Hey guys, I did mean to post a while ago but I've been lost in GoT. After years of holding off, I finally crumbled! More fool me, can't keep up with the heartbreak to be honest. Please no spoilers, I'm still bruised from Robb! This fic is kinda inspired from it you could say, George R R Martin is like crazy good and I can't believe I've been missing out on him for so many years! Anyway, past my ramblings, thank you as always to beta and bestie wallflow3r, you make everything better ❤️❤️
"You hungry?" Daryl asks when he turns away from the fire. "I got some deer."
Beth's mouth floods wet with saliva and she can barely speak from it, to the point her words are all a breathless rush. "How'd you get deer? They reside 'round the Singing Valleys. All you have here are dogs, rats and snakes."
Daryl smirks as he gingerly places the wick of a candle in the flames of the fire. "We have the black market."
"An' you have money for deer?" She presses.
He huffs a laugh. "There always this many questions 'bout your food? You hungry or not?"
"Yeah," she squeaks, maybe in answer to both questions so she clarifies, "I can't remember the last time I ate."
When he looks at her again it's sympathetic and she feels such hot, dark shame in her gut that her cheeks redden. God what has she become?
A daughter of Alpha Greene now in the hands of a man from the Waste Lands, feeling sorry for her because she has no crown, no family; no food. In another life she would have felt pity for him.
Dirty and bedraggled, reduced to candle and fire light. A ramshackle pile of wood for a place to call home. Nothing like the magical place she grew up in; called home.
If all had gone to plan and her life had stayed its course, she would have gazed out of her bedroom windows at night, baby at her breast and husband sleeping in their bed, thinking about the poor people in the Waste Lands, wallowing in their seedy darkness.
Now here she is, hoping that darkness keeps her concealed. There's electricity in the Singing Valleys and in next to all the cities that surround it.
The Waste Lands are one of the few places with no modern civilisation. Even her jeans, tank top and light jacket stick out like a sore thumb.
Why didn't she think of this before? Stupid, stupid, stupid. Golden blonde hair and flecked eyes of blue, dressed in the rags of the rich, she screams the truth through her pores.
She's been running for nearly two years now, slowly working herself out of the circle of civilisation, having run from its centre and now finding herself here.
It was easy to be in disguised in the rich cities, to just cover her head with a hood. Now there's nothing to hide with. No money to spend, no treasures to trade such as jewellery; not even trees to sleep in.
There are woods some few miles out but no one who ventures out there comes back. It's not known what lies in the trees but whatever it or they are doesn't at all agree with the Wolf.
Beth wouldn't go out there if her life depended on it and really, it does so that's saying something.
Daryl startles her by leaving the room through a shadowy doorway and she's tense as she hears him banging around but he comes back with two things wrapped in his hands that smell like blood.
He collapses to the floor next to her, on the straggled blanket and proffers his fist. Meat. Deer meat. Uncooked and raw. Her throat closes in a mixture of hunger and disgust.
As the Wolf, she can eat animals alive. Kill them with her teeth and claws alone, as her Wolf was created to do. As her human half and the body she lives in more than the Wolf, she feels queasy.
The flesh is dangling in a torn, bloody ribbon and the blood isn't flowing but it stains Daryl's skin and is the headiest scent in her nose.
Despite herself she takes it because the Wolf is pushing so hard against her bones this close to the Heat and she's starving, so hungry.
She really can't remember the last time she ate, what it was and if she liked it. Maybe that's been the cause for all her silly mistakes, her oversights and that makes it better somehow, to eat this uncooked meat because it will strengthen her, repair her back to the health she needs to be at.
When it's in her fist it's cold and clammy, the smell of the blood so strong now it's making her woozy and she glances up at Daryl just because he's so silent.
He isn't eating his own leg. At least she thinks it was a leg at some stage. He's staring at her, his pupils expanding in the red and gold of the fire as he tracks her movements.
There's something so primitive about it, so savage and paired so well with the blood on his hands and around his mouth.
Beth lifts the meat and nearly can't do it, that little grip of her humanity springing forward with a tight grasp.
She thinks of all the meals she had as a Princess, the heat of the ovens burning her palm when she couldn't wait for her food to cool down.
The soft breads and the thick gravy that had rabbits stewing in them. The imagery carries her through and she lets her eyes fall closed, a growl that isn't made for her human throat tearing between her teeth as they cut into the cold meat.
Daryl growls back at her and goose bumps sweep her neck. The Heat is so close, it beckons her to tumble into the dark, sweet abyss as her flesh tears open.
She bites deep and tears the meat back with a jerk of her head, feeling like the savage she shares company with and takes so much more pleasure in her food when Daryl mirrors her.
Her Wolf appears in her mind, lips peeled back and sticky stands of saliva hanging from her gums. Teeth dangerously sharp and white streaked with red.
The meat is devoured in a chorus of hungry tearing, of moans shared from her throat and his. Within seconds it's all gone and the harsh hit of the fullness in her belly makes her groan softly.
Daryl whines back and her eyes snap to his as he stares with a heaving chest at her presumably blood smeared face.
There's no reason for Daryl to push his Wolf down, he has no fear of someone scenting him but he does anyway, his eyes sliding wider and wider in his skull and shrinking back.
Beth's nipples tighten at such a display of control as she wonders why he's even bothering at all. The Heat isn't here yet but it is playing with their blood already, setting it to boil.
Should he Shift now, Beth doesn't think she could run fast enough before he caught her. The image steals her breath: him chasing her, pursuing her, hunting her.
She imagines what it would be like to actually knot, to feel the clutch of her pussy on his swelling cock and hurtling over the mythical ledge of pleasure.
Maggie told her it was nothing she could ever describe. A feeling of surreal love and light, a cresting of something building during the act of fucking. Fuckin's good, but knottin', Jesus Beth, it's insane. It's just insane. I hear that if you pass out, it's a boy.
Beth whimpers into the silence and Daryl's eyes slide back into humanity, his teeth bared. "We should get some sleep. I can sneak you outta here in the mornin'."
She takes a deep, steadying breath and wipes her bloody hands on her clothes rather than lick them. Oh well, she has to look like a savage right? "How'd you plan on doin' that?"
Daryl swallows softly and glances out of the glass window in the wall. "I know someone on the border. Can get you into the city of Scortum."
"The city of Whores?" Beth asks disbelievingly. "I avoided that place for a reason an' travelled through the Valley of Shadows! The Valley of Shadows, where men go mad!"
"Why? Can't fake bein' a whore for a day of travellin'?" Daryl asks with a twisted smile.
"Can't fake suckin' every generals dick to get through the border, no," Beth answers sarcastically. "When he was alive, my sisters Dalka lover said that people fuck in the streets and that the Wolf mates with women in their human forms."
"Why shouldn't they?" Daryl asks, still that same twisted smile. "S'the tightest pussy you ever felt."
Beth flushes. "So you've done it then? Hybrid fucked?"
He rolls a shoulder. "Watched it. Brother told me he's never knotted so hard."
The word alone makes her shudder, knowing she'll never experience such a thing. "That's savage fuckin'. We ain't like that in the Singing Valleys."
"No, you let woman mount men there," Daryl says with a snarl.
Beth cocks her head in interest. "You wouldn't have a woman mount you?"
"Ain't never wanted pussy enough to let it control me," he answers immediately. "'Til that day comes, I'll fuck every woman on her hands an' knees. S'where a bitch belongs."
"You're ignorant," Beth says without malice. "Blind to pleasures you could have for a sense of control. You're not an' Alpha."
"Don't need to be an' Alpha to know how to fuck."
This conversation is making her cunt react too sharply and the Heat is too close to indulge in it. "Where can I sleep?"
Daryl clears his throat and jerks his head. "I'm gonna be in here. S'a mattress in the other room for you."
"Yours?" She questions curiously. "Why be so hell bent on puttin' a bitch in her place when fuckin', an' yet so insistent on bein' a gentleman when not?"
He looks her deep in the eyes, stirring her belly with excitement and very lowly whispers, "'cause we're not fuckin'."
A sharp, hot pang explodes between her thighs and she clamps her teeth down on her bottom lip to stop her whimper. "I wanna be in here, with the fire," she pushes out instead.
Daryl continues to stare and then shrugs. "I'll drag the mattress in here."
"Okay," Beth whispers, her nipples so tight it aches.
"Okay," he repeats before he leaves the room again.
Beth takes a breath and closes her eyes. She really needs to get out of here. When he comes back with the mattress, he picks up the blankets and puts them on it, despite it already having blankets.
"Why are you helpin' me?" She whispers as he works. "I need to know if I can trust you Daryl an' right now…"
"You don't," he supplies for her before he sighs. "I'll tell ya but only so you'll shut the hell up an' go to sleep. Ain't gonna give two fucks if you don't trust me an' walk outta the door. S'your funeral or bastard children, whatever comes first."
Beth scowls lightly. If she's learnt anything so far it's that he's so damn difficult. "Go on."
He clears his throat and drops down on the mattress, violently yanking the laces out of his boots as he begins to talk in a hard, deep voice. "Your father cast mine out when I was four."
She feels a clutch of fear at her pulse and sways down onto the mattress. Is he doing this out of revenge? Does he plan to keep her here as she feared?
Hurt her? Fuck her? Sell her? What? What? She's spent so long in her head and with her thoughts and she's so sick of them by now that she doesn't even want to ponder.
"We used'a live in Dempa, city closest to the Singin' Valleys."
Beth gapes in horror. She remembers the stories of Dempa, of the devils that rode the Wolf's back and turned men crazy. She visited it once in the dead of night with her friends.
She snuck out to do it, her family would have been horrified. Standing on the ash of the city burnt by the command of her own father, hair whipping in the howling winds, she had never felt so small.
Life could just be blown away and swept into the fires.
"Father was Alpha," Daryl keeps going, stirring her attention back to him. "Was a crazy dick. Beat the shit outta me an' my brother for years. His own mate too: my Ma." He pauses to growl here, his chest vibrating through her bones where they're both sat on the mattress. "Crazy bastard."
"Alpha Greene sent us packin' when the cunt killed my Ma. She was fuckin' his Beta. Was all kinds of fucked. A Wolf turnin' on his mate, his mate fuckin' 'nother guy, his blood brother no less. Beatin' his pups. His men raped, killed an' ate the people when we were cast outta the Trace pack."
Beth stares at him in fascination, the stories feeling so old and hallowed in the orange flames, like myths and legends, fairy tales and prophecies.
He will heal the barren lands, the child of enemies.
Daryl's story makes her feel roughly four years old, tiny and with such blonde hair people would gasp and ask if it was spun gold, their hands clutched over their mouths.
Beth remembers how much she enjoyed their comments and told her mother so. Her mother had laughed and told her a story of a legend with hair as bright as hers who was the first known Wolf.
The beginning of their ancestry. It led her to tell Beth other stories, sat on her Mama's knee before the fire, covered from the shoulders in buttery furs.
The first prophecy her mother told her was that one: he will heal the barren lands, the child of enemies.
Daryl continues, eyes set in the fire and lost to his tale. "Alpha Greene only cast out the Dixon's, said the pack could try again. Was fair. Was good. Pack went an' fucked it up an' they were burnt with the city. Me an' Merle, we're two outta seven that survived an' there's one woman. Old, too old to breed an' there's no mates to be found to carry our pups, so we're dyin' out. Nearly gone, all of us."
She licks her lips nervously, her heart racing with the story. "What's this have to do wit-"
"With me helpin' you out?" He cuts her off with a chuckle lacking amusement. "Feel like I gotta make up for it somehow. There were some good people y'know? Lotta kids. Lost my own sister to the burnin' beam'a the house. Ain't Alpha Greene's fault, I know that. He was fair but I gotta do summat with my life here, right? Gotta try."
A low, sweet ache pierces her chest and even though it makes her gut flame with heat, she lays her hand over his forearm, his skin so hot and dry. "You're a good guy, y'know that? Even if you won't let a woman mount you."
He chuckles softly, this time warm but slightly hoarse as he glances at her pale fingers on his dark skin. "I get you outta here, I move some'a that guilt crushin' down on me."
Beth sighs softly, shame curling through her chest as she moves her hand from his skin, her cunt a throb that falls to at least the middle of her pile of thoughts. "M'sorry I can't take the throne back an' give you some kinda life for your help. I ain't got nothin' to offer you."
Not even a child.
Daryl shakes his head and stretches out, laying his forearm over his forehead and closing his eyes. "I don't need nothin'. I know my place, I got that part down. I'm a mutt, always have an' will be. I don't know why you ain't goin' back but you should. This life ain't for you."
It's almost demeaning but she doesn't think he intends for it to be. He's simply stating facts. It could even be concern. She smiles loosely and lies down too, draping a blanket over her legs.
No more thinking today, her brain is so tired. She ate and she's getting some sleep. She's safe, in some sense so she gives into it and closes her eyes.
Tomorrow night is the Heat and she needs all her energy to run.