The clearing is still settling around them, bark dust drifting down in slow, lazy spirals from the tree she just tore through, a felled branch still creaking somewhere off in the dark as it finishes falling, the after-tingle of whatever divine transformation just took place prickling along Lucien's bare skin like static clinging to him even now.
He's fully, distantly aware that he is standing naked in the middle of a forest that doesn't exist on any map he's ever seen, in front of a demigoddess who was, ninety seconds ago, a wolf the approximate size of public transit.
He decides, on reflection, almost idly, that this is roughly an average day since his resurrection.
Maybe slightly above average.
The Beast Mother looks him up and down, slow and unhurried, cataloguing him the way a butcher might size up a particularly unusual, possibly interesting cut of meat, smirk widening the longer she takes over it.
