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Faunus lifted his hand to wrap it over his snout and fangs in thought. “Your scent is not all over her, so I doubt you have fucked... You have not connected with her properly, so maybe this is the issue.”

“She will not let me,” Ingram grumbled, feeling a pout in his mind. “She is wary of me, of this. I think it is because I have already hurt her with my claws.” The shameful reminder threatened to make his sight shift to a reddish pink. “Can you teach me how to heal, like how Orpheus did for her?”

Faunus lowered his hand so he could place it around Bitey, who was trying to escape from his lap. “Almost all of our magic requires some sort of bargain. The bargain for this is that you must bear her wounds instead. That is all, just will for that trade.”

“That does not sound too difficult.” He lifted his sight towards the two females, watching as Emerie crinkled her nose up all cute as she swung. Her braid whipped behind her and tapped against her blue dress. “I wish I had known that sooner.”

“It’s no wonder she fears pain,” Faunus muttered quietly, mirroring the direction Ingram was looking. “I have felt that too. Felt flames eating at me. It’s... one of the most unpleasant things for anyone to suffer.”

The feline Mavka’s words only brought attention to the gold-filled crack keeping his skull together.

“Did the Demonslayers do this to you?”

“Demonslayers?” Faunus reared his head back and then let out a quiet but dark chuckle. “As if humans would be able to trap our kind.”

Reddish pink flooded his vision, and he was tempted to cross his arms defensively. He almost moved his tail away from him in petty annoyance.

“No, it was Jabez,” Faunus continued. “He was trying to figure out how to destroy us, so he did numerous things to see which one would work in killing me. Set me alight, drowned me, buried me, opened up my chest so he could show me my own beating heart. As much as it pains me, Mayumi wishes to avenge all I have suffered at the hands of the Demon King, since I cannot do it without leaving our younglings on their own.”

Faunus’ honesty was as mind-opening as it was saddening. Ingram was sure the Mavka saw himself as weak, just as he had when he’d been trapped at the mountain fortress.

The fact he’d shared that with Ingram was the only reason he spilled his own vulnerable truth. It also helped that Faunus was the only Mavka he was truly comfortable with.

“Demonslayers managed to trap me,” Ingram admitted, lifting his sight back to Emerie to drink in her colourful beauty, letting her soothe him even from a distance. “They also showed me my heart. It is strange, but I feel as though it has not healed properly ever since.” It was like they put it back with a shard of Emerie’s essence lodged into it. “She saved me.”

Even though the Witch Owl had been there and helped, Ingram believed Emerie would have saved him all by herself had she not.

“Ah, so that’s why she’s here,” Faunus commented. “I wondered how you found yourself stuck with a Demonslayer. It seems much has happened along the way from there to here. Did you ask her to join you?”

“No. She offered to help me,” Ingram admitted while shaking his head, causing bones to rattle in him. One of Faunus’ younglings reared their head up at the noise. “But yes, much has happened, and I find myself wanting to touch her more and more. I have shown her I can be gentle, and I have learned much, like how to sheath my claws and walk like her. I don’t know how else to change her mind when she is so uncertain about me.”

Faunus let out a deep chuckle as his orbs turned bright yellow. “Sorry, but I cannot help you. Mayumi didn’t just fall into my lap, she crawled into it. I had no idea how to instigate this with her, and without her doing so, I think I would still be hiding in the trees surrounding her family cottage.”

“That is... creepy,” Ingram stated. Only because Emerie had told him the same thing when he wanted to watch her from the bushes while she bathed.

Faunus burst into a fit of laughter as his naturally yellow orbs brightened. “Perhaps it was, but I was doing it to protect her. As I always have.”

“And just what are you laughing at?” Mayumi said with a grin, strutting over before placing her hands on her hips just in front of Faunus’ crossed knees.

“I was just explaining the first time we officially met,” Faunus answered with his orbs an even brighter hue of yellow.

Emerie, huffing wildly with her face pink from exertion, came up beside the smaller female.

“Yeah, you have to say ‘officially met’ because you tried to eat me the first time.”

With a playful growl, Faunus dragged Mayumi into his lap, forcing their younglings to make way. They were unbothered and immediately crawled all over her as though they’d missed her presence. Bitey even began rubbing their oval face against her abdomen fast and frantically, as though to smother themself in her scent.

“You forget I saved your life. What child walks into the forest at night in the middle of winter?”

“An awesomely brave one?” she snapped back with a single arm lifted into a shrug. “I was just too cute, and you couldn’tbearto let me freeze to death.”

Ingram ignored them and looked up at Emerie, finding she was watching the family of Mavka and their Phantom female interact. His skull jerked at her crinkled expression, unsure as to why he thought there was a small hint of... hurt in it.

Is it because I have not pulled her into my lap as well?

Yet, when he tried to do so, reaching out to her thighs, she resisted. Instead, she sat on the ground with her back against the inside of his knee. Even though it was exactly how they’d sat in the grassy meadow on top of a hill, it felt... detached in comparison to the couple beside him.

Her lips were flat and hard, while she had her hands on her upright, bent knees. When he called her name, she didn’t respond.