"You've come again." He said; said biting, said with teeth. Over the moor-mist in the dark morrow, he always spoke to him first.

He wonders what Calix ever did do with all of his letters. How often his ink was turned to ash and fuel in warm Fellner hearths.

Did the words swear themselves to memory? Every one?

Volkor watches him with bristles raising painfully down his nape- shifting on his heels in learned anticipation of the abeyance to come. It would, like all their encounters, be earned slick in bruising and blood.

Anticipation that drew saliva across blunt fangs.

A pale wolf blessed in particolour and grave-fur emerged from over the hill as with every pale morning asked. Furious jealousy when he saw him.

A searching eye within his sou would see Volkor stiffen, hands twisting and poising over his waist- over his coat. Blunt claws were tucked away into a pair of smoothed dark gloves, he never bore his hands to Calix, as he meets with eyes narrowed.

Volkor circled him above and from the same place always. He would not meet him in valley or den otherwise. Only at the edges of the same hill overseeing the dip into the valley near below.

Volkor, a beast of the same line, was a resenting and uneasy little wolf hidden behind quills and spines and hunting green. A slightness in stature was resented by tall leather heels and shoulders made wide by fur and epaulettes.

He would share the flesh of his body beneath with no one.

When the other lord nears, he takes a step on a slender heel down the rocky slope and towards the grasses still dry in blood from days before.

In emerging from stone to moorgrass, his second hand makes itself known gloved. He did not bring knives and playthings to these agreements.

"You are a proud beast. To obey me this way." He breathes dripping ire over him.

Having no need of the answer no matter its form. A slight to him at all.

The lord Achiaron had known of Calix von Fellner for years. In the halls of politics and grand spectacles, he imagined his flesh fondly in all meals offered. Saw him when he writhed and gave his word to things. Different from the others. How?

How was as one wolf is to another. As strength was to another. As gifted things were to a keeper.

The lord Calix was. A direct threat to the fabric of Volkor's land. To Volkor's very being.

Heretical to the threads of his house. And so they would meet some distance from the Volkor den-hold. The land of Fellner his own to claim in his dark dreams as he held fast onto its handsome lord.

And yet for all of his pretty words, he did not know the other's hand in writing.

Volkor pauses in front of him. Steps away for moments in furious observation. Thinly veiled excitement the promise of pain- of domination. As with all other times. Lips tightening. Stiff.

For all of their encroaching upon one another. Eyes fix to Calix's face.

Oh, oh... as he dares to watch him come nearer. Reciprocating with a growl. Reciprocating with a serpentine movement forwards to meet the white shadow theatrically. Eyes a little wilder now.

"I will accept this surrender under the veil..." He breathes. Imagining piercing his neck through with a blade left inside the den-hold and far from here. His first duty as alpha-lord of his territory.

And what first? Volkor lunges for him with both hands and a hiss.

Claws find him around his nape and over his chest and tighten without a mane to pull, squeezing fabric and blood-red linen with fury.

"Given or taken."

Volkor's eyes roll in pleasure and he wraps his hand around jaw and throat as he brings him down, down towards the moor with a hard shove- sending them both down willingly. The snarl overheard performative in its aroused vitriol.

Sending himself around Calix's throat toothlessly as he coils over him, heart pounding in learned excitement.

When ash and ink burned, he would write all his pretty treatises and hymns in Fellner blood.

He breathes, begging. Fight him. Break skin. Earn his submission. Leaning over him to pin him tighter against the cold ground.

A pleasure offered openly to him in the mind. The fantasy a feeding of addiction better than all other things.

The frozen discomfort of morning cold settles beneath his gloves as he presses Calix's throat tight towards the grass with a feverish, enthused panting.

Another letter yesterday. Which meant another chilly trek over the fell toward the Volkor march. An ‘arrangement’ not entirely to his liking but, as it was, ensured no brooking of ire between the Fellners and Volgoths. A confrontation he knew the den-hold would not win. Volkor had the apex-lord’s ear, as he understood it. He would always need to please him.

Until the day he can justify killing him, of course.

Calix peers at his own boots as he navigates down the slope, pausing with care for a step or two. The warm grey, red and bronze of his house colours were muted by mist until he was able to approach. He looks up with eyes mismatched, to meet the more impressive viridum of his rival under a hardening brow. His arm raises and he offers an exceptionally terse cant of the head.

You are a proud beast-

Calix’s lip curls near imperceptibly.

“And you must be desperate.” He remarks. “Relying so much on my discretion.” Calix gives him a strange look before the motion for his neck cut the stillness and he tightens in place. It was a surrender. To allow the alpha-lord his display and avoid troubling his sister and brother with the intricacies of this little agreement. It mattered not. It was no matter to him, he thinks to himself.

Given or taken.

Calix’s gut twists as his hands come to grip the lord’s wrists while he squirmed to a knee, compelled as he was to lower under his grip. He grunts, neck bared momentarily. The snarl is heard deep in his head, rattling his spine. He strains to keep himself upright and battling with himself to decide how much he resists. How hard to resist without shaming himself or inviting some worse imposition upon his house. Or he.

For a moment, he relents, allowing Volkor to get him to the ground with a wince of defeat. It was the way of things for some time. He would let him dominate him for a time, wash out whatever blood clung to his teeth and then they would part. No face lost to others— though the threat was omnipresent.

His breathing quickened for moments as he looked away in furious deference. The panting though, it truly did enrage him. So much slavering over so little a thing. He wished to punish him for it. Such hubris.

Calix allows his mouth to part in exhale. “Savour it while I allow.” He bites, eyes flickering toward him in warning. His grip tightens then upon his arms as he wrenches him sidelong. Off his neck and his chest. Calix attempts to reverse their position with a hard throw and press into the damp moor- palm flat to the lord’s collar before as promptly retracting himself away and to his feet.

He would circle him with a nervous cadence for seconds before pausing.

“Taken, today— No.” He bares his teeth. “Earned. Or I will send you scarpering home, lord-alpha.”

It was duty that bound him to ink. Wasn't it. Duty to the lord-alpha as obedient servant to his den-hold; as slave, as unable to conquer with his own fangs. As obedient impotence in, hmm, some terror of Volgoth. An altogether troubling and infuriating strain.

Envy was given form here in the dark morning marches, and in the blood shared between Fellner and Volkor beneath where the Veil itself evendared to look for long. It was all the power that Volkor might behold without unceremonious execution or war with either.

A lone huntmaster could not march upon Volgoth or Fellner. Not with all of his hounds alive or in undeath. Not by the rules of their people.

A lone huntmaster could set his fists and fangs around the neck of one of his very own men.

One of their kind at the mercy of his own game.

It was.

Not.

Troubling.

These thoughts of pleasure. That he would look upon Calix von Fellner and wish to see torture for him for all that he had existed to be. Thoughts an instinct that came with waiting for minutes or hours for the loathed beast to find him then.

He believed in some way that Fellner would be all of his while they were bound to one another. Thought as eyes raked down the front of the uniform's virifell green split so neatly down the breast.

From far away he imagines him there, crawling in the grass. His blood expunged to a pretty, starlit black in complete submission to Volkor.

He met his mismatched gaze with a choleric frown that he makes no effort to hide.

And you must be desperate.-

Volkor's inner world roars in torment self-made as he lunges for him in such easy madness.

Surrender not enough. Not enough for it. Gripping and growling a warning; a desire to eviscerate. You dare? He eyes him wildly as his hands find his throat and make to break him. Desperate, ravenous violence. Mutualism in destruction.

Hatred so deeply seeded of him. He would see him unrecognisable in his despair if it pleased him so.

Torture from lips so unworthy of his place.

The flash of pale bright flesh under their shadows is what he reaches for with his grip and his teeth as he wrests him down, down. Domination a subsuming pleasure in the strain it offered.

Volkor squirms after him with gloves gripping for what he could in shared barbs; shared panting. Throwing himself over him in an instant burst of thrill and convinced in welcome insanity for moments that he should kill him. Calix's strength a pleasure in fury as the resistance comes so naturally- so easily. Disobedient hound.

He clambers over him when the pressure gives way and pins him to the grass with a hand fixed against the lord's throat. The flesh, perfect musculature, thicker than his own and supply beneath slender, calloused hands out of sight.

The lord licks his lips drawn dry in the fight and heaves over him as a thumb and index savour the surrender of him. Degenerate closeness and shared breaths as he pets him over his jaw and groans. The sight of him beneath himself in surrender...

As all of their games. It was the play that came before their war. Before- oh. He could hardly concentrate on the eloquence of it. Wanting only to fight and to dominate him unto his end or mindless obedience both.

"Ahhh-ah- no," he pants, the air ringing loud in his ears. "You- would never. You would not ignore my summons for anything else in all of Margard. Dogmatic little hound as you are-- and yet how faithful you are to our meetings."

He could laugh. Breathless when he tries to.

The cold of sweat beneath shirt and hair was a pleasure in its ecstasy always. An exertion sending him to trembling as he craves it- craves the blood, the fight. Shameful hunter. Gripping him tighter.

As was the way of them both. As what satisfied them both to live another morrow in shared banquet halls and shared loyalty to higher lords. That no others would know about them or find their bodies this far into the moor-lands. Not while the Veil persisted over them both.

Perhaps the wild wolves would find their bloodscent.

Volkor, wrists bound by thicker fists, strokes the offered face feverishly with a hand while the other sought to strangle him- pinning him by pelt and shoulder. Wolven hidden beneath his own grave-pelt quilled across his spine and elegantly over a shoulder.

His mind wanders between both of Calix's eyes as he anticipates the fight; obsession degenerate. Hatred unable to be voiced without claws.

Savour it while I allow.

Aah-

The words send him to furious arousal.

Volkor thrashes in fresh, furious, cloying panic as he was wrenched sidelong. Away. The gripping not enough to bruise. Not enough to spend him. Nor enough to truly harm von Fellner either. He sees this in him as the lord escapes him and he barks at him back- wrestled into the moor and jabbed by the bones decorating his pelt. It makes him roll and part his arms in an effort to chase Calix closer where he might hope to clamp his teeth down on his neck.

Calix parts as quickly and stands and Volkor chases. Pacing in counter with a hiss so human in its silence. Panting and frustrated. Heart pounding but hardly begun.

"And challenge answers slight, doesn't it, lone-fang." The growl returned with a mad breath.

"You will know that your punishment has already been earned."

Slender strides persist until close enough to lunge and he throws his weight into Calix-- shoving them both in fury towards the stone. Towards where it fell down into the valley beyond them.

He crashes into him and grips to him with a palm raised for his throat, fingers sliding against Calix's neck in an effort to shove him back. Against his body that he holds himself as he threatens their descent into the mire of the darker shadow of moor.

In an effort to bring his surrender, he grips and fondles and clasps him by fabric and aiguillette and seeks out to send them both down.

—doesn’t it, lone-fang.

Calix’s eyes flash under the insult just briefly. A quick exhale betraying his fury. The pounding in his neck a ghost-echo of the Lord Volkor’s audacity to touch him. He knew it to be the goading that it was. An invitation to kill or be killed and yet, with knowing that he would never betray the laws that governed them both.

Would it? Be so terrible a thing? To kill him here?

Lady sister would kill me herself if she knew I was out here settling such foolish disputes in such a foolhardy way. Surely.

-your punishment has already been earned.

Calix pushes a hissing breath of his own from his throat, eyes dropping in warning the nearer their pacing brought them to each other, covering his throat. He envies Volkor’s red eye for all the ferocity it promised— and wasted- upon such a creature. Ill-granted blessing as it was.

“Guard your neck.”
He barks, meeting him the same as their contest took on an edge literal in its danger. The mist-soaked moor was hardly steady footing.
Did Lord Volkor intend… for this? His own hands claw for purchase as he sought to break the lord’s guard and take him by his neck the same.

Calix’s eyes took on a wildness as his heel brushed with the ledge of a ravine. One of the many ghylls riven through the Virifells, particularly this far from the main valley.
He, with a noise of effort, tries to swing his weight around and reverse them. Instead, what he gets is the weight of heavy resistance, both nearly slipping on the moss-draped stone and falling against the facade of stone on the other side of what barely qualified for a trail between their territory.

“You mean to—?”

He offers with a strain in trying to pin the other against the stone.

“I will kill you. If you mean to kill me!”

His voice wavers in fury and fear both, for the fright of the misstep moments ago.
He pants openly into the air between them, eyes wide, intent.

Volkor imagined it in easy bliss under a heart marching so loud at attention within his mind- the hands on him marked by soft aches. Imagining his death in his mind's eye easily.

To dominate him so basally for his clan's very existence, it...

Clarity reminded him that he would disobey no law. The risk greatest if he desired for this to continue and the effort far beyond his to claim. Far beyond his war to deserve. Not his kill to claim. Not yet.

And. Well.

Thought as he wrestles him.

The pounding, loathing heart of life within himself bid that he continue. That he would, challenge and beg and goad all of the blood and bruising and abuse that came near every several turns of the moons.

Again. And again. Pleasure and resentment enough to satisfy him for enough fleeting moments between. The fury of it would be his frustration to bear in the coldest moorlands. In the deepest of his territory's ghylls and winding hills. That it was not his desire to die foolishly for his own pleasure.

He circles him with a wild growl, those eyes on him setting him ablaze within- handsome hissing meeting his word with thrilled contempt. Reciprocation. Fury run primal. It was all he desired, with a glimpse as he stalks him.

Gaze on his in wild admiration. He recognised the white wolf's judgment from afar.

Did he envy it? Or only resent it for its benevolence? For its sanctity?

Oh... but he did for all things. How he did so dislike it. Thought in black poison as they neared one another, suddenly so much closer to claws and teeth.

Pleasure of the hunt overcomes him again when Calix reciprocates his desires and they lunge for one another; oh, bliss.

Fatiguing already from the lord's strength more immense than his own. His neck, grabbed, forces a groan from his throat and he would struggle. Struggle as he grabs his arm and barks and brings them both closer, closer to the ledge beyond.

Closer to what the veil had hidden away from them both.

It had been his intention-- to take them into it. To tumble down and to dominate Calix at the bottom of it while they both shared aches. His body aching for agony in adrenaline. The ridge surely survivable for what it was.

Clutching Calix, turning them over the stone. Panting. Desperate hatred; desperate obsession.

Then regret.

Volkor's eyes widen as his gaze met the ghyll's full size in peering down into it.

"Nnh--!"

Dangerous for a pair of well minds. Worse for a pair of ill minds bound in single-minded desire. Worst for two lords whose deaths of one another could be suicide for their very houses. The each of them.

He resists him- and then meets him withhis own gripping gloves as he assumes in adrenaline that Calix did intend to kill him. Fighting him to bring them both from the chasm's open maw. Open terror in the unknown.

As he wheezes over the grip around his neck still. And then fury and panic.

So easy it came to thrash in newfound adrenaline. Perhaps that Calix meant to kill him instead.

He would hiss at him and grab his arm in an effort to shove him off and chase him into the moss and away from their misstep- from one or both of their demises.

His head is thrown sidelong, making to escape Calix's grip and to reassure himself of a hold on him as he meets him with hissing and groaning.

"You will do no such thing!" He rasps first, breath heavy between them as he laps Calix's fury. Grabbing him with his own hands and wrenching his forearm with all of the strength bound within his thrill.

He could feel it. Betrayal. Not regret. Calix's regret. That he desired to destroy him deeply enough to manifest it all in his own excitement to fight with him. But it was not why he called him to these arrangements. Not why they trialled against one another. The weight upon him immense in reminder of it.

In clarity he understands how this looks- how this steps so near to treason beyond the dominus-law.

Volkor wrests the other to breathe as he tries to reverse their positions himself, clawing up his arms.

"Dominus-Law is not mine to disobey. I cannot kill what cannot belong to me yet." He asserts through a wheeze and a gasp as he, eyes feral, throws his arms aside with his own strength to free himself from strangulation. Agonising though the very thing of it was to admit it.

If he were to have him there, to reverse their positions again, he would clamber atop Calix in all of his desperate vigour.

Volkor, eyes rolling and throat rasping dry, agony with every gasping breath inward, pants over him and beside him and heaves as he makes to explain himself.

"If I mean to kill you you will know! You will know, white wolf." He yelps, the sound not entirely malicious.

Assurance.

It was.

In his desire for the very thing- Volkor's pupils are pinpricks for minutes before they would settle again.
Minutes of desperately raking his gloved hands against Calix's body and clothes had sored his fingers inside all of the way across his knuckles. His body pleasantly sore at the end of things. Not over yet. Wanting to bleed him in new-found fervour to fight him.

A rush of adrenaline has Volkor holding out a grip towards Calix's neck- to keep him away or to clasp him if he came near.

Willing the white wolf in him to judge them for what was asked. Does the scent of death so near enlighten you, perhaps, white beast?

"If you intend to kill me for what I did not know then I will send us both into the ravine." He barks, eyes dilating at the sight as his hands tighten and he brings his weight heavy to pin Calix to the ground. Precarious, dangerous game.

He presses his fingers white-hot around what he could grab of him, snarling at him with open teeth. Panting openly.

Fingers pressed around the nape of his cloak. Its thick fur. In contempt of his fright.

Oh, he could swear his own arousal burning in his loins so immensely at the edging of death if he were upon him any more proper.

"What is your answer?" Volkor challenges then, adrenalised- gorging on fear and the hatred of it true. On the deep torture, pleasure, reciprocation of their dependence upon one another's fabric. "Are we to kill each other and emerge traitors to both our kingdoms?"

He shudders then, teeth baring.

"Is that what you want of our meetings, von Fellner? Tell me now. Tell me you would see all of Margard itself be lost to its own ghylls." He demands then, eyes wild and uniform marred in moss and dirt from their wresting.