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This story was written for the winning prompt of January's poll, which was: "Post-war, an ex-pilot struggling to play the role of a benevolent handler for a pack of hounds encounters the real deal". And from there, I'm afraid it's gotten very out of hand. This is a long one, and explores some rather heavy themes, but I'm very, very proud of how it's turned out. I won't say more, but I'm hungry to see what you all make of poor Thalia, the ex-pilot in question

Enjoy! And next: HELLHOUND beckons

P.S. I'm deeply indebted to my beta readers Sarah, Maggie, Sophie and Scylla. On this one in particular, they really went above and beyond. Thank you all <3

Comments

Ruby Ivy

Mhmm mhmm, very normal about this already

june

i'm glad it has a happy ending :) honestly too much to say about this. love how tali fails to recognize val due to the imperfections of humanity. love how genuinely afraid val seems early on. scarlett's night. very very good.

UnknownGnomes

Gods I’m not really even into ntr but this managed to both be kinda gutwrenching and cathartic at the same time. I dunno, the elementsof Thalia kinda just half assing scenes while trying to maintain composure and watching everything slip further and further away finally ending in a limp attempt with maybe the one woman she actually loved (?) was uh, something and im gonna have to read it again and see if i can figure out those thoughts lol Anyways, headcanoning Thalia giving Val a mug that says “I’m not the step-handler, I’m the handler that stepped up”.

Raminae Skye

That was, I don't even know, but damn this is some of your best. The way you can tell that Tali wants to help them, wants to be what they need, and how the weight of expectations just drags her down and down until someone can step in. It's hard to think of this as anything but a "good" end for everyone involved. Going to be thinking about this one for a while.

Anne

"Am I doing a good enough job? Am I playing my role? Is Scarlett enjoying herself ? Would she enjoy something else more? Is this form of service too selfish? Is it too much like the chores she performs for me each day? Do I need to make it more exciting for her? Should I care?" I... I'm genuinely in shock. Plenty of stories are relatable but very rarely am I confronted with my own thoughts word-for-word staring back at me on the page. This isn't a revelation for me by any stretch, I've known for a long time that being a domme isn't something I have in me. But feeling so viscerally seen and having those old memories dredged back up is a lot. Seriously thank you, this is one of your best 🩷🩷

C.C. RED

Ohhhhh, Ms. Rho, this one...this one's a delayed infection. It has really been wriggling its way into my brain since reading it earlier today. Much like that fever creeping up on poor, pitiful hound Tali. Tali's fatal flaw: not having mastered the art of knowing what you can not, and what you are not. It is, I think, genuinely okay for a Domme to not be capable of certain things. One person may be unto a God, but even God has angels to attend to the work. That's what submissives are *for* after all! But Tali doesn't perceive her own limits except as bitterness and self-loathing to be repressed. She wants to simply play pretend, in her cap and coat, that they don't exist. I'd argue Handler Val knows her own limits much better; she's in a pretty sorry state when we meet her at the start here, too, after all. And gods I am obsessed, OBSESSED, with fat dyke Handler Val. You did such a great job giving her a TON of characterization with very little writing and I just...I would read 100 chapters of her just bossing around her new pack of hounds and working out her own shit. I love this so much. I actually really really really do think this was sweet, and a good end for Tali, who so badly needed someone to come in and take the reins. Tali loves her girls, but she wasn't *loving* them, and now not only can she do that...but she can do it in the powerful embrace of a woman she knows will take much better care of them all. <3 What's more romantic than that? Maybe I'm just desensitized to the cold and the dark at this point though. I dunno. I mean, regardless, Handler Val gets what she wants. And that's what REALLY matters anyway~ Great work as always Kallie...this story hit me in the feels more than I expected. Your prose is so goddamn crisp and deliciously savory. (And I am going to place this as one more brick in the "Luna finds out she's a domme" wall.)

NewtypeWoman

For a long time I felt like Tali. I kind of thought it was just like that for me- i very carefully made sure I didn't fall into her fate, measured my energy better, but still burnt myself trying to please people, here and there. Very familiar feelings- I loved domming, but it was hard. I even found a domme I love very much, and found that service was so much easier, and recharged my batteries for domming. It's nice to belong to someone. .... Until a week ago when it turns out I have an insane evil sadist princess lurking inside me. I'd been leaning into that for a while but oh my god. it's easier now. What the heck. That wasn't supposed to happen! I didn't know it could change!!! i just was doing it wrong!!! i wasn't being selfish and petty and cruel enough!!! I'm still a maid first and foremost but wow. It's fun to be the princess.

Vallerie Knight

some of your best work, and absolutely hit like a truck. too many thoughts about this for 1am apart from i have absolutely been there with Tali ❤️ (this is, hilariously, Despite the name)

Amy Sussman

Sooo good. I love how you write drugs and addiction, like the way there was something so panicked and desperate about Thalia trying to manage the alcohol against the dick pills. And returning to one's "natural" state of either handler or hound is like relapsing, as in the beautiful line: "her manner speaks to the poisonous ease of a lapsed addiction" 👌👌👌 I guess that's why Thalia doesn't need the cigarettes anymore.

XF

Fuck, yeah I'll be turning this one over in my head a while

Tazzah

Shockingly merciful, lol. Loved seeing the Hounds reunited with a proper Handler. Val honestly reminds me of Alana from Intraspecific Competition with her whole 'docile and friendly' to 'Handler/Alpha' switch up

lexiprocessing

I've been reading your stuff for a while and have fallen in love with all of it, but this hit on something deeply personal. So much of the writing spoke directly to thoughts and insecurities I've had so often with both current and previous partners, and the focus on alcohol use in particular touched very close to home. Reading everything in the back half leading up to the ending had me genuinely nauseous (positive). True despair. 10/10.

Vea

Latecomer to this, but gosh I enjoyed it. After reading it, I woke up in the middle of the night thinking about it. Thinking about why I just *couldn't* think of the Handlers and hounds as atrocities. Thinking about sitting in that bar just to be close to the kind of single-pointed, ardent devotion that I can only aspire too. Thinking about the times when all the trivial shit filters out and I feel for my Owner what the hounds feel for Val. (And thinking about bootblacking, naturally.) It got me, is what I'm saying. :3

Niff

It's funny, I read this expecting Val to be evil in the way most Handlers are in the genre; ghosts of the original Jane, skulls in black coats cutting up girls that look and sound and act like me seemingly just for the hell of it, to exert their power and their "humanity" over a hound. As someone who straight up has an aversion to NTR bordering on the reddest lines, I was also expecting to have to punch out of this halfway through as well; for whatever reason, NTR never reads to me as "kink" because I can't take my mind off oaths being broken and the trust being lost-and cuck kink, while related, is to the point I can't interact with it at all. I stuck with Wolf's Clothing because of the "good end" tag, because I feel it's something the genre needs as much as our grueling bad ends-if the world is just a hound being stomped forever, what's the point of writing stories about it happening in fiction too? And then I read this, and I remembered who wrote it, and why I both write and read mechsploitation; it's because it says something true about women like us and our struggles. Val somehow isn't a bad person; she clearly struggles with the guilt and pain and fear of what she had to do, just as the Hounds and Thalia did. Thalia's struggles reminded me intensely of the times i've tried to play both domme and as part of a wider cule; the tension, the pain, the fear of betraying people I loved. It never felt right, and I empathize intensely with it. In short, Thalia is tragic, and despite it all I believe Val when she says she's trying to help-especially because at the end, she doesn't gloat, she doesn't humiliate, and she doesn't turn Thalia into a spectacle; she ritually welcomes her into the pack, and when Tali needs it she is gentle and careful. There's something in there about regrowing yourself after trauma, and part of me thinks everything really *will* be ok. Thank you for writing this, Kallie, and I'm sorry for this wall of words, the half-assed attempt at analysis, and stuttering attempts to explain how your work makes it safe for me to stretch my boundaries. 💖