The Titan Queen - Levi X Reader

Chapter 1 - The Huntress

The girl drew an arrow and notched it to her bow with quick, quiet movements. Downwards in the glen, a wary doe had emerged from the thicket despite the snow. "Raven," the girl's partner breathed, her dark eyes fixed firmly on the slim creature, "don't let it run." Raven, apparently, did not appreciate her partner's caution. Ire flickered in her grey eyes as she let a breath loose and then let the arrow follow with an amateur's aim.

Raven did not look at all like her name suggested. Hair that would have been a white blond if it weren't for a week's worth of dirt hung around her pale face – and her grey eyes looked like they could have competed for the prize of being the coldest with the very snow on the ground.

But those grey eyes glowed as her arrow found its mark.

Her partner let out a whoop as the doe fell, its too-thin body making only a little noise against the ground. Raven tutted, her eyes fixed on nothing but the source of her next meal as she slung the bow into place at her back and began to run towards it. There was not a moment to waste in these woods – not when there were worse predators then herself out, hidden by the trees.

She slipped her knife out from the hidden pocket in her sleeve as she neared the animal. "It's too small, Rachel. Too small to last everyone for a while." Winter had always been a tough time – especially to those people who lived on the outside of the infamous walls that kept the rest of the human population safe.

But a winter where they were increasingly wary of the other predators on the other side of the forest?

That was worse.

But hunger had drawn both girls from the safety of the outskirts and had coaxed them into the depths. Raven had a little sister to feed, and Rachel was not about to let her lover just walk into the forest alone. Rachel's dark-skinned hand snuck into caress Raven's elbow as she dropped to her knees before the doe that would be their salvation only for a short while. It was their reassurance – it was the touch that said 'I'm okay. I'm here.'

But then Rachel's hand abandoned contact with her lover's elbow, and Raven froze a beat before a deep male tenor rang through the silence of the forest.

"And just what are you two doing here?"

The girl clenched the knife in her hand tightly enough that her knuckles went white, slowly looking over her shoulder. Her mate stood before her – without a weapon, without armour – with her arms outstretched, as if she could shield Raven from the beast before them with nothing but her body.

The thought died on Raven's lips as she opened them to beg Rachel to run. The thing in front of them did not look like a beast.

No.

He was one of the most beautiful people that Raven had ever seen. His dark brown curls had been cropped close to his face, with his pale skin almost glowing against the snow. His eyes, though – at first glance, Raven could have easily seen them as black. But they were brown – and utterly fixed upon Rachel.

"Do you know what we are?" The words boiled in Raven's ears. Not who they were, but what they were. The fact the male had deliberately chosen his words to answer his question for them showed enough about his intentions. Raven, in a moment of utter stillness, realized that she'd never see her little sister again.

A snort sounded from behind the male, and a girl elbowed her way past him to stand at the front. Raven immediately abandoned any thoughts of the male's beauty aside – this girl was born to demand attention, as surely as she breathed. It wasn't so much that she had beauty; she commanded focus by the way she held herself, by the way that she glowed with something that Raven could not quite place. 'How unfair,' she thought to herself. 'How unfair that the beasts are beautiful.'