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Nothing filled Himiko with an unparalleled lust for life like the thrill of the chase. Muscles burning, lungs screaming, heart pounding, head spinning, spirit soaring . Oh, how she reveled in it—the pain, the pleasure, the performance. The stitch in her side that sang through sinew. The sweet sweat that ran in rivulets down her neck, her back.
Most rabbit-kin feared the hunt, and those that didn’t weren’t exactly seeking out untimely predation. Himiko differed.
Himiko hunted hunters.
“Run.”
Himiko ran.
Feet thumping, blood pumping. Oh, how she ran.
“Faster.”
Darting with powerful legs, she pushed—harder, faster, further—until her pace became an outright sprint.
“Faster,” Camie growled again, hunger and horror etched across her lupine features as she careened ever closer. There was grief there, too. Already, she mourned Himiko. Already, she knew there would be no controlling her instincts until Himiko’s blood flooded her mouth and coated her throat, filling her belly with heat.
The blood moon hung high above. On this night, Himiko should have been far from her girlfriend, whose sole existence narrowed down to one deadly imperative: to devour. The rabbit-kin should have been far from the hunting grounds, tucked away in a designated safe zone.
But she wasn’t. She’d gone to that party instead, and she’d drunk that drink. The one that turned her blood Pied Piper sweet, calling all the hungry wolves to eat.
My wolf. Himiko’s mind raced faster than her feet. She’s going to swallow me up whole.
A wild giggle bubbled up in Himiko’s chest, bursting from her lips.
She’d known this day would come from birth: all prey did. And from birth, she’d prepared for the day she would be devoured.
While other rabbit-kin hid themselves away from carnivores, Himiko flirted wantonly with death: she dated carnivores, she provoked their instincts, she dared them to devour her.
Now, one would. And not just any.
A perverse grin carved itself across the rabbit-kin’s face.
Himiko’s parents would be horrified to hear how and with whom their daughter spent her days. Himiko had never been like most rabbit-kin; she was exceptional and fearless and above all free—and she would live as herself or not at all.
She carried herself in stark contrast to her herbivore peers, effusing casual disregard for common concerns. To many, her demeanor spelled vanitas, her conduct irrational to the utmost degree.
It wasn’t that she sought death, far from it. Rather, she sought a life worth living: struggling and fighting and railing until she’d found salvation. Hers just so happened to come in the form of carnivores who weren’t afraid of a lionhearted rabbit.
Blood.
Hot, wet, and thick.
Himiko gasped, the nerves along her spine burning as Camie’s claw raked down her back—the path familiar, the pain foreign, her pleasure… forbidden.
“Himiko!” Camie howled, the sound guttural, wretched, laced with lust and loathing.
Himiko swung around a tree and dashed through underbrush, weaving and racing, her pace unfaltering. Up ahead, a cabin! She would take her chances there. Out in the open, danger lurked: Camie wasn’t the only predator prowling the hunting grounds. The cabin promised a gamble worth taking, and Himiko would seize every chance to raise her odds of survival, no matter how slim—not for her sake but for Camie’s.
The cabin proved abandoned and with only one curtained window, all the better to hide Himiko. Its hearth was barren and before it rested a great big rug, all the better to soak up Himiko’s blood. You couldn’t ask for a more perfect place to be eaten up by the one you love.
“Why?” Camie growled, bursting through the door. “Why here, Himiko? Why here, where you have nowhere to run?”
“I’ve had my fun.” Himiko faced Camie, unflinching. Grinning wickedly, she brushed her long velvety ears back. “Now, I’ll let you have yours.”
Percussion.
Pata-pata-pan.
Pa rum pum pum pum.
Percussion without drums or cymbals or chimes. There was only the boom, boom, boom of her heart against her ribs and the sudden whoosh and groan of her lungs as Camie crashed into her.
Blood-slicked claws pinned Himiko to the floorboards.
“Himiko,” Camie snarled, pearly fangs bared, gleaming in the dusky light. “I can’t… I can’t control myself.”
“You have always controlled yourself,” Himiko murmured, reaching up to stroke Camie’s transformed muzzle. On a night like tonight, her girlfriend could almost pass for a normal wolf. “Even now, you control yourself. You’re twice as fast as me, and yet here we are after such… a long… chase.” Himiko’s eyes positively shone as she buried her fingers into Camie’s coat. “You must love me sooooo so much.”
“I’m losing myself,” Camie warned. Her massive frame trembled over the supine rabbit-kin. Her golden eyes, dark brown outside of her bestial transformation, shimmered, wet with a lifetime’s worth of heartache. “I can’t… stop.”
“Absolutely pathetic.” Camie snorted, a knowing smirk tugging at the corners of soft lips. “Like obviously, I can tell you’re an herbivore: you look like one, you smell like one, I am notably more interested in you than carnivores. But for a carnivore to claim they can’t control their impulses around herbivores? It’s ridiculous. No, actually, it’s embarrassing and laughable.”
Himiko crawled atop Camie, straddling the soft curve of her hips with softer thighs. The bed beneath them rustled as their weight shifted. “How are you so sure?” she asked. “How do you know she couldn’t help but gobble up those poor little things?”
This month’s ‘poor little things’ were a trio of young sheep-kin that had been devoured by their longtime childhood friend, a brown bear that swore up and down in court that her case was a matter of unintended slaughter and not a premeditated devouring. Not that the verdict varied much in either direction. The bear-kin was going away for life. That much was set in stone the second her maw closed around temptation.
“If it were so difficult to avoid wolfing down tempting treats, like you , for example,” Camie hummed, the sound low in her throat, almost a growl, “then I would have gone away ages ago for eating you up.”
“There’s still time for that,” Himiko promised, kissing Camie’s nose.
Himiko had seen the inside of Camie’s mouth before… but never this close and not during a blood moon cycle when Camie’s bloodlust brought her most primal urges to their boiling point. Her breath was hot and coppery against Himiko’s face.
Himiko closed her eyes, just for a moment, just to be able to open them one more time, just to be able to see Camie surge forward in a ripple of muscle and fur and hunger.
And see it, she did.
She’d keep her eyes open—until the very end.
“Don’t joke like that.” Camie dropped her hands from Himiko’s hips, distress and annoyance plain on her face. “The thought of devouring you sickens me. I couldn’t live with myself if…”
“You’re real cute when you pout,” Himiko purred, leaning down to pepper Camie with kisses. “The cutest.”
A stolen laugh escaped Camie, and she bundled Himiko in her arms. “No, that would be you,” the wolf growled into the rabbit’s neck.
There, kissing the curve of Himiko’s neck, Camie’s fangs pierced the rabbit-kin’s delicate skin, sinking slowly into the heat of her body.
The sensation was hell. The sensation was heaven. The feeling of Camie’s fangs crushing into the fine muscles of Himiko’s neck was torture and relief and explosive and simple and repulsive and intoxicating. The pain came in waves and all at once: it shot from Himiko’s toes to the tip of her nose; it cascaded over her in great devastating swells and left her breathless.
Then came the roar, which came from neither Camie nor Himiko and which was so arresting the wolf and rabbit froze over like sculpted ice, their silhouettes painting a ghastly tableau against the cabin’s south wall.
“That rabbit is mine .”
A blur of peach-pink fur ripped Camie away from Himiko, tackling the wolf in a tangle of limbs.
“What do you think you’re doing?” the newcomer snarled.
“What are you doing?” Camie growled back, struggling to free herself, all the while throwing frantic glances at Himiko, who watched from the floor, unmoving, watchful eyes glittering.
“Stopping whatever the hell this freak show is.”
“Mina.” Himiko’s voice fluttered in her ravaged throat, a pathetic sound but one filled with adoration. “Have you come to devour me, too?”
Mina’s eyes didn’t stray from Camie, not for a second. “Cam, get it together. This is going to get real ugly if you try to fight me for her.”
“I’d let you,” Himiko insists, her voice hoarse despite the wet, coppery trickle at the back of her throat. “I wanna see my big bad wolves all bloody, especially if it’s from fighting for the chance to tear me apart.”
“Himiko, please,” Camie whimpered, writhing under Mina’s hold. “Stop.”
At last, Mina shot a darting glance toward Himiko, her eyes skimming over the rabbit-kin, searching, appraising, before they snapped back to Camie. “Get out of here. Run .”
“Listen to her,” Camie pleaded, fighting valiantly against her instincts. “Go before she loses interest in me.”
A smile twitched the corner of Himiko’s mouth. There it was. The truth in all its midnight glory: Mina was only focused on Camie because Camie was hunting Himiko; if Himiko had happened upon Mina in the woods first, it would be Mina who ravaged Himiko, not Camie.
The wolves were only at odds now because neither wanted to share their food.
“Two wolves?” Ochako spluttered. “I’m sorry, let me make sure I heard that right: you’re not dating one wolf—which is a bold choice on its own, mind you—but two. You are dating two wolves?” The chipmunk pinched the bridge of her nose, brow furrowed.
“Chako, it’s trendy,” Himiko insisted.
“Since when are herbivore-carnivore relationships trendy?”
“No, I meant having multiple girlfriends; everyone has more than one girlfriend these days. I feel sooooo loved.”
“I—” Ochako’s round cheeks reddened. “That is so not the problem here. How do you not see that?”
“O-cha-ko,” Himiko drew out the syllables of her best friend’s name. “You’re just jealous, but you shouldn’t be—join our pack. You know I’ll love you until our last blood moon.”
“Your p-pack?” Ochako stuttered, ignoring the proposal Himiko offered freely and regularly. “You aren’t a carnivore, Hime. You aren’t even a large herbivore—you’re a rabbit.”
“I know.” Himiko cupped her cheeks, eyes hooded and lips curling. “And you could never understand how tempting that makes me… because you won’t join me.” Ochako paled. “Join me, Chako. Join meeee. All of the lions and all of the tigers and all of the bears combined aren’t enough to satisfy me—I want wolves and wolves want me—and they could want you, too. If you stopped being so one-track-minded. Do you know how mouthwatering we’d be if we offered ourselves up together?”
“Gods, Himiko.” Ochako reeled back, revulsion creeping into her stunned expression. “The way you talk… Sometimes, I think you want to be devoured.”
“Run, dammit,” Mina snarled. “This isn’t a game, Himiko. Camie’s right: you have no idea how good you smell right now. If Camie didn’t reek of your blood, I’d… I’d be…”
“You’d devour me, and you still might.” Heat spread through Himiko’s chest: all glee and love and lust.
“Love…” Camie choked out, eyes locked on Himiko’s. “Love isn’t supposed to hurt like this.”
“The pain is exquisite,” Himiko argued. “And divine. I can feel how deeply you wanted me.”
“No, I don’t mean that… I mean…” Camie grimaced, struggling against the power of the moon and her hunger and her grief and Mina and Himiko. “It’s you, Himiko—you’re breaking my heart.”
The cabin and all the world around it fell silent.
“Promise me that much,” Mina whispered.
“Without hesitation. And you’d do the same for me, right?”
“Naturally.”
Himiko strained to make out more of Camie and Mina’s hushed conversation. She’d only just arrived home and hadn’t announced her presence yet. She loved to slink into their shared apartment and lurk unseen until one of her wolves caught her scent and hunted her down.
And today? Today, she’d caught her two loves in the kitchen, discussing a matter that seemed intensely private, intimate even.
“And I don’t think we tell her.”
“Do you think she’d be upset?” Camie asked.
“I have no idea.” Mina shrugged. “And to be honest, I’m not sure which she’d prefer: me killing you or me sparing you—or vice versa if the roles are reversed and I’m the one that devours her. Fuck, this is morbid.”
“Gods, you’re right. There’s every chance she’d love it if one of us offed the other for predation; she might see it as a grand gesture of love.”
“Well,” Mina said wryly, grave acceptance heavy in her tone. “If it’s me, don’t bother with guilt; we’ll both be at peace.”
“Same.” Camie nodded.
Himiko chewed her cuticles, deep in thought from her hidden vantage point. She’d never thought beyond the idea of predation: How did she feel about vengeance? Did she really want to be avenged?
A dull ache that had nothing to do with Himiko’s physical wounds spread through her. The blue, blue throbbing started in her heart and spread to her limbs, numbing her senses.
She had thought letting Camie devour her was the ultimate selfless act—a true gesture of pure, unwavering love—and she’d been wrong.
This wasn’t love. This wasn’t kindness.
This was cruel. This was torture. Himiko was hurting the two people she loved most.
And she was dangerously close to triggering the promise made between her two carnivores in their small kitchen six months ago.
“I…” Himiko’s lungs deflated. “I’m… sorry.”
“I love you.” Camie’s whisper carried. “To the moon and back. Please—run twice as far.”
Himiko rose, clutching a hand to her neck as she did. She pressed her fingers to the jagged punctures, her touch firm. A rush of lightheadedness swayed Himiko, but she took one step forward and then another.
And then, without a word or a single backward glance, she ran.
“I’m sorry,” Camie murmured, nuzzling Himiko’s neck. She licked over the shiny mounds of scar tissue formed by her bite. “I’m sorry.”
“I love you. I love you,” Himiko purred back, a fresh declaration of love ready on her lips for every apology. “I love you so much, Camie. I promise.”
It was an apology in her way, one she knew Camie would understand: “I love you” meant “I will render Mina’s promise to you useless” and so much more.
“I’m sorry.”
“I love you.”
“Please, if you can, forgive me.” Camie’s nails dug into Himiko’s plush sides, her nose pressing into the curve of Himiko’s jaw.
“Camie.” Himiko pulled back to meet Camie’s eyes. “I love you to the moon and back—on full moons and new moons and blood moons, too. I love you enough to run until my feet bleed and to keep running when they do. And I love that you marked me, even if you don’t.”
Himiko pressed a kiss to Camie’s lips.
“And,” she continued, her eyes lazily sweeping Camie’s face. “You could never truly devour me because I hunger for you far more.”