a lot of people will look at you
Aria
By the time he broke through the curtain of steam, it was too late to stop her lunge toward the cliff. His chest tightened, the image of her vanishing into the boiling sea below driving him forward—
And then someone else was there.
The stranger’s form flickered in and out of the heat like a shadow, tendrils of black clinging to her as she dragged Aria back from the brink. The cub squirmed in her grip, indignant at being snatched mid-pounce, but very much alive. Damien stopped short a few paces away, breath hard in his chest, the sweat on his skin not entirely from the volcano’s furnace-breath.
Aria gave a mewl when she spotted him, and he ran a hand over his face, the edge of fear in him already hardening into a mask of irritation. “You little fool,” he muttered at the little leopard, resting his hands on his knees as he tried to catch his breath.
Then he looked more fully at the woman who had saved her. She was shorter than him, but carried herself like someone who’d fought worse odds than a playful cub. Her horns caught the light like shards of molten rock, and her eyes—bright, cutting blue—met his with a guarded intensity.
“Bad spot to bring a cub, huh,” Damien said. His voice was a little less breathy, though still low and rough, shaped by years of Halo’s cold but edged now with something warmer—genuine gratitude under the flat delivery. “She’s mine. You have my thanks for not letting her burn for it.”
Aria, oblivious to the danger she’d just escaped, nosed at the woman with kittenish curiosity, her long tail flicking as if this was all just another adventure. Damien's gaze didn't leave the Ancient, weighing her the way he weighed any new face in unfamiliar ground.
Damien
but only a few will see you
