what hurts the most

He would have rather that Deathbelle was angry, her soft, resigned acknowledgement was much closer to his undoing. She came closer to him, and he wanted so desperately to reach a paw out to her. To brush a lock of fur from her face. He clenched his claws in the dirt to hold them still.

I gave you my life she reminded him, and he thought they echoed a little too close to his unspoken thoughts. And then… and then.

She tilted back her throat, tears in her voice as she asked him to… something broke in his brain then, as his once Empress and Mistress gave him two terrible choices. She wasn’t willing to walk away from him. She wanted death, or to be his.

He stared at her, he stared and stared as shock and horror flitted across his expressions. He was not going to kill her, of course he could not. But he thought of the numerous and different ways he had claimed her, at the hot springs, at the falls. Of his teeth in her coat. Bringing her into the Armada sounded like… like a very terrible idea. Leaving her out here? Would she simply sit her, and let the elements take her?

“....Deathbelle.” he said again, aghast.