Warning: cussing in this chapter hope you don't mind lol
"And I'm wholly grateful that there aren't madmen after my expensive skin," Soul says, snidely. He wraps her hand around her wrist, scraping his sharp claws against her skin in a mock caress. Maka's cheek twitches but she stays still, letting him run three fingers down her arm until they reach the crook of her elbow. There, Maka's breath hitches, and Soul's crooked grin darkens. "You've always had a thing for sharp things," he smirks, pulling her in closer. His mouth stretches back in a savage grin and Maka follows a string of saliva down the edge of his jaw. He's absolutely starved, Maka realizes with an uncomfortable ache between her thighs. Had it really been so long?
"Soul, Meme...she can't be left alone," she hisses. Soul jerks her even closer and Maka's foot slips in the muddy undergrowth. She slaps a hand against the tree for support, but her other hand grips his shirt. She hesitates only for a second, just to allow her fingers the quiet, short, luxury of smoothing down his sculpted chest. "I told you I would come back," Maka states, no longer irked or angry. She was just tired and, most of all, she was sad. "I did, but-!"
"Five years later," Soul seethes, digging his fingers into her shoulder. She flinches, but his nails never break her skin. "You made me wait for you five years, Maka, without a word from you! I waited every day at that fucking tree for you like you asked for two years and you never came!"
"I wanted to but I couldn't!"
"Oh, but you could come now, right? After everything had blown over?-You don't even have that hag Liz with you! You had no one to stop you!"
"Listen to me-!"
"I waited five years and I'm tired," Soul snaps his jaw like a wounded wolf. He sounds like a wounded animal. "I'm here to tell you I won't wait anymore, not if you're going to leave me here like some fucking stray-!"
"SHUT UP!" Maka screams, slapping both her hands on his cheeks. This stuns him enough for her to lock their gazes together: one dumbfounded red and another blazing emerald. Her thumbs dig into his cheekbones to hold his head still. "SHUT UP AND LISTEN TO ME, YOU GRUMPY WOLF!" She barks, just like she did when she had been sixteen and gallivanting through the woods-meeting a starving white wolf with the most gorgeous pelt she had ever laid eyes on, feeding the ill-tempered hound and indebting his life to her with just a few simple treats. Dark chocolate, she thinks distractedly, because he did not like sweet things, but rather bitter ones. "I didn't come back because after I vouched for your life at the Rangers Cabin, I couldn'tcome back. Why do you think they stopped hunting you, Soul? Do you really believe someone like me, a baker's assistant, could stop an entire cabin of armed men for one wolf?" She searches his eyes and, upon finding them trained on her, she smiles sadly at the old pain he harbored-the wild thing she had tamed over many weeks, the animal she had once embraced so tightly his skin could have become her own. She held his heart in her hand and she hadn't been careful with it. "I told you where to go to get food to survive," she lowers her voice, remembering the mill that an old couple owned; the small patch of garden, lush with vegetables and nuts and trees of fruit. "And I told them...I told them I killed you."
Soul gives her a halting look, red eyes searching hers for signs of deceit. "They've been trying to hunt me down for years, how did you...?"
"Poison," Maka answers. "I told them I had found you in the forest, starving, and, scared you might attack me again, I had poisoned you with some berries and left you there. It had been two days by the time I told the Rangers-enough time for the other animals in the forest, the vultures, and other magical creatures to pick you apart...it's not strange for carcasses to disappear within the hours, not in this forest so they didn't question me further. When you didn't appear anymore, they decided I was telling the truth."
"Then why didn't you return to me?" Soul demands, one part of the riddle not sounding true quite yet.
"The forest has been closed off for the past five years, Soul," Maka looks at her toes, the wind whistling between the branches. The forest night is cold, loud and full of horrors, with things that whisper in the ear and disappear at the next moment; mud that clogs the steps, feeling as if it is sapping away all strength; trails that change every time the moon beam hit it at just the right angle, at just the right moment. After the death of the supposed blood hound that preyed on young village girls and travelers, the forest had been officially closed off by the King's orders. Iron walls had risen to prevent any entry miles ahead of the forest itself.
"The only reason its open now...is because I broke through against the law. It took some time, but I found a weak spot about two miles away from the actual entrance."
"You...broke the law?" Soul asks, blankly. "For...?"
/an/ cliff hanger since its the weekend I can work on this story more
