***[POV: Heart-Aching Alpha]***
The question I’d asked had been simple. I thought. Why did you stop last night?
Not the things she was doing to . Though the mory of it kept trying to surface in my thoughts Ever since we woke up.
Even while I was trying to stay focused on her answer. It had been the most ’generous’ night she had ever given . Sothing to savor for the next few days.
What I’d ant was the other stopping. The mont where she ca back after feeding Asha. When she curled on top of and I told her how I felt again.
Her teeth were on my collarbone after she asked to repeat it. And I literally felt sothing pull between us straining. Different from how it felt to be drawn to her.
For a brief mont I felt how much she was drawn to .
And watched her choose the restraint over the completion. Again.
So I’d asked, after we both cleaned and got dressed. After I’d fed her son. Without an edge to the question, just a feeling of curiosity.
And sowhere in the half-hour of fox kingdom details, the answer she assured was coming had turned into a story about her brother. An older one, nad Ravi.
I hadn’t tried to steer us back the whole ti. Because whatever this was, it was more than she’d ever given .
To cut her off and ask only for the version of the answer I’d actually wanted? Unthinkable. I’m not sure I’m the person she needs to talk things through with.
...But I am her mate. No matter what.
So I listened. To the words. To their tone. The way her voice had gone flat when describing the years after this sibling had purportedly rejected her whole existence.
Yet, it doesn’t stop her from picking and smoothing at the sleeves of the red shirt she’d picked out for today. As I asked careful questions. The kind best ant to understand.
When had it happened? What exactly did he or others say?
She’d stared at the wall above my shoulder. Instead of at . Particularly when explaining what it felt like to realize that soone could just decide that there were reasons of so sort worth ignoring her for sixteen years.
Conditions, she called them. Went on a short tangent there. In the way of speaking she took when she didn’t trust herself to improvise.
Clear to because words even had the sa rhythm the next tis she referenced them. As if she’d recorded the lines a long ti ago and mastered how to recite them.
Which ans they must be far blunter than what would actually cut her coming out. I know her enough to understand she protects herself that much.
The flatness wasn’t an absence of feeling. A few tis, sothing raw slipped through anyway. A word choice that was a little too specific with a nose or eyelid twitch.
...And each ti it happened, her next sentence ca out more controlled than the one before. Which left wanting to howl at the injustice of it all.
At what others let her go through. No matter if it might have been what led her to .
Wanting to find this golden fox and make him understand what he’d broken. Wanting to pull her into my arms and promise that I would never - could never - make a choice like he had.
She looked wrung out by the end. Dry-eyed... she’d never cried. But incredibly *dulled* as her hand runs through her own hair. Even less vibrancy than after she’d just given birth.
I knew I should leave it there. Should just thank her for trusting with this part of her. Hold her if she’d let .
Instead, I looked inside. To the questions that had been sitting in my chest for over a month. Given a much sharper form after I’ve listened to this.
Doubt, ever since she took off from this very apartnt. To go den alone. To bear the child alone. Without trusting to be there.
"Did you think that will happen with us? Do you think that now? Is that what you’re saying?"
Her gray eyes lifted to mine. As intelligent as the day I t her... and just as wary as that day.
"Yes."
No hesitation. No softening. Just the truth. As she saw it. Even after everything.
After nearly dying in that blizzard. After she called reliable. After I’ve held her son and hoped to stand between her and every threat that could co her way.
She still thinks... I’m going to leave? Still this certain in her belief that *everyone* gives up if the price is too right or too wrong.
I stood up from the bedside then. Looked down at her sitting there, legs pulled up to her chest. Looking smaller than Citra Lomdi truly is.
Like a fraction of herself that hides the whole of her. I turned my face away before I did or said sothing I’d regret. Grabbed Asha on the way out, deciding she needs ti to herself today.
And walked into the elevator without another word.
Wondering if she was going to chase down to find him.
Or just be confident he is safe with right now.
Because no matter what she just told , I don’t believe it. I don’t believe she actually thinks there is a ’condition’ that would ever let her abandon her son by her choice. Even eventually.
"...I didn’t grab him for that pretext... right?"
⧖ ☾ ❄ ☽ ⧖
The room had reinforced walls for a reason. . I’m the justification for the expense.
I rember that when I hit the heavy bag hard enough that the specially made chains squealed on the hook. Again. And again.
My hands had ’shifted’ partially at so point. I realize when I reach out and full-stop the wild swinging training equipnt.
My claws shred through the canvas. Not because I was done working this out.
Because of a scent. A realization that I’m failing in my duties.
Luca had appeared in the doorway. Watching the rubber mulch spilling across the floor. Still much too far away to bolt toward Asha where I left him in sight.
Yet, my guard had still been too down. And this is how she must have felt. Every mont since she arrived and learned she was pregnant.
Insufficient. In danger. On guard.
Wariness in her eyes. Underneath her skin. In her bones.
He didn’t say anything as I stared his way, but not *at* him. Just started setting up a bag in another spot.
One designed for a full werewolf’s contact, rather than the one for an Oga that was already hanging to take my anger.
"Want to talk about it?"
He asked after I began pacing. Trying to get myself to breathe through the bit of... unsolvable fury and irrational hurt.
Family in another world, in the past, but effects that persist right now. That hurt her right now.
My foot lashes out and kicks the ruined heavy bag, tearing it further.
A ss is a ss is a ss.
"No."
Starting to count to ten in my head, I rethink my belief that it was just my wolf that was always responsible for *this*. For I knew that I wasn’t perfect. That I had my issues.
But I’d been so very, very calm since I expelled it. And I’m starting to realize that the tis I let it push on, that the things I’ve done to maintain control of this pack... were far more revealing of than it.
"Want to call for so sparring partners?"
Yes. Is what I want to say. I want to fight. Until I’m too exhausted to feel this way.
Need it to be useful. To go out and hunt those people eaters waiting in the Sandhowl pack.
Or the group living under Chad Duskpaw’s control, before he targets her again.
Only, that would be leaving here. Leaving her. Proving her right, even for a mont.
...Not like leaving the apartnt when I did, or how, was all that much better.
"Not yet. Can’t afford Ricoat injuries. Our people area already pushing their limits."
Checking my watch, I realize I have only fifteen minutes until the morning eting. The one I’d agreed to with the remaining Vossden governnt body.
Sothing about complaints that the floor I’d given them to work from isn’t enough. That the share of compute Claire allotted them from connection to Lodestone servers weren’t enough.
Rations aren’t enough. Space isn’t enough. Food plans aren’t enough. Rescue operations aren’t enough.
I wasn’t enough to solve the problems dropped on all at once.
...
But when has that ever made give up? If she thinks I’ll look away from her eventually, I can believe things, too.
Hold the market position that others seem to want to bail from. With a cold, patient logic that the business world has taught since I ventured inside it.
"Start giving a rundown of today’s problems. Treat it like the usual triage Claire has you do."
"In the lobby... actually, I don’t think I want to say."
"What is it?"
After glancing toward the child I’d picked up, Luca closes his eyes and clears his throat. My Beta is rarely so avoidant. So it must be bad.
We don’t need bad. But maybe I do need sothing to solve, if I can.
"Security said Citra just made a scene. Then dragged three other won into the elevator. All different pack wolves."
"Oh? Is that all?"
"...Alpha?"
His voice shakes. Like it usually does when I smile this calculating way. The person I’m supposed to trust to physically stop if I lost my mind.
Oh well... he never did like being a part of corporate strategy etings. Which is why he heads Lunarizon’s security.
"She’s fine, then."
"But-"
"If she didn’t leave the tower, it’s fine."
"Uh..."
"It’s. Fine. Lets go parley with the humans again. It will make them feel better."
If the CEO looks like they are worried, everything quickly falls apart. Sa if the pack leader seems like they don’t trust their mate.
And ti has shown that there is a payoff to trusting her. In a different sort of uneven way than she trusts .
A return that always tastes, feels, and looks like my broken princess.
If you squint at the fragnt she shows you. On any given day.
From minute to minute.
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