"Arus, Arus, Arus, what are we going to do with you?"
Marcus drawled as he circled the man.
"I swear, that's all I know!"
Arus the stablehand was a hack and a git for perpetuating gossip about the nobles, but at least he was honest and easy to scare information out of. Marcus grinned.
"Well then, my man," He leaned momentarily on the corridor wall and took a bite of his apple before continuing as he chewed. "It's a good thing we ran into each other, isn't it. Now you can go about your week with a clean conscience and all of your limbs intact."
He then pat the stablehand on the shoulder in what would have otherwise been a comforting gesture (if a bit heavy-handed) and headed off further into the castle. It was almost noon and while he'd love to spend the rest of his day intimidating the staff and living up to his disreputable reputation, he did, in fact have more important things to do.
His Queen did not like to be kept waiting.
She made this clear for the thousandth time the moment she heard the door to her study scrape open against the stone floor. Red's voice was cold, but not entirely agitated. Her eyes never once strayed from the documents she was leaning over.
"You're late."
Marcus took the opportunity to look at her unabashedly as he strolled forward.
"Yes, well, at least I'm not paying thugs to attack my tax caravan and then return the money to my private stores."
He replied in lieu of an excuse or plea for forgiveness. This was an old game, assuaging her displeasure with him by providing a piece of information he thought useful. The practice originated out of an attempt to keep her from having him whipped, starved, beheaded, etc. Now it was more amusing than anything. The Queen was almost always irritated with him - irritated, but not wrathful.
She glanced up at him momentarily, only her hazel eyes flicking sideways.
"That would not bode well for you, no."
Marcus' perpetual smirk widened and he leaned on the table next to her, still staring. Even when vexed and trying not to be distracted from the boring duties of paperwork, His Queen was beautiful. He lingered there a moment, above her only in stature and then let out something halfway between a huff of amusement and a sigh.
"Well I suppose it's a good thing I'm just an untitled cur posing as an advisor rather than a fat baron of the southern coast."
"It's fortunate, yes." She agreed, searching for a moment and then gathering various documents into a stack and handing them over - effectively ruining the moment. "Look over that census data will you. I want to know how much the upstart is funneling away from us - people and resources. Lord Pinnel compiled the data, but he's also a fat baron and I don't trust him to organize a collection squad for anything beyond western wine."
The wolf made a face at the idea of having to do administrative work, but accepted the parchment regardless and sat at the other side of the table to begin looking it over. His own note page looked like chicken scrawl compared to the other documents, but given that hardly anyone else was ever going to read it, he didn't much care. The sooner he could complete the task, the sooner he could take the wolves out for a run. The moon would be out that night and the more exhausted the wolves were, the less likely there was to be trouble.
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Since Red's rise to power, the civilized wolves typically made it a tradition to remain outside the capital's walls until the full moon had set and the sun risen in it's place. Coherent and in control or not, they had centuries of prejudices to make up for and one night of camping a month was no hardship for those loyal to the Queen.
Marcus, however, was never one for tradition.
Slinking back into the castle as a wolf was easy. Even though he'd grown substantially in size, he had no problem navigating the narrow passages, crevices and cut-throughs he'd discovered as a lonely youth. It was a path he'd never dare take as a human, even knowing them as well as he did. Once inside the keep's walls, he stuck to the shadows and kept to himself both out of respect for the humans within (what? he could be respectful, he just usually didn't want to), and because he didn't fancy the possibility of interaction. His large paws padded silently through the dark corridors, his eyes well-adjusted and gleaming as he made his way further within.
The door to the Queen's chamber made no sound as it opened. In fact, there was very little advance notice for the woman within that she was receiving company. Still, Red did not startle as she sat on the bed reading.
"I had wondered if you were going to attempt an appearance tonight."
She said, voice soft in the night, but still retaining the queenly edge. Marcus (as he was a wolf) made no reply, but turned to shut the door behind him with a click. Perhaps one of his favorite things about the wolf was that no one expected him to do anything human in that skin. He could be quite expressive, sure, but he was never required to ponder, suppose or quip. Wolves had personality. Human things like responsibility and obligations didn't apply.
He made his way silently through the room and toward the bed, neither rushing nor waiting for endorsement. Finally, when he was several feet away and clearly intent of foregoing his usual couch for a far more comfortable perch, the Queen looked up sternly at his beastly form. When her gaze alone didn't stop his advance, she spoke.
"You know I don't like fur on the bed."
Marcus paused at that, but still made no reply. That seemed good enough for His Queen, for she dropped her attention back to her reading. The shapeshifter felt a surge of great amusement, then, when she looked up in a mix of shock and righteous indignation when she felt the bed dip under his weight. It must have shown on his face, for her expression quickly dropped to one of exasperation.
He ignored the thin line of her mouth and the single arched eyebrow in favor of crawling the rest of the way over and curling up along her side on top of the covers (he wasn't entirely dishonorable), completely human and completely naked (just mostly). She stared at him for a moment or two longer until it became clear that he had no intention of responding. His eyes were shut when she continued on, flipping a page and resting her hand on the shock of unruly hair next to her hip-bone.
"Honestly, I'm surprised you came at all." She mused, "It takes quite a lot of effort to shift back under the moon's pull, does it not?"
Typically, this would be where Marcus might reply something smarmy along the lines of simply needing "proper motivation." But she was correct in assuming that the effort to maintain his current form was taxing. It was easier for him because he was only half-wolf, so his humanity was always closer to the surface than the others. He wondered for a moment if his mother's genetics were perhaps the only reason he could do it at all - let alone maintain it for longer than a few minutes.
It was still the night of the full moon, however, and he had chosen to spend his energy on his physical presence - not controlling the animal instincts. His only response was to hum and nuzzle impossibly closer both to her hip and the hand stroking through his hair. If Red was disturbed by his lack of words, she did not show it.
Silence reigned in the chamber once more, disturbed only by the sound of their breathing and the occasional turn of a page. Any other night, the stillness and comfort of his surroundings and the gentle repetitive motion of Red's hand would have surely lulled Marcus to sleep. As it stood, however, none of these things were enough to overpower the restless pull of the moon. Even the effort of maintaining his human form was not enough to wear the shifter out.
So while he remained still, Marcus' mind raced. The moon drove him to analyze everything with an almost manic energy, pulling him in all directions with the various stimuli drawn in by his enhanced senses. When he was first learning to shift, Marcus' father calmly taught his struggling pup to anchor his consciousness. They might not be able to control the shift on the night of the full moon, but they could harness and direct it. His father's anchor had been his mother, and all of his control had died with her.
Now, Marcus focused on the beating of his heart and the asymmetrical rhythm it made with His Queen's. The sheets and thick blanket beneath him were soft, yet he could almost feel the individual threads and was careful not to shred them beneath his claw-tipped fingers. The bed below and the line of Red's legs were warm where he pressed against them, absorbing and reciprocating his higher body temperature, but he chose to follow the trail of gooseflesh along his exposed back and side instead. So different from the skin and fur of a wolf was that of a human. His nose filled with the various scents of the castle. The hustle and bustle of people created it's own odors, though slightly mitigated in the Queen's private chambers. Here, he could pick out the wax from her candles and the oil of her bedside lamp, the smell of yellowed parchment from her book as opposed to the brand new documents neatly ordered on her writing table. Most prevalently, he could smell her.
Some wolves liked to romanticize the scents of other people, comparing them to herbs, weather or some abstract concept. Marcus thought himself a little more practical. His Queen smelled like a human. She used strongly scented soaps for her hair, washing the room in florals anytime it swung, yet kept to plain washing for everything else. In the mornings she smelled clean and distinct, but if she'd had a long or hard day, that scent turned sharp and salty with sweat and annoyance. She did not smell like the woods unless she was hunting or the stone of the castle unless she had been exploring the lower levels. She smelled like whatever emotion she had last felt strongly enough for the chemosignal to linger. Mostly, around him at least, this was some mix of annoyance and amusement.
Tonight she smelled clean and content, wrapped in silk and linen, holding an old book.
Almost reflexively, Marcus drew his tongue across his teeth as he thought, still slightly sharp for all his effort of appearing human. He could still taste the fresh deer on the back of his tongue, left over from the hunt earlier in the night. Behind closed lids, he saw the forest rushing past and the shadowy forms of the other wolves, working together to bring the beast down. He recalled the thrill of the hunt and the exuberance of the conquest, his teeth lengthening almost completely to points at the memory of tearing into the deer's flesh still steaming in the cool winter air.
"If I let you lie with me, will it allow you to settle?"
The Queen's voice, sudden and crisp, brought Marcus back to the present. He was halfway to raising en eyebrow to remind her that they already were laying together when she glanced pointedly at his waist. Apparently, his teeth had not been the only thing lengthening at the sense memory of the hunt. His stomach and instincts jolted forward at the comprehension of her offer. In a bid to regain control, he paused, taking a few deep breaths to center himself. He flicked his tongue across his teeth once more, both to check they were suitably human and to subconsciously chase the taste of the deer away.
He attempted to reply, but Red continued to meet his gaze and he found himself unable to articulate. It was, the full moon, after all. There was a reason the wolves stayed outside the castle. Human appearance or not, the wolf was in control on this night and the wolf wanted to claim. Thankfully, she saved him from the embarrassment of letting out a whine by shifting to set her book aside and remove her nightdress. She moved the blankets down out of the way and Marcus continued to stare, fighting the instinct to just pounce until Red pulled him over her.
When her eyes met him again, her voice was stern.
"No wounds. No lasting marks."
And honestly, as far as lists of demands went, that was far less than usual - made even odder by the specific circumstances of the night. But the full moon shone in through the window and Marcus rumbled happily in consent.
F a l l o n SF_- · Tue Nov 28, 2017 @ 11:12pm · 0 Comments |