Brenn (gnoll) x female reader, Part Three (sfw) (Patreon)

As promised, here's a pre-release of my story for Tumblr. I did you a brand new aesthetic to accompany the story as well! 

Potential spoilers in the warnings, but I feel I should put them up anyway. It's sfw, but it does include some violence and mentions of loss/grief, as well as pregnancy. 

Part One | Part Two 

You passed the admissions to the university and began your studies immediately. You had a little to catch up on, but fortunately your time with your father had more than made up for it, and you were near the top of the class in no time. 

You’d been partnered for a lot of the work with a young nobleman by the name of Tristan, who was sweet and intelligent, and the two of you got on better than you’d expected, given that his father was the ruling Duke in charge of the city and the city-state that surrounded it and you were a humble physician’s daughter from another country. The independent city state was a protectorate of the larger kingdom, and ultimately the duke was answerable to the king, but he had the autonomy to rule as he saw fit. Tristan was self-effacing, quick-witted, and oddly humble for a nobleman. He had curly brown hair and hazel eyes, a small constellation of freckles on each cheekbone, and a cheeky, dimpled smile that made you feel at ease. 

But you missed Brenn almost every minute. 

Once, while out buying groceries one afternoon, you saw a gnoll on a heavy iron chain with a steel muzzle clamped around their face, trotting along the side of a wagon and being paraded around like little more than a prize fighting dog. The sight of it made your stomach turn. 

Tristan, also watching with a slightly nauseous expression, murmured your name. “Are you alright?” he asked. 

“That makes me sick,” you spat, and his warm eyes followed yours. 

He sighed. “Yeah. I tried to convince my father to change the laws, but he won’t. Says people have always had gnolls as guard dogs, and it’s as it should be. I’m not so sure though.”

“They’re every bit as intelligent as you or I,” you fired, turning on him. 

He stepped half a pace back in the face of your burning insistence. “I’m sure,” he said with a quiet assurance in his soft voice that made you relax a little. 

You still sighed though; it felt like Brenn was the only thing you hadn’t told Tristan about so far, and you weren’t sure you were ever going to. 

You wore Winter’s adder stone around your neck all the time beneath your clothes, and sometimes you felt it flare with a surprising heat. On one such occasion, it happened just as you took the hand of a beautiful nobleman at a fancy university function. Since you and Tristan were top students, you’d been asked to attend the fund-raiser. The nobleman’s eyes flared white with anger as you felt the stone almost shiver against your skin, and he yanked his hand free of yours. He recovered himself in seconds, excusing himself, but you realised you had just escaped the influence of a fae, and quite possibly an Unseelie one at that. 

“Thank you, Winter,” you breathed when you were alone again. 

A touch on your shoulder made you jump, but you turned to see Tristan standing behind you, looking sheepish, and holding two wine glasses in his hands. “Drink?” he asked, and you relaxed, smiling. 

“Perfect, thank you,” you said, taking one and chinking his glass with an easy grin. 

Six months passed, and on every full moon, you rode Hima out of the city to meet Brenn on the edge of the forest. Each time you ran into his arms and he swung you around, inhaling your scent, licking your face, whining, nuzzling, caressing. When he’d calmed, you would settle into the long grass at the edge of the forest and tell him enthusiastically of how you were getting on, and sometimes found yourself talking about Tristan too. He listened quietly, rubbing your back or stroking your hair, or sometimes with his head in your lap. 

What you had wasn’t perfect, but every month, Brenn would be there waiting for you with open arms, a warm embrace, and more often than not, a raging hard on. 

As you settled your skirts once more around you – he hadn’t even waited to undress you this time – and grunted as you felt a deep ache inside you from where his knot had slipped as easily into you as it had the first time, you glanced up at him and went still. Where usually after one of your furious sessions of love-making he would look invigorated, eyes almost glowing in the darkness, now he looked… sad. 

His ears drooped and his tail hung limp between his legs as he fixed the cloth around his hips again. You stepped over to him and caught his wrist, holding him tightly. “Brenn, what is it? What’s wrong?”

“I can’t meet you here again,” he mumbled. 

“What?” you gasped, adrenaline shooting through your body. “Brenn, why? What’s happened?”

“I lost my territory,” he said gloomily. 

“What?” You rested your other hand on his forearm and he sighed. He couldn’t look you in the eye. His shame was etched deeply into every line of his body. “Please, Brenn, come on,” you said. “It’s me… you can tell me…”

“Well, first of all,” he said heavily, “You remember those mercenaries?” 

You shuddered, a cold thrill running through you. “How could I forget?” you muttered. The sight of Brenn going down with an arrow in his spinal column would stay with you for life, no matter that Winter had healed him, for a price you had yet to pay…

“Well, a few more came back a month ago, right after I’d met you here. I came back and found them waiting for me.” His ears twitched and he glanced sideways at your bloodless face. “I knew they’d come, and was ready for them, but I still took a few cuts and scrapes. I wasn’t in good shape for a while, and a pair of females came by while I was still healing. If you think male gnolls are aggressive, you’ve not met a female. They’re…” he shuddered. “Something else. Anyway, they drove me out in no time. I’m a nomad now,” he said. 

“Brenn…” you breathed, not knowing what else to say. 

“So I can’t meet you any more. It’s not safe for either of us to keep coming back here. Someone – a gate guard or the like – will soon notice the pattern and get curious. I have to go. I won’t be here next full moon, and I don’t want you to come looking for me.”

“Brenn,” you choked. This was awful, and it was all happening so fast. “Stop.” Your heart felt like it was breaking in two as he cupped your cheek with his warm, leathery paw. 

“Don’t cry, beautiful,” he said. “You’re not supposed to be with an ugly monster like me anyway.”

You flew at him and held him so tight he grunted, tears soaking into his soft fur. “Don’t say that. I love you. I love you, Brenn!”

He cradled you for a while, but soon he peeled your fingers off his hips and stepped back. “Take care of yourself for me, alright?” he said, dropping to all fours and turning to go. 

“Brenn!” you screamed as he disappeared between the trees. 

You ran after him, crashing through the underbrush, but the darkness soon swallowed him and you were left alone. You fell to the earth with a wail, pain wracking your knees as you landed heavily, and beat at the ground with a closed fist. 

“Please,” you sobbed desperately. “Please, come back. Brenn. I love you. Please… please…”

The adder stone around your neck burned suddenly, as if in response to your distress, but you hardly felt it behind the pain of Brenn’s departure. Eventually – you had no idea how long you knelt there –  you forced yourself unsteadily to your feet and meandered hopelessly back towards the meadow where you found Hima grazing peacefully. 

He wasn’t coming back. 

You cried into Hima’s silky, white coat for a long time, before swinging back into the saddle and walking her across the moonlit meadow, back to the city. 

You couldn’t help it. When the next full moon came around, you rode out as usual, but as he had promised, the treeline was empty, the meadow grasses whispering empty promises at you as the breeze gusted over them. 

As you turned to go, perhaps half an hour later, the sight of a figure walking across the field sent a spike of fear through you. As they approached, however, they called your name, and you trotted Hima over, moonlight dancing on her snowy coat. 

“Tristan?” you asked incredulously, stepping down from the saddle and going over to him. “What are you doing out here?”

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said. “I was coming down the high street when I saw you leaving through the gates. I was worried. You looked so sad. I… I’m sorry.” He paused and looked around. “Were you meeting someone? I didn’t intrude, did I? I didn’t mean to.”

“No, Tristan,” you said heavily. “You didn’t intrude, and…” You bit back tears. “No one is here.” 

“You look… terrible,” he finally said, and you crumpled into his arms, sobbing. 

“I can’t tell you,” you hiccupped. 

“It’s alright,” he said, stroking your hair and your shoulders. “Shh, it’s alright. You don’t need to tell me. Come back though, let’s get walking? Come on…” And with a final look over your shoulder, you turned to go, Hima’s reins held loosely in your fingers, Tristan’s arm around your shoulder.  

If a darker shape in the forest shifted as you moved, you didn’t see it. 

A whole year passed after Brenn had left, and finally you stopped going to the meadow. You threw yourself into life at the university, and you made a few friends. While gnolls were treated like animals in this city, other non-humans were not viewed with such disdain. 

One of the medical students, only a few years above you, was a centaur by the name of Florian, and he, Tristan, you, and a couple of others, formed a close-knit group of friends. Florian stayed in the city after graduating, and when you and Tristan passed your final exams a few years later with flying colours, he took you out and got you stupid-drunk on mead that was apparently brewed by a werebear on the outskirts of the town in the other direction from the forest. 

That was the first time you kissed Tristan, and while it was nothing like being with Brenn, it went some way to comforting you and giving you the close intimacy you’d been missing since he’d left. It never went any further after that, and neither of you mentioned it the next morning. 

Tristan was the younger of the two sons of the ruling duke, but being friends with Tristan certainly opened some doors for you. After graduating, you found yourself with a nice practice on the high street, and were never short of custom. You were really good at what you did, so your skills spoke for themselves, but your knowing Tristan had been what convinced the owner of the building to let it to you in the first place. 

Everything from broken bones to damaged fairy wings passed your treatment table, and you were grateful for the work. It kept your mind off other things. 

You still wore the adder stone around your neck, and you still thought of Brenn, though as the years went by, the ache had grown less acute. You liked to daydream in your quiet moments between patients that he’d met another, perhaps a gnoll, and had pups of his own somewhere now. The thought sent a sharp lance of pain through your chest, but you suppressed it, and it passed in due course. 

You smoothed out your work clothes and stood, putting away your records for the day and closing up the shop. You were meeting Florian and Tris for drinks that night, and your hair needed washing and time to dry. It wouldn’t do for a respectable physician to turn up looking like a wet werewolf after all. 

Occasionally you met Tristan at his family manor, for dinner or just afternoon tea. He had taken on the role of his brother’s assistant since graduating, but he would still tend to his family’s employees and their kin for free if they fell ill, putting his training to use. 

One evening, as you and Tristan strolled around the rose garden of his family’s enormous town house, he paused and took your hand. He murmured your name, and you felt your heartbeat start to hammer. Something was coming. Something significant.

“I know…” he began uncertainly. He looked so sweet, his curly hair just as ebullient as it always had been, his freckles still as endearing, the little dimples when he smiled making him seem even more bashful than he really was. “I know that you loved someone else before you came to live here in the city, and I know you don’t see them any more, but…” He took a deep breath to steady himself. “But I’ve loved you since practically our first session together at the university. You’re kind and strong and gentle and wonderful, and… I… I would like to ask you to be my wife.” He finished in a rush and stood there, stock still for a moment. 

You opened your mouth to speak, but he cut you off.

“I don’t need an answer right now,” he blurted, “And it’s alright if you don’t want to ruin the friendship we have. I won’t ask you again if you say no. I just…” he smiled sweetly, “I just think we’d be good together, you know?”

You did know. He was your best friend. There was nothing you didn’t tell him or share with him. Well, nothing except that you had been in love with a gnoll, and would quite possibly never get over the loss of him from your life. 

“Alright,” you said, smiling gratefully, if a little sadly. “I won’t give you an answer just yet. I will give you one – you deserve that much – but I do need to think about it. I mean,” you added with a grin, looking around at the fabulous house behind him, “It’s not as if I’d be living a quiet and humble life with you, is it?”

He blushed furiously and turned away, staring at the toes of his boots as if they held all the secrets of the universe. “I understand if it’s not what you want. I also… understand if… if you never love me as much as you loved… whoever it was. That’s alright. I wouldn’t ask you to betray your feelings or pretend or anything. As long as you’re as happy as you can be, and safe, and cared for… that’s all I’d ask…”

You reached for his cheek then and turned his face towards you. “You’re a good soul, Tristan. I couldn’t promise you that I’d love you the way you want, but you do mean a very great deal to me. I know you’d treat me well.”

He smiled a watery smile and sniffed. “I should walk you home,” he said. “It’s getting late.”

You nodded and left the heady scents of the rose garden behind, passing through the house to collect your cloak. As you entered, you saw his older brother coming down the stairs. Phillip had never married, and had become a stern head of the household after their father’s death, but he was always courteous to you, and offered you a gruff smile and a nod when he saw you. 

“Tris,” he said to his brother. “In the morning, I need to discuss some matters of business with you.”

“I’ll come to your study after breakfast,” Tristan smiled. 

His brother nodded and left you, heading for the sitting room. 

You gave your answer to Tristan a week later, and a full year after that, you were married. Tristan never expected more from you than you gave him, and you always treated him with the loving respect of the best friend that he had always been. It worked out well, and you made a really good team together, but it wasn’t what you’d had in mind for your life with Brenn. 

Tristan never asked you to give up your medical practice, and you continued to tend to your patients, but in a smaller capacity, as you knew you were also expected to assist Tristan in his running of the family estates, which were apparently vast. You didn’t mind the extra work, and it gave you the chance to travel and meet new people. The busier you were, the less time you had for wondering and daydreaming about another life. You weren’t unhappy, but there was a gnoll-sized hole in your heart that could never be healed by Tristan’s happy laugh or quiet, scholarly conversation. 

Tristan’s family employed many non-humans on the estates beyond the city: centaurs at the extensive vineyards on the southern slopes of the hills about fifty miles from the city; goblins in the prosperous family mines in the mountains on the border with your own native kingdom; and a naga and a harpy who provided the family with what was perhaps the most surprisingly lucrative commodity: rare fairy-tended mushrooms which had incredible healing properties when desiccated and ground to a fine powder and applied in salves and ointments. 

You visited all these places, but your favourite had to be Tristan’s country house about an hour’s travel from the city walls. It was a beautiful, old castle, a former hunting lodge, which his mother’s side of the family had owned, and which always passed to the youngest sibling in the family as their own private retreat. The eldest always inherited everything else, so it had been decreed long generations past that this property would go to the youngest to keep, and pass down their line. 

It was on a visit here that you discovered you were carrying Tristan’s child, and you would never forget the way his eyes lit up with wonder when you told him the news. The adder stone around your neck seemed to glow warmer with every passing day, reminding you of your promise to Winter, and of the love you had lost. 

Of all the visits you made to establishments worked and run by non-humans, the one place in the city you never set foot was the gladiatorial ring in the northern quarter of the city. The memory of your own experiences as a child with your father, and of the stories Brenn had told you, meant that you never wanted to set foot there. 

Phillip had managed to get the City Council to change a few of the laws, but his focus was on other things, and no amount of campaigning had changed his mind. It drove a wedge between you and him, but you kept your tongue civil. He had an entire city state to run, but still…

You did occasionally treat gladiators of all kinds who were brought to your practice, chained and usually muzzled regardless of species. Some were belligerent and clearly hated all humans, while others were quietly, sullenly grateful. 

A gnoll female was brought in one day with a terribly wounded foreleg. Her entire front paw had been bitten clean off by another gnoll, and cauterised by the staff at the arena, but it needed further attention by a trained medic. 

“I can’t believe they treat you like this,” you fumed as you tended to the wound. “Pitting you against one another like…”

“Animals?” she sneered through the bars of her iron muzzle, looking at you with hard, honey coloured eyes. “You should see the other guy…” she grinned. 

“I’d rather not.”

“I broke his leg, and nearly gutted him like a freshly landed herring… And he was a big boy too,” she laughed, wincing as you finished up. “He’ll be out of action for months.” Her eyes glinted with a hint of madness, and you pulled back. 

You felt sick, and allowed her to be led away by the orcish handlers who were themselves under close watch. 

Your daughter was born that summer, and she had Tristan’s wavy brown hair and freckles, and your eyes. Motherhood came naturally to you, as naturally as caring for others had always been, and Tristan made a good father. 

But when little Violet was only three, you suffered your second tragic loss. 

Tristan was killed in a mine collapse while visiting the gold mines with some goblins. Overnight, you lost your best friend, and the father of your young daughter. It was almost more than you could bear alone. 

Phillip was devastated by the loss of his little brother, and retreated to run his empire from the town house in the city. The logistics of running the remaining estates which Tristan had left you, fell to you. 

You visited the goblin families who had lost relatives in the collapse, offering condolences and financial support, and inviting some of the younger children to come with you to train as house stewards at Vineside, the castle which had once been a hunting lodge, and where you made your home when you were not travelling. 

You were in your late twenties, and had more wealth and power at your fingertips than you could ever have dreamed possible, but aching loneliness filled the cracks that grief had made in your life. You thought of Brenn and of Tristan, and cradled little Violet close to you in the evenings when you were left alone in your private sitting room. 

One afternoon, when Violet was four, a summons came from the king himself, requesting that you join him and the queen at the gladiatorial games to celebrate the coming of spring. The very last thing you could imagine being celebratory was watching slaves hack each other to pieces in the sand-filled fighting pits, but this was a summons from the king, and you could not refuse. 

And so it was that you found yourself sitting in the royal box, very much aware that the queen was playing match-maker with you and some duke from the south, and trying not to look too closely at the fighters as they entered the arena below. 

A rumbling portcullis drew up and a colossal troll burst from the dark passage, roaring and bellowing and throwing handfuls of dirt and grit up into the cheaper stands. The stench of the place was almost overwhelming, and the noise was close to deafening. 

From the announcer’s stand at the far end, voice amplified by a huge copper trumpet, came the shout, “Ladies and gentlemen, your attention please, your attention please! Today, in honour of His Majesty the King, and Her Majesty the Queen, I am truly honoured to present to you – fighting in his first match this season – the one, the only, Demon Thunder Jaw!” 

The crowed erupted, baying and cheering. 

“Who is this gladiator?” you hissed to the serving woman beside you. 

“The Demon? He’s a big gnoll,” she said. “Toughest fighter they’ve had in years, though he got his leg broken by a female gnoll in a big match last season. He hasn’t fought publicly since then.”

“Oh,” you said, your stomach turning over. The last thing you wanted to see was a gnoll fighting that rock troll. You knew it would bring back too many memories, too much that you’d tried to repress. 

And then he paced menacingly out onto the sand and the world lurched sideways. 

That little tail. That stocky build. Those sloping shoulders. That beautiful spine of black fur. That nicked ear. 

Brenn. 

“Oh gods,” you said, “No. I… I’m…” 

“My lady?” the serving woman said. “Are you unwell?”

“I can’t watch this,” you said, gathering your skirts and half standing, bile rising in your throat. 

You made to leave, dizzy with shock and horror, but the queen saw you move and the light that flashed in her eye was dangerous. She had her plans for you, and if you embarrassed her now… 

But… Brenn? How on earth…? He was supposed to be miles away, with a mate and cubs, and… You watched in terror as the fight began. Shaky, sick, with sweating palms, all you could do was watch as they reined blows and bites down on one another. 

It seemed to happen too quickly for you to follow, and yet you felt every blow that he didn’t dodge, every punch that connected. 

Eventually, however, he leapt, the weakness in his left leg apparent to one with medical training, and locked his powerful gnoll jaws around the jugular of the troll. 

The pair crashed down, but he didn’t let up. The troll died slowly, thrashing and gurgling in the sand, and when it finally went still, guards emerged wearing thick armour and carrying long spears, and Brenn was chained and muzzled and dragged away. 

The troll’s black blood dripped from his jaws onto the sand and you thought you might be sick. 

You sat there, numb, with a hand over your mouth. Your only thought was that you had to get him out. Somehow, you had to get him out.