Author's Note

== CONTENT WARNING ==
This is a chapter that deals with Grief, Miscarriage, and Consensual Non-Consent. I'm not going to lie, this is a darker chapter, but the "clop" part is actually part of the overall narrative, believe it or not.

I understand that some will not want to read through this part - and that's perfectly understandable. So, to that angle, I thought I'd add this warning to eat up space and give anyone who'd rather skip the topic a way out.

Am I overdoing it a bit? Maybe... but I'd like to think I'm doing The Right Thing in giving Fair Warning.

Some of the events and inspirations do come from Real Life and people who I've known - and not necessarily from my own personal life experience.

With that... I look forward to any comments.

Consent

“Shadow… hun… Look, we’re both upset right now. This isn’t a good time to–”

Moon Shadow’s face was a sunken mess - eyes red, cheeks covered in tear-streaks, muzzle slicked with rivers of snot half-heartedly wiped at. What words she could get out between near-paralyzed vocal cords were hitching with half-restrained crying. “NO! Don’t you… don’t you take this away from me! I’m… we’re… Do this for me! Please do it! I need.. need to feel it!”

Earlier tonight Moon Shadow had felt something… “Wrong”. It wasn’t something she could describe in terms, just in feelings. Something was just “off” in how she felt. It wasn’t “pain”, but she insisted we visit the infirmary. It was frustrating to her not being able to tell me or the doctors what she felt.

It took the medical expert a terrifyingly short time to explain what she’d been feeling.

An hour after leaving the infirmary, with the sun already having risen, here we are. Home. In the kitchen of our tree. The one I’d grown up in, had all my memories in. Where we wanted to build new ones to share together, to experience together, to build up together.

“It won’t change things, Shadow. We can’t fix–”

Her squinting eyes and scrunching jaw were a siren, warning me before her hoof flew out to clock me across the face. Catching it infuriated her into a screaming rage with tears and snot flying off her lips. “YOU SWORE TO LOVE, CHERISH, AND SUPPORT ME! BE MY STALLION! DO THIS NOW!”

I held her eyes as tightly as her hoof, all too aware of how the rest of her body was acting. She was shivering, twitching, ready to fight me with everything she had. It was something we’d been taught in the Reserves to not let happen since it exhausts the muscles and makes the mind less focussed on the real enemy.

She was right, though. I’d promised her exactly that; the same as she’d promised me back.

“Shadow,” I whispered, not knowing if my volume would make things better or worse. Maybe matching her tone would stabilize her into stalemate. I could always raise my voice later if I have to. “If I do this, there’s no coming back from it. It’ll always be there as a–”

“I - DON’T - BUCKING - CARE!”, she screamed into my eyes. I swear she was ready to bite my nose completely in half. “STOP OVERANALLYZING EVERY… BUCKING- THING AND JUST DO IT, YOU LIMP-DICKED WANNA-BE!”

The power of that scream was enough to ring off the windows and fling fluids off her lips, landing only just short of my pelt. The worry that anypony casually walking past our home could hear all this occurred to me, but what could I do? It was my turn to be the calm one, at least on the outside. I was curled into a ball on the inside - crying with her, but now wasn’t the time for me to do that. That’s how we’d always been, sharing and trading what responsibilities were needed for however long we required.

It’s a strange thing, “Time”. Do ponies realize just how long “Three Seconds” is? During the normal course of living it’s barely a blip on a day. But in the here-and-now, arguing with my mare, trying to hold us back from the precipice Tartarus-bent on flinging us over, it stretched out forever in my mind. Questions and worries and concerns and fears all swirled in my mind worse than any whirlwind storm I’d ever matched my wings and skills against. And they all slammed against the same wall of hesitation inside me.

[...what if she wanted it?]

That… That right there, was the one concession I couldn’t shut up and ignore in my mind. Yes, Moon Shadow was angry, heartbroken, inconsolable…

…but this is what she said she wanted to try to get through.

My raised hoof didn’t release hers until I back-hoofed her square across her jaw with enough force to make her tumble off the chair and onto her back. She landed on her spine with her wings splayed out to cushion her fall, leaving her legs splayed like some poor unlucky tortoise. I was already standing, looking down on her flat, empty, defenseless belly and only slightly swollen teats. My calm was wearing thin, feeling close to the brink of giving in to her. “You want this, then? You want me to ‘punish’ you for something that wasn’t your fault?”

“NO, YOU FECKLESS MORON! I WANT YOU TO ABUSE ME! I NEED TO KNOW YOU DON’T SEE ME AS TOO FRAGILE TO EVER BE YOURS AGAIN!”

Another Three Seconds of forever started swirling in my mind, examining every possible outcome.

[...what if she wanted it?]

This… is a bad idea. An immensely, immeasurably, inconceivably bad idea. No mental health professional would ever sign off on this. Tartarus! I could end up in prison for what she’s wanting me to do.

Beat my wife blue and purple after she’d lost our foal? How could I possibly explain to anypony what this was? What our private relationship was like? How we loved to rut in the ground level long into the day, screaming like animals where nopony else could accidentally see or hear her plead for more.

[...what if she wanted it?]

My rear-right hoof lifted and stepped on her cunt, hard, grinding the frog into her lips, dragging down to stomp on her tail just past the dock. I wanted her to know how close to the edge she’d pushed me to doing exactly what she’d asked, and more. She needed to have some part of herself know what she was demanding of me so we could take a step back from that. It also gave me a way to check if she had any cream lubricating herself.

Harmony help me, she didn’t.

One Second….

This would be nothing short of “consentual rape” if I do this.

I pulled my hoof back and kick-punched her cunt harder, getting her eyes to squint and barely hold back a grunt.

Dry.

I didn’t spare her the frog this time, kicking her again straight on my toe. The way it bounced off I knew her lips took the full pressure, squeezed flat to the sides and against each other. The slap of hoof on skin rang in my ears, pushed by the volume from the scream she let out; first in pain, then molded into frustration.

“MUTHER… BUCK! DO IT OR–”

Two Seconds…

My wings snapped open loudly, filling her field of view, distracting her while my front hooves landed on her wing-skin between the second and third finger-joints. A place that would trap any flier, making them unable to lift a wing without ripping the skin. More training instilled in me to restrain her, non-lethally, so she could stop and think.

I couldn’t trust her to not try to do that - ripping holes in her wings the shape of my hooves, so I did the first thing I could think of in this situation. My head dove down, twisted to the side, and with my jaws opened I bit into her throat. We’re taught to never do this in combat since fangs against neck armour will fail every time, but against semi-willing rape meat?

I knew this was a horrible idea, but I’d committed myself to this feral attack on her; So… I bit. I bit hard into her throat. The taste of blood instantly told me that I’d broken skin. The sound that came out of her barely functional throat was a maddened, terrified scream.

The best I could do was to pull my lips back to mutter as clearly as I could for her to hear, “You want this, you bucking whorse? You want me to do this to you?”

My grip was tight enough to keep her from talking back, getting only wheases out, but when she felt the face of my cock slap between her ass and cunt, she flinched.

…Three……seconds.

“--geld’ng.”

My eyes flew wide open and I froze.

“Time”.

What even is “Time”?

We think of it as a measure of defined moment to moment, adding up in a never-ending pile behind us fed from a mountain before us. But what happens when “Time” defies that idea? When everything you’ve experienced all your life changes from being a string or pages in a book into an ocean you fall into; experiencing every moment you remember simultaneously?

My mind swam through our time together; the tree, the fair, the wedding, the countless times she goaded me into rutting her, the one night we shared our deepest wants. How she wanted to be mine, to welcome me home every morning, with her knees folded in front, her tail waved aside, inviting me, barely inside the door. Showing off to anypony lucky enough to be in view that she was about to be filled, dripping with fluids all morning until we slept - maybe even through it.

And then she told me the one thing she wanted me to promise; to one day fulfill her darkest desire with me. The one she’d had growing in her for years.

She’d used her ANTI-Safe Word.

This was her way to tell me, in no uncertain terms, that I was free to do anything, literally anything, short of maiming her, for the next however-long I wanted, regardless of the consequences of it. An uncomfortable doctor’s visit, strange questions from her beautician to cover obvious rut-bruises or fixing sections of mane chomped short, avoiding ponies we knew so they wouldn’t see her swollen cheek or hobbling gait - all part of the deal…

One Second Gone.

We talked about this many times in the beginning of the day before sleep, rutting eachother in some secret semi-private locations around town, when we wanted to play through naughty ideas for our life together. ‘course with a foal that would have become massively difficult to schedule. Between trying to sleep, feed, clean, teach… It was a life we were going to endure and enjoy together. With a little help and advice from our families.

Well, about the foal anyway.

The underground floor even had a few areas that could be converted into an even more long-term location to keep her trapped. Chained or caged to the floor, being fed however I wanted, abused, cleaned, instructed. We worked on it together, getting a few pieces here and there, planning and cleaning sections while I bored her with stories of how young-me would have never imagined what we’d be doing down here.

Wondering what our foal would think of it one day and how to eliminate that threat one day when they got too precocious.

All those late-days of planning and fantasizing and dreaming what would be.

Two Seconds Gone.

But that word… That one word… That was her greatest power over me.

Over who we were.

–and her ultimate ask.

This code between us was the final fail-safe between us; this was no longer “playtime”. This was her final commitment to me. Deeper than being my wife, than my friend.

Oh, to be sure! She wasn’t going to just submit. She was free to try to escape, to plead for mercy, to try to push me off. But I was allowed to do anything, everything, to rut her however and wherever I wanted. I needed to fight her, force her, earn her screams of pain and hate. I needed to conquer her.

She needed to feel that she couldn’t escape; chained, marked, hooves nailed to the floor, subsisting as my toy.

And right now?

I wanted to hurt her.

I wanted to inflict pain in a way I never would have otherwise.

I was angrier in a way I shouldn’t have been. I was angry at her!

She was pushing me to become the monster we’d fantasized about; deciding, unilaterally, that our relationship was about to change, forever.

Irrevocably.

…Three.

My hooves shifted up her wing, pressing into the bone. I was still attentive enough to not damage it, but enough to make her scream in pain and terror for a solid three seconds through my grip on her windpipe.

Blood and terror. I could taste both of them on her as I lifted my head quickly, tearing at her throat, scraping the fur and skin hard. My eyes bore into hers to scream my intent so my voice didn’t have to. “You want me to rape you, huh?” My lips were tight, curled on my teeth coated in her blood and the growl of my resentment. “Slip my cock in you, stir you up and set a new foal in you, huh? Well guess what, little sponge…”

With her wings pinned and her throat barely able to form words, she couldn’t do more than wail in panic and need as I shifted my haunches and tilted my cock lower, pressed against her ass. She wanted me to rail her, to break her, and I had every intention of doing just that, but on my terms.

Her panicked eyes, wide and white, shook back and forth faster than her whole head could, trying to tell me, beg me, not to do what I was–

“NO-O-O-O!!!”

I speared her ass, filling the very end of her hole without looking away from her.