Shielding the Beast (discontinued)

Nine | Revisit

Shadows are scarce among the forest, the sun banishing all but the faint slithers hidden beneath the leaves of the underbrush.

My spine stands straight in awareness, my eyes surveying our surroundings with lethal precision. My hips move in sync with Asher's back as he retains a steady trot, his paws kicking up small clouds of dust from the bone dry earth.

My hands remain resting on his shoulder blades, the feeling of them sliding beneath his pelt as he walks somehow soothing my uneasy notions.

The atmosphere has changed, the aura of the environment different; not of a positive manner.

In the midst of our path a large log lays, rotted and decaying. Asher's pace does not falter, his back legs only contracting and pushing his feet off the ground in a graceful leap. As he lands on the other side of the log, we become trespassers; trespassers with no intentions of turning around.

Analyzing the new smells that a new pack's territory offers to me, panic is, yet again, immediately brought forth.

"Stop."

Asher does so, lowering himself for a second time for me to dismount. My feet holding their own weight now, he turns around for his golden eyes to question me.

"Go back to the border. Follow along it until you find our scent trail again on the other side. I'll meet you there."

My instructions are told futility, Asher refusing to wait for my last sentence to finish before growling his protest.

A pang of irritation ricochets inside my chest for the disobedience. But beastial instincts do not prolong in the abolishment of the emotion, cutting short my negative feelings towards the thing most precious to me.

Killing the possibility of a one-sided argument, the familiar gory sound of bones popping from their sockets and reshaping by force draws my attention.

A mere second is all it takes for the human face of Asher to linger only inches from mine, the same glowing yellow orbs burning into my skin. And just the meager fact of knowing they belong to him is enough for me to let them roam my face for however long they wish.

His body is bare, the transformation having ripped his clothes to shreds the first time. The only article that still remains is the metal piece pierced through his left ear, shining as if it were silver.

His form stands at a microscopic distance from mine, teasingly withholding contact, but instead brushing the loose-fitted clothes that he had scavenged for me.

A gleam of fresh anger flashes in his honeyed irises, the small action emitting a foreign feeling from within me. He had caused this feeling the first time I had ever experienced it, proving him to be the only one capable of it.

Attraction.

When he speaks, his voice only strengthens the lust, "Unless you take me for a careless asshole, I'm not leaving you to walk through enemy territory alone."

Hypnotized, my dominant and commanding mindset is nearly erased, to be replaced with obedience and docility.

What's wrong with me? How does he do this?

His hands glide down my arms, firmly encircling my wrists in his strong-grip fingers. The thick sleeves of the button up shirt put on me whilst I had laid unconscious had, to my gratefulness, smothered out the feeling of the scars bared upon upper arm.