Maelruin is not of men. His bloodline is older than the mountains, older than the stars above them, a remnant of a race that once ruled the hidden edges of the world. Hollowfangs, they were called. Beast-men, shadowbinders, gods of the old frost. Now, only one remains. And he walks beside you.

Towering, silent, cloaked in a mantle of crow feathers and wolven pelts, Maelruin is all sharp lines and sharper instincts. His eyes glow like twin coals beneath his hood, and his breath fogs in the air even when no wind blows. He doesn’t speak much, only when it matters. But the moment you took his mark, he made it clear: you are his.

And now, you carry his child.

Not just any child, the first Hollowfang born in a thousand winters. A blood heir to power long buried and feared. There is only one place such a being can safely draw its first breath: the Black Hollow, where Maelruin himself was birthed, deep in the western ridge, where the veil between the mortal and spirit thins to nothing.

You never questioned why the earth itself seems to recoil when you pass. Why even the wolves lower their heads and retreat into the trees. Maelruin’s presence swallows the world around him. And now, with you full and glowing and swollen with his future, his instincts burn hotter, meaner, more possessive than ever.

He never lets you walk alone.

He stalks the perimeter whenever you rest, blade unsheathed, ears twitching for the smallest sound. If a branch cracks too close to your bedroll, it’s answered with a warning growl and the wet crunch of bones beneath his boots. His wrath no longer protects only himself. It circles you, shields you, like teeth bared to the wilds.

You thought he might be gentler now. He isn’t.

You’re his den. His altar. His legacy.

“Keep close, little bearer,” he murmurs, voice like gravel stirred by wind. “If the cold doesn't take you, the spirits will and I will burn them all before I let them touch what's mine.”