Chapter 52: Let's Stay Together
#52 of The Mating Season 4
Chapter 52: Let's Stay Together
"Psh. Lea just wants attention."
Kilyan looked at Aros as if he had shit for brains. "Aros, Lea is pregnant. It's not that she wants attention: she needs attention. Her ankles are swollen, her back hurts, sometimes in the morning she gets sick --"
"All right, all right! T. M. I." Aros' ears went flat on his head to drown Kilyan out.
"And even if she wanted attention, what the hell's wrong with that? Lea's not only carrying my pup, but she's taking care of another pup that isn't even her own. Though the way she dotes on Wynn," reflected Kilyan with a laugh, "she might as well belong to Lea."
"Whatever, Kilyan. I just know that I'm never going through that shit with Lila again. She wouldn't let me touch her with a ten foot pole let alone my dick anyway -- not that there's a difference."
Kilyan laughed.
Against Kel's wishes, Kilyan and Aros were on forest patrol that cold wintry afternoon. They walked side by side, their spears on their shoulders as weak, pale fingers of sunlight streamed through the canopy of naked trees to touch the snow. It had been several months since Kilyan's adventures with Avi, and now Lea was big with his newest addition to the family, Wynn grew prettier every day, and Inden was slowly but surely becoming a well-loved warrior in the summer village. The prince had, in fact, become a great asset as a lookout: every night, he circled the sky, and with his eagle's eye view, could see trouble coming for literal miles away.
"So are her tits full of milk yet?" Aros wondered. "I used to drink Lila's breast milk while she slept. Lila loves berries so it was pretty sweet." He laughed to himself.
Kilyan shook his head. "God, Aros. You know so little about females it's a wonder that you've lived with three of them for the past sixteen years. The milk will come when the pup is born."
"You're gonna bring me some of it, aren't ya?" Aros teased.
"Shut up, you sick bastard!" Kilyan laughingly returned and shoved Aros in the shoulder.
Aros laughed. "Seriously, though, Kil: I think it's great that you're willing to have another pup with Lea, that you're willing to go so far to make her happy. The two of you are so cute, and I was always so happy for you. Not every wolf's marriage is such a breeze. If Lila asked me for another pup, I'd just bust out laughing. I'd laugh clear into next year. Ha, ha, ah-ha, ha . . ." His sarcastic laughter faded away and he spit suddenly in the underbrush and growled, "Pups. Who needs 'em? They cry at you when they're little, they yell at you when they're older, and they dump their own pups in your lap when they're middle-aged. You give them everything you have, you slave to keep a roof over their heads, you stay in a miserable fucking marriage just to be around for them, and what do you get in return? A bitter, ungrateful bitch of a wife and daughters that hate you. Females." His lip curled up in a snarl around his fang and he glared at the distant trees.
Kilyan watched Aros sympathetically. "Aros, if you're so unhappy with Lila, why don't you do something about it?"
"Like what, Kilyan?" Aros said with a derisive snort. "Don't start with me, okay? I already had to hear it from Keeno -- Keeno! As if he had any room to talk after what happened last summer."
"It's pretty rare that it happens, but Keeno is right, Aros," Kilyan returned. "If my son is going to marry your daughters --"
"What!"
"-- then I want his father-in-law to set a good example. Do what's right for your kids, do what's right for Lila and yourself! You can be better wolves if you're apart and better parents for your children. It's probably a little late to attempt it, but you can be a good father, Aros."
Aros was silent, his eyes trained on the ground as they walked. After a long and thoughtful silence, he said quietly, "Zane loves my girls? Really loves them?"
"He didn't say it. I just . . . could tell," Kilyan answered, thinking with a fond smile of the day he finally noticed his son's growing affection for the twins.
One morning when coming to Aros' hut to pick him up for patrol duty, Kilyan and Keeno had arrived with Zane. The twins had been sitting around the fire with their parents, and when they looked up and saw Zane, they weren't the giggly, silly little girls Kilyan remembered whispering with their heads pressed together and blushing as they looked over Zane's cock. The girls had looked up, their eyes shining with love, and they were females now. They were adults. And when Zane gazed back at them, Kilyan had been stunned to see the clear and vivid ardor in his son's eyes! He had felt a little sad to see such a thing: his boys had really grown up.
"Good," Aros said. "Then he'd better take good care of my little girls -- better care of them than their father has, at least."
"Don't worry about Zane. I've raised him for the task. But, Aros, I mean it: set a good example for our kids! Fix things with Lila, do the right thing for your family. Besides, I want to see you smile again and mean it. It's been a long time since your smile wasn't hollow."
When they came to the edge of the forest, they realized the sun was setting: their shift was now over and the night shift would be ready to meet them at the gates. They emerged from the forest to give their report at the gates: all quiet to the east, but there'd been some suspicious howling to the west. The night shift nodded and headed out, Kilyan and Aros headed home.
"Think I'll rub Lea's feet tonight," Kilyan said thoughtfully. "She likes that and it helps her sleep." He smiled to himself, thinking of Lea on her back, her great stomach protruding toward the ceiling of their darkened room as Ohana stroked her mane and sang to her, as he lovingly rubbed her little white feet.
Aros watched Kilyan's absent smiling with a sudden flash of jealousy. Kilyan had no idea how much his warm and happy household was envied by his friends. Even Keeno had expressed his jealousy that Kilyan had two wives, two sons, and another lover and a daughter. Aros rolled his eyes: it had always been Keeno's dream to have three wives, though an easily jealous Zalia had forbidden her husband to take another mating season.
"So," Kilyan said as they passed up the street. "You gonna patch things up with Lila? Or am I gonna have to tie your tails together and force you?"
"There is no patching things up, Kilyan. If by 'patching things up' you mean leaving her . . . I think about it all the time. All the time. But . . . then I think of my little girls being so mad at me. Lila and I made a promise to each other a long time ago that if things didn't work out, we'd stick it out for our kids. But my girls are close to moving out now, and Lila . . . I think she's been seeing some guy behind my back. I mean, it's more than sex -- I think it's love! She doesn't say anything about it, but she comes home and gets in bed next to me, and I smell the guy on her fur, in her mane. His scent gets all in the bed and she knows that pisses me off. But of course she doesn't care. Stupid bitch."
Kilyan winced. He hated when Aros called Lila a bitch: she was trapped in that marriage the same as he. It didn't seem fair.
"Anyway," said Aros darkly, scratching the back of his ears, "I guess I'll try talking to her." He sighed. "Damn, this is gonna be hard. I haven't said anything more to Lila than 'pass the salt' for sixteen years."
"You can do it, Aros. Just think of it this way: she's still the female you fell in love with sixteen years ago."
Aros laughed bitterly. "Yeah. Only now, she hates my guts. See ya, Kilyan." He clapped Kilyan on the shoulder, then took the turn that would lead him to his home.
When Aros pulled aside the curtain of his hut, he was a little surprised to actually find Lila inside. She was kneeling beside a low fire, holding her shawl tight to her breasts. She looked up at him when he came in and actually gave a reluctant smile.
Aros stepped into the room and sat near her. Lila was the typical wolf: gray fur, dark brown eyes. But she had a beauty all her own: her haughty and vivacious spirit blazed in her eyes and there were few males who knew how to say no to them. She had pursued Aros when they were young, not the other way around. Aros could still remember to this day the way she'd come up to him while he was supposed to be on patrol in the forest. How she'd managed to sneak into the forest alone was anybody's guess. He'd blushed and had stammered out a protest. But Lila pounced on him without preamble and was soon hopping on his cock in the bushes. She had practically raped him! But, of course, he hadn't been able to resist the tight clenching of her wet walls, her pointy little breasts flapping, her narrow waist as it twisted in sharp movements to ride that tight pussy on his cock. And afterwards, she had winked at him and given him a place to meet her again the next day. Then she switched off into the trees, her tail swaying low, her breasts riding high. She had glanced back at him, a flash of lust in those magnetic eyes, then disappeared into the trees, the sweet scent of her pussy lingering after. Who couldn't fall in love with that? Thus, Aros had been helpless under her spell for years.
"What are you doing here?" present-day Aros wondered, for it was rare that Lila ever showed her face around their hut in the evenings: she usually came home in the middle of the night (after a drunken fuck with her lover, no doubt), and without saying a word to Aros, she would crawl in bed. Aros had been cooking for his daughters since the time they were six because of this.
"I thought it was time we talked," was the answer, and she smiled another of her reluctant smiles.
Aros lifted his eyebrows: Lila never talked about anything. Lila screamed, Lila fought, Lila flashed her fangs and argued. That was all Lila knew how to do.
"It's funny," Aros answered, "because I was thinking the same thing."
"What did you want to talk about?" Lila asked, then added under her breath, "Ladies first . . ."
Aros' face darkened. "What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"
Lila looked up at him, and her brown eyes were dancing with scorn. "It means you're a cock-sucker. A salad tosser. A nasty, dirty, fucking tail cha --"
Aros grabbed her arm before the word was barely out of her mouth, and jerking her around until her mane tossed, he hissed, "You shut the fuck up about things you don't understand. You hear me? You fucking cunt!" He shoved Lila from him in disgust, and she fell back on her elbows, smirking at his anger.
Still smirking, Lila opened her legs, and Aros had a clear view of her sex in the firelight: pink and glossy, the little clit above the pussy lips. He could smell another male's tongue and spit on his wife's vagina, on her thighs. His body tensed and Lila laughed.
"Do you still even remember what to do with this?" she teased. "Of course you don't. But he does." She touched a finger to her sex and ran her tongue over her fang. "He pleases me every night in ways that you never --"
"Shut up, Lila," Aros warned in a low voice.
"But you never could please me, could you, Aros?" Lila went on, her brows drawing down sharply. "You know that little thing you used to do to me? Well, I was faking --"
"I said shut the fuck up!"
Lila tossed her head back, and putting on a look of ecstasy, she moaned to the ceiling, "Oh, yes, Daddy! Bite me -- harder! HARDER!"
Aros let out a roar and lunged at Lila. Her laughter shrieked to the ceiling, but her giggling abruptly stopped when Aros' thick cock slammed inside of her. The laughter choked in her mouth and she let out a cry of pain: she was being fucked hard, fast, and dry. He snatched her shawl open until it was hanging free around her breasts, and her jiggling tits slapped against her husband's chest as he forced his way inside, grunting, growling, holding her down by the neck when she sought to escape. He put Lila's leg on his shoulder and raped her so hard that her clit was soon throbbing against his swollen thrusts. He smiled at her arousal, and she blushed and scowled at him, and when he tried to kiss her, she ripped his head back by the mane and slapped him in the face.
Nonetheless triumphant that Lila was aroused, Aros leaned down and kissed her anyway, his panting mouth closing over hers. They moaned together through the kiss, and for a moment, Aros thought she was giving in -- but her fangs closed on his tongue and he backed off with a curse.
Lila sprang up and ran for the curtain. Aros snatched her back by the mane, and throwing her kicking and screaming over his shoulder, he carried her into the bedroom. Here he slammed her on the bed. She scrambled away on her knees and was half-standing when he sank his teeth in her neck, and dragging her down to the sheets, he fucked her.
Her pussy throbbed wet and hungry around him, growing deeper and juicier with his frantic thrusts, until she was on her knees under him, her fists clenched in the sheets, shrieking breathlessly as he fucked her, her tits flapping, her mane in her eyes. They came together and collapsed, breathless and exhausted.
"So . . . who is it? Just out . . . of curiosity," panted Aros after a pause.
"Roc. Been seeing him . . . for years . . . actually," Lila panted back.
"Done him."
"You have not!"
Aros only looked at her, and when the truth of his confession became perfectly clear, they both burst out laughing.
"God, you really know how to pick 'em," Aros said, pushing his mane back from his eyes. She had picked a tail-chaser all over again -- and a very handsome at once at that. Aros felt a sudden flash of jealousy again, but he knew deep down that a marriage between Lila and Roc would never work: she was just doing the same thing twice.
"Don't you know it, baby," Lila teased, slapping her tail over her husband's. "I seem to have a thing for you butt-munchers. Must be because you're all so sweet."
They looked at each other, and when Lila touched an affectionate finger to his lips, Aros felt with a flutter of his heart his old feelings resurfacing. Gazing into Lila's pretty face, he remembered in a rush those days they made love in the bright green fields, the sunlight reaching down on them, birds singing and butterflies drifting overhead. And how they had whispered and snuggled and smiled, how Lila had giggled in his arms, those lovely breasts -- always so small and yet so irresistible -- jiggling against him. Those jelly cushions and their sharp little nipples! He would lean down and suck them hungrily, and she would fall very still, moaning and squirming every now and then: Lila had always deeply enjoyed having her tits sucked.
Present-day Aros realized, as they smiled into each other's eyes, that there was a reason why he'd never fallen in love with a male: he was still in love with Lila. After all these years . . . his heart still belonged to her! And only her. Always.
"Lila," Aros whispered, taking her paw into his own. He kissed it and said earnestly, "Let's stay together! Let's try again! I still love you, I've always loved you no matter what. Isn't that what marriage is? Loving each other through the good and the bad?"
But Lila's brown eyes suddenly grew cloudy and sad. "No, Aros," she said gently, and took her paw away. "Don't ask this of me. I can't live like this anymore."
After a miserable pause, Aros swallowed thickly and whispered, "What are you saying?"
Lila sat up, her back to him. But she turned and looked him in the eye, her long mane swinging back over her shoulder when she said the words that made Aros' heart crack, "I don't love you anymore."
Aros sat very still, but he looked as if the color had drained from his face.
"I'm leaving you for Roc," went on Lila, rising from the bed. She brushed her mane back over her shoulders, those little breasts momentarily thrust forward, and shaking her mane and tail out, she said casually as she pulled her shawl closed, "And I'm taking the pups."
Aros' body tensed. "Like hell you are!" he growled, flying up from the bed.
Lila didn't move when her husband was suddenly towering over her. She folded her arms calmly under her bosom, but her face was serious and hard. "What the hell do you care what happens to Mora and Nyssa?" she demanded. "You didn't even want to have them!"
Aros heard movement in the front room, and realizing that his children were now home, he hissed down at his wife, "Will you keep your fucking voice down --!"
"Don't you tell me what to do!" Lila snapped back, just as loud as before. "You don't tell me what to do anymore! I already went to the village council and they've accepted my request. That's what I wanted to tell you. We're divorced, Aros! I'm marrying Roc three moons from now --"
"What!"
"-- and I expect you to be out of this hut by then!"
"Over my dead body!" Aros grabbed Lila by the arm and dragged her, shrieking and fighting, from the bedroom and into the front room of the hut, where their two daughters were kneeling around the fire and looking shocked: their father had never thrown Lila around in such a manner. But Aros was at the peak of his rage: he would take no more of Lila's shit and said as much when he shoved her toward the curtain.
"Get out of my hut -- my hut that my father Landor built for me! Take your sorry ass to Roc -- we're through!"
Lila laughed nastily, her paws on her round hips. "Didn't I already say that, Aros? You miserable fucking cock-sucker! We've been through for days. I just hadn't told you yet." Her mane streaming into mocking brown eyes, she smiled sarcastically at her husband, then turned to her daughters and said, "Get your things, girls. We're leaving."
Mora and Nyssa didn't move.
"Did you hear me?" Lila said through her teeth.
Mora glowered and Nyssa wouldn't even look at her mother. It was Aros' turn to smile sarcastically.
"They don't want to go with you," he said, folding his arms in triumph. "They want to stay here. With their father."
Lila sneered. "Don't flatter yourself Aros: you're just the lesser of two evils. I'll be back with Roc tomorrow to collect my things." She glared at her family, and turning from the hut, she gave her mane a haughty toss and stormed out, tearing the curtain aside and leaving it open in her wake.
A flurry of snow rushed in, and Aros moved toward the curtain and closed it with a hard jerk. He bowed his head a moment and took a deep breath to hold back the threat of rising tears, then he turned to face his daughters.
Mora and Nyssa smiled sadly at their father. Nyssa's lip trembled. Look at them. They were almost adults now, but the pups in them showed clearly in their large and miserable eyes. And suddenly, they weren't teenagers but his breast-less, skinny, shrill-voiced little girls. Feeling a sudden and overwhelming need to protect them too late from the scene that had just taken place, Aros came across the room and fell to his knees between his daughters. He hugged them both close in his arms and whispered that it was all right. Daddy was here. Daddy would always be here.