Snippet #2561067

This is a collaboration post


Riley was caught off gaurd by the sudden attack. "Shit it's him!" he thought to himself. "How did I not know he was here? I was distracted, how did I get THAT distracted?" He scolded himself in a spit second in his mind. The position he was in made it impossible for him to bite back and the pain in his neck was more than a little distracting. He did the only thing he was sure would give him the leverage he needed; he shifted to his were-cat form. Upon doing so he was able to manuver an arm around and he decided to fight in more of a human way, dirty. He retracted all the claws on his free hand and started jabbing repaetedly into Ko-jin's belly to try to get the beast off of him. He knew that even if he were to hit a vital organ, it would only take a few shifting cycles to heal it.


In Ko-jin's second attempt to bite down on Riley's neck he missed completely as Riley shifted growing taller. He was able to get his his hind paws under him and extend his body to take a swipe at his face with one of his paws, claws extended. It was then that Ko-jin felt the jabs in his belly as Riley's claws tore into him sending blood everywhere. Ko-jin let out a pained roar and went back, shifting first to his werecat then briefly into his human, cluching at the slashes in his stomach that sewed themselves gradually. He lunged again before the wound quite fully healed, shifting mid-air into his were-lion form aiming to wrap his hands around Riley's throat. He brought a fist down on Riley's muzzle and snarled at him sending another into his diaphram. "How DARE you!" He snarled into his face. "How DARE you take my Son!"


Between the blow to the muzzle and the claws across the face, Riley's face was taking a beating, somewhere in the very back of his mind his vanity was hoping he was still cute after all this was over. With Ko-jin's words and a punch to the stomach everything made sense, he had seen what he had done and how he had marked John. He understood his anger completely, but he was too pissed at this point to care. He knew that Ko-jin had to get all this out, and hopefully they didn't kill each other in the process. "TAKE him? You stupid old man, he came running to me!" Riley growled as he spit out a little blood. "Besides, he was never yours to begin with. You were nothing more to him than a sperm donor!" He snarled as he lifted a knee right into his groin. Riley knew from being a bouncer that sometimes fighting dirty was the only sure way to win.


Ko-jin let out an odd sound between a strangled roar and a yelp and went to his knees. He clutched at himself a moment but the look he gave Riley was full of anger and hate and sadness as well as shame. He growled once more and got back to his feet. "What do you know, boy? What do you know of me, of him. I am his father and he is all I have left. I brought him into this world with my own two hands." He extended his rough, bloody hands for Riley to see. "You don't know what it is to be a father, it's likely you never will not like this. He is my blood and blood flows stronger than anything. I will do whatever it takes to get my son back. My boy."


"Finally!" Riley thought. "He's starting to talk, maybe now he'll listen." Riley calmed himself and looked into the old Lion's eyes, not with a threatening glare, but with a compashion for the father who was trying to accomplish a similar goal, but just doing it all wrong. "You want to get him back? You have to treat him like the man he is, do things on his terms, not mine, not yours just his. I want you to be a part of his life. I want you to teach him everything it means to be a lion that my tribe could never teach him. I lost my father, i lost him long before he died. You wanted to know what I know of your son; I know one thing above all else, he loves me. For the nine years I was missing from his life he spent nearly every waking moment trying to figure out what had happened to me, the funny thing was even he didn't realize he loved me. I don't want to come between a father and son, but he choose me and he marked me for a reason. And my marking him wasn't a means of claiming my property, it was signifying that the two of us were equals in every way. I have no objection to him continuing your bloodline, but there are many ways to go about doing that and all of this should be discussed with John. I'm on your side whether you see it or not, i want the same things for John that you do, but please don't hurt him to do so."


Ko-jin was silent for a moment, his eyes never leaving Riley. He mulled things through in his mind. 'This kid...' Ko-jin shifted for a moment and straightened his posture, the slashes in his stomach aching, blood leaking from the bits that hadn't healed fully yet. He grunted slightly from it and spoke in a measured tone "Alot of times when a lion finds a mate it's for the blood. Maybe......maybe he's strong or she's got excellent hunting skills or.....she has a long line of alpha males in her family line...." He paused a moment. "You don't hardly get stuff like this."


At this point Ko-jin looked away. He felt ashamed of all of this. He'd fucked up raising the kid loosing him to an asshole of a hunter now he couldn't get this right. He looked back at Riley again, a stern look in his eyes. "I don't agree with all this. I don't think I ever will not fully. But....even I can see when the Gods have made a choice. You're right....this is John's call."


Riley smiled a faint smile at the old lion. "You know you two are the lucky ones, I didn't exactly have a choice in the matter. Lions don't imprint, but some tigers do. I did, and John was the one I imprinted on. Don't get me wrong, I loved him before I imprinted, but once I did, I couldn't see anyone else. But John, he chose me. For that I will always love him. We may not agree with the details, but we do agree with the one important thing, we want your son to be happy." He extended a hand to Ko-jin as an expression of friendship. "My name's Riley by the way. If you prefer I'll call you Sir." Riley bowed to him as a sign of respect for the authority he had when he had a full pride. "Now, let's go get your son and talk to him." he grinned and started off in the direction that John was in.


Ko-jin shook Riley's hand, a little unsure what to think of the whole imprinting thing. "Call me Ko-jin only humans use Sir." He muttered. He did enjoy the bow though, he didn't say so. It had been a long time since anyone offered him the respect of an alpha lion. "A true leader needs no titles to make him one." He followed Riley back through the forest, Ko-jin paused only to pick up the racoon Riley seemed to have forgotten about. He offered it back to him. "Never waste a kill."


John meanwhile had been gnawing at his rabbit, getting the small bits of hard to reach meat from the little bones, wondering what on earth was taking Riley so long. He groomed blood from his muzzle and paws and let out a massive yawn.


Riley took the raccoon and continued to chew on it as they walked back to where John was waiting. He wondered how on earth John hadn't heard the scuffle or smelt his father's scent on the air, but then he remembered that he hadn't exactly caught the scent either. "So where's your hunter friend? He does still owe me blood." He wondered out loud. He wasn't sure if he should be watching his back and listening for the sound of a riffle being cocked but he did tweak his ears around on his head as the two walked.


"Our camp was behind the hill." Ko-jin said gesturing to the small hill off to the west. "I don't think I trust the man completely either but it seems he's not trying to hunt us for the moment. I prefer to keep him nice and close as opposed to sending him off....somewhere."



"Good idea, enemies closer and all that stuff." He laughed uneasily as he looked to the west and saw the hill where the two were keeping camp. He realized it had a perfect view of the clearing where the two of them had been the night before. "Oh Gods the poor guy saw everything." He thought to himself. "No wonder the guy went crazy." He got to the clearing and was able to see John grooming himself and looking as though he was about to fall asleep. "Sheesh, lazy bones, all ya had was a rabbit, not a turkey. You shouldn't be that tired ." He called out to him, waiting anxiously to see the look on his face when he realized who he was with.


"Hmmh?" John opened his eyes and suddenly jolted up to his feet turning human at record speed. "What the hell are you doing here?! What did you do to him?!" John first noticed Ko-jin walking side by side with Riley then the fact that Riley had scratches and a nasty bruise on his face. Ko-jin put his hands up as to say he wasn't there to fight.


"Now....Listen here-"


"YOU listen!" John snapped "What right do you have coming here and beating on Riley?!"


"I can explain, if you give me a chance to." Ko-jin said, his voice rising above John's "I wanted to apologise about how I acted before....I didn't realize...no I didn't understand exactly....what it was you guys had. Now...." He put a hand up cutting off John as he was about to interrupt. "Listen....Just for five minutes, boy." Damn this kid has a lot of me in him. He thought


"I get it, you're not the little cub anymore. I can't treat you like a little cub and tell you what you can or can't do. You want to..." He glanced at Riley, changing the wording he had in his mind. "You want to mate....with another guy I can't change that....but...Don't kick me out I'm your father."


John looked to Riley, hoping for a clearer explaination as to what the hell he'd missed out on his little hunting trip.


"It's okay, Johnny, I gave as good as I got, maybe better." He smiled and nudged Ko-jin in the spot he had slashed and stabed. "I was hunting and I guess your dad here saw that I had marked you, among other things, and he reasonably went a little nuts. He attacked me, but I understand why and I'm okay, so please don't be too mad at him. We talked it out after the fighting had subsided and I helped him realize that I wasn't trying to take you away from him. Don't cut him out of your life,John. He is your father and he loves you. I can't tell you how important it is to keep him in your life. He can teach you all the things about your culture that you never got to learn in the tribe. And ... maybe later .... if you really want to... you can keep the bloodline going. Not nesecarily the traditional method, of course, but maybe a seroget and invetro fertilization? You'd make a great father. But I'm getting way too far ahead of myself, the point is Ko-jin is willing to do what it takes to be your father. You deserve to have your father in your life, so don't waste this opprotunity. We both love you and want you to be happy." He smiled as he shifted to human form only to realize then that the tow of them were still naked. He shifted back to his were-tiger form as he wasn't comfortable giving Ko-jin the up-close version of the show he'd already seen. Not that that really hid anything, but at least there was the modesty of the fur.


John looked to Ko-jin then Riley. "Alright..." He said carefully, "As long as you understand that I'm not just John your kid. I'm John the kid that was raised by tigers and fell in love with a tiger."


Ko-jin nodded. John wasn't entirely sure what to expect at that point, a group hug or a pat on the head or...Instead Ko-jin picked up John's pants and tossed them into his chest. "Put some pants on, boy you're flashing the whole forest. The both of you..."


Riley grabbed his own pants from the makeshift drying stand he had set up earlier and pulled them on and shifted back to his human form. "So are we still headed to Alaska? Not sure there's a lot of places for a group like us back home. There's still a lot of unclaimed territory up there." He grinned. Riley was still well aware that he couldn't return home and he couldn't join a lion's pride. This really seemed like the only option for them. Not to mention that just because Ko-jin was understanding, didn't mean other lions would be and he didn't want Ko-jin to sacrifice his dignity if he didn't have to.


"Funny idea for a jungle cat and a savanah lion." Ko-jin murmured. The cold was going to be a little bit of a nightmare but if he could do anything it was to adjust. The fact that he'd just agreed to allow his only son to be gay pretty much proved that in his eyes. Though "allowing" wasn't really the word to use for it. "Alaska it is then. I can tell you most lion tribes would chase us off even if it was just me and John. They're very finicky about who they let in. Especially an old pride leader like me."


"What about Lapin." John muttered. "Any tribe is going to serve him up. Not that I'm complaining..."



"Well, I guess we take him with us, so we can keep an eye on him. I agree with Ko-jin, i don't want him straying too far away. Not that I wouldn't love tearing him to shreds, but he did have the opprotunity to kill us and he didn't, so I'm a little on the fence about what to do about him. We really should go get him before he thinks we're down here plotting his demise and decides to take us all out so we don't become a problem for him later."


"Excellent, we have several rabbits that we can cook up or eat raw. They're fresh just caught them early..." He Ko-jin trailed off slightly as he remembered his early morning/late night hunting rush after he'd seen things he wish he hadn't. He lead John and Riley up the hill. John extinguished their fire after picking up one longer burning stick in order to kick start their fire up on the hill.