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My fan fiction, Return to Dust, can be found here;
》Reтυrɴ тo Dυѕт《

An extract from a novel I'm working on, Razor's Edge (the science fiction one about the wolves)
This is not the first of her loved ones to die, but she holds this body closest, because this time, death has arrived with a specific agenda.

She buries her nose in the cooling fur, but no life sparks within the tiny, broken body, no matter how much she wants it, wills it. The scream that tears itself fro her throat is raw. Primal. It echoes the mournful songs of her ancestors, and in that moment, she has never felt more like a wild animal.

She doesn’t know how to deal with the pain. It feels as if her chest has been surgically opened and her heart removed, the wound left to fester. It feels as if all the bones in her body have been ground into dust. Her muscles no longer have anything to attach to.

But she is a soldier, and so she soldiers on.

Fury sparks beneath her skin, eclipsing the hopelessness of pain. A growl rumbles, deep within her chest. Her heart has been removed, but lightning fills the hole.

She climbs slowly to her paws. Anger oozes from every pore on her body and pools at her feet. She had once been told that death was a friend, a relief from life that was to be welcomed with opened arms, but she has dealt in death and retribution long enough to know that death is not kind.

No. Death has never been kind.

Her legs can no longer support her, but she does not give in to the urge to collapse. Sickness claws at her throat. For the first time in her long career, the carnage spread before her is unbearable.

Pawsteps echo through the empty corridors. The lightning sparks to life. She finds that she has it in her to fight one last battle if it means her survival. Death has come looking for her, but she is not yet done with life. Some vague remnant of her violent spirit flickers to life in the empty cavity of her chest.

She has always been dangerous. Volatile.

She will not back down again.

Her pursuers close in. She braces her tired muscles for the spring. She counts down the seconds, teeth bared, and in that moment she knows exactly who has been sent to kill her.

Her pack bursts into the room and skids to a halt, stumbling on their confusion. The fight has left their wiry bodies. Still, she stands guard, her challenge declared.

“Swift…” Her name fall easily from Blade’s mouth, his jaw limp with shock. He stares not at her, but at the destruction spread between them.

“What have you done?” Fear creeps into his voice, because there is no explanation for the havoc she has unleashed. He has been at her side since the very first mission, and has witnessed all she has to give. He is all too familiar with the hurricane concealed within her flesh and bones.

“What I had to do.” Her voice cracks, hoarse from the savagery of her screaming. “Are you here to kill me, Blade?”

What she has done is punishable by death.

Once, her pack meant more than her blood family, but she is not ready to meet death’s gaping jaws. She will kill them all before she surrenders herself to them. The pack watches with new eyes. Something cautions their movements, and for a heartbeat, she wonders exactly what it is they see before them.

In the moments since they have arrived, everything has changed. Everything that has ever given them purpose has been taken, as surely as her daughters’ life has.

They are not soldiers. Not anymore. She is no longer their captain, as equally famous for her level head as she is for her ferocity. She has become something else entirely, and she knows they should no longer trust her state of mind. Something deep within her has broken, and nothing will ever put it back together.

But trust is not freely given. It must be earned, and she long since earned theirs.

Their silence is an answer. She knows that if they had been sent to destroy her, they should have done so by now. Every moment they waste staring is another moment she has to prepare. In moment they waste, their advantage slips away. No, they will not risk attacking her now. She has taught them well, after all.

Slowly, her tired muscles relax. A whine escapes her. Nothing matters – not even the slackjawed wolves standing a few paces away. The world has shrunk until there is nothing but her and the blood on her paws and the bodies of those she has killed.

She has forgotten what it feels like to be a leader, but she has not yet forgotten what it feels like to be a mother.

There is a hesitance to the footsteps that approach. That in itself is unusual – she is fierce, but her packmates have never feared her. Not until tonight.

“Oh, Swiftie…”

The anguished voice is as familiar as her mothers. More so, perhaps. A retort burns on her spitfire tongue. She wants to be alone, yet fears to be so, and so does not turn him away. Blueback settles beside her, his body warm against hers. It is a small mercy.

All she can taste is the blood in her mouth. It is a stark reminder of what she has done. Of what she was made to be. It dawns on her suddenly. She does not regret killing the humans who have wronged her. What is left of sorrow turns slowly to rage. She can feel it, deep within her tired limbs.

The humans have left her behind. Abandoned her. They have broken her and remade her, over and over, in the hope of making her the perfect soldier. The perfect weapon.

And now, they have killed her daughter.

They do not deserve her loyalty.

Blueback sensed the change, sensed the iron in her muscles, the fire in her blood.

“I want to kill them.” The voice does not sound like hers. She is painfully aware of the gaping chasm beneath her paws. She is balancing precariously on the edge of the knife, and it is a long and slow climb back to sanity. It doesn’t matter. She will not fail again.

Her pack moves around her in a precarious dance, unsure of their places now that the structure of their lives has disappeared. The betrayal cuts deep as she realises who is missing.

Alexander, who had vowed to protect her. Alexander, who had kept her warm through the long, cold winters, who had ensured her pack was always fed, who had refused to send them into battle unless there was a change that they would all come out alive.

Alexander, who had failed her, just as he had failed her mother all those years ago.

She couldn’t remember why she had trusted him.

“Swift… We should… stay…” Blade tried to reason with her. They are scared, and they are convinced that the best thing to do is wait.

“So what?” She snaps, finally, she snaps, her voice heavy with the weight of her fury. “So they can find us here? Do you really think they will spare you after this?”

There is a dangerous truth to her words. They had nothing to do with the storm she conceals, but they are hers to command. They are guilty, guilty, guilty by association. Her blood, her crime, has tainted them all. Her body is shaking with the weight of what she has done.

She wants to sink her fangs into something. She wants to bite, to rip and tear and mangle and make them suffer for what they have done.

Once, a long time ago, her handlers had named her for the fire in her blood. They had named her for the obsession they both feared and revered. The lightning that replaced her heart hardens into stone.

“No… they will not spare us,” she whispers. “They will destroy us for this. But… but I swore I would protect my pack. I will! I will! I have lost too much, far, far too much. They will not take the rest of my family from me.” She tries to believe that there is a method buried within her madness.

“They will pay… oh yes, they will pay…” Her reflection stares back, distorted by the blood pooled on the floor. Her identification tags glint mockingly in the pale light. It doesn’t take much to dislodge them. A violent shake, and her identity falls to the floor.

The eyes that meet her gaze aren’t quite her own. She was created to be a hunter, and so a hunter she shall be.

“Blade… are you with me?”

Her second senses that the ice beneath his paws is thin. Something claws at his throat, some desire to speak up, to say that what she has done here is wrong. “Swift-”

“Are you with me?”

“Swift!”

“You are either with me or against me, Blade, and I will kill all those who are not with me.” She doesn’t take her eyes off her reflection. She has half a mind to bend her fury inwards, to obliterate the last marks of her handlers.

The tattoo beneath her eye mocks her.

“They will know…” Her voice is broken. A whisper. “They will know the face of their hunter. I can only hope they suffer as much as I did.”

Her mission is clear, the targets acquired.

She is a soldier, and so she will soldier on.

Her second bows his head in submission, and she is left with nothing but the distinct sense of an ending.


A one-shot that ties in with my webcomic. The one-shot is entitled 'Say Anything' and won first place in the Tuesday Challenges;
Rahni has always considered herself a warrior, a soldier, but she knows she is inexperienced in the ways of emotional warfare. She doesn’t mind; she hardens her heart and moves on.

She has never been ashamed of who she is. She is loud, brash, unapologetic, and she has never apologised for it, but somehow, it is easier to be her loudmouthed self when she knows her attentions will not be returned.

It is easier, somehow, to love someone who does not share her feelings. She throws herself wholeheartedly into the possibilities of love, hidden behind a flirtatious smile. She has long ago accepted that the she-cat she loved will never love her back, so she has long ago stopped hiding her affection.

She moves on. She holds her head up high and fixes her signature grin on her face and learns to move on.

It is hard to be satisfied with ‘just friends’.

It is harder still to watch her love fall hard for someone else.

It feels as if her heart has been ripped from her chest. In that moment, it feels as if the ground has been pulled out from under her feet. In that moment, it feels like the sun won’t rise. In that moment, it feels as if the sky is crashing down around her ears in one decisive, endless movement.

In that moment, it feels as if she will never feel again.

---

Despair, she learns, is a thing of conflict. She has every right to feel bitter, jealous, upset, yet no right at all to keep her friend from happiness. When they ask her if she’s all right, she smiles through the tears and nods despite the pain.

She tells herself that everything will be ok – she repeats it until it becomes a mantra, until it becomes something she can’t live without.

Slowly, time softens the blow and stitches the ragged pieces of her heart back together. She learns to be satisfied with just friends, and against her better judgement, settles into an almost flirtatious and certainly sarcastic friendship with her best friend’s lover. They snipe and bicker good-naturedly; her tongue is sharper than his, however, and she matches his spite, phrase for phrase.

She won’t admit it, but she enjoys their conversations.

She fixes her signature grin on her face and settles back into her place in the world. She swears, however, that she will never again subject herself to the pain of heartbreak. Instead, she casts her heart in stone, and pretends that she’d rather feel nothing at all than feel pain.

She has never been that good at pretending.

As the days wear on, however, she gets better at it.

---

Mica is everything she expected, yet somehow nothing like it. There’s a shrewdness to her cobalt gaze and an easy confidence to the way she walks. She’s quiet, thoughtful, and Rahni can’t help but love the way she tilts her head to one side when she talks.

They are nothing alike.

There’s a rumour of legal trouble, which is why, she learns, Mica is here; the tortoiseshell she-cat is rumoured to be the best. Rahni can’t quite picture the quiet she-cat ever possessing the ferocity to win a court battle until she catches side of the stubborn set of the newcomer’s jaw, the tension in her shoulders, the fire in her eyes.

Maybe they are more alike than she thought.

She is desperate to cross the space between them, yet whenever Mica is near, Rahni feels her silver tongue turn to lead. Nerves creep up her spine and down her limbs. She can feel heat flush across her face whenever the tortoiseshell returns her smile.

She doesn’t realise she has fallen in love, hard, until it is far too late to slow her descent.

She remembers what it feels like to be in love; it is all-consuming, until every fibre of her being is burning with the possibilities of what if. She is ready to love, and ready to be loved again. By the time the sky goes grey and the snow begins to fall, it is eating her alive.

Feelings, is seems, have returned with a vengeance.

Something unfamiliar moves through her bloodstream and slows her paws. It takes her a moment to name it – nervousness. Rahni has never been subconscious, but she can’t shake the anxious terror that stalks her.

Go on, she tells herself. Say something, anything, or you’ll lose her.

Starting a conversation takes all her courage. Even then, it is by accident. She stumbles over her words, but Mica greets her verbal clumsiness with a quiet laugh.

“It’s nice to meet you, Rahni. I hope we can talk again soon.”

She floats away on Cloud Nine.


---

She has always loved the night. There is something addictive about the stillness of the air. She loves the winter nights the most, when the wind carries with it the sharp tang of mountain snow. There is something about it that soothes the ragged edges of her soul.

Distant laughter echoes through the night; below her vantage point, cats spill out across the grass, undeterred by the last of the snowmelt beneath their paws.

“Do you mind if I join you?”

Rahni spins, startled by the sudden presence of another. Mica stands several tail-lengths away, a small smile on her face, patiently waiting for a response.

“O-of course not.” Rahni stutters. She never stuttered.

Mica’s grin grows wider. The tortoiseshell moves forward until they stand side by side, perfectly symmetrical. “A beautiful night, isn’t it?”

Rahni’s heart is beating so loud and so fast she is surprised her companion can’t hear it. “Uh-huh.”

Great. Let’s try for a full sentence now, shall we?

“Are you all right, Rahni?” Mica turns, concern plain on her face.

“Yep. Fine.”

“Are you sure?”

No. I’m not ok. She knows, deep down, that having her affections returns terrifies her. She has always, always found it easier to act out when she knew that nothing serious would ever come of her wild and reckless ways.

She knows all too well that she is still inexperienced in the ways of emotional warfare.

Say something. Say anything.

There is a part of her that wants to lie, to protect herself from pain, yet she can’t help herself. She can no longer deny her heart. A sigh escapes her. “No, Mica, I’m not ok. I’m going to miss you an awful lot when you leave tomorrow.”

For a moment, she can see her own sorrow reflected in Mica’s gaze. “I’ll miss you too.”

Almost subconsciously, Rahni steps closer, drawn to the tortoiseshell’s warmth. Almost instinctively, Mica mirrors her movements until their pelts are touching. Everything she had ever wanted to say balanced on the tip of her tongue. It takes all the courage she can summon to swallow the fear that lodges in her throat. “You don’t have to go, you know.”

Mica stills, her bright eyes wide. She opens her mouth, then closes it again, as if searching for something to say.

Say something, Rahni pleads silently. There is a desperation to the thought; she knows, deep down, that she cannot take another heartbreak. Say anything, please.

A soft smile graces Mica’s face. The tortoiseshell steps forward and settles wordlessly beside her. Without a word, she rests her head on Rahni’s shoulder. The red tabby stiffens at her touch, then relaxes, warmth flooding her chest.

“I know.” Mica whispers. “I… I’d like that.”

Suddenly, the night seems brighter.