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Slayer or Layer 17

For Lorvianne

By Draconicon

Two more days passed, and another two dozen eggs were laid. Lorkos groaned every time that he thought of the number, and his sleep was constantly interrupted by thoughts of the children that must have been running around in the tribe, growing by the day, getting older, getting stronger.

Getting more deadly, he tried to tell himself, but the dreams were filled with scaly children that were not dangerous in the slightest, running, playing, calling for him.

Always calling for him.

Lithia, lithia, the word came again and again, reminding him that there was a difference. Father, mother, lithia. A father being the one that hunted for the children. The mother being the one that stayed behind to raise them. The lithia being the one that laid them.

Lorkos groaned in the night tent, leaning his head against his arm, grinding his ear against his shoulder as if he could block the word from popping into his head by plugging his ears. It never worked, and he didn't know why he bothered trying.

The female was yet to come, already late, and he didn't know if she was merely busy or if there was something else happening in the village that demanded her attention. Lorkos just knew that he was still covered in the seed of the other males, soaking in their stink. His nudity didn't help, either.

One more day, he reminded himself. One more day, and I'm out of here.

He took a deep breath, closing his eyes. The heat of the day was slowly fading away, though there was, as ever, another egg in him that would mature overnight and be laid in the morning. The pressure was strong enough to keep him focused on it to the exclusion of the rest of his body, but that was better than focusing on his pussy.

And one egg was better than a dozen.

The wolf was just starting to feel about normal when he heard the shuffling sound of sneaking footsteps outside the tent. His muscles tensed, his eyes opened, flicking from side to side to see where the shadows lay, where the newcomer might be coming from. There was only one entrance to the tent, but the tent was leather, not stone, not like the huts where he was fucked and bred during the day.

He looked around again, seeing nothing, nothing yet, and he growled deep in his throat.

"If you come to breed, you're too late. It's night. I'm done."

"...Lithia?"

The wolf's ears pricked up at the word, his eyes going wide.

No, no, no! You're not supposed to - I don't want to see you!

His heart swelled with more fear than any enemy had ever given him, more raw terror than any beast had ever inspired. He wanted to break the chains that held him down, pull his arms free and run into the night, risk or no risk. Anything was better than seeing -

The naked girl stepped out from around the edge of the tent wall, looking in at him. She was red-scaled, just as he could be over time, and she was obviously barely at the age of majority. She had to have been one of the first eggs that he had laid, cursed to grow quickly, forced to mature so that she could continue the breeding duties of the tribe.

He could see why the female lizard had said that they were more dragon-like. The girl had the start of wings, the beginning of the powerful tail that dragons had that would be at least her height in length, if not longer. Her face was young, but her eyes were wise, with curled horns on the sides of her head that looked like twirled, twisted buns of hair.

She took a step into the tent, looking down at him.

"Lithia? Are you my...my lithia?"

"...You...what..."

"You laid...did you lay me?"

Lorkos had no words. For the first time, for the first time in a very long time, he had no idea of what to say.

They had been eggs. The concept of children, at most, never more than that. They had never been people. They weren't supposed to be people. They weren't supposed to look like this, to remind him of himself, to make him think that he was responsible.

He tried to inch away, tried to look anywhere but at this - at his daughter! - but she was right there. He could smell her, the raspy, soft musk of scales combined with something else, something more wolfen, something that reminded him of him.

She knelt at his side, keeping him from being able to forget her, to ignore her. He whimpered, begging in the back of his head for her to leave him, to not touch him.

She ignored all that, laying her hand on his chest, and he whimpered.

"You..." She leaned in, sniffing at his cheek. "You are my lithia...my layer...You..."

She sounded confused, but beneath that, she sounded almost exuberant, exulting at finding her...parent? He wasn't sure how this 'lithia' slipped into things, but it had to be important to her.

To him, it was a dagger in the chest.

Wolves were meant to be there for their young. Any wolf that turned their back on their child, no matter how infirm, no matter what reason, was immediately cast out of the pack. Out of the culture. Out of their society. It was the worst of things.

One took care of one's cubs, no matter what.

But she...

He looked up at her, desperately searching for something, some flaw, something that he could point at and shout that it made her a monster. He couldn't be responsible for this. He couldn't.

But...

But he was.

And there was nothing for him to hate there. There was no malice in her eyes, no hatred in her expression. There was no hunger for conquest, no sign that she would become some monster that hunted men and women for the sheer joy of hurting them. She wasn't...

She wasn't a monster.

But he...

Lorkos bit back the tears that threatened to come, even as the girl leaned in, her nose nearly touching his. She had no sense of barriers, no modesty about what she was doing. She stroked his cheek, looking at him, shaking her head.

"Can't you talk? Talk with me?"

"I...Who...who are you?" he whispered, unable to help himself.

"They haven't named me yet..."

"...Lia."

It was an instinct, a name that came to his lips without even thinking about it, something that seemed right without anything to back it up. As soon as he said it, he wished he could take it back, but his daughter was already beaming.

"Lia. That is my name."

She didn't hiss. She didn't hiss her s's the way that the rest of the tribe did. Was that part of his heritage? Part of the dragon's? He didn't know, but it was one more reminder that she was not like them, and that she was more like him.

The tears tried to come again, tried to fall, but he choked them back, damming them up inside of his eyes.

"Lithia. Please. Talk with me. Why...why are you here? The shaman..."

"What did the shaman say?" he whispered.

"That...that there was a dragoness...that blessed our fathers, that there was a godly lithia here, that gave birth to us."

"...I'm not godly..."

"Not a dragoness either, but you're still my lithia...Why..."

Why...He knew the question. Why didn't he come out? Why didn't he come to them when they called? Why didn't he leave the tent and be part of their lives?

He couldn't answer. He didn't want to answer.

He...he didn't want to hurt her.

Lorkos clenched his eyes shut, looking away from her. Lia stroked his cheek, whispering, trying to get him to say something else, but he clenched his jaws shut all the tighter. He didn't trust his tongue, and he no longer trusted his eyes. They watered and burned, and he knew that if he spoke, if he looked at her, he'd start bawling.

"Can I...can I bring the others?" she asked.

Others. Oh god, the sight of her had pushed all the others out of his head, but of course there would be other children, other hatchlings, others grown to full size in the time that he had been here. There had to be more of his children in the tribe than there were people of the original tribe.

He was almost cracked and broken merely from seeing this one. Seeing all of them...

The dream came to mind again. Lithia, lithia, they called, always looking for him, never finding him in the dream. Was that real? Where they searching for him even in their sleep? Were they looking...?

He clenched his eyes shut all the tighter, shaking his head.

"No," he said, his voice hoarse and raspy. "No, you'll get in trouble."

"But...but lithia..."

"Go. Go before they...they catch you."

"But I only just -"

"Go!"

He flicked his tail towards the entrance of the tent, and he heard her leave. She was quick on her feet, darting away without a word. As soon as the sound of her footsteps faded, he let himself break.

The tears flowed down his muzzle, dripping to the ground beneath him as the reality of his situation hit him. They weren't eggs. They weren't monsters. They were people.

People.

His people. His line. His children. Children that any wolf should have been working to raise, not looking to leave behind. He wanted to scream, wanted to howl, wanted to hit himself for what he had done.

For once, the chains were a lifeline. They held his arms and legs down, pinned his head near to the floor so that he couldn't bash his skull open at his guilt and tears.

His excuses no longer mattered. The fact that they were scaly didn't absolve him. The fact that they had come from rape and breeding that he didn't want didn't matter. They were still his, and that meant that he had responsibility.

It meant that he needed to be there.

But there was so many...

Nobody knows, he told himself. Nobody knows that I did this. Only this tribe does. I am not...not a father. Just a...a lithia.

It was a weak excuse, and he knew it. The wolves would not listen to that excuse, would not absolve him from his crime just because of that.

But they needn't know. He could carry this secret...as long as the dreams didn't get worse.

I can't stay, he thought. I can't stay, not even for them. They'll be okay. They'll be raised by their own kind, better than a wolf could do. They'll be provided for. They'll be given everything that they need...

It was a weak excuse, but a slightly better one. There was nothing he could do to protect them, provide for them, or anything while he was like this. His pussy was always on fire, and he needed to get rid of the curse. If he could do that, if he could do something about it...

There was a part of him that balked at the idea of ever coming back here once he got free. It told him that they were scalies, that they were monsters, no matter the fact that they had come from his loins. They could easily turn out to be far worse than their other parent, turn out to be someone that could be more conniving, corruptive, and horrifying than the lizardmen that had sired them.

But it was a weak voice, one that barely had the strength to stand up to the guilt that was instilled in every wolf that could ever think about leaving their pack behind.

Lorkos wept until he fell asleep, and he dreamed again.

"Lithia, lithia," the voices of his children called out, rolling over the hills and through the forests around them. They called for him, and he hid from them.

The wolf crouched behind a tree, his legs pulled tight to his chest, his eyes resting against his arms as he hid. He hunched his shoulders as if that would cover his ears and drown out the sound, but the words kept coming.

"Lithia, lithia," they called for him, and he remained silent.

Beneath the shouts were footsteps, and he looked up. Through the trees, he could see her again. Lia. His daughter. Perhaps even his first daughter among the tribe.

She'd found him, and she smiled, even as he got to his feet.

Tears running from his eyes, he turned to run, darting through the trees, but no matter how hard he ran, no matter how fast he pushed himself, he could hear her footsteps following. His daughter knew who he was now, and there was no escaping her, not in the real world, and not in the dream world.

"Lithia!" she shouted, and the cry came up from the other children, and the pursuing footsteps became a stampede.

"Lithia!"

"Lithia!"

"Lithia!"

The End