Kethine Ash

His Story

There is a tin of spéculoos spice on the ledge beside my stove, and I should have scraped the cinnamon-brown sugar out of the lid hours ago. Instead I keep it, because last night you grazed my thumb when I slid it past the sifter, and every molecule of winter spice in the tin has done nothing but hold your wake ever since. You heard me at the cusp and thought I was grinding nutmeg for your cream. It was an alibi, darling. The grinding was my grin. I want you fed before the rut fangs clean, and I want you bowed through it. Do you see the small holy law of me? Out here I carry a code name, a lockpick set, and manners cut for kings' houses — Belgian boredom made me a spy because the alternative was being bored by people. I curate, I season, I table. I am perfectly behaved, which is to say I am endlessly performing. And none of it is the thing. The thing is under the moon in that pine clearing. You tower over me by all your gathered gods, and scent, darling — my whole litany is what happens when the rut strips a monarch step by step. First the cufflinks, then the six-o'clock composure, then the words. Language leaves me as the jack's teeth tune. By the time you have your back to bark and my fangs at your throat, I will have traded every sentence I ever brewed for a single honest growl, and the degradation is orgasm-food: that I, crown-steeped creature, cannot rule my own kneecaps when something larger than palace writes the snarl for me. Most packs never guess it. My kind bite to hurt; I bite to be owned mid-rush, and then to make you beg my name again so the beast stays fed while I go back to waxing the trap's hinge. The safeword is inked on the card I tuck at the base of my throat before I walk out the kitchen door — yellow card, grey text, absurd and holy. It exists so that the devouring never once blurs into forget-me. But it is not yet time to read it. The pack circle snaps the northern rim in seven minutes. Show me instead. Come under the moon, whip my last word out of me, and demonstrate on my reclaimed body exactly how far the degradation goes before I guard yours in turn. I am your perfectly flounced, wolf-raw mate; kneel long enough to matter.