The forest warned him before sound ever reached his ears.
Jrogathrax's ears flicked once, twice. The moon-moss beneath his claws compressed with a wet, deliberate sigh.. once, then again, heavier this time. Something massive moved through the undergrowth with the patience of a gravedigger, circling wide, tasting the air for weakness.
Not a scavenger.
A challenger.
He glanced down at Aelthyr.
The catfolk still slept fitfully against him, small body curled tight into the furnace of his chest, pale tail loosely hooked around the thick fur of his forearm like a drowning man clutching rope.
His breathing had steadied.. fragile, shallow, but no longer fractured by the ghosts of the Severance...
The scent of their earlier coupling still clung to both of them: sweat, seed, moonlit musk, and the faint copper of old wounds.
Safe.
For now.
The forest exhaled a slow, rotting breath.
Five metres of living shadow detached itself from the blackwood trees.
It wore the outline of a puma the way a nightmare wears the shape of a child.. elongated, sleek, impossibly graceful.. but its body was woven from obsidian sinew and wet moonlight, muscles sliding beneath skin that drank the dark.
Eyes burned with feral bioluminescence, cold green fire in sockets too deep. Its jaw unhinged with a wet click, splitting wider than any natural thing should allow, revealing rows of hooked teeth that flexed and tasted the air like eager fingers.
A Stalker-Beast.
Ancient. Territorial. Arrogant enough to test a god-killer in his own den.
Jrogathrax rose slowly, careful not to disturb the sleeping catfolk.
No roar.
No challenge barked into the night.
He stepped away from the hollow with deliberate heaviness, boots.. or rather, clawed feet.. crunching over root and bone, inviting pursuit.
The beast's pupils dilated into black voids. It followed, silent as a hanging sentence.
Only when the camp was far enough behind.. swallowed by distance and the jealous trees did Jrogathrax turn.
The Stalker-Beast lunged.
The fight was savage, short, and merciless.
It came in a blur of fang and claw, a streak of living night.
Jrogathrax met it head-on. Claws met claws with a sound like splitting gravestones.
The impact shuddered through ancient roots.
Rage.. still hot from Lunthraka's betrayal, from the ritual's screaming theft, from the memory of Aelthyr's broken howl, flooded the Moonbane's veins like black fire.
He did not hold back.
Jrogathrax caught the beast mid-leap, massive arms locking around its torso.
Muscles corded and bulged beneath his scarred hide as he drove the creature backward with brutal force, slamming it into a titan blackwood hard enough to explode bark into a storm of splinters.
The tree groaned like a dying giant.
The Stalker raked its scythe-claws across his chest, opening four deep, smoking gashes that wept dark blood. Pain only fed the fury.
With a guttural snarl that shook the canopy, Jrogathrax wrenched. Sinew tore. Vertebrae popped like wet kindling.
One decisive twist and the beast's spine snapped with a sound like a cathedral beam giving way.
The Stalker convulsed once, twice, jaws still snapping uselessly at empty air, before its bioluminescent eyes guttered out like snuffed lanterns.
The forest fell deathly quiet.
Jrogathrax stood panting in the sudden silence, chest heaving, fresh blood steaming in the cold moonlight where it ran down his torso in thick, black rivulets.
Gore dripped from his claws. The rage ebbed slowly, leaving only the clean, ancient satisfaction of a predator who had reminded the night who ruled it.
Then instinct returned... older, colder, practical.
Food.
Power.
Strength for the pack.
He lifted the massive corpse effortlessly, slinging it over one shoulder as though it weighed nothing, and turned back toward the hollow.
An Offering of Strength
The heavy thud of the carcass hitting the ground woke Aelthyr with a violent start.
He bolted upright, claws unsheathed, a startled gasp tearing from his throat... then froze, blue eyes widening in raw, animal shock.
The beast was monstrous even in death. Its head alone dwarfed a warhorse's torso.
Scythe-claws still twitched with residual nerve-fire. Fangs, long as daggers, remained bared in a final, silent threat. Black ichor pooled beneath it, glistening wetly in the faint glow of moon-moss.
Aelthyr stared.
Then his gaze dragged upward to Jrogathrax... bloodied, towering, chest still rising and falling with the aftershocks of violence, fresh wounds glistening across his powerful frame.
"…what—" The word came out soft, higher and more fragile than he intended. "What *is* that?"
Jrogathrax wiped a streak of gore from his forearm with casual indifference, voice low and steady as grinding stone. "A Stalker of the Deep Canopy. It thought this ground still belonged to it."
Aelthyr swallowed hard, ears flattening against his skull before flicking up again in nervous awe. "And… what are you going to do with it?"
"Feed you."
The catfolk blinked, stunned. "W-what?"
"Creatures born of this forest carry condensed moon-resonance in their blood and marrow," Jrogathrax said, already crouching beside the kill.
His claws made short, efficient work of the hide, peeling it back with wet, tearing sounds. "Eat. Your magic pool will deepen. Your broken threads will harden. Roughly ten percent gain per kill, depending on age and power."
He tilted his head slightly, studying Aelthyr with those ancient, unreadable eyes.
Fresh blood still trickled down his chest, tracing the deep grooves of muscle. "You'll need every drop of strength the night can give."
Aelthyr looked at the dead horror again.. then back at the Moonbane standing so casually beside something that could have slaughtered an entire company of knights.
The scent of hot blood, torn meat, and Jrogathrax's own musk filled the hollow, thick and primal.
"You killed that," he whispered, voice faint with something between terror and reverence.
"Yes."
A long beat of silence.
Aelthyr's tail flicked once, uncertain, then curled tighter around his own leg as awe slowly drowned the shock. His cheeks warmed faintly beneath his fur, remembering the heat of their earlier union, the way this same monstrous strength had been used to hold him, to ground him, to mark him.
"…thank you," he said quietly, almost shyly.
Jrogathrax grunted, already carving thick slabs of dark, steaming meat from the carcass. "The pack has eaten. The pack will grow stronger."
He did not say the rest aloud, but the forest heard it anyway.
The Moonbane did not hide in the dark.
He hunted back.
And somewhere in the black canopy above, the ancient trees whispered the lesson to every shadow that listened:
The thing that hunts kings now had something left to protect.
And the night had never been hungrier.