's opening his mouth to tell her this, parting his lips to wince with how fucking good it is and to tell her I can't or please or let me fuck you when she says

what she does, and makes him groan in sheer relief.

A second later he's rising over her as her hands fall from his arms and shoulders. She's falling into bone deep relaxation and he's just hitting the peak of his tension and strength and arousal; he's moving to brace himself on his hands, the muscles of his torso tight, bunching with strain. Lukas's dark head bows. He looks down, watches; looks at her body laid out and open to him, looks at his cock buried inside her, drawing out slick and wet, slamming in again. He watches himself fucking her, fucking her hard now, furiously, a short, harsh burst of unchecked lust that has him pounding into her, plowing into her, fucking into her over and over until some wire trips, some switch flips, some line of dynamite in the core of his nerves bursts into flame and lights him up.

He throws his head back when he comes. He's one single tensile arc, every muscle rigid, every joint locked for a searing instant. The room fills with his groans -- a wordless exclamation of pleasure, and then god! and then fuck, over and over as he moves again; slams into her in short, erratic, uncontrolled thrusts, gasping and panting, swearing, falling apart, going to pieces, going ragged at the edges.

Near the end he looks at her. Finds her eyes and holds them, comes down over her. The look on his face is beyond pleasure; not quite pain, either. He's simply overcome; the circuits overloaded, the breakers blown, the switches melted down. He keeps fucking her as though either of them could stand it now, as though he can't stop if he wanted to -- wrapping his arms around her now, holding her to him, kissing her over and over while he shudders and groans and gasps into her mouth and

slows, finally.

Stops.

His back is wet with sweat. His breath comes so hard and fast that his chest presses against hers on every inhale. When this first began, Danicka used to tremble after they made love, as though she couldn't withstand the forces at work between them. Lukas is trembling now, slightly, a quivering deep in the large muscles of arm and shoulder and back and flank, as though overexerted.

Words are utterly beyond him.

[Danicka Musil] Ultimately, this is what they both want, what they always wanted when they used to avoid telling each other

Chci tě.

To be close like this, to be wound up in each other and tangled together, sweating together, their lower halves melted together. They wanted to be burrowed into their own den, safe and warm and alone. And neither of them knew it, and neither of them could admit it, but what they wanted was simply:

Chci, abyste byli moji.

And now they are.

Danicka holds him on top of her, in her, when he finishes. Her hands fell to either side of her blushed face after her own orgasm, but when he groaned like that, in relief and desperation, she let them come back up to his hair, to the back of his neck, then to his shoulders. She held his arms as though she could hold him steady, keep him present and accounted for, keep him close no matter what heights of ecstasy he was reaching. She watched him then, whispered encouragements, moaned, tightened her cunt and her legs around him when he started to

nail her to the fucking bed.

And now he's coming back down, he's recovering from what she did to him, though from any outward perspective it would look like something he was doing to each other, so in reality it must have just been something they were doing to each other, always have been. She runs her fingertips through his dark, sweat-dampened hair, lets the air flow over his scalp, finally starts to catch her own shuddering breath.

She was so soft under him when he arched like that, pushed hard and deep and fast into her over and over over again, bucking his hips with a sort of madness in the midst of his orgasm. She whimpered and she flowed with him, moved against his body even though all of her was begging to be limp, even though her clit was pulsing with sensitivity. She closed her eyes and moaned soft into his mouth when he kissed her, when he finally started to slow the pounding of his cock, the flexing of his hips.

And now she wriggles softly around him, squirms gently between coverlet and masculine body, adjusts to the feel of him and his cum inside of her, gently eases into stillness, finally, and just

holds him.

She is panting. Her hair is dark around her hairline from sweat, tossed and tangled around the pillow more like spiderwebs than lace or brocade. Her thin arms are wrapped around his chest, hands splayed over his back.

"Shh," she whispers, the movement of air a caress, a tingle, past the curve of his ear. "Shh, má lásko. Já jsem tady. Jsem tady s tebou."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] A shudder ripples through Lukas when she whispers to him. It starts at the base of his spine and shivers up through the lean muscles at the base of his back, across the broader ones that fan out and give his torso its breadth, its weight, its distinctive shape and contour beneath Danicka's hands.

When the shiver has run its course, he seems to calm. He holds her, but without the near-desperate strength he held her with in the moments immediately after orgasm. He pants, but he's getting his breath back now, and every inhale is a little slower, every exhale a little softer.

Eventually he turns; he kisses her neck, softly.

"Vím," he whispers back. And another kiss, softer, a press of his lips against her skin. "Vím."

Lukas doesn't want to move yet. He doesn't want to fall aside, to roll off of Danicka, to withdraw from her body, to disentangle and become separate, whole creatures again. He wants to stay here. Ten more minutes. Two. A minute; a moment. A little longer.

He says it again; the same thing he said over and over tonight:

"Zůstaň se mnou."

[Danicka Musil] Sometimes it means just as much as the words do when Danicka chooses to speak in Lukas's native tongue. She was so excited, as a child, to find out that he spoke Czech, just like her. Even as his parents practiced English, insisting on learning despite the presence of those who could have understood them regardless of what tongue they used, Danicka would be upstairs or in the back yard talking almost solely in the Kvasnicka's first language. Even when Anezka and Lukas both learned English fluently, picking it up with the speed that all children can, they mostly spoke Czech when they played together.

For her, it can be secrecy between them, even when there are others around who view it as rude. It can protect her. She's used it to speak to one night stands, exploding into a language she knows they don't know at the peak of pleasure, just so they could not hear whatever was coming out of her mouth, just so she had one more layer, one more wall between herself and their understanding.

As though understanding from another person can be something of a violation.

She strokes her fingers through his hair still, strokes his back, and nuzzles the side of his face with her brow and the bridge of her nose, lips brushing over him. She speaks in English now, a little gently, a little worriedly: "Are you afraid I'm going to leave?"

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] That makes Lukas shift and stir; makes him rise up on his elbows, slowly. He looks at her, his eyes clear and perceptive, searching over her face, her eyes, her mouth. Danicka's hair is spread over the pillows and the bedspread, tangled, tousled, wild. He combs his fingers through gently a few times, then lowers his head and kisses her mouth.

Gently.

"Ne." This isn't an off-the-cuff answer. He had to think about this. He thought about it, considered it, turned it over in his mind. "Ne opravdu. Já jen ... "

Lukas pauses for a second. Long enough to kiss her again, a soft slow melt of his mouth over hers, grazingly, and then deeply.

When he draws back he finishes, "Potřebuji tě vedle mě dnes večer."

[Danicka Musil] There's an inherent trust in the way her arms loosen, letting him move upward onto his elbows. She knows he isn't leaving, that he isn't about to pull out of her and climb off of her and go away, go shower or just wipe himself off and get his clothes back on regardless of her scent all over him. She knows he's right there, and he's not going to try and get away from her. That would defeat the point, the purpose, everything he's said tonight.

Danicka moves her head into his hands, turns her head and kisses his wrist as he combs her hair. Her eyes close as surely as they do when he kisses her mouth, as though she is just as lost in the press of her lips to his radial pulse as the exchange of breath between them.

But her head rolls back, hair combed slightly now, pushed off her neck and back. She looks up at him, still pink from sex, still sheening from exertion, still... fucked. Satisfied. Limp. Her eyelashes flutter downward when he kisses her, as he searches her mouth for the words he wants to say.

"Mmm," is all she says, a soft murmur of understanding. Sleepily, she turns her head to the side, and starts to pull him back down over her. Danicka's fingertips stroll down the back of his neck, up again. "If I had left you at the fire, love... I would have come here."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] There's a change in Lukas's face; that sort of aching, slow, dawning awareness she's seen before.

The first time she lay back for him, she saw it. The first time she said, I'm falling in love with you. It's in his eyes again now, like a spark of light disappearing into his pupils, arcing up his optic nerve to the centers of understanding and comprehension in his brain. In his mind. He had not known that before; he hadn't even suspected it. He supposes he thought she would've just left, would've gone home or to a hotel or something; would've left him there on the longest night of the year, alone in the dark and the cold.

Which should not be a notion that frightens him. Which should not be an idea that hurts. He's a goddamn werewolf. He's a full moon, a Shadow Lord, a Fostern, and on some level -- dimly -- he knows here are those of his moon and rank and tribe that would be ashamed to admit such a thing.

He would be ashamed, too, or even threatened, afraid, made vulnerable, if he felt it in conjunction to anyone else. Anything else. But this is Danicka. This is them.

It's safe.

"I love you," he says, quietly, as though this were a natural and fitting answer. Which it is. "Miluji tě."

And then, after a pause, smiling now because she taught him, and because he's still so bad at it:

"Ya tebya lyublyu."

[Danicka Musil] It shouldn't surprise her that he seems caught off guard by this, that he seems... like he's just learned something, understood something, come to have faith in her in a way he did not, before. Or, if not to have faith, to realize that she loves him this way, wants him that way, is his. Not just when it feels right, when they seem on the same page, but utterly. That she is his even when it aches. That she is his even when they're uncertain. That she knew what she was getting into when she told him that she wanted him to go see her brother

and take her from him.

Still, endlessly, she plays with his hair. She draws sensation up to the edges of his skull, seems to manipulate the threads of his very soul. There's every chance now for him that if he had let her go, if he had not stopped her when she turned to walk away from him, he could have found her in their den. He could have come here for comfort, himself, seeking her scent in the linens and the air and finding the woman herself, wreath and gown left somewhere in the room, body naked and face tearstained in their bed.

Or apologetic, reaching for him in the dark and whispering both regret and forgiveness.

Gaia only knows.

Alone in the dark and the cold is a state of being that Shadow Lords know well, know intimately enough to call the dark and the cold a friend. Trusting no one, their own company is often the best. There is nothing in the night that should be able to terrify him. There is nothing the cold can do to him that he cannot survive. There is nothing about solitude to harm him, not when he has his pack, not when he has the spirits, not when he has even his blood relatives, no matter how distant they are. Yet Lukas does not even need to confess, not to Danicka, that he was afraid. Not of being alone in the dark and cold. Of her leaving him there.

In one language after another, he professes his adoration. And she lifts her head and kisses him softly after each one, her smile slowly, softly growing. "Ya tebya lyublyu," she whispers back, then: "Miluji tě."

Danicka nuzzles him, fully and warmly, as open as an animal greeting her mate. "I love you. I love you. I love you."

[Lukas Wyrmbreaker] He has no reply to that that's verbalized. Lukas's eyes close, and he nuzzles her back. There's nothing perfunctory about the gesture; nothing automatic or brief. It unfurls slowly and lazily, their faces moving together, their cheeks rubbing past one another's unhurriedly until he lays over her again, their heads fitted to the lee of one another's shoulders.

She's so much smaller than him; so much slighter and weaker. He protects her when he lays over her like this, the breadth of his shoulders shadowing her, the solidity of his torso shielding her. If a strike were aimed at her, it would inevitably hit him first. If the ceiling caved in, he would absorb the brunt of the impact. Even if the goddamn sky split open and rained fire and ash --

he could protect her.

And that's the obvious conclusion to be drawn from the way he lies over her. Protection. Dominance, perhaps. Strength.

There's another, though. It's in the way her limbs are wrapped around him. In the way her body received him, and welcomed him, and recognized him. In the way she touches him even now, stroking his hair over and over, combing the faintly damp, dark strands apart, channeling coolness to his scalp, shivering sensation down to the very core of his consciousness.

There's something of protection there. And nurturing. And -- yes. Adoration.

Lukas understands better now, he thinks, why it was so long before Danicka would lie back for him. It had nothing to do with dominance or submission. It had everything to do with how open she is when she's like this. How open they are when they're like this.

--

He loves it when she strokes his hair like that. And Lukas never thought he would ever love something like that. It would have never occurred to him at the beginning of all this; it would have never occurred to him before all this, with anyone else.

That's the truth for much of this.

--

Lukas can't fall asleep atop her like this. He'll stop holding his weight on his elbows; he'll let himself relax. He'll start crushing her.

He drifts off anyway, and wakes to her shaking him gently, or perhaps swatting him on the shoulder the way she did once in New York City, when he tried to pull her down on his condomless cock. She's telling him he needs to get off her, or that she can't breathe, and he huffs a laugh and rolls to the side, bringing her with him. He's still inside her, and this makes him slip out at last, and that in turn makes him draw a short breath, just a hint of shudder at the edges.

They lie in the half-dark quietly. It's so quiet here; as quiet as it is in her bedroom in her glass tower. Quieter, somehow; more still. Peaceful: a sort of unscarred silence, perfect.

He holds her against his side, atop the blankets. They don't shower after all. They don't make a nest on the floor.

They sleep as they are, tangled together, smelling of one another.

--

If she had walked away from him in the longhouse, and into the night, he would have come here too. Not immediately, no. Not for hours. He would've stayed in the longhouse; he would've gotten drunk, drunker than anyone's seen him since that day last winter when he sat in the Brotherhood's kitchen and drank glass after glass after glass of scotch until he was fucking smashed, and angry, and resentful of her, right before she showed the fuck up.

And he gave her to Sam and went upstairs.

And then Sam came up too.

And he tore Sam to pieces.

He would've gotten drunk, and then angry, and then resentful, and then burst into the cold and the dark to run in the woods in absolute fourlegged solitude until first light began to stain the east.

And he would've come back to the city. To their den.

And found her here.

--

When Lukas wakes again, it's well into the night, and growing cold. The furnace in this old house isn't terribly efficient, and it's all the way down in the basement. Up in the bedrooms, it gets cold on an icy winter's night before long. This time he's the one that wakes her, though he tries not to; though he tries to pull the comforter out from under her without disturbing her.

"It's getting cold," he tells her, quiet, when she stirs and murmurs wordless question.

He gets the comforter free; they get under it. The sheets beneath are cool, too, but he wraps her in his arms, against his body, and covers her feet with his calves; her torso with his arms, and his hands. He keeps her warm

because the night is long and cold

and they sleep again.

--

Around dawn he wakes briefly. They're facing the eastern window; the sky beyond it is grey and pink, wintry, cold. It is the beginning of the day after solstice, and each will be longer than the last.

Until summer solstice. Until summer.

Asleep again.

--

In the late morning he showers with her. They wash woodsmoke and holly and rose and wine off one another. They don't wash away one another's scent, because he never strays far from her. They stay close; they brush past one another and bump gently against each other, and Lukas doesn't say much, but he smiles all the time.

He makes breakfast: breaking the eggs she bought into the pans she bought, garnishing with sausage bits and tomatoes, serving it up on the plates she bought. It's all new to him. When he thinks she isn't looking, she catches him sniffing one of the plates, holding it edge-down in both hands.

They eat at the breakfast table. He muses that he needs to look at the furnace; he thinks maybe he can fix it. He wonders if the empty rooms will look better with more color on the walls. He thinks they should pile blankets and pillows on the ground and make a nest and stay there until...

whenever.

--

And later, standing at the sink, washing dishes:

"I'm glad I would have found you here if you'd left."