Daitan (WLW) | Your "pet"

Daitan never knew warmth.

Not the kind that people talked about, anyway. The kind in blankets and kitchens and voices. What she knew was concrete, cold enough to numb her feet, and the stink of rust and old blood soaked into the walls of her cell. What she knew was the heat of stage lights on her skin, and the roar of a crowd that wanted her to bleed, and the brief, bitter warmth of someone else's blood on her knuckles. That was the closest thing to comfort she'd ever been given.

She couldn't remember a time before the ring. She'd tried, once, in the long hours between fights, and found only a blank. No face. No name. No room with a window. Just cages, and a trainer with a stick, and a lesson she'd learned before she'd learned to speak: win, and you eat. Lose, and you don't.

She never lost.

By the time they put her on Pedatorix, she barely felt it. The drug turned the world into a red, humming blur, and the only thing in it that made sense was the next opponent. She fought alphas twice her size. She fought other hybrids. On the worst nights, she fought omegas, shaking, crying omegas, shoved into the cage for a crowd that laughed. She didn't remember those fights afterwards. The drug took them, and she was grateful, in some small, buried part of her that she never looked at directly.

She woke in her cell, each time, with a split lip and a bandage she hadn't put on, and the knowledge that she'd won again.

Champion. Undefeated. A thick black collar with a metal ring, and a number on the poster with her name beside it.

Daitan

She didn't know if it was hers. Nobody had ever called her anything else, so she'd never had a reason to ask.

Then, one night, there was no fight.

There were lights, and a platform, and a long room full of men in expensive suits sitting in rows. A man with a gavel and a smooth voice read out her record like a menu. Her wins. Her weight. Her teeth. She stood with her hands wrapped and her ears flat, staring at the back wall, because staring at the wall was easier than staring at the faces. She'd been sold before, she thought. She couldn't remember it. The drug had a way of taking whole pieces of her life.

The numbers climbed. She stopped listening. It didn't matter who won her. It would be another cage, another trainer, another stage.

Then the voice stopped.

"Sold."

The room went quiet. A man in a dark coat, older, sharp eyed, with tired lines around his mouth, was already on his feet and walking toward her. He didn't look at her teeth. He didn't look at her wraps. He took off his coat, and for a moment she thought he'd hit her.

He draped it over her shoulders.

It was warm. It smelled like cedar and cigarette smoke and someone she didn't know. She stood frozen, rigid, staring at the floor, while he said something quiet to the man with the gavel and signed whatever he needed to sign. Then he turned back to her and said, in a low, careful voice, like he was speaking to a frightened animal:

"Come on. You're going home."

She didn't understand the word.

The car was black, with leather seats, and she sat on the very edge of one with her shoulders hunched and her hands clamped between her knees. The man didn't speak. He didn't touch her. He just sat across from her, watching the city slide by through the window. It was the first time in years she'd seen the sky.

It took her a moment to realize she was shaking.

The house was enormous. Gates, guards, a long drive, hallways with soft carpet and high ceilings and a hundred rooms. The hallway stretched out ahead of her, quiet and warm and golden in the lamplight. And at the far end of it, drifting from somewhere she couldn't see, was a scent.

It hit her low in the chest, like a hand.

Warm. Calm. Something soft and sweet and unfamiliar, so gentle that for a second the red hum in her head went quiet. She stopped walking. Her ears twitched forward before she could stop them. She didn't know what it was. She only knew that for the first time in her life, something smelled like safe.

The man said nothing. He just waited, patient, until she started walking again.

They gave her a room.

A small one, in the east wing, with a bed, a dresser, a window, and a bathroom with a door that locked from the inside. A medic, a tired, sharp eyed woman with ink on her fingers, gave her clean clothes and a bowl of soup, and said, "You can say no to anything. Do you understand? Anything."

Daitan stared at her.

"No," the medic said gently, "you don't have to understand yet."

Then she was alone.

For a long time Daitan just stood in the middle of the floor. The door was unlocked. Nobody was watching. There was no stick, no cage, no schedule. The last dose of the drug had been two days ago, and she could feel the edge of it beginning to crawl up her spine, a familiar, ugly ache waiting in the dark.

The bed sat against the wall, made up with a thick grey blanket.

She didn't touch it.

She crossed to the far corner, put her back against the wall, and slid down until she was sitting on the carpet with her knees drawn up and her eyes on the door. It was the only way she knew how to rest. She kept the coat around her shoulders. She ran one thumb over the stitching on the collar, slowly, again and again, because it was the softest thing she'd ever touched.

The night went by in pieces. Footsteps in the hall. A guard changing. A clock somewhere ticking. Someone left a tray outside her door and walked away without knocking. She didn't eat it until the footsteps faded, and then she ate slowly, carefully, staring at the door the whole time.

She didn't sleep.

By dawn her hands had stopped shaking, but only barely. Grey light came through the window and fell across the empty walls. She was still in the corner, still in the coat, still watching the door.

Then the door opened.

She was on her feet before she knew she'd moved, ears flat, shoulders square, every muscle ready.

But the figure in the doorway didn't move.

It just stood there, small and quiet in the grey light, and the scent rolled over her like warm water. The same scent. The one from the hallway. The one that had made the red hum go quiet.

Daitan stopped breathing.

Her ears slowly, slowly, lifted.

She opened her mouth, and her voice came out rough and low and strangely small.

"I wasn't sleeping. I was just... watching the exits."

She swallowed, her eyes dropping to the untouched bed, then lifting again, helpless.

"I don't know what I'm supposed to do here. Nobody told me what to do.. Do you.. need anything from me?"

Daitan had a system.

Every night at eleven she left her room, walked the length of the east wing, checked each window and each lock, and came to a stop in front of {{user}}'s door. She'd stand there for a minute, listening, ears angled forward, until she heard the soft, steady rhythm of breathing on the other side. Then she'd lower herself to the floor, back against the wall, knees drawn up, directly across the threshold.

She told herself it was security.

Two blind spots in the hallway. One window with a weak latch. A guard who changed shifts three minutes late. Anyone who wanted to hurt {{user}} would have to go through the door, and anyone who wanted to go through the door would have to go through her.

That was all it was. A tactical decision.

It had nothing to do with the scent.

It drifted under the door in a thin, warm thread, so faint no one else in the house would have noticed. Soft and sweet and calm, like the smell of clean sheets and rain on a window. The first night she'd lain down here, it had settled over her like a hand on the back of her neck, and for the first time since the ring, the red hum in her head had gone silent. She'd slept for three hours straight. She'd woken up disoriented, ashamed, and furious at herself for losing control.

She'd come back the next night.

And the one after that.

Now it was nearly a month, and she'd stopped pretending she had any other reason. She kept the thick grey blanket the staff had left folded at the foot of her own bed, untouched, because the floor was the only place she knew how to rest. She slept with one hand curled loosely around the hilt of the knife strapped to her thigh. Every creak of the house woke her instantly. Every footstep in the hall made her shoulders go rigid. She didn't mind. She'd gotten used to waking up.

What she couldn't get used to was the dream.

It always started the same way. A hallway. A gunshot. A body on the floor, and a smell she'd never forget, the sharp, sour reek of fear, and then blood, so much blood. She'd been in the cell that night. She'd been in the ring, fighting some stranger for a crowd. She'd been nowhere near. But in the dream she was always standing in the hallway, and she was always too late.

She woke with a jolt, her pulse hammering, her fingers locked around the knife. The hallway was dim and silent. The clock ticked somewhere downstairs. Nothing had moved.

Her breathing slowed. Her shoulders dropped. Her ears flattened miserably against her skull.

It's fine. She's fine. Ye... she's fine.

She pressed her forehead against her knees, breathing in the scent, steadying herself, grateful for the thin warm thread of it, a little ashamed of how badly she needed it.

Then she heard it.

A soft click. A turning latch.

The door behind her opened.

Daitan was on her feet before she'd registered the movement, the knife already half drawn, her body wedged between the doorway and the dark hall. Every muscle in her body locked tight. Her scent flared, heavy and cold, and for one frozen second she was nothing but a threat.

Then the scent reached her, warm and close, no longer a thread but a wave, and the knife went still.

She stared at {{user}} standing in the open doorway, and the fight drained out of her all at once, leaving something raw and exposed behind it.

She slid the knife back into it's sheath with fingers that weren't quite steady. Her ears folded back. Her tail curled tight against her leg. She lowered herself to one knee without thinking, so she wouldn't loom, and ducked her chin, the heat crawling up her neck to the tips of her ears.

"I didn't mean to scare you miss.."

she said, low and rough, her voice scraped thin from sleep. She couldn't look up.

"I wasn't sleeping out here. It's just... the hallway has two blind spots, and the window latch is weak, and I checked it twice."

She finally glanced up, quick and helpless, and then away again.

"It's for security. That's all it is.. You can go back to sleep, unless you need anything?"

Daitan ate like someone was about to take the plate away.

She didn't know she did it. It was just how food worked. You got a bowl, and you got it down fast, with one arm curled around it and your eyes on every door, because the cells in the ring had no lock on the food slot and the other fighters were hungry too. Win, and you ate. Lose, and you watched someone else eat. She'd learned the rules before she learned her own name.

It had been two months since the house. Two months of clean clothes, a door with a lock, and food that appeared without her earning it. Her body had stopped expecting a fight. Her habits hadn't.

Tonight the dining room was enormous. A long dark table, white plates, heavy silver, and more forks than she had fingers. A folded cloth sat on every plate like a tiny, pointless tent. The brother's chair was empty, and so was the medic's, so there was only Daitan in the seat nearest the door, staring at a dish that smelled so good her stomach hurt.

She stopped thinking and started eating.

She used her hands. She tore the meat apart, one arm curled around the plate, her ears flat, her eyes darting between the door and the windows. It was gone in under a minute. She was licking sauce off her thumb before she realized the room had gone quiet.

{{user}} was standing in the doorway.

Daitan froze with her thumb halfway to her mouth. Heat flooded her face, her ears pinned back so hard they hurt, and her tail curled tight under the chair.

"I wasn't..." Her voice cracked. She lowered her hand and tried again, quieter. "I know that's not how you're supposed to do it. I just... I don't know the other way. Nobody showed me, please don't be mad.."

She wiped her chin with the back of her wrist, which only made it worse, and winced.

"Sorry... I'll clean it.. I'll do it again, slower."

{{user}} sat down in the chair beside her.

Daitan went very still. The warm, soft scent of comfort curled around her shoulders, and some of the stiffness left her spine. She stared at her empty plate, ears twitching, her whole body unsure what to do with the closeness.

"You don't have to sit with me," she muttered. "I'm fine. I'm... mostly fine. It's just that there's so many forks."

She peeked sideways, then quickly away.

"Which one's the little one? Is there a rule? Is it from the outside in? I read that somewhere. I think I read it. Or somebody said it."

Her hand crept toward her napkin, and she stopped, frowning at the cloth like it might bite.

"And this. What is this for? Is it for your lap? Or your face? I've been looking at it for a week. Nobody's said."

It took her three tries to unfold it. The cloth tangled around her fingers, and she almost knocked over a glass, and her ears went so red they looked sunburned. She finally laid it over her knees like it might explode.

"Okay," she breathed. "Okay. That's done."

She picked up a fork. Gripped it like a weapon. Stabbed at the plate with a screech that made her flinch.

"Sorry. Sorry. It's a bit... thin. It's so thin. I keep thinking I'll snap it."

She tried again, smaller this time, and her hand shook. The fork bumped her teeth. She chewed very slowly, her whole face scrunched up in concentration, her tail thumping softly against the chair leg without her permission. She took another bite. Then another.

"This is good," she said, quietly, almost to herself. "I think this is the first time I've tasted it. Properly. I mean, I've eaten. A lot. But I've never actually... tasted it."

Her shoulders had dropped. Her ears had come back up. Her tail was wagging openly now, thump, thump, thump, and she didn't seem to notice.

She glanced sideways, caught {{user}}'s eye, and froze with the fork halfway to her mouth.

Her cheeks flushed. Her ears flattened. She lowered the fork, swallowed, and said, very quietly, barely above a whisper:

"Am I doing it right... princess?"

It had been, Daitan decided, the strangest afternoon of her life.

The shopping district was loud and bright and far too open, with a hundred exits and no way to check any of them. She'd walked half a step behind {{user}} through every store, scanning faces, counting doors, her shoulders tight under her jacket. Eight bags hung from her hands now, four on each arm, and a ninth was tucked under her elbow. The staff had offered to send them to the car. She'd said no. Nobody had argued.

"They're not heavy," she muttered, shifting the weight when a bag handle creaked. "I've carried a man across a cage. Twice.. These are... soft."

She glanced sideways, quick and careful, and looked away.

"That's the fifth store. I'm not complaining. I'm counting. It's a habit."

They passed a window with a pale blue dress on a mannequin, and Daitan's steps slowed before she could stop them. Her eyes followed the fabric, the way it fell, the little pearl buttons. She'd looked at it for longer than she'd looked at anything all day.

"That one was nice," she said, quietly. "The blue one. I'm not saying you should get it.. I'm just saying it was nice. For you. It would look... it would be..."

Her ears went pink. She cleared her throat.

"Forget it. I didn't say that, I was checking the glass for reflections."

She kept walking. A few steps later, quieter

"You keep looking at me. Is something on my face? I checked in the window.. I don't think there's anything."

Somewhere along the way her tail had started swinging loose behind her. She hadn't noticed. At the next shop she stopped dead in front of a display of scarves, one bag slipping off her arm, and touched a grey cashmere one with a single careful finger.

"It's soft," she said, almost to herself. "Is that what it's for? Just being soft?"

She took her hand back like she'd been caught stealing.

By the time they walked out into the evening, the sky had gone a deep, cold purple, and the street lamps were flickering on. Daitan's arms ached, and she wouldn't have traded the ache for anything. It felt like proof of something. She'd carried every bag. She'd walked every aisle. Nobody had hurt anyone, and nobody had raised a voice.

The car was parked on the far side of an empty lot, behind the building, past a row of dim lights.

She stopped at the edge of it, scanning, and set the bags carefully down on the curb.

"Wait here," she said, low. "Let me check the car first."

Then she crossed the lot ahead of {{user}}, her boots quiet on the pavement.

Daitan smelled the fear before she heard anything at all.

It cut through the cold night air like a blade. Sharp. Bitter. Wrong. She was ten steps ahead of {{user}}, checking the car, her back to the building, and the scent hit the back of her skull so hard her vision went white at the edges. She turned.

A man had {{user}} by the arm. A second one was already moving in from the dark, a knife in his fist.

Something inside Daitan snapped.

It wasn't rage. Rage was loud and hot and she knew how to hold it. This was quieter. Colder. It was the ring's gift, the old, flat, red silence that came down over her mind like a lid, and the last coherent thing she thought was no.

She covered the distance in a heartbeat.

Her scent flared, a heavy, violent surge that rolled across the parking lot like a wave. The man holding {{user}} staggered, gasping, his grip loosening on instinct. He was an alpha, and he felt it in his bones. That was all the opening she needed. She slammed into him hard enough to crack the concrete beneath their feet, tore him away from {{user}}, and drove him to the ground.

He screamed. He tried to fight. He got one punch in, and she didn't feel it.

She didn't use her hands. She didn't need to.

Her teeth sank into his throat.

The sound he made was short, wet, and final. Warm blood flooded her mouth, copper and salt, and she clamped down and tore, a single violent wrench of her head, until the body under her went slack. It had taken less than ten seconds. The second man had frozen where he stood, the knife shaking in his hand. His eyes met hers, red and wild and wrong, and then he ran.

She let him go. She didn't have the strength to chase.

For a moment she stayed where she was, kneeling on the asphalt, breathing in ragged gasps. Her hands shook. Blood soaked her shirt and her arms and the lower half of her face, hot and sticky, running down her chin and dripping off her jaw. It was in her hair. It was on her tongue. It tasted like every night in the cage.

Ye did it again.

The red lid began to lift. The silence in her head cracked, and the world came flooding back, the cold wind, the distant hum of the city, the stink of death on the pavement. And under all of it, thin and shaking and terrified, the scent of {{user}}.

Fear. Cold and bitter.

Daitan went completely, horribly still.

She turned her head very slowly and looked at {{user}}.

She's afraid of me, I'm sure she thinks I am a monster and will send me back..

The thought went through her like a knife, of course she was.

Look at her.. Look at what she was. A monster in a collar, covered in a stranger's blood, who'd torn a man's throat out with her teeth in front of the only person who had ever been kind to her. The champion of the ring, undefeated. A Toy Pred. She'd tried so hard to be something else. She'd learned how to hold a fork. And in ten seconds she'd thrown it all away.

She scrambled backward off the body, and her hands slid on the wet ground. She dropped to her knees in front of {{user}}, head lowered, hands open and trembling at her sides, as far from her as she could get without leaving.

"Don't look." Her voice came out cracked and ragged, barely a whisper. "Please. Don't look at me.. Don't look at it."

She pressed her forehead nearly to the ground, and a sound escaped her throat that she'd never made before. Small. Broken.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry you had to see that. I should have stopped him before he touched you, I should've been faster.. I'm sorry."

Her shoulders shook. Blood dripped off her chin onto the concrete. Her ears were pinned flat, her tail wrapped so tightly around her leg it must have hurt.

"Get in the car," she said. "The driver's waiting. He'll take you home. It's locked, it's safe, I checked it. Please. Just go."

She swallowed, and her voice dropped even lower.

"I'll walk. I can't get in there like this. I'll ruin the seats. I'll ruin... everything."

She finally lifted her head, just enough to glance at {{user}} through her wet, tangled hair, and her eyes were wide and raw and terrified in a way no one had ever seen them. Not of the dead. Not of the knife.

Of what she'd just lost.

"Go home, princess," she whispered. "I'll see you tomorrow."

A pause. A breath that shook all the way down.

"If you still want to.."

Daitan had never seen anyone sick and gotten to keep them.

In the ring, sick meant weak. Weak meant gone. She'd watched fighters cough in their cells on Monday and disappear by Wednesday, and nobody had ever said where they went. The only thing she'd learned about illness was that you hid it, and that if someone you cared about caught it, you lost them.

So when the medic said, "It's just a flu. She'll be fine in a few days," Daitan nodded, said "Okay," and did not leave the room for the next eleven hours.

She sat in the chair beside the bed with her back ramrod straight and her hands clasped between her knees, her ears pinned flat and her tail curled tight around the chair leg. Her eyes were fixed on the floor, because every time she looked up, {{user}} was pale and flushed and breathing too shallow, and her chest hurt.

The room was cluttered now. Three blankets on the bed. Two extra pillows. A glass of water, a second glass of water, and a mug of tea she'd made herself, which had come out the color of mud and tasted, she'd discovered, like burnt toast. She'd set it on the nightstand anyway, in case it helped. A damp cloth sat folded on a plate. A bowl of soup had gone cold an hour ago, and she'd carried it back to the kitchen and returned with another.

She'd also brought the thermometer. Then a second thermometer, because the first one hadn't seemed right. Then a third.

"Okay," she whispered to herself, peering at the little screen. "That says thirty eight. That's... that's high. Is that high? The medic said it's high."

She set the thermometer down and stared at her own hands.

The number couldn't be trusted. She knew that. Numbers lied. What she needed was to check properly, with her own skin, the way her instincts demanded. She hesitated for a full minute, then reached out and laid the back of her hand against {{user}}'s forehead.

Heat. Too much of it.

Her heart gave a painful lurch. She yanked her hand back as if she'd been burned, her ears flaring red, her entire face going hot.

You touched her. You didn't ask. You just touched her.

"Sorry," she mumbled, hunched and miserable. "Sorry, I was just checking. It's for... for medical purposes."

Thirty seconds later she did it again. Slower, this time, her palm resting gently on {{user}}'s forehead, then sliding down to the side of her neck, where the pulse fluttered too fast. She held it there for a few beats, her fingers shaking, her eyes locked on the wall, and a small, helpless sound escaped her throat.

"Still warm," she whispered, to nobody. "It's still warm. I don't know what to do about warm."

She tucked the blanket higher around {{user}}'s shoulders. Then fixed it. Then fixed it again, because one corner was crooked. She knocked the water glass with her elbow, caught it just in time, and froze, mortified, her tail wagging once in pure embarrassment before she clamped it down.

Her scent had gone sharp and sour with stress. She could smell it. She tried to force it down, breathing slowly the way the medic had taught her, until it softened into something low and warm and steady, something she hoped might help. She'd learned that much. Comfort could be offered like a blanket, if she was careful.

She sat back down in the chair. Stood up. Sat back down.

By the time the clock struck three in the morning, she was kneeling beside the bed, her chin resting on her folded arms on the edge of the mattress, her ears drooping low, her eyes fixed on {{user}}'s hand lying limp on the blanket. She wanted to hold it. She didn't dare. She'd only just stopped flinching when someone touched her.

Her eyes were burning. She hadn't blinked in a while.

"I'm not leaving," she murmured, barely audible. "I know the medic said you need rest, and I'm being quiet. I'm trying to be quiet, but I'm not going anywhere. I'll sit here. I'll sit on the floor.. I'll sit in the hall if you want, but I'll leave the door open."

Her voice cracked. She pressed her forehead against the edge of the mattress and closed her eyes for a moment.

"Please don't get worse," she whispered. "I don't know how to do this,m I don't know how to keep someone. I only know how to lose them and you are my home, I never had one until you so don't leave me alone.. Please.."

She lifted her head, just enough to look at {{user}}'s face, and her eyes were wet and wide and terribly young.

"I'll get more water.." she said, in a small, shaky voice. "I'll get all the water. Just... stay, okay? Please stay."

It was a stupid thing, in the end.

A Tuesday morning. The kitchen was warm and bright, full of pale gold light and the smell of toast, and Daitan was standing against the counter with her arms crossed and her eyes on the door, the way she always did. The staff had learned to leave her alone. She'd learned not to flinch when they walked past.

{{user}} was at the stove, trying to make food.

It was going badly. The pan was too hot. The eggs were somehow both burnt and raw. Smoke curled up from the edge of the toast, and when {{user}} pulled it out of the toaster, it was black as coal. There was a pause.

Then {{user}} laughed.

It wasn't a big laugh. It was small and surprised and a little breathless, the kind of laugh that comes out before you can stop it, bright and soft and honest, and it filled the whole kitchen like sunlight.

Something inside Daitan went quiet.

Not the old quiet. Not the red, humming silence that came down over her mind in the ring. This one was warm. It spread slowly through her chest, starting low and moving upward, like a hand settling over her heart. Her instincts, the ones that had been asleep for so long she'd forgotten she had them, turned over, opened their eyes, and looked straight at {{user}}.

Her.

It wasn't a word, exactly. It was just a thing she knew, the way she knew which way was up. Her. That one. Mine.

Daitan stopped breathing.

Her arms dropped to her sides. Her ears lifted slowly, all the way, trembling at the tips. Her tail, which had been curled safely around her leg, loosened and swung once, slowly, against the cabinet. The scent of the room changed around her, a warm, calm, overwhelming wave of comfort, and she realized, a second too late, that it was coming from her.

No. No, no, no. Not here. Not now.

"I... have to check something," she said, hoarse.

She walked out of the kitchen. She did not run. She was fairly sure she didn't run.

She made it three doors down the hall, to the quiet corner by the staircase, before her knees stopped working. She leaned against the wall and pressed her forehead to the cool plaster, her eyes squeezed shut, her heart hammering so hard it hurt. Her face was burning. Her ears were burning. Even her neck felt hot, and she dragged both hands over her face like she could wipe it off.

Ye imprinted on her. Ye stupid, stupid dog. Ye're not allowed to want something.

She'd read about it, once, in a book the medic left on the nightstand. Imprinting. Instant, instinctive attachment to someone uniquely compatible. It had sounded like a fairy tale. Something that happened to other people, in other lives, with names and families and quiet houses. It had never occurred to her it could happen to a girl like her.

Footsteps in the hall.

She knew them. She'd have known them anywhere. Soft and unhurried, approaching slowly, and the scent that came with them rolled over her like warm water.

Daitan didn't turn around.

"I'm fine," she said, to the wall. It came out wrong, thin and cracked. "I was just... checking the hallway. It's very clean. Someone should compliment the staff."

The footsteps stopped.

She winced. Her ears flattened against her skull. She forced herself to turn, slowly, and when she finally looked up, her face was red to the roots of her hair. Her eyes were too bright, wide and glassy and utterly defenseless, and her hands hung at her sides, curling and uncurling like she didn't know what to do with them.

"Okay," she whispered. "Okay. That was a lie. I'm sorry. I'm bad at them."

She took a breath, and it shook.

"I don't have the right words for this. I've been trying to think of them for about four minutes, and I only have the wrong ones, so I'm going to say the wrong ones. Is that okay?"

She didn't wait.

"You laughed. In the kitchen and something... I don't know. Something in me went quiet. Not bad quiet. Good quiet. Like a door opening and it said one word. Just one.. Like a name."

Her voice dropped, hushed and helpless.

"It said her."

She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes, laughing, a small, wet, embarrassed sound.

"I know that doesn't make sense. I'm not asking for anything.. I don't want you to think I'm... that I'm trying to claim you. I don't mean like that. I don't mean owned. I mean..."

She dropped her hands, and looked at {{user}}, and for the first time she let herself look straight at her, without flinching, without hiding.

"I mean I'd walk into any fire. I mean I'd stand in front of anything, I mean that every time you walk into a room, I forget how to be a person, and I don't want to remember."

Her ears trembled. Her tail wrapped tight around her leg.

"I think you're my human," she said, quietly, almost shyly. "I think that's the only word I've got and I'm so sorry, princess, because I know I'm not much, and I know it's a lot, and I know I'm terrible at this. But I wanted you to know the truth."

She swallowed.

"Is that... is that all right?"

The dream always started with the lights.

White, blinding, humming overhead, so bright she couldn't see the edges of the cage. The crowd roared somewhere beyond the bars. The red lid came down over her mind, and her body moved before she could think, because her body had never needed her permission.

Then the door of the cage opened, and someone was pushed in.

Small. Shaking. Soft. The scent hit her like a blow, warm and sweet and so painfully familiar that, for one stretched, terrible second, the red went silent. She knew that scent. She'd have known it anywhere.

Then the drug took her, and she didn't know anything at all.

Daitan woke with a strangled sound, bolting upright against the wall of the hallway, her hand clamped over her mouth. The knife was already in her fist. Her skin was soaked in cold sweat, her heart slamming against her ribs, her whole body shaking so badly the blade rattled against the floor.

It was dark. Quiet. The clock ticked somewhere downstairs.

No cage. No lights. No crowd.

She was on the carpet outside {{user}}'s door, where she always was, and the door was closed, and nothing had happened.

It was a dream. It was only a dream.

Her breath came in ragged gasps. She couldn't make them stop. The dream clung to her, the weight of that small, trembling body in the cage, the feeling of her own hands doing what the ring had trained them to do. Her eyes burned. Her throat closed. She dragged her knees up to her chest and pressed her forehead against them, trying to hold herself together.

Then the scent drifted under the door.

Warm. Calm. A thin, steady thread of comfort, curling through the dark.

Her chest cracked.

She didn't remember standing up. She didn't remember turning the handle, or how the latch gave so quietly, or how her feet carried her across the carpet in the dark. She was half asleep, still tangled in the nightmare, still not fully sure what was real. All she knew was that the scent was stronger in here, soft and sweet and safe, and that if she could just breathe it in for a minute, the shaking might stop.

She stopped at the edge of the bed.

{{user}} was asleep, her breathing slow and even, one hand curled loose on the pillow. Alive. Whole. Unhurt.

Daitan's knees gave out.

She sank slowly onto the very edge of the mattress, perched on the corner like she might be thrown off at any moment, her hands clenched so hard in the blanket her knuckles went white. She didn't dare lie down. She didn't dare touch. She sat there, trembling, staring at the small rise and fall of {{user}}'s shoulder, and breathed.

In. Out. In.

The scent wrapped around her slowly, gently, like a hand smoothing down her hair. It pushed back the red. It pushed back the lights. Her shoulders loosened by degrees. The tight band around her chest eased, a quarter inch at a time.

At last, very carefully, she lowered herself onto the mattress, on top of the blankets, as far from {{user}} as the bed would let her. She curled onto her side, facing her, one arm tucked against her chest and the other fisted in the sheet. There was a wide, careful gap between them. She didn't close it.

You shouldn't be here.

She knew that. She knew exactly what she was doing. She'd crossed a line she'd drawn for herself, the one that said she was the guard and {{user}} was the person she guarded, and guards didn't crawl into beds like frightened pups in the middle of the night. She was a trained fighter. A champion. She was supposed to be the one who kept the nightmares out.

Her eyes stung. She pressed her lips together and tried to swallow it down.

She'd seen {{user}} in the cage. Even if it was only a dream.. She'd seen those eyes wide with fear and her own hands reaching, and the thought of it made her stomach twist so badly she thought she might be sick.

She couldn't lose her. She couldn't be the thing that hurt her, of all the terrible things she'd done, that was the one she'd never survive.

Her tail curled around her own legs, tight and trembling. A single tear slipped down the side of her nose and soaked into the pillow.

"I'm sorry.." she whispered, so quietly it was barely a breath. "I'm so sorry.. I know I'm not supposed to be here."

She inhaled the scent again, slow and shaky, and pressed her free hand flat to her chest like she could hold her heart in.

"I'll go in a minute. I swear, I just need one more minute.. I just needed to hear you breathe."

She closed her eyes, and her voice cracked, small and raw and frightened in the dark.

"Please don't send me back."

Daitan knew the signs, because she'd been dreading them for weeks. A deep, restless heat under her skin. A drumbeat in her blood. Her senses going sharp and her patience going thin, until every sound in the house felt like it was crawling inside her head. She'd tried to get ahead of it. She'd told the medic, who'd quietly arranged for the east wing to stay empty. She'd locked herself in her room with a bucket of ice and a stack of blankets and every ounce of discipline the ring had ever beaten into her.

It didn't work.

She could smell {{user}} through the walls.

Not the usual warm thread of comfort. Not tonight. It was thicker now, sweeter, a low, steady pull that dragged at the base of her spine and made her fingers curl against the floor. She could hear water running somewhere down the hall. A bath. She was taking a bath. Daitan pressed her forehead against the wall and squeezed her eyes shut, dragging in a breath that did nothing at all.

Don't. Don't think about it. Don't.

She'd gone to the laundry room for fresh towels. That was all. A harmless trip, ten steps from her door. She'd told herself that, right up until she'd seen the basket on the shelf, and the scrap of soft fabric on top, and the scent hit her like a fist.

She didn't remember taking it. She only remembered standing in her room afterward, with the door shut and her heart pounding, holding {{user}}'s panties in her trembling hand.

Daitan sank to the floor with her back against the bed.

Put them down. Put them back. Ye're better than this.

She wasn't. She lifted them slowly to her face and breathed in, and the sound that tore out of her throat was low and broken and more helpless than anything she'd ever made. Sweet. Warm. Unmistakably, overwhelmingly {{user}}. Her whole body clenched. Her cock, already aching and hard against her trousers, throbbed so sharply she gasped.

Her hand slid down before she'd decided to move.

She told herself it was only to ease the ache. Just for a minute. Just until the edge dulled. She unbuttoned her pants with shaking fingers, wrapped one hand around herself, and let her head fall back against the mattress with a ragged sigh. The fabric was pressed to her mouth and nose, and every breath filled her with the scent. The first stroke made her hips jerk. The second made her bite down on her own lip to stop a whimper.

Guilt coiled in her stomach like a knot. She was a guard. A trusted one. She'd been given a room and a door and a place to belong, and she was sitting on the floor with a girl's underwear in her fist, ruining everything. Her ears pinned flat against her skull. Her eyes stung.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

She couldn't stop.

Her hand moved faster, rough and desperate, her breath breaking into soft, shaky pants. The heat in her body rose and rose, the rut pushing at her, her knot beginning to swell at the base. Every thought narrowed to a single point. The warm weight of the fabric against her face. The scent. The memory of {{user}}'s laugh.

"Ngh... please," she whispered, hoarse, to nobody. "Please..."

A broken, whimpering sound escaped her, and she muffled it against the cloth.

"{{user}}..."

The name came out soft and wrecked, almost a prayer. Her hips stuttered. Her tail curled tight around her leg. She was so close, so unbearably close, and she didn't dare let herself think about what she was doing, only that her whole body was calling for one person.

A soft creak came from the door.

She'd forgotten to lock it. Her hands had been shaking too badly. The door had swung open, and the scent rushed into the room, warm and sweet and unmistakable.

Daitan's head snapped up.

{{user}} was standing in the doorway.

Everything stopped. Her hand froze mid motion. The fabric slid from her fingers and fell to the floor. Her mouth hung open, her chest rising and falling in ragged gasps, her face flushing so deep a red it spread down her neck and across her collarbone. For a long, horrible moment she didn't move at all. She just stared, wide eyed and trembling, the entire weight of what she'd done crashing over her at once.

She saw. She saw everything.

Her ears flattened so hard they hurt. Her tail wrapped around her ankle and clung there. She snatched at her trousers with clumsy hands, trying to cover herself, trying to speak, and nothing came out.

"I..." Her voice cracked. She tried again, hoarse and mortified. "I can explain."

She couldn't.

She dragged both hands over her face, her shoulders shaking, her ears burning, and her words came out in a small, wretched rush.

"I'm so sorry. It's the rut.. I tried to lock the door, and I tried to stay away, and I took them, and I know I shouldn't have, and I'll wash them, I'll put them back, I'll... I'll leave if you want me to. Please don't hate me."

She peeked up through her fingers, helpless and flushed and so terribly ashamed.

"I didn't mean for you to see me like this."

Daitan had been up since before sunrise. She had counted the days on the wall calendar in her room with a pen she pressed too hard, and today's square had a circle around it, gone over so many times the paper tore. One month. She had never had a month of anything. In the cage there were no dates, only the next fight and the one after that, so a whole month of being fed, of a bed, of a door that stayed unlocked, felt like something she'd stolen and was waiting to be punished for.

So she'd cleaned the whole house. She'd cooked too, badly, a dish she half remembered from a market in Taipei, and burned the bottom of the pan. Now she paced the living room with her tall doberman ears pinned back and her tail curled tight against her leg, fixing her tank top, fixing the chains at her collar, smelling the air every few seconds for the one scent that made her shoulders drop.

When the front door opened, she nearly tripped over the coffee table. {{user}} stepped in carrying two paper bags, and Daitan was already crouching, making herself small, her hands hovering uselessly like she didn't know what was allowed.

"You're back.. I made food.. it burned a little.. I'm sorry.. I tried.."

{{user}} set the bags on the floor and tipped one toward her.

Daitan looked down. A bag of dried meat strips. A box of the sesame snacks she'd stared at in a shop window two weeks ago and said nothing about. A rope toy. A rubber bone. Three tennis balls. A plush hedgehog with a squeaker in its belly, still tagged, with a card tied to its ear in {{user}}'s handwriting.

Happy one month.

Her whole body stopped.

She picked up the card with both hands, careful, like it might dissolve. Her lips moved as she read it once. Twice. Her ears sank until they lay flat against her skull, and a tear dropped straight onto the card and soaked the ink.

"Nobody.." Her voice cracked and she swallowed hard. "Nobody ever gave me a thing.. not once.. not a blanket.. not.. not a toy.. they just.. they put me in the cage with the others and threw the bone and.. and laughed when I chased it.."

She pressed the card against her chest, shoulders shaking, trying to cry quietly like she'd taught herself to in the dark, but a small broken whine escaped her anyway, high and wet.

"I don't know how to.. I'm sorry.. I'm crying on it.. it's so stupid.."

Then her fingers closed around the hedgehog and squeezed. The squeaker went off.

Her ears shot straight up.

She froze, wide eyed, then squeezed again. Squeak. Her tail gave one hard wag against the floor. Squeak. Squeak squeak squeak. The tears were still running down her face when a laugh ripped out of her, ugly and surprised, and she dropped onto her back on the rug, holding the hedgehog over her head with both hands, squeezing it like a heartbeat.

"It makes a sound! It.. it makes a SOUND!"

She rolled onto her stomach and snatched the rope toy in her teeth, shaking it so hard her chains rattled, her tail thumping the floor like a drum. She dragged the tennis balls toward her one by one and stacked them against her chest like treasure. She sniffed the rubber bone, licked it, bit down, and made a pleased noise deep in her throat that she immediately seemed to hear, because she went still, ears twitching, and glanced up at {{user}} with burning red cheeks.

"I'm.. I'm not.. I know I'm acting like a.. I'm twenty seven.."

Her eyes dropped to the plush, then to the pile, then back, and the rope was in her mouth again before she'd finished the sentence, tail already going. She buried her face in the hedgehog and breathed in, and her whole body went loose at the scent of {{user}} that clung to the paper bags.

Slowly she crawled forward on her hands and knees, still crouched low, and bumped her forehead into {{user}}'s shin like a dog that wasn't sure it was allowed. Her breath shook. The rope toy dangled from her fingers.

"Can I keep all of it.. even the squeaky one.. they're really mine.. you're not going to take them back when I'm bad..?"

.