Samson

"You lost" Mintakas words cut far deeper than any of his wounds.

The adrenaline from the duel was wearing thin, the numb exhaustion creeping up beneath it. The clarity that came with the rage fading to a static fuzz. He kept his feathers fluffed out; he was still a challenge. still a threat. still-

"You lost. You're weak. unfit. Your partner is mine."

The defiance and contempt held within that small pearlcatchers body leaked out from her eyes, as bright as they were frigid. This didn't fit the image of the turn-coat species he knew. This was wildclaw rage trapped in a pearl body and the unnatural nature of it made him shiver. He would have snapped at her if he could, but the pearlcatchers claws rested carelessly upon his neck, keeping him pinned.

Copper and Iron filled his mouth, "How dare you-..."

It's all he could do to growl out those words. Mintaka was supposed to have hid behind her brutes, a coward, a lesser. He hadn't wanted to acknowledge such a creature. How dare she challenge him. challenge Saraneth. take his partner.

How dare she destroy his peaceful home.

"I dare. I'm the only one in the clan that dares, I dare say so myself"

He can't see her face, obscured by the shadow and the sun glaring down above, but her eyes ... Her eyes glimmered with humor and triumph to a joke that only she found funny. Feral hostility leaked from the edges of her grin, but the pressure on his throat let up. Perhaps she had witnessed the fight in his eyes die, something he never thought would happen.

"You aren't welcome here anymore. This clan is mine now."

Samson staggered to his uncooperative feet, throwing one last defiant glare at the pearlcatcher who stood over the battered and bruised body of his mate. But he had turned. and he had run.

The words chased him from the only home he had known for decades, spurring him on faster than either the murdering ridgeback or fanged tundra dogging his heels.

---