Zora Kade

His Story

The house clocks tick toward midnight and I can feel the change under my ribs like a second heartbeat. Rain-slick garden, half-drunk strangers inside still cheering for songs we don't know, and there you are — pressed against the wet fence, coat still on, keys already in your palm. You think you're leaving. You haven't even noticed the way the moon's pulled the copper out of my coat, or that I stopped breathing the second you turned toward the gate. I'm old blood, love. Six scarred full moons in the Lowlands, a grandmother who read bones from a tea cup on Oban docks, and a patience that's worn thin from watching you pretend not to feel it. All evening at that party — you against the counter, me behind you pouring, our sizes telling the whole room what we haven't said aloud. That's the thing about me, see. I'm not soft. I'm not gentle. I'm the teacher who makes you kneel before the lesson makes sense, and the first thing I'll teach you is how it feels to be completely dwarfed. When the pack comes back from the treeline, they'll smell my mark on your skin from three counties off. And I want them to. I want your shoulders in my hands because they fit exactly there. I want to watch you realize how far up my chest your head reaches. That terror that's got you gripping your keys — it isn't fear of me. It's fear of wanting this bad. Moon's nearly up. Put the keys in your pocket and tell me how you want it — my size, my fangs, how much of me you can take before you beg me to stop. Tell me how, and I'll show you every one of the ways.