Shattered

His jaws fastened around the root ball, gently closing as the taste of dirt filled it mouth and coated his tongue. He could see her through the stalks of brush, collecting some of the irises. He turned his eyes away, then stilled and lifted his head as she came close. The cold look he gave her as he looked her over spoke volume of the irony in this situation.

“You’d need help to apply them.” His cold tones were heavy with irony as a black brow point lifted sardonically. Then he turned to face her, posture poised and elegant, and very chilly. “Let me tell you what I’ve been going through, and what Talis’ raid on Celestial means to us.”

The lilting grace of his words still remained in the clipped tones of his next words, words that spilled out in a wave and gave the girl no choice but to listen to it all, or leave.

“One: I encounter a girl who apparently is willing to learn a little about my craft, and whom I could, tentatively, see calling a friend.

"Two: I return home from gathering Iris plants to patrol the borders while our alpha was out searching for missing members of my family, and this pack, and watch a wolf trip over the border stones, and investigate them closely enough that she couldn’t miss for a second that they were covered in pack territory markers, and at her age, there is no bloody way she could feign lack of knowledge about them and their meaning. I watched her trespass, and intercepted her. I warned her to leave. Politely, but firmly.

"Just because someone is blind and a healer, does not make them bloody helpless. The Nomads have plenty of the blind who can fight their own battles. No doubt she was one of your scouts—the timing is just too close.

“Three. My sister returns with my half dead brother, to tell me that our father, your leader’s cousin has been murdered, in cold blood, defending my brother from the same bitch that killed him. Not only that, but I learn later that another of our pack was attacked and raped by a male in the same area of the north.

"And not long after my sister returns from telling our cousin in Talis, that Creed Ancora has been murdered, then Talis is at our border, trying to steal and harm my family, and you are among the bastards that come a-calling, when it would have been simpler, and more intelligent to strengthen the familial bonds between the packs by asking for help, which Celestial would have given readily.

"We don’t go against our family, or our friends, Sterling, we help them. Or at least the Adravendi side of my family does. And yet my own blood from the Ancora side has tried to steal from Celestial.” His jaws snapped together furiously on the word ‘Blood’ with a sharp clack, but the look in his eyes was still one of frigid calm.

“The woman who was raped birthed five children. Children who aren’t old yet enough to understand why they should be afraid of the snarls and sounds of battle they heard that night. We have one new mother who is pregnant, and the stress from knowing her mate was in that fight and could be hurt badly could have reaped harm upon those fragile, unborn lives. She could lose that pregnancy. Celestial doesn’t start trouble, but that never means we are weak or lax, and we will reap hell upon those who start trouble with us.”

Those sapphire and amethyst eyes bore into Sterling’s emerald gaze, as he uttered a low growl of a question. “How the hell can someone I felt in my gut has good in her follow a bastard who would gladly steal from his own family, whether it hurts his own pack or not? Blind loyalty? Or was my gut severely misjudging you?” Despite his fury, his fur remained flat in its fluffy luxury, and there was a distinct sense that he would hear her out.

He wanted to hear that she hadn’t gone into the raid willingly. Why, he wasn’t sure-- she had no tight ties here as far as he knew, and they certainly hadn't become bosom buddies in the couple of hours spent gathering iris. He wanted to know, perhaps, that he hadn’t been wrong about his final conclusion about her when they’d parted ways at the lake last time. He doubted he would hear it that way, though. However optimistic he usually was, the various recent events had compounded to very nearly convert him to a cynic.