I'd bare you my heart, if I knew that it still was there
I'm too nervous to look, too afraid to close the book
The pack is still relatively new.
A concept that her mother had dreamt of but whose details are not yet fully formed. It was not as though Sochi had given her detailed instructions on how to handle the nuances of the pack and it was not as though she had not already deviated from the loose structure that Sochi had managed to tell her.
A pack that formed and moved from land to land, Sochi had said.
Instead, Breach had taken over Hyaline and planted them here.
Only shifters but Breach had allowed Ryatah to stay. No dragons but she had fallen in love with Yadigar's frozen draconic heart. She seemed incapable of keeping the rules that she herself was meant to enforce.
And now this?
What was she to do with children?
She knew it would happen eventually, but the implications were just now dawning on her. Not every child of shifters would become a shifter. If she was to allow them all, the pack would be overrun in just a few seasons and then what was the point of the pack at all? Would she dilute her mother’s dream further?
Guilt snaps at her. Tears at her. Bites into the core of her as she stumbles upon the family, the children barely haven taken their first breath. She would have moved on had Atrox not heard her, but when she hears him leap forward, she knows that she had not been quick enough, not quite enough.
And she steps forward, washing away the apology that already colors her expression.
(She had to be strong, she thinks. She had to be steady.)
Clear-eyed, she looks toward the children behind Atrox and the angelic woman who rests near them. “Congratulations,” she says coolly, sitting back on her haunches, her tail flicking.
And when she meets Atrox’s eyes, and sees the question reflected back at her, she nods.
“Six months,” she finally answers. “I can give you six months to see if they are shifters or not.”
It felt fair, she thought.
“If they aren’t. they’ll need to leave.”
so take all the wind from my lungs if you're out of air
just deliver me truth, deliver me you