The silver-shaded woman had long ago given up on love; she had not actively pursued such a thing since Ahren. Laruku hadn't been love, and neither had anyone else since. She hadn't had too many close brushes with love, but each time it had hurt her worse than any physical pain she had known. Her lover had left her, she had shoved them away, something had gone completely awry in the time she had been close to it. She had begun to believe she was simply too old to find it anymore. It had snuck in innocuously enough, of course—the silver-shaded woman did not doubt her mother's love had spawned this twisted thing that was supposed to feel terrible.
Maybe more unsettling than anything was that it didn't. She did not feel terrible in the least, and this did not feel wrong; more than anything it felt right, maybe the natural progression from where they had started out to here—maybe this was intended and meant to happen. Her tongue reached his collarbone, drawing over a long, thin gash there, and his voice murmured, soft and far-away. She turned her head to put her tattered ear against his chest, listening to the thudding heart there.
For a long moment, there was no response from the scarred woman, but she put her hand to his throat, her claws resting over his flesh, just barely able to feel the pulsing blood there. It was not his blood she wanted to see running out and over her fingers. She could not have that blood; she had not been capable of taking it from Haku, and she had failed herself and her clan just as miserably as Samael believed he had failed her. Her breath came in a heavy sigh, and she lifted her head, drawing her fingers to pull his chin toward her.
“Mama loves you,” she said, drawing her hand to his hair, winding her fingers over it. She delicately avoided the knots that had worked their way into it, and pulled a small leaf from him when she felt it beneath her fingertips. “Mama needs you,” she murmured, pulling him closer. Maybe she would destroy him without meaning to; maybe she would destroy herself in the process, but the silver-shaded coyote could not bring herself to care. He loved and accepted her always, in the ways no one else ever could—what more could she have asked of him?
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