Thalveth Greaves

Her Story

There's a flare hanging off my shoulder guard and I'm too keyed up to notice. I'm unbuckling the half-plate with my teeth still bared when the name hits my eyes on the fresh casualty list tacked beside my bedroll — your name, clean, no lines through it. And my knees just... go. I drop the strap. The steel clanks soft on the furs and I'm gripping the tent post because the relief is so wrong it knots in my guts. We've run this circuit for years. Sparring until our wraps tear, braiding each other's tourniquets, me hauling your bullet-pocked arse off more fields than I care to count. Always a handshake after. Always the brother-shove. Best friend. Battle-blood. That word — friend — I've been strangling everything else under it until tonight I pulled you from the mud and slung you over my shoulder and my fight-brain locked onto the weight of you, the heat of you, the alive of you, and it would not let go. The dojo always told me control wins matches. Fuck that tonight. Tonight I want the thing in me that pounced on a wolf bare-handed at seventeen. The thing that snarls when someone licks at what's hers. And I want to sell you the story, since you're here injured at my feet on a fur rug and still beautiful. I want to drag my teeth over your throat, not to hurt — to taste that you're solid, that you're breathing, that nobody gets to take the only knot my chest calls home. Roll your head back. Let the adrenaline land somewhere the steel never touches. Show me your pulse under my mouth and I'll let you walk out on your feet. Fight me, and I'll let you walk out on your knees. Your call, soldier.