Never thought I'd find you here

Alastor could see the emotional trauma Kichi was struggling through. The poor lad had been through so much in his short time in this world. Silently, the Mendacium man wondered if Kichi had ever learned the truth of his parents' deaths. Had Lurid told him what had actually occurred on that fateful day, or had he perhaps pieced it together himself? It was a terrible truth Alastor had been sworn to secrecy on. But now his promisee was dead and gone, and loose lips did no good for him. If Kichi didn't know the truth and asked him, Alastor would reveal all to the boy.

Kichi explained how he'd traveled all over Boreas. Alastor furrowed his brow. How could that be? He hadn't seen hide nor hair of Kichi for almost a year and he'd occupied an expansive territory in the north for over half the year. Kichi asked where he had been. "I remained in northern Boreas for a long while. I thought that maybe you and..." He swallowed, not wanting to say her name anymore. "I thought you'd both find your way back to me eventually. When that didn't happen, I stayed around the north just for the hell of it. When I met my mate, we ventured south to the prairies and then made our way up over here." He didn't want to provide Kichi with all the details of how his life had changed in the year they'd been apart. He didn't want to give Kichi the impression that he'd gone running off with another wolf as soon as he'd been freed from the shackles of the Amarix dynasty.

"You were not stupid," Alastor snapped a little more intensely than he'd intended to. "You were a pup, Kichi—a child. You put your faith in Lurid and she failed you. You put your faith in me and I..." His jaws clenched, unwilling or unable to say the words clinging to the end of his tongue. He'd failed Kichi when he left the impressionable pup in the clutches of the selfish faux empress. How blinded he'd been by her beauty and love that he would have let her rip the world apart and he'd have simply smiled. "I wanted to find you. I did." Perhaps it was too little, too late. He'd assumed Lurid had taken Kichi far, far away. Never would he have expected Lurid to abandon her adopted son as well. Maybe that was his grievous mistake to bear.


"Alastor"