Aurora Heights the river

She lingered. She drifted.

The season inspired a restlessness that had not been soothed since the day it started. She had spent plenty of time pummeling aggression out of herself. Snapping teeth at ravens and exhausting herself with sloped climbs. But the truth of it remained.

And she ached for motherhood once more. Done right. Done proper, no questions or others who wished to show up when the hardest of the work had been done.

She let out a deep, summoning sound. A siren song for a strong, hale man.

She would test their worth with a piercing gaze and sharp words. Her perfume enough of a summons if her call was not enough to cut it.

Scully was on his way home, finally calling it quits on tracking Moore. Crossing the heights was the longest leg to his journey, but he didn't mind making it a little longer. Everything about the howl that swirled about in the wind piqued his curiosity, and it didn't take long for his lengthy limbs to find her. Blackened ears pressed forward, he slowed with a few yards still between them.

Intrigue was clear within his mercury eyes as he appraised her. Still, he wasn't so young and eager as to assume that it was welcomed for him to rush right up to her. Silently, he waited for a signal.

Strong, healthy. Everything she had asked for presented to her on a monochrome platter.

"I am doing this for myself," A warning draped in serious tones. She was not laying with him for fun or his own motives. "If you wish to be a father proper, I have no use for you." It was a simple fact, a deal of this type of transaction. And blue gaze stared at him with expectancy, awaiting any sort of answer from him before she offered anything to him further.

If he showed even the barest desire to think on it, she would be off to find another. Unwilling for hesitancy.

Surprise was clear on his features as she made herself clear. It was certainly unexpected, but nothing he would complain about. Scully's grin stretched wide, fangs showing.

"Fatherhoods the last thing I want, you c'n keep everything you get outta me tonight."

While she of course couldn't read his mind or heart, he meant every word of it. Avella had made herself clear, and if his trysts did conceive children, he would refuse responsibility for them. Whatever it took, no bastard children would touch what his sibling had built. Well, whatever it took outside of actual celibacy, clearly.

He took a step forward, ready and willing if she had no other terms.

So it was settled then, it seemed.

If he so much as showed a glimmer of his hide in future months, if she produced another child, then she would turn teeth on him. No questions warranted this time. She would not be so kind, so soft.

She would waste no time inviting him in with a wide swish of her tail, a low rumble of approval for his answer. She had no desire to court him proper, there was no need for it. They would be nothing but warm, nameless bodies to each other.

Just the way it should have been last year.