It happened after the hounds had finished devouring their meal.
Usually, once satiated, they lost interest in gnawing through her cage for a time and lazed about their enclosure instead. It was then Hwynn felt the most safe to sleep. Assuming the beasts were being fed daily, it'd been going on five since she'd been captured, and sleep was almost all that she was capable of any longer. Unlike his pets, the male provided her with no food or water. At least when asleep she didn't have to contemplate death, and the hunger cramps and dehydration which made sitting up a trial abated somewhat.
It'd only been a matter of time before she unconsciously rolled, shifted, or stretched too close to the bars.
A hot, sticky wetness across the back of her hand pulled her from the oblivious darkness of dreamless sleep. Still, it was a struggle to convince her eyes to open - she was just so tired. When they did, she was met with the sight of a set of glistening fangs hovering inches above her fingers, drool trickling over them as the hound drew in short puffs of air, scenting her. Her breath hitched as icy tendrils of fear encased her heart and her mind blanked, unable to process past the overwhelming horror of what was about to occur.
If she'd lain there without reacting, perhaps the hound would have moved on. It'd just been fed and its packmates were all dozing. The room was quiet and the atmosphere calm. She wasn't moving, wasn't currently doing anything to entice its drive to prey upon her. It might have smelled her and went about its business.
Instead, she jerked her arm back in a desperate attempt to save herself from what her survival instinct insisted was the inevitable.
It didn't work. She was not quicker than the beast.
Teeth sank into the flesh of her forearm and she shrieked, the searing pain like a bolt of electricity straight to her nerve endings. It gave a brutal toss of its head which dragged her bodily into the bars, smashing her face and lacerating her forehead. Grasping for leverage, throwing her weight back against the unimaginable pressure and force the hound was applying as it held fast to her arm, Hwynn wildly fought to extricate her limb. Blood was running down her nose and between her parted lips, the copper tang on her tongue only serving to heighten the volume of her frantic screaming. When it gave another shake of its thick neck she felt her humerus ripped from its socket under the impossible strain and the cold, inescapable certainty she was about to watch her own arm be torn off gripped her. Instead of pulling away, she jammed herself against the bars, clutching and clawing at any part of the hound she could reach in a madly desperate bid to get it to release her. Her lungs were burning, her throat raw from the sheer intensity of her animalistic screeching - there were no words, just distraught and wild sounds she hadn't known she was actually capable of producing before now. Her fingernails caught and broke on the beast's thick, leathery hide, to no avail. Others were encroaching at the edge of her vision, regarding the life or death struggle with relish.
A talonless hand appeared as if from thin air, seizing the hound's muzzle and forcibly prying its jaws apart, and in the absolute unexpectedness of being freed, she sank down in a quivering heap, both arms still extended through the bars. Every ounce of the adrenaline which had been pumping through her veins a fraction of a second prior deserted her and she watched in helpless paralysis as the creature was flung across the outer enclosure as though it weighed nothing. The bars receded from the same section of her cage they previously had and her ankle was caught up.
She was in shock. She understood this. It was the reason she laid placidly as she was yanked across the floor, out of the cage, and rolled onto her back. A cold sweat had broken out over her whole body. Everything was numb, the excruciating pain of moments before having receded to some dark corner of her mind she didn't have access to just then, and with it the fear.
Staring up at the monstrous form of the blue eyed male, she felt nothing. If her mouth had still been under her control, she would have told him to kill her right then. 'Just get it over with,' she would have said.
But no words came out.
No 'aseigan attendants came forth this time, but Pheist wasn't bothered in the least. The too-hot bubbling water of the healing pools began to work its magic the moment she eased herself beneath the surface, toes curling in bliss at the fading of the ache in her ribcage.
Behind her, Riot sank into the water, submerging himself entirely for a moment before he resurfaced with a rumbling groan of pleasure and shook his head, flinging droplets from his dreads in the process. Smiling over her shoulder at the display, she was relieved to see the deep sheen returning to his hide, undertones of the burnished red and yellow mottling glinting through from time to time. He was still leaner than before, but no longer had a sickly appearance and his energy levels were good - a fact he'd proven to her multiple times the past couple cycles, and evidently had intentions of doing again as he hemmed her in against the side of the pool with a crooning purr, hard body flush with her back.
"Nah-ah," she corrected him before the amorous advance could go further, signing her disagreement. She'd convinced Jaele to join them and certainly wasn't planning to allow him to have his way with her while the other woman and Zihrait - who hadn't turned out to be willing to allow the petite blonde to venture out unaccompanied - waded in another pool ten feet away. The Hunter was already in the pool, at least. Jaele seemed to be having second thoughts as she eyed the roiling, steaming waters. "It's no hotter than the showers here. You get used it quickly." She assumed that's what Jaele's hesitation was over, anyway.
The anxious look which was directed her way in return made her think otherwise. "Can you…" Jaele twisted her hands in her robe, still dithering by the door. "Can you ask Riot if the females use the pools? The pregnant ones?"
Pheist blinked like an idiot. She gave a mute nod, having no notion what to say to such a question, and signed the inquiry for Riot after shrugging away his determined efforts at seducing her by fondling her neck and hair with his mandibles.
The dismissive grunt he released spoke to his thoughts on the subject. No pup inside you.
"Not me, dummy!" she hissed after a moment of immense confusion, elbowing him and repeating the question, but tacking on a further inquiry of whether the pools would harm a pregnant female since she figured she knew the answer to the first already. The females, Lola had informed her, mostly lived separately from the males so probably did not frequent these healing pools. But maybe they had their own? Would Riot even know the answer?
Taking the hint that there were no jollies to be had currently, he shifted to settle on one of the ledges ringing the pool with a grumble. Females not weak, water doesn't hurt them.
Well, it wasn't precisely a definitive answer. "So, the short answer is no. But I don't know how much he actually knows about what the pregnant females do and don't do." She frowned awkwardly up at Jaele. "I'm sorry, I… didn't realize. How are you doing?" It had to be a result of what had happened aboard that mercenary ship, right? Jaele and Zihrait seemed to be growing closer, but she hadn't witnessed any behaviour from them planetside which might have suggested Jaele could be carrying a hybrid.
"I'm not sure I know most of the time," Jaele said in her soft voice, gaze darting sidelong to Zihrait. Pheist had no idea how the Hunter might have reacted to the development, but he'd followed them well enough through the corridors, shadowing Jaele tightly and snarling at Riot in the lift for stepping too close. His eyes didn't look to have healed any further, so he was obviously adapting to the limitation. "I think I'll sit on the side, to be safe."
Watching as she moved to the edge of the pool Zihrait was using, Pheist noted the manner in which the Yautja's posture tensed as Jaele lowered herself down to dangle her legs over the side. He wasn't lounging the way Riot was, instead holding himself erect and alert. Apart from them the room was unoccupied, it being semi-late into the sleep cycle, but he didn't seem willing to let his guard down regardless. "I don't know much about it, but if there's anything you need or that I can do to help," she offered, wishing not for the first or even tenth time that Lola was still alive.
Jaele gave a slight nod and Pheist took her silence as an indication she wasn't prepared to talk about it more just then. Turning back to Riot, Pheist bit down on the inside of her cheek at the perturbed set of his tusks. She had a feeling he deeply regretted 'permitting' her to invite Jaele along, as he likely saw it, and resolved to make it up to him. Later, she signed while reaching for his arm to pull herself up onto the ledge he was using. When this elicited a barrage of considering clicks, she slid her fingers through his wet mass of tubules to mollify him further with a massage. It was the least she could do following the level of attentiveness and care he'd shown her since returning to the cruiser.
Immediately, the surface of the water lapping at his chest broke into a quivering dance, carried along by the reverberations he emitted. His mandibles flexed and relaxed and he eyed her in exaggerated tolerance before allowing his lids to droop and sinking back against the edge of the pool. He'd left her to spar in the kehrite a few times now and while he'd returned with new wounds on each occasion, they were superficial and he had returned despite her apprehensions. She had to keep reminding herself while she'd witnessed him laid low by O'joath and he was still a Young Blood, Riot was adept and cunning. He needed to regain the respect he'd lost. What was more, as he insisted, they needed to prepare for whatever it was Vechaath had in mind as a means of proving their worth to the clan. She had no idea what that might entail, but odds were it would involve violence and would not be easily accomplished.