Matriarch Pt. 01

"I can't even stand to look at you right now."

He had to face her, grabbing her arms, anger pushing through him. Could she really think, after all their time together, that he could change who he was?

"It's your fault!"

The words burst from the cougar before he could call them back, Fyr's brows pushing in, her frown darkening into the vileness of a snarl that contorted even her pretty muzzle.

"My fault!" She all but shrieked. "Oh, well, excuse me, I didn't realise that I was the one who had gone and fucked my son's girlfriend, totally my fucking mistake there!"

"You don't satisfy me!" He belted back, shoving her away as her paw slapped his face hard enough to sting, his tentacles restraining her. "You think you do, what with your mouth and your pussy, but a quickie and then lights out dearie isn't enough for a demon! You knew this!"

He didn't know why he was saying any of it, as if an otherworldly power had grabbed hold of his tongue and was running amok with it, twisting what he wanted to say into something devious and deadly. Words like that could not be played off so easily and he knew that too, though that did not stop them spilling out.

"It's you! It was always you! If you were more attentive to my needs, I'd never have had any reason to fuck someone else!"

She reeled as if she had been struck, though Ropes had never once hit her, not ever.

"Well, there's nothing wrong with your muzzle then, is there?" She shot back, hurt drawing lines on the scales of her muzzle. "You could have used your words, Ropes, said something. That is never any excuse for cheating, let alone who you cheated on me with!"

She couldn't stop the tears from coming, hurt brimming over, but her husband was no longer there for her, not to hold her, not to soften the blow of all that had already come to pass. It was wrong, so wrong, her chest tight with breath that she could not let go, though she panted and gasped, twisting her head back and forth.

"I knew..." She heaved, forcing the words out even when she did not have the breath to do so. "I knew... I thought...there was something. You weren't in bed...some nights. Sometimes...you were out longer with Holly, when Hiss was somewhere else. I wanted to think you were trying to be nice to her, that you were trying to build a relationship with her. What a fucking fool I was to ever think that."

Ropes stilled, shaking his head.

"Fyr, you've got it all wrong, it was a one-time thing, something I regret... Breathe, you've got to breathe."

He tried to calm her but she slapped his paws off her, a snarl on her lips.

"Don't you dare fucking touch me, you disgust me. You've caused enough harm."

Her breath came easier but not for being around the cougar, storming up the stairs with her wings lifted, buffeting him back.

"Don't you fucking follow me!"

She threw clothes and shoes haphazardly into a bag, not caring what she packed, even though she would need something, something if she was going to be out and away from the cougar for a time.

"Where are you going? Fyr, be reasonable --"

"Oh, that's fucking rich."

She rounded on him, though some of the anger had settled, a cloud that would simmer within her while she turned her back on the cougar who had promised the world to her. Above all else, he had promised that he would change for her, without even being prompted. And that too had been a great big fucking lie.

"I'm going to my mother's place," she said through gritted teeth. "Hiss can come with me, I doubt he wants to be here...around you. I knew, I always knew. You don't change Ropes, not creatures like you. I can't be here right now, not with you."

"Let's talk this out -- be reasonable, Fyr!"

He tried to block the door but she slammed him aside with her tail. He could have forced himself back against the blow but he was too shocked to try, bouncing off the ground, a tentacle crushed under his buttocks.

"Fuck you!"

All the while, Hiss tried to contain his anger in the room that was not as soundproof as he may have liked, though it was laughable that he had tried, before, to keep his fun with Holly a secret even in his own house. If Ropes had ever heard them, well...he had probably just been thinking about how to move in on Holly, how to steal his girlfriend from him.

"It was all his fault, Hiss, I'm so sorry, it'll never happen again..."

"Oh, really -- and just why did it happen this time then?" He tried to fight down the urge to snarl, pulling his lips back from his teeth. "My own fucking father, Holly... Couldn't you have chosen some asshole jock of a football player to get off with? That would have hurt less."

Calmness seeped through him, radiating as if it was enveloping him whole. He surprised even himself how he was. Maybe he was more like his father than his mother, though Hiss shoved the thought away as soon as it had appeared. Best not to think like that, to think that he could be like that monster.

"I only came over," she said, clinging to Hiss even as he turned away from her. "I was just dropping off a book for Fyr, something I thought she would like. We got talking... Ropes was here, obviously, he was here. But he came on to me, Hiss! You've got to believe me, he pursued me, pushed me, made me want him."

She sobbed. The story was only half a lie, because it had happened a few months ago, not long after she'd turned eighteen. And she had come over with the false excuse to see how far she could push the demon cougar. It had turned on that he was willing to go all the way with her without a second thought.

"You could have said no."

Holly pulled back, a short gasp clutching at her throat.

"I... I... There must have been something, his pheromones..."

"Oh, shut up. You and I both know that those are something that can be resisted. You're not that weak. You're smart, intelligent, considerate and not who the hell I thought you were."

Hiss stared at her, but all of his anger was contained inside, something to implode and "look forward" to later when he was alone in a room that he no longer recognised.

"I skipped the first year of college for you, pushed it back to get a job first, some experience, live life with you. I wanted to marry you, Holly."

Her eyes brimmed over with tears. What had she done?

"But all that's gone now."

He tossed clothes in a bag, ignoring her weeping on the bed, for she was no longer of his concern. No, she was a bitch, a femfur who had taken his heart and stomped on it, breaking it down into tiny little pieces, no longer the cougar that he had thought he was. His mother's shrieks caught his ears, his one ally in the storm, and he lunged out into the hallway with his dragon mother there already, the two of them in as perfect sync as it was possible to be.

Hiss slammed the door of his bedroom on a sob, a bag over his shoulder. All it took was a silent, exchanged look with his mother to know what it was that the two of them needed, shaking their heads, making their way down the stairs. For once, they were alike, mother and son shoulder to shoulder, standing up against forces that had harmed and scorned them both.

They left, leaving Ropes and Holly alone, only Holly's sobs remaining to colour the trembling air of the house. Ropes followed Hiss and Fyr down to the front door, trying to the last moment, but he only got it slammed in his face for his troubling.

"Fuck."

Sighing, he shook his head, staggering to the living room, exhaustion lining his limbs. It was all he could do to flop in a chair, limbs sprawling, even his tentacles dangling, his only clothing being the shorts that he had managed to drag on. Holly shifted upstairs, oddly quick to move, though he could not breathe life back into his limbs, knowing all that had already come to pass and remained to be seen still.

She came down slowly, taking her time on the stairs, though she was no longer trying to hide the squeak of them. There was no need for that anymore. Her T-shirt was too big for her, one of Hiss' and hung off a shoulder, though she hadn't managed to get any undergarments on in the trouble and fretting of everything, rushing through everything with tears darkening streaks down her muzzle.

She had to find words to convey things, important things, things that had to be addressed now that their lives had changed. But it was harder than ever to wipe her muzzle off, eyes swollen, her heart aching.

Sobs had to come to an end, somehow, when she had no breath left in her soul with which to cry, shuddering in place, drawing in clawing breath after breath, sinking fangs into her lungs with every gasp.

"What are we going to do now?" She asked, hardly daring to hear the answer. "I think... I think Hiss and me are...done."

The last word came out in a strangled sob but it could not have been anything else, not even then. It was, after all, just the inevitable outcome at the end of it all.

"Of course," Ropes said quietly. "I'm so sorry, Holly."

He was, in a way, though perhaps not in the way that a mortal who had committed the same deed may have been. The cougar, after all, knew why he had done it. He didn't regret what he'd done, not really, not when he'd needed to feed. It was who he was but that would never make it right to Fyr or Hiss ever again.

"We have to work something out," Ropes said slowly, though even he did not know what he was going to say. "Fyr was furious... She might even want a divorce."

Holly sniffled.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. It was my choice."

"But what will we do?"

He didn't have an answer for her as much as his soul ached to give her one -- what he had left of a soul anyway.

"Hiss was going to move out with me... Not now... Never now..."

She cried and he could not bear it anymore, scooting in close to her and putting his arm around her shoulders.

"Hey... We'll get through this. You're not on your own, Holly, remember that."

He wasn't all lustful demon, after all, and she tipped into him, the warm, welcoming hold of the cougar soothing her at least a little. It helped stifle the sobs in her chest, ease the wracking ache of it all, yet her sins would forever require atonement, the crimes committed against her boyfriend too great to ignore.

"T-thank you, Ropes."

It was all she could hope for that she would have someone there for her, someone to hold her, to help her through. Even if it was the one who was partly to blame (for she was equally to blame) for everything that had gone wrong. He didn't know that she had blamed him in her argument with Hiss, trying to get out of what had broken her down terribly through any means possible.

"You could move here, Holly."

She laughed brokenly, hiccupping on a tear.

"I still have my parents' place... I'll be alright. I have to look after my siblings anyway."

There was a time for thinking over their crimes and a time for planning and that night was destined to be neither. Her heart was too heavy to be sensible, though Ropes took care to keep her away from the liquor shelf, the glow in his eyes warning her without actually saying anything that he would know if something was missing. She would not drink the sorrows that she was responsible for that night away, oh no, but they would linger in her heart, twisting through her digestive system and colouring every aspect of her mind and body.

Still, she had the cougar's arms around her on the sofa and someone warm to cuddle into, someone who could hold her fast through the storm. He was older and she leaned desperately into his greater experience, the cougar a steadfast point that she could anchor herself to. It was all she had left as she kissed him through her tears, the last thing that they had left being their body, her legs slipping to either side of his as she eased into his lap.

It was a bond that could not be broken between them, as much as Holly may have wanted to leave it behind. His shaft pushed into her as she moaned into his mouth, finding comfort in what had brought them together and torn their lives apart, the cougar's thrusts short and desperate. He didn't need to feed when he was already full but he needed the closeness of her, passion rising, taking them away from the hurt of reality, a reality that they could not have run from when they had caused it.

He climaxed inside her and yet his cock remained hard, their bodies needing it as much as their minds, lust coursing through. It tied them together better than any marriage or wedding ring and there was nothing more for it as she moaned out his name, broken and muffled into the clasp of his lips.

Ropes groaned into her mouth in turn, tentacles wrapping around her as well as her arms, holding her tightly so that she would not float away from him, for even a demon needed something. Maybe that was rich but it was something that everyone needed, even a demon, and all he could do was bring her to orgasm too over and over until the skunk's body too slumped against him.

Sleep would come but it would find them together again in the morning.

The next day: who knew?