Returning to Ardent had been a… bittersweet experience, to say the least. More bitter than sweet if he was being honest. He had left Boreas at the height of his family’s power, abandoning the thriving Klein empire for a brave and daring rescue of his princess girlfriend when she had been captured. It had been an adventure of a lifetime tracking her down and saving her from the slavers that would have sold her off like property, and in the end what had his reward been for risking his life and limb for her?

She broke up with him.

Fiametta had unceremoniously dumped him as they neared Boreas, claiming she needed time to work on herself and heal. Stolas had tried his best to pretend like he was on board and this was a mutual breakup, but it was all a mask to hide the anguish he felt at having his heart ripped from his chest once again. And just like last time, it had all come right after he and Fiametta had become intimate. The fallen prince was convinced that sex had ruined two of his relationships now. And worse still? When he returned home, there was no home left to return to. Ashen was gone, the Raiders in its place, and his family nowhere to be found. Stolas was in dismay, directionless, despondent. He had lost everything while trying to do the right thing.

Over the next few days, the once proud Klein prince wandered aimlessly south from Boreas and into Auster, choosing the temperate summer of the south over the frigid winter of the north. He had nowhere to go, no one to turn to, and no plan for his future. Everything he had ever had was gone. Even his observatory and his books... just gone. All he had left was his one grimoire and the meteorite and moonstone pendant that hung around his neck, glimmering faintly in the silvery moonlight. Eventually Stolas' paws brought him through the dense woods at the heart of Auster, the dire brute slinking quietly through the stillness of the night, his dark fur almost a perfect camouflage in the night. Silver moonlight streamed down through the gnarled tree branches overhead like little spotlights. All around, the sounds of nocturnal insects and animals could be faintly heard in the calm summer night.

Stolas breathed a sigh and stumbled forward, careful to avoid tripping over the roots of the trees he passed, though he cared little for if he fell. What more was physical pain added on to his emotional suffering? The prince took in a deep breath through his nose—and froze. A perfume of feminine pheromones hung on the air, a scent Stolas was familiar with—a fae in heat. But it wasn't just the primal instincts that roused his interest in the smell. It was who he smelled on those pheromones. It can't possibly be... Graphite eyes steeling, the brute surged forward, muscles rippling beneath his coat as he chased down the source of the perfume, all the while convincing himself that he was being tricked. But this was no trick. Rushing through the trees, Stolas pushed through some underbrush with a crunch of leaves and twigs under his giant paws, and there he saw her in the moonlit clearing.

"Widow..."

"Stolas"

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"Speech!"
Tomorrow would be the day that she would take this forest as hers, claim is as the new home of those that would soon be called the Hellborn. She had spent the day getting everything ready and although she should be exhausted from all the work, there was a much different feeling going on inside. It was rare that she felt this way but there was an insatiable need that came around every year without fail. She couldn't help but remember the night in the crypt with a man she hadn't seen since that night. So much had happened in a short time and though she had never forgotten about him, that night never left her mind while she was in heat.

Part of her hated it, but it was trying to control her and she so desperately wanted to let it. Even alone, or so she thought, alongside the edge of the pond she finally allowed a paw to slide down in an attempt to alleviate what was almost becoming painful at this point. She hadn't been at it but maybe a few minutes before she heard her name and she stopped suddenly, attention flicking over her shoulder in shock from being watched (and maybe a little turned on??) and recognizing the voice.

Stolas.

She didn't know what to say at first. What was he doing here? Was this where he had been the whole time?

"Stolas," her words came out almost as a moan and her paw slipped away from her most delicate parts. "It's been a long time~"

It was her! Stolas would have recognized that midnight slate fur speckled with dark spots like a jaguar anywhere. The gold markings around her face simply sealed the deal. She was alive. She was alive and she had grown up. The fae that turned to face him was all woman, built of slender yet powerful planes of muscle hidden beneath her fur, lithe and graceful yet far from fragile or delicate. Her eyes met his with a wide-eyed surprised look, and the moment his gray optics locked with her gleaming silver jewels, it was like he was being transported back in time. Stolas stood frozen, equally as dumbfounded to see her as she was to see him. Time seemed to stand still around them. Even the noise of the summer forest seemed to ebb away into oblivion, leaving just him and the phantom from his past. Was she as surprised by his glow up too? No longer the scrawny star-loving boy she'd known, Stolas had grown into a man. The brute was trim and toned, his coat clinging to powerful muscles. His fur around his face and neck was just a little scruffy from his time away from home, just the right amount of disheveled and mussy.

She spoke his name, the sound a breathy sigh of air close to a moan, and then she shifted her position. Stolas' eyes followed the movement of her paw, realizing with a flush of heat that it had been nestled snugly between her thighs. He'd caught her in the middle of satisfying her own urges. Stolas' mouth hung open, stuck somewhere between the reflexive notion to apologize and the instinctive urge to go over to her and offer his own paw instead. Her heat pheromones were slowly intoxicating his brain like a miasma filling the air; Widow was deep into her season. But despite his body's primal drives, Stolas' mind still had unresolved emotions and issues it needed to address first.

The way she purred her words to him as calmly and casually as if she hadn't just disappeared from his life for three years stoked an anger in his heart. Dark eyes narrowed and he leered at Widow from where he stood, staring at her in disbelief, half expecting her to disappear again like a ghost in the moonlight. "Is that really all you have to say to me? After all these years, that's it?" His voice was spoken softly, but with an edge of anguish he'd never forgotten. Stolas took a couple bold steps closer to her, now fully emerging from the tree line into the clearing and heading towards her at the pond's edge, his starry fur glistening in the moonlight. "Do you have any idea how worried I was when I never saw you again? I thought something terrible had happened to you! I thought you'd died when your mother told me you were sick and wouldn't let me see you!" Stolas' anger turned to anguish on his face, expression contorting through rage and into sorrow and heartbreak. "I thought I'd done something to make you hate me. I thought I'd never see you again."

Stolas' advance stopped a few paces away from Widow, staring at her with a confusing mix of emotional distress and rising carnality. Gods, her scent was getting stronger the closer he got to her! It didn't help that his breathing was picking up too, each labored breath pulling more of her pheromones into his nares, straight into his brain. "Where were you all this time?" he asked, his temper subsiding enough after his outburst to speak calmly again—even though his mind was already racing back in time to a night long ago inside a silent crypt with her...

"Stolas"

Code © Skelle/Witchdogtor DO NOT USE WITHOUT PERMISSION

"Speech!"
Had she not have recognized his voice and had he not had such a unique coat pattern, Widow doubted she would recognize the now man that stood before her. Maybe it was just because of the season and her urges, but fuck he was hot. She would happily keep her paw between her thighs and allow him to watch, noticing how distracted he seemed to be by her scent, but his words and tone demanded something else entirely.

"She never told me you tried to see me..." She said first, barely above a whisper and really only to herself. She might not remember much, but she would remember that. She shook her head then, brows furrowing. "So much happened after that night, I-..." she paused, wondering where she even began and if he would even believe her.

"I got really sick the following morning. I don't remember much after that though. Medusa found me unconscious with a newborn puppy nursing and I've been with Insomnia ever since she took Habari from Recluse," she tried to explain, intentionally avoiding the part about the mass of conjoined stillborn puppies she had birthed alongside Cryptis. At this point, she was still convinced that she was cursed to either get pregnant and have children or, at this rate, suffer through what seemed to be insatiable horniness.

The ache in Stolas' chest and the roiling emotions in his heart wanted to continue to roll like a thunderstorm on a summer night, but Widow's surprise by his words and her apparently genuine reaction to his hurt stole whatever energy those storms in his broken heart had. His pained expression softened gradually the more she spoke, explaining what had happened following the last night he'd ever seen her. Knowing that Recluse had never even told Widow about Stolas' numerous attempts to find her shocked him. Why had she done that? Did Recluse have some issue with him hanging around Widow? Hearing the tale from Widow's mouth filled in some of the blanks he had in the aftermath of their adolescent coupling. She had indeed gotten very sick, and that same sickness had her in a haze to where she couldn't remember much. It somehow ended up with her with a nursing pup, Habari gone and Insomnia founded.

Stolas' brows furrowed; so many more questions lingered in his mind, but right now he was having a hard time focusing on any of them. Every breath he took intoxicated his brain with her scent, a chemical reaction akin to taking a hit of a narcotic. The dire brute swallowed thickly, his body flush with warmth radiating out from his core the longer he stayed in Widow's presence. But he wasn't about to walk away or put space between them, not now that he'd finally found her after all this time. His breathing became a touch more labored, Stolas more consciously aware of every inhale as he could practically taste her on the air. Graphite eyes stayed on hers, losing himself in mercurial silver pools. She was still so beautiful... even more so now in all her glory as a fully grown fae. If she had said anything after her story, Stolas was having difficulty keeping his mind on track when already the primal part of his brain was picturing her underneath him—or him beneath her. Fuck, keep it together!

"I never stopped looking for you. I passed by Habari's borders every day until they fell and Insomnia rose. Nobody could tell me if you were alive, or a prisoner in Insomnia, or anything! I didn't stop... until I couldn't keep wasting away chasing a fleeting hope any longer." Stolas' shoulders slumped and he heaved a sigh, averting his gaze from hers to stare out at the still water of the pond, hoping that would give his mind enough clarity to stay in control. "I never stopped thinking of you. Every night when I looked at the stars, I prayed that you might be looking up at them too. But... I never thought I'd ever actually see you again." The brute's lips quivered into a soft lopsided smirk, his eyes lifting to look up at Widow from beneath his lashes, a bit of a smolder in those gray depths. "Fate likes to prove me wrong time and time again, it seems..."

Stolas took a deep breath, and- fuck, big mistake, there was her scent again! His whole body shuddered as that instinctive reaction to her pheromones sent chills rippling down his back. He clenched his jaw, letting the sensations pass by before trying to speak again. Gods, he hadn't felt those sensations in a long time. "I missed you, Widow..." he spoke softly, his voice a practically a rumbling purr while he risked another step closer to her. His eyes were searching hers, searching her expression for something. Did she ever miss him too or had he just been a good memory for her to please herself with at night?

"Stolas"

Code © Skelle/Witchdogtor DO NOT USE WITHOUT PERMISSION

"Speech!"
It hurt her to know that Stolas searched for her, patrolled the outside of Habari's borders for her every day in hopes that she was okay. Just one more thing to add into the pot of why she so greatly despised her mother, but there was no use in hating a dead woman. Nothing could be done about it now and it was something that she was going to forever have to live with, and she was desperate to make sure that she didn't do it to her own children. She would break the cycle.

She had no more words to say to him that felt worth saying. What could she even say to take away this pain they had felt years ago? She did know that she missed him though... and that maybe finding him here, in these woods, was fate telling her the curse was over. Widow could only hope that was the case.

"I've missed you too, Stolas, so much. I'm sorry for everything that happened, I wished that I could've had you there with me. I was so lost and confused..." she started with a frown, noticing his slight advance but not acknowledging it as she was too focused on the past in that moment to see that he was struggling to keep his composure the deeper he got buried in her intoxicating scent.

There was a long bout of silence between the two between where his words ended and where she just listened to him. It felt... cathartic in a way to release all of the pent up frustration and pain he'd held inside all these years. Try as he might to have ignored it, Stolas could not deny that losing Widow had been what launched his life on the trajectory it had been on. Now, here in the moonlit forest, alone and together again, it almost felt like divine providence had brought them back together again. Too young to have lasted when they'd first met—but maybe now they were both matured and ready to try again.

Widow spoke and Stolas looked up to lock gazes with her, steely gray holding brilliant silver. She admitted she missed him too, and then she said the words he'd ached to hear for most of his life. I'm sorry. That was all Stolas needed to hear, that simple show of remorse. There was nothing they could do to change the past, but the future was still theirs for the taking, and they could write whatever they wanted in it. This could be the start of a new beginning, or the closing of their final chapter. It was all up to them now. Whether it was the allure of Widow's natural biological perfume or the yearning of his romantic heart, all Stolas knew was that he didn't want this to be the end. Not now... not after all this.

Stolas took a deep breath, both to steady his nerves and because he really liked the way her scent was making his whole body tingle, his nerves alive with wanton desire. "It doesn't matter anymore. It's in the past, where it deserves to stay. What matters now is I've found you again." With a surge of confidence, Stolas held Widow's gaze with a crooked smirk, slowly closing the space between them until he was right upon her, mere inches separating any part of their bodies. Her scent was irresistible now, and he could practically feel the heat radiating off of her body. "I suppose the only question that remains now is..." His words paused, held on his tongue while he reached a giant paw over towards one of hers, giving her the choice to take it or to refuse him. His eyes smoldered while they gazed into the depths of hers, finding familiarity and newness within them. She was still Widow, but there was so much more to her now. And Stolas was aching to learn her inside and out. "Would you have me for our futures?"

"Stolas"

Code © Skelle/Witchdogtor DO NOT USE WITHOUT PERMISSION

"Speech!"
Would he accept her apology? Understand that it wasn't her fault and that if she knew she could've seen him, then she would have? Widow didn't realize she was holding her breath until Stolas responded and it was as if an immense weight was lifted off her shoulders and she was allowed to breathe a breath of fresh air for the first time in two years.

Suddenly he was upon her and her body moved on its own, rolling onto her back to allow him to stand above her as her paws curled into her chest. He offered her one of his then and she took it without hesitation, using it as leverage to pull him closer, desperate for more contact than just their paws. "What about now and our futures?" she purred barely above a whisper dangerously close to his lips and snaked her arms around his neck to hold and keep him close. She wouldn't lose him again.

Widow bent before his will easily, and it was such a rush of indescribable feelings to feel her svelte body buckle beneath his. Seeing her on the flat of her back again awakened both memory and instinct. Flashes of visions of her, younger, sprawled out across the crypt floor. His body remembered this moment as if it were fresh in his mind. It knew exactly what to do and what he wanted to do. Widow's paw clasped his own, and then she was pulling him down closer, every part of their chests and bellies pressing close while she whispered those heated, salacious words to him. Stolas' body gave a quiver, his anatomy betraying his arousal as it pressed to her soft underbelly. There was no hiding his desire, no downplaying exactly how he felt in this moment or how much he wanted her. How much of it was repressed emotions and how much of it was her heat pheromones wreaking havoc on his brain? He'd never be able to tell, but in this moment, it didn't matter to the brute. All that mattered was the fae beneath him, and claiming her until they exhausted themselves or until the sun rose.

Widow's words enticed him in, coaxing him to go further, and Stolas would oblige. He did not reply with words, but with action as he closed the space between their lips until their mouths crushed together in a heated kiss, pouring forth all the longing and passion he'd held in his heart waiting for her. She clung to him, her arms around his neck, and his paws found their way around her sides, stroking slow, savoring movements down the planes of her slender body until those powerful forelegs were wrapped around her hips. Stolas gave a little wiggle of his body, positioning himself between Widow's thighs and sliding his hips back until he felt the warmth of her most intimate parts meet his. The dire brute moaned into their kiss, lips parting hers with a gentle pressure to slip his tongue into Widow's maw to taste her. The first time they'd had sex had been the clumsy, urgent rumblings of adolescents discovering their bodies for the first time. This time, their coupling would be the joining of two refined adults, ready to melt one another in their heat.

Stolas wasted no time teasing her, aligning their parts and bracing his paws on the ground so he could thrust back forward and sink into her. That first joining of their bodies shut his brain down with a shudder of lust, another groan slipping from the brute while he took Widow as his own. Giant paws flexed over her hips, claws finding purchase in the soft flesh of her thighs while he pressed deeper, moving slow to allow their bodies to adjust to one another. They were of similar size, but it had been years since they'd been together. He wanted to savor this as much as he wanted to make it perfect as well.

"Stolas"

Code © Skelle/Witchdogtor DO NOT USE WITHOUT PERMISSION

"Speech!"
Stolas wasted no time in taking his place above her, their bellies and chests pressed together. She loved his weight on top of her, although they were of similar height, her lighter build made her slightly smaller than him still but his weight was welcome, especially as he felt his most intimate parts press into her warm belly as a hint of what was to come. She was so desperate for him now, it was obvious in her breaths and the way that she grasped at him and held him so close, refusing to let go of him now or ever.

He trapped her lips in a kiss and she moaned into it as she arched her back, pressing herself into him as hard as she could. They weren't close enough, she needed closer. Maybe he got the hint, but finally she felt his hips draw back and she whimpered into the kiss, her need doubling every second it took him. Tilting her own hips to offer him better a better target and grip, she couldn't help but remember their first time... which unfortunately happened to be the last time she saw him.

She was dragged back into the present as he pulled her hips down to meet his, bringing them together roughly but she didn't want it any other way. Claws dug into the flesh beneath his shoulders as her toes curled into him and she broke the kiss to throw her head back into the soft grass as she moaned so loudly that they were no secret to anyone that may be around. Unable to help herself, she bucked her hips as he moved slowly; the pace torturous as she was nearly ready to start begging for more.

Every sound Widow made for him stoked the inferno burning inside his core for the midnight-hued fae pinned between him and the soft bed of summer grass. Every breath, every gasp, every moan and sigh was a serenade that encouraged him to do more and to do it more intensely. There was no doubting the lust that smoldered between them; whether from time apart, yearning hearts, or the basic primal instinct to breed Widow in her heat, Stolas couldn't tell. All he knew was that his body felt like it was being electrocuted in the best possible way, like lightning had struck his brain and every nerve was on fire. The heat that surrounded him as he sank into Widow's depths melted his brain, leaving the brute shuddering with gray eyes rolling back in his head. His paws flexed over her hips, claws sinking through plush fur to grasp at her soft flesh and hold her tight and close. She arched her back into him and Stolas rolled his hips into hers, spreading her around him as he dove deeper into their pleasure. This was not the same clumsy lovemaking he remembered them sharing as teens; this was infinitely better.

Stolas gasped for breath when their lips parted, listening to the way Widow moaned for him like she had needed him and needed this from him all her life. It made a powerful feeling rise within the fallen prince's chest; a possessiveness that demanded he claim Widow as his, mark her for all the world to know. Those primal instincts told him to rut her, so that was exactly what he was going to do. With Widow's claws in his shoulders and her thighs squeezing around his waist, Stolas began to thrust his powerful hips in steady, rolling motions, sliding their bodies back and forth across the grass. Her cries of passion were so loud, so uninhibited and raw and carnal, it drove the brute mad for her! He didn't care if the whole forest heard him fucking Widow—part of him wanted the world to know.

In her heat-induced frenzy, it seemed Widow would not be content with easier mating tonight. A buck of her hips up into his stole the dire brute's breath away in a heated gasp as he sank to the hilt within her, every inch of his member reaching every part of her depths. "Widow...!" Stolas bared his teeth in a pleasured growl, gritting them against the rush of ecstasy. He didn't want Widow to hold back, and he certainly didn't want to be gentle right now. One paw moving from her hips to brace himself on the ground, Stolas began to move with more intensity, withdrawing to press hard down into Widow again and again and again, seeking to drive himself as deep into her as he could manage. Each collision of their hips felt like a cathartic release of every emotion that had built up over four years. And soon, he would release with her in the most base way a brute and a fae could together.

"Stolas"