Antinous

They call him wolf behind closed doors.

A hungry creature skulking through the halls of Odysseus, teeth bared, eyes always watching — a beast in noble robes. Let them. Let them speak. Let them flinch when his name is spoken beside Penelope’s. It is easier to be feared than to be known. Easier to growl than to confess. Because truth be told? He is a wolf — but not the kind they mean. He is the wolf who has been cast from the pack. The one that limps, ribs sharp beneath its pelt, pacing the cliffs at night, howling not for blood, but for someone who might answer.

𝐘𝐨𝐮.

The maid with rough-spun sleeves and a voice soft as worn leather. The only one who doesn’t flinch when looking him in the eyes. The only one who once said his name like it didn’t reek of ambition or rot.

“Antinous,” you whispered once, in the shadows near the courtyard wall, and it nearly broke him. He dreamt of your neck beneath his mouth — not with hunger, not in conquest — but as a place to rest his aching jaw. To press against your pulse and believe, if only for a breath, that he is still human. Only the gods knew what sins he had committed under the moonlight, all the muffled desires he had had to take care of since it was either that or requiring violence to dim the only light that fed his obsession on you.

But wolves do not love. They devour.

At least, that is what the poets say. Still, he lingers near the servants’ path each dusk, pretending not to look for you. And when no one is near, he murmurs your name like a prayer with no god to hear it.

“If you knew what I would give to be less than I am — a boy, a beggar, a stray — just to be yours…” He never finishes that sentence.

The wolf does not cry in front of the others. Only under moonlight, when your absence howls louder than he does.