The Wounded Heart Within

Aranea's wish that he could be here forever tugged at his heart and before he could even speak his own doubts she spoke them for him as she mentioned Azariah. He felt her stop the nibbles and kisses she had begun to give him in return and he instinctively held her tightly as if he was afraid she would slip away again. He sighed and pressed his face into her neck, his ears folding back against his head because he knew she was right. Azariah had been his first love, his fiancé, the mother of his children, the woman that he had first promised his world to. The unknown of if she could ever return or not made him feel like he was in limbo and stuck trying to determine how long was long enough for him to wait before he was allowed to love again. He wasn't young any more. At six years old, he knew that his "prime" would soon be behind him and after wasting so many years of his life he didn't want to take any more of them for granted. But he still had to face the fact that if Azariah ever returned, if it turned out something had happened to her and she had disappeared at no fault of her own, was he prepared to break one of their hearts?

He was quiet for a while, just holding Aranea while his mind tried to work through this problem that had no solution. It pulled him into his past and brought him to a place he hadn't expected to go. "When I was still a pup... My father was challenged to the death and lost," he told her, speaking quietly as he revealed more of his past to her. She had done the same for him, giving him some perspective on why she was the way that she was. It was only fair that he do the same for her. "We lost the pack he led after that so my mother, sister, and I were loners. I grew up really quickly after that... I took care of them." His paw started tracing her back again, trailing his claws through her fur while he was lost in thought. "That's how I spent a little over four... almost five years of my life. I gave them everything. It took getting into fight with my sister over how she was caring for her children and her giving me that first scar I had on my cheek for me to finally make some time for myself... That's when I met Azariah."

He didn't know where he was going with his story or why he felt the need to share his life with her, but it was also kind of nice to share with someone else these things that he had never really spoken about. He hadn't shared his story with many, instead feeling like he needed to be strong and put on a facade for those around him. "I never made time to look for love before I met her and I was just so in love with the idea of being in love that I just..." He gave a small shrug and just let the sentence trail off, unsure of what else he wanted to say. He had genuinely loved Azariah, but he sometimes wondered if his life had gone differently and he had been given the freedom to live his life normally and not have to cater to and protect his mother for the majority of his life... would he have fallen for her so quickly? Or would he have taken the time to get to know her more, learn her history, know all the things that he still to this day didn't know? It was a question he'd never know the answer to, but it was one that constantly bothered him.

Walk | "Talk" | think