And this feende...was all redy, and lay by hir, while she was slepynge

How know you that your lover
Of death’s tideless waters stoops to drink?

Severus glared at Nareth as his clawed fingertips trailed along the cheek of the lycan woman he held tightly in one arm. “You hypocrite... it is fine for all of you to rut and smear yourselves all over this building as you please... but now you deny me this?” He growled low, curling his towering frame over the lycan woman, shifting against her sensuously, and savoring the pleasure that radiated from her due to his touch. He felt more than heard the snap, and then his powerful arms loosened, startled and scenting her.

"If we rut and tear ourselves, as you say, we do it by mutual consent. I cannot hold the Old Woman back, Severus, and she can kill us all.” Nareth placed her hand on Severus' chest again. “I will not see this happen....”

Me by night doth mouldy darkness cover,
It makes me quake to think:

She stood, improbably, leaning on a cane. “Joah, you need to release that bastard. If that's even possible. He is a threat to us all.”

“And what would happen if I did, Nareth? He would be without restraint.”

“It’s your call, Joah. Unless it becomes Omega’s.”

All night long I feel his presence hover
Thro’ the darkness black as ink.

“I spent two hours talking him down… so that he
wouldn't take a lycan woman here in the library.”

“Nareth, yer standin’, that’s good.”

“Yes... Grr. I am standing. Just barely....”

Without a voice he tells me
The wordless secrets of death’s deep:

“Grr... you, Lycan... tell me the nature of your kind's soul….” Severus uttered fixing Grr with his burning black eyes.

“Tha nature of our souls, Maker? Complex. Wild and free, eternally cyclin’ and tied to tha cycle of tha world…. ”

If I sleep, his trumpet voice compels me
To stalk forth in my sleep:

“I wish to know if the souls of your kin are born damned as some have said... if there is no redemption for them after tasting the blood of mortals... is this correct?” Severus asked, his eyes wild and desperate.

“Not as far as my own leanin’s go, no, that ain’t correct. Redemption is fer all who seek it, soul or no. I don’t believe, nor does my totem, that anythin is unchangeable. Nothin’ is born damned, that’s somethin’ that happens to ya, or ya do yerself and everythin’ – everythin’ – can Change its own destiny. Even you.”

If I wake he rides me like a nightmare;
I feel my hair stand up, my body creep:

“That is not... the answer I had hoped,” Severus ground out between clenched fangs, his every word a struggle, strangely accented and slipping towards the First language. “I will not damn another....”

Without light I see a blasting sight there,
See a secret I must keep.


A Coast-Nightmare, C. Rossetti