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"Are you truly?" the voice inquired, not attempting to hide the stab of ice in its tone. Vartoon could be described as many things...stupid was not one of them. And she wore her deceit poorly.

Rising, taking assessment of the pathetically-small frame he found himself in, he climbed out of the bed. "Then why do I wake?" he challenged.

Zhane.

The name struck a familiar chord in him and yet he'd never heard it before. The runes of the guardian circle blazed brighter, searing his flesh as growled in dislike. Something had needled him awake.

Something here.

Something she was doing or about to do.

His eyes fell to the vial in her fingers as he crossed the room. He did not bother to stop and grab for it, one wing flexing outward sharply to knock her wrist instead as he faced her fully, amber eyes drilling into the swarming orbs of green.

Lips pulling back from his teeth, he moved to pursue her. Whatever it was, she was not to be deterred from it. She was--

As she changed her position, scents assaulted his nose. This body's senses were absurdly-narrow and dulled, but he was able to pick up enough traces to fit fragments together. There were some that stirred deeper things than others. Scents of familiarity that made something in him tighten and flutter in a way he found ridiculous. That made the other part of him he was bound to whisper her name fondly, imprinting it in the black velvet of his subconscious.

Nani

And there was something else. Something that suddenly made it glaringly apparent why he'd been stirred. She was pregnant. It was his.

Growling, he seized her by the hips, pulling her back from the bedside enough to make her face him. "You would destroy the life within you..." he snorted. "Why?"

And so he did let her go. Sitting back on his haunches to watch her warily. Touching her prickled at him in a way he wasn't sure he liked. She seemed familiar. And not in the same sense of familiarity that this other part...this ZHANE found her to be.

"That." he said, his voice smoothing into something more reasonable. "is -their- decision."

An eyebrow cocked at her question and he gave a derisive snort. "No." he told her. "And if you think it is any easier for me, to be pulled from the nether and rebound to a soul that had long-since departed from me...."

He did not know who it was who had done this to him. Or for what reason this man needed a guardian circle. But he found, right now, as he eyed the strange scaleless arms and uselessly-thin flesh that covered his bones, he would like to ask them. He'd like to ask them right up close.

He allowed himself to look at her. Really look at her. Soft, smooth flesh, hair of gold, strange bejeweled wings. Was she attempting to masquerade herself as a fairy?

The acid tone of her voice, the way she had no regard for anyone but herself, the audacity of her made him hiss, both in anger and from the intensity of the runes glowing brighter, needles of pain driving into his skull.

A moment later and he was on her, his hands grappling with her own to entrap her wrists, trying to force her to spill the contents of what she clutched.

"IF I let you...." he rumbled, glowering at her. His tail flicked irately behind him, his eyes drilling into her own. Her struggles wavered his attention from the matter at hand....only for the briefest moment, but it was enough to betray the effect the friction had on him.

"You disgust me." Vartoon snarled, his words a perfect contrast to what his body was saying. "Preying on the unborn just to have a foothold of control..."