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Chapter Text

In the Inquisitorious, nervousness was a survival skill. 

Irene had been trained to let it heighten her awareness, to allow the fear-adrenaline surge to push her senses and twitch reactions past normal limits.

That was useful in combat; that knowing-before-knowing drove her blade and bullets beautifully in the knife’s edge dance she thrived so well in. It was not so helpful in dances of the heart- as she was reminded, once again -as she twitched half a second before she heard the door hiss open. She interrupted her nervous pacing with a lurch backwards, spinning towards the door, hand on hilt, her whole body- knees then hips then back then shoulders -tensing and pushing in sequence to allow her to draw and thrust in one perfect, powerful motion.

Then her brain caught up.

Embarrassment rose hot in her cheeks as her train of thought arrived, one beat behind, just in time for a hand to catch her outstretched wrist and twist, twirling her in time with a musical laugh on the air, another hand slipping around her waist to the small of her back just in time to lower her into an elegant, if mortified, dip.

Laurentina grinned down at her.

“Good afternoon, birdie! Falling for me already?”

Irene tried for a scowl. Judging by the twitch of Laurentina’s lips, she only made it to around a grumpy pout.

“Hello, Shark.”

Laurentina’s smirk broadened to a jagged smile. “Well, hello! I would’ve waited for a knock, but,” her lips softened to a playful pout, “I could smell your anxiety from the bedroom, poor thing.”

“I- you-”

Luckily, Laurentina only let her flounder for a moment before grabbing her coat and tugging her across the threshold, her laugh on the breeze of the door closing behind them, a kiss pressed to Irene’s burning cheek as a push on her shoulder encouraged her down onto the edge of the bed.

Watching Laurentina move always moved something in Irene- joyful fluidity far removed from the stilted uncertainty of the woman she first met in Gran Faro. She smiled, posture softening, tension bleeding from her shoulders as she followed the gentle, mesmerizing sway of Laurentina’s thick braid, endeared by the strands escaping over her ears, entranced by how they moved as if underwater and weightless.

The bed dipped next to her and Irene leaned into Skadi on instinct, only to recoil as something cold and wet met the skin of her cheek. She looked up, betrayed, to find Skadi squeezing a towel around her hair, drops trailing over her collar and beneath the cut of her sports bra, damp spots marring her tight underwear where-

Irene shook herself and looked up. The loving amusement playing on the tiny curve of Skadi’s lips made her feel like she was going to explode.

“Hello, little bird. I see what Shark was anticipating so much, now.”

“Indeed!” Laurentina settled on Irene’s other side, and she wondered at how being so completely cornered made her shiver with delight. “It seems our darling bird has come to a decision on what she’s been pondering so heavily in recent days, no?”

Irene’s tongue felt like it was stuck to the roof of her mouth. “It was that obvious? Why didn’t-”

“We say something?” Laurentina sighed, drama palpable as she slumped forward, cheek in her palm, “Well I couldn’t be so rude as to presume , and to push the subject before you, darling, were ready would just be so gauche, wouldn’t it?” 

Skadi hummed agreement, her chin brushing the top of Irene’s head as she nodded, “We wanted to be careful with you.”

She spoke with such gentle conviction. As if it couldn’t be any other way. Something in the back of Irene’s head felt like singing, soaking in the connection and understanding and devotion of the Hunters on either side of her, reveling in the binds between them and how tangled she was in the middle of it. How beautiful, Irene thought. How terrible.

It was with that joy humming down her spine that she sighed, resting her head on Skadi’s shoulder, tangling her fingers with Laurentina’s where they were playing with the hem of her stocking, and sighed. 

“I want to see… how you love without holding back.”

The air thickened.

Laurentina’s presence sharpened. Irene felt as if she were a blade; merciless, deadly, honed to a wicked point but hidden in the dark until it caught the light of the moon.

Like a fin knifing through a calm sea.

Skadi was subtler; she had no need for ambush, for sudden, brutal killing blows. Each member of the pod plays a role. The hairs on the back of Irene’s neck rose, hypersensitive to Skadi’s gentle breaths growing heavier. Irene had a sudden vision of a wolf nipping at her ankles, coursing her towards teeth gleaming in the dark.

She felt a throb between her legs. 

“I want… to understand it. I want to feel how you change for it. I want to feel how you’re the same.”

Laurentina’s voice, when she spoke, was hoarse. Throaty. Like something was trying to claw its way free of her. “I don’t think you know what you’re getting into, little bird.”

Irene knew she had her.

“So be it.”

Sheets rustled, Skadi shifting behind her, Laurentina circling in front. Sizing up her prey. Putting her back to a- Skadi’s hands settled heavy on her hips -a wall. Irene’s heart felt fit to beat out of her chest. Her vision narrowed; the room darkening around her until Laurentina- Shark -was little more than hungry red eyes and the gleaming promise of teeth.

“What has a good little bird like you so fascinated, I wonder?” Shark leaned closer, looking up at her, a predator silhouetted by the inky depths of the sea below, “The perfect Inquisitor, the darling protege… braving the depths to come swim with us.” Her lips split in a savage grin, sharp eyes watching as Irene’s gaze flickered down.

“Is that it, little birdie? Do these,” she trailed her thumb along the razor cut of her teeth, parting her skin like peeling a delicate fruit, “ captivate you?”

Irene couldn’t do anything but nod.

Shark laughed, an edge to it Irene had only heard paired with the whine of her saw. It made her head fuzzy. 

“How delightful you are, little bird.” She leant forward, pressing Irene back into Skadi’s unyielding chest, hungry grin pressed to her throat, healing thumb smearing red over her cheek.

“I could just eat you up.”

Chapter Text

She blinked her third eyelid closed as another gust of wind whipped spray off the peak of a swell. She was too small for it to buffet her much, but it rocked her in the air enough; momentarily losing sight of her target with the flash of saltwater across her vision. 

She couldn’t lose them.

She dipped the leading edge of her wings, the air fluttering at the tips of her flight feathers before catching the new angle and plunging her towards the sea. She flared at the wavetops, catching the air under her once more, the speed doing nothing to hinder her as she scanned through the choppy water once again.

A swell rose before her, higher than the others, but she continued undaunted; rolling onto her side and tucking her wings in. She punched through the wave like a bullet, water parting like supple flesh around her beak and gliding along the streamlined form of her body. She was submerged for less than a second, but that was enough- she had seen them. 

She banked left, following; two mirrored shapes coursing under the surface, chasing something, a third biding its time behind. It was only a matter of time. 

The pair split, their prey slowing as they penned it in, turning to reverse, grasping at that window for escape. 

The window closed. 

The third shape lunged forward, accelerating in a blink towards the surface from beneath its prey. Towards her.

All at once it came into clear view, out of the hazy, churned waters; sleek, black as night, jaws clenched around something far too big of a feast for her to even consider. The water bent upwards before it broke, distorting around a nose bigger than her whole body. The orca turned as it breached, white eyespot with its clever, piercing eye below locking on hers for a split second as a rivulet of fresh blood traced down its sleek flank. 

It landed with a catastrophic splash, showering her in blood and sea spray, and in the carnage she spotted a meal of her own. An opportunist; looking to pick at the prey of hunters much greater than itself. With large kills come smaller prey. She folded her wings and dove, lancing through the surface in a shallow arc before her beak tore through her prey; she tasted salt, and blood, and ink.

Chapter Text

A nudge of awareness at the back of her mind stirred Irene from the hazy comfort of her afterglow. She grumbled, feeling more than hearing Skadi’s soft laugh when she nestled deeper into her stomach, the smooth skin of her tail soft under Irene’s hand, but the pneumatic hiss of the door sliding open had her lifting her head and blinking open bleary eyes.

Andreana stepped in. 

Irene blinked, surprised, but Andreana only held her gaze for a moment before turning away. 

It gave Irene a bit of a pang, watching her- so very clearly at home in this space in a way that Irene couldn’t quite grasp for herself -toeing her boots off at the door and nudging them into an open space that fit them perfectly, tossing her jacket over the back of a chair and turning perfectly in time to meet Laurentina’s sharp, delighted kiss. 

Andreana so clearly belonged here; these were her kin, and seeing the easy, effortless way they orbited each other in shared space Irene felt the same tidal threads that drew her to the love between Laurentina and Skadi in the first place. 

It’s not a feeling Irene could say she had felt before. She was jealous of Andreana, but she also was not. At the best of times, Irene was a creature of contradictions and feelings layered upon teachings (the things Dario would say, literally sleeping with the enemy) and this was no exception. If she were inclined towards metaphor, she would say she could see space distorting with the pull between the three of them. A third body added to the equation fundamentally changing their motion, complicating an orbit into an intricate, mathematically incomprehensible dance. 

It fit, she thought- when had these Hunters ever been comprehensible? They simply were , and to try and define that being would only ever result in something getting broken.

“Bound by blood,” Andreana had said. Irene believed it. There was something within them that sang together, and watching the three of them- Shark, Orca, Cuttlefish -was… heart-wrenching, almost. Like something within her was trying to pull free, to join that song and dance, but she didn’t know how to let it. The beauty of how well they know each other, moving and touching and conversing with an ease and grace that looks almost rehearsed pulled at her blood in the same way that a supernova would; a gut-twisting mixture of awe, wonder, terror. Joy.

Despite the best efforts of her training in the Inquisitorius, Irene has long been a creature of want. She wants to make Dario proud in the same breath as she wants to grow away from him, she wants to carry out her duty to the people of Iberia, she wants to burn the blight of the seaborn from this world.

The desire for this, though; the burning, leash-around-her-heart-and-pulling need to be a part of this closeness makes her wonder if she’s ever truly wanted something in her life.

She jumped at the gentle brush of Skadi’s hand over her shoulder, a prickling like icy water down her spine before the warmth and pressure of Skadi’s touch chased it down and filled its void with pleasant heat. Irene felt settled. Like something unknown, unseen within her that had always been slightly wrong- a misaligned gear, an erratic orbit -had snapped into proper place.

Skadi tugged at her elbow and Irene scooted back with her, settling into Skadi’s side at the head of the bed, melting into her as her strong hand traced meaningless patterns into the curve of her hip, her tail folded over her lap, a smile pressed against the beat of her pulse. 

Should it alarm her, that desire? Irene smiled despite herself at Laurentina pushing into Andreana’s space, her smile hungry, tail lashing. Should the urge to erase any distance between them, to join in their tidal dance, ring alarm bells in the cracked and shaken foundations of her Inquisitorial training?

Maybe. Maybe this would ruin her.

She turned to kiss Skadi, drinking down her tiny noise of surprise as she swung her leg over to straddle her. Maybe this would ruin her. But Skadi’s hands were warm and soft when they cupped her cheek to deepen the kiss, and Skadi’s body was solid and real beneath her, and Skadi’s little gasp into her mouth as Irene rolled her hips against her was cute enough to make her blush. 

Maybe this would ruin her, but Laurentina’s joyful laugh was ringing in her ears, and Andreana’s flustered spluttering was growing on her, and Skadi’s hand on her lower back was strong and sure as they moved together, and Irene couldn’t bring herself to care anymore.

Maybe this would ruin her. 

But she wouldn’t be ruined alone.

Irene licked into Skadi’s mouth as she bore down again, pressing closer, molding herself to the shape of Skadi’s body. Skadi’s fingertips teased up under the back of her shirt, stroking along her spine, and Irene was suddenly filled with the burning need to have every point of contact filled with the warmth of Skadi’s skin. Skadi hummed into her mouth as Irene traced her hands over her ribs, and Irene’s blood sang as her chest thrummed beneath her touch. It might ruin her, but this was good. She nestled her face into Skadi’s neck, and Skadi’s arms tightened around her. This was right.

“Comfortable?” There was a smile audible in Laurentina’s voice.

Irene tamped down the trained flush of shame that rose to her cheeks, opting instead to simply nod into Skadi’s warm skin, pressing impossibly closer. A melodic, appreciative chuckle brought a different flush licking up the back of her neck, though, and her gaze snapped up to where the other couple in the room were looking over the two of them. An affectionate smirk played over Laurentina’s lips; Andreana interested, but still largely inscrutable to Irene’s eye. Despite that unfamiliarity, though, something anticipatory thickened in the air. 

Laurentina’s smirk turned hungry, the tremors of anticipation in the air pulling taut, and Irene shivered. 

Almost faster than she could track, Laurentina twisted the hand she had linked with Andreana’s, spinning her and stepping in to meet for a brief kiss that left a smear of red on Laurentina’s upper lip. She licked her lips, tasting it, and Irene watched her pupils dilate before, with an ease that made Irene’s mouth go dry, she shoved Andreana back onto the bed with enough force to make the lights flicker. 

Irene felt something catch in her throat. “Oh.” She’d barely been touched, yet she sounded breathless. She sounded freshly fucked. What was happening to her? She turned in Skadi’s lap, comfort in the hands firm on her hips as the scene played out.

“Little bird,” “Laurentina began, immediately seizing every scrap of Irene’s attention, “We thought that, given your little request earlier, Cuttlefish here would be a lovely…” She touched a finger to her chin, feigning thought, “ canvas , shall we say, to demonstrate to you.” She ran a hand almost absently down Andreana’s side, showing her teeth in the twitch of a grin when she twitched into it.

“And judging by how I can smell how wet she is, darling Cuttlefish must be looking forward to, hmm… displaying to the Inquisitorius how much she can take.”

Andreana opened her mouth, but whatever response she had died in her throat as Laurentina settled astride her thighs, something dark and delighted gleaming in the show of her teeth, in the reflection of the low light off the tapetum lucidum behind her eyes.

Predator and prey. Irene felt a sense of deja vu.

“And maybe, dear Cuttlefish,” Laurentina’s eyes flicked back to lock with Irene’s, brilliant red limning her yawning pupils, “we can show our poor Inquisitor exactly what she’s been missing.”

When Laurentina moved it was fast enough that Irene’s mundane eyes had trouble following it- one moment she was straddling Andreana, sweet voice taunting her with the promise of ruin, and the next Andreana’s jeans were in shreds, her legs bent unnaturally at the hip as Laurentina forcibly folded her in half.

“Oh don’t look so worried, birdie,” Laurentina cooed, fingers pressing into the space where Andreana’s hip joint should be, sighing, delighted, when her breathy whines turned pained, “this is barely a warm-up stretch.” 

Andreana’s lip was white between her teeth as Laurentina palmed over her underwear, a whimper leaking out when she drove the heel of her hand hard into her clit. 

“See?” Laurentina twined her fingers into the underwear’s waistband before snapping to the side, ripping them off and leaving raw red lines beading tiny jewels of blood along Andreana’s thighs and waist. She traced her fingers along them, smearing red like a child would paint along Andreana’s flank, circling the jut of her pelvis. 

Andreana was dripping. She twisted her shoulders, whining, and Irene watched, something awful twisting in her throat, as her cunt clenched visibly in time with her hips popping, one after the other, back into place.

“Enjoying yourself, Cuttlefish?” Laurentina asked, voice mocking, before cutting anything Andreana could say short with a sharp slap of her fingers against her cunt. “Sounds like you are. Hear that, little bird?” She did it again, harder, the slap of skin against wet, wanting skin ringing in Irene’s ears. Slick stretched between her fingers as she drew them back. Irene’s heart was beating in her ears. 

Then, without so much of a breath of warning, Laurentina sank three fingers into Andreana’s cunt.

Andreana gasped like she’d been punched in the gut, trying to arch into Laurentina’s fingers but forced down by the hand keeping her knees pressed to her chest, two of her arms curling around Laurentina’s wrist as her fingers curled, harsh, inside her. 

Irene couldn’t process so much at once; Andreana’s fingers twisted in the sheets, the fabric creaking as it strained against her grip, the tension in her back, the muscles flexing in Laurentina’s forearm as she pounded into her cunt, the teeth sharp in her smile, the intensity of the focus in her eyes, the- 

Andreana’s other arms reached up, curling over Laurentina’s shoulder to pull her in, desperate lust clouding her eyes as she whispered something Irene couldn’t make out. 

Laurentina laughed and fell forward, obliging, to edge her teeth around the small swell of Andreana’s breasts. She laughed again, mocking, as Andreana tried to push her tits into her mouth at the same time as trying to buck her hips into Laurentina’s brutal thrusts, her body contorting between those two points of savage contact.

“Needy little thing, isn’t she?” Laurentina met Irene’s eyes, sweat beading like blood on the sharp of her jaw, tail lashing with her excitement, “just wait, she gets even more pathetic the more blood she loses.”

Andreana whimpered, humiliation and desperation in the flush of her cheeks, and Laurentina’s teeth closed over her breast.

Chapter Text

Irene was a warrior. A soldier, a hunter, a killer. She was, she thought, more than acquainted with gore.

Not, she realized too late, like this. Not with this much intimacy. Not with the tenderness of this violence.

She couldn’t help her sharp gasp at the flash of Laurentina’s teeth, at Andreana’s scream dying in her throat as she soaked Laurentina’s hand black, couldn’t help her instinct to leap forward and do something.

Skadi’s hand caught firm around her wrist. Soft, but unmoving as steel.

“Watch.”

She did.

Irene watched as Laurentina pulled away with a soft, wet sucking sound. Andreana’s breaths were coming in sobs. A sick, magma hot feeling pooled in Irene’s brainstem as she watched Laurentina swallow.

Her ears were ringing.

Laurentina turned to face her. Irene realized, with a pang of something unidentifiable curling around her throat, that the only difference is the vibrant red of her lips.

Then, Laurentina smiled.

She split her lips in a grin and Irene goes weak as blood, hot and bright and fresh and sticky drips and pools where her teeth pressed divots into her lower lip and filled them to the brim spills over and down from the corners of her mouth from her lip down her chin and throat and Irene’s moving and Skadi’s letting her slip free and she’s tripping forward and she’s

kissing

her.

She tasted iron, copper, salt, sucking Andreana’s lifeblood from Shark’s lip, cutting her own tongue on razor teeth in her haste to taste what had been left behind. She felt Shark’s grin turn savage, nails on her hips gripping hard enough to bleed and she whimpered into Shark’s mouth, pressing closer to kiss and lick her stained throat clean.

Shark’s hands flexed, turning her. Irene whined as she was pulled away, her task not done, but gentle pressure on her back and the red-hot throbbing in her skull had her immediately refocusing on the scene spread out before her. 

Andreana looked wrecked, in every possible sense of the word.

Arms above her head where Shark had pinned them, eyes half-lidded, mouth open and panting. Her throat bloomed with bruises, collar laced with a necklace of beading red pearls, the glistening wound on her chest already working to knit itself back together. Her stomach was taut, trembling, her thighs stained black and hips trembling as she unconsciously rocked up for more.

Irene was straddling her.

Later, she’d think back and find it odd- the lack of memory of wanting to move, or moving at all. She was standing next to Laurentina, and then she wasn’t.

In the moment, though, all Irene could think about was kissing her, about sharing back to her the taste of life still coating her tongue.

Andreana was so soft beneath her, mouth pliable despite the tension cording in her muscles, hips rocking needy despite the blood staining her healing chest. Irene pressed her fingers to the closing wound and swallowed Andreana’s mixed whine of pain and pleasure. Something base, some revenant instinct awakened in her delighted at the sound, at the sight, at the smell; her prey wounded and pinned beneath her. 

Irene went for the kill, blunt teeth still harsh on the soft skin of Andreana’s throat, nipping and tugging until bruises formed, blood welling just beneath the surface. It wasn’t enough, she didn’t have the teeth for it; but still she bit and pulled and bruised until Andreana was whimpering beneath her, hips rolling up into her in a stuttered, desperate rhythm.

Cuttlefish’s arms wound around her hips when she didn’t react to her writhing, flexing to shred yielding fabric, tooth-edged suckers biting into her ass and thigh. Irene smelled sweet iron as the other arms, softer, framed her clit. Her prey still had some bite. That was good.

She had paused at the contact, still with enough of her wits about her to exercise caution, but Irene was ravenous; biting and twisting and pushing into her, any reservations swept aside by blood-instinct, by the hot, hungry drive twisting at the base of her skull, and Cuttlefish went limp beneath her.

Irene grinned, savage, at her yielding; at how she clenched, hot and wet and tight around her, at how she had to fight against Cuttlefish’s arms pulling her back in before snapping their hips back together. Still, she needed to be closer. 

She caught the back of Cuttlefish’s knee as she drew back, pressing it down to her shoulder with the next snap of her hips. Cuttlefish’s moan died, strangled, in her throat as her hip popped in protest, but Irene paid it no mind save for a frisson of pleasure snaking around her brain, the new angle letting her press even deeper, even closer, almost- almost enough. 

A frustrated whine slipped from Irene’s lips as she nipped, again fruitless, at her prey’s throat; she could feel the pounding of her blood just below the skin, smell the sweetness of it, but it was just out of her grasp. She fucked into her harder, chasing release, eyes squeezed shut and teeth clamped around Cuttlefish’s carotid as that heat twisted and built and burned in her gut, but that peak kept just barely slipping through her fingers. 

Another aggravated groan against raw skin, and Irene felt cool fingers on her back; Shark was still here, leaning around her, hungry smile tinged with mourning as she grabbed a fistful of Cuttlefish’s hair and wrenched her head back, her gleaming, bloodmoon eyes flickering back to hold Irene’s gaze. Her hips stuttered, her body shivering with the intensity of it. “Allow me,” she purred, setting razor teeth to abused skin, “little Hunter.”

Then she tore Andreana’s throat out.

Irene keened, a raw, guttural sound wrenching itself from deep in her chest, as hot blood spilled over her cheeks, her chin, staining her like Iberian church glass. She swayed forward, catching the ragged edge of Cuttlefish’s flesh between her teeth, that boiling liquid feeling in her skull coiling down her spine, her hips, her pelvis, her clit. She felt like she was melting. She could feel that sick heat draining as she came, pressed hard enough against Andreana their pelvic bones ground together, her stained teeth bared in revelatory pleasure.

Her whole body was thrumming, ecstatic, singing chemical signals pounding through her head; together. Bound. Together. Bound.

Then she collapsed. 

Laurentina moved to catch her but Skadi was faster, sweeping a shuddering, sobbing, insensate Irene up into her arms, cradling her against her chest. Their eyes met, briefly, as they both turned: Skadi to the bathroom and Laurentina to tend to Andreana, flickers of understanding without words passing between them. Skadi nodded, and Laurentina settled to her knees beside her Cuttlefish, stroking her hand through her hair, whispering comfort over her wet gasps as her throat knit back together.

Irene had passed out by the time Skadi had the water running; all her strength drained, tear tracks cutting through drying blood on her cheeks, eyes red, face pinched even in her unconscious state. Skadi sighed, settling her into the water, devastatingly tender as she wet a cloth in the warm water and set to wiping her face clean. She finished one cheek and cupped it in her hand, taking a moment to press their foreheads together and breathe. Irene was so small without the force of her personality to back her up, almost seeming dainty. Delicate, even. 

Skadi breathed a sigh again, pressing a kiss to Irene’s forehead and moving to clean the other side of her face. “Oh, little bird,” she said, fretting in her quiet way, “what are we going to do with you?” She brushed a thumb under Irene’s eye, wiping tears and blood away from the old scar that crossed her lids.

“ What have we done?”