You're going to have to be faster than that

Manea answered his question, and her response brought him a little bit of comfort. At least the pups wouldn't get to know the world, get to know their parents, get to become actual living fucking beings before being destroyed like unwanted property. Her explanation of the criteria her family used to cull the children didn't matter to him. He truly didn't care for the reasons why the children were chosen for ritualistic slaughter, since the end result was the same. The most dazzling pup, the biggest and strongest... that would be the one to live... Alastor looked over Manea, at her gorgeous celestial purple fur, her breathtaking eyes, her unique mutations, her size... He considered himself, with ebony black fur that looked like it had been kissed by fire, his obsidian eyes as dark as a moonless night, his sheer size and strength... They made sense together when looking at it through the lens of her family's beliefs, and it explained why Manea was so head over heels for him so quickly. It had also been why he had survived his childhood.

Manea tried to reassure him that pups were the crux of her family's beliefs, and that the survivors would receive love and resources from the family to flourish. He nodded his head slowly, but it was mostly on reflex to acknowledge he had heard what she said. The soft touch of her paw on his cheek brought him back to her, and he saw the curious look in those aquatic optics prying to see what was inside his mind. What was he thinking about? Alastor wasn't sure she would really want the answer to that question... But Manea had been so open about her life and her family, it was only fair that he shared with her too. "Where I came from, it was a very similar situation. Strength was the way of life, and the stronger you were, the further you got..." he told her, beginning his story. "My parents took that as an excuse to strengthen my siblings and I any way they could... In our case, that meant beatings, punishments, denial of food and water if we weren't good enough... My father..." Alastor hesitated, that word tasting like poison in his mouth to call the monster that had spawned him a 'father'. "He took some sort of pleasure in it, like we were toys for him to break... It would have been more merciful if he had done what your family does and just kept one pup alive after birth... He didn't... I got to grow up to know all two of my brothers and two of my sisters—until he killed them one by one..."

Alastor reclined his head back on the dead dire wolf, staring blankly up at the ceiling while he recalled every single death of his siblings as if it were happening right in front of him again. "I was the oldest of the five... The first one he killed was my youngest brother, the runt... He was four months old and couldn't take as many beatings as the rest of us, so my father dragged him to the river and held him under until he stopped fighting... Then he threw the body into the river and came back to tell us all he had only lasted one minute and twenty eight seconds and how pathetic he was... The next was my middle brother... He was being starved for having lost a fight with another pup and tried to sneak some food when father wasn't around... Father came back, caught him, and slammed him into the wall of our cave over and over until his brains were all over the rock... He refused to let any of us touch his corpse to bury him for a week until it started stinking and he finally let our mother get rid of him..." Alastor's jaw clenched and he grit his teeth together as he moved on to the next part of his story.

"My sisters would only have been so lucky to be killed by him... He raped them both repeatedly once they were big enough for him... The one he choked to death when he got too frisky with her one night... The last one, well, I think at that point he'd just decided he liked killing and got bored of having her around... I came home to find her eviscerated, her body ripped open, stinking of blood and of him... I buried her myself..." Alastor slowly brought his dark yes back down to meet Manea's once more, all traces of a smile gone from his face while he clutched her body possessively, protectively. "All my childhood I stayed awake at night listening to the crying and screams of my siblings... I never gave him the satisfaction of a yelp... But the worst part...? When I was the last wolf standing, he tried to beat me again, but I fought back that time... He was bigger, stronger, so he won, but I got a good chunk out of his shoulder... He broke my leg and congratulated me on earning my right to live... Then he never harmed me again, said he was just toughening me up, making me stronger to take on the world... Fucking asshole..."

His story told, Alastor finished by explaining his hard lines. "That is why I don't ever harm pups... My brothers and sisters didn't deserve what happened to them... We were dealt a shit hand and they lost... I almost wish my parents had done what your family does and just mercy-killed them all before they could open their eyes..." He snorted, trying to suppress the angry demons he could feel rising to the surface. He did not need to lose control now and lash out at the wolf he was falling for. "That is why the timing matters to me... If you're going to kill all but one, do it before they can feel it, before they're old enough to know betrayal, to look you in your eyes and ask you why you're hurting them... If that is your family's customs, then I can accept that so long as you accept my terms for the timing... and don't ever ask me to do it... I will stay by your side for the birth and the aftermath, because I do not abandon my wolves, but do not ask me to take their lives..." Of all the lives he'd taken and would take, Alastor did not have the stomach or heart to kill a newborn pup.


"Alastor"