A Love Like War

Manea almost wished that he had fought back, that he hadn't just laid there and taken what she gave him, but she understood why he didn't and that frustrated her even more. He was such a good father that even though she was still early enough in her pregnancy that a light bit of fighting would be very low risk to their growing pups he still allowed her to strangle and choke him out just to keep from accidentally harming her or them. She could see it in how he reacted to her anger and her violence and how his obsidian gaze left her face to glance down her body to her rounded stomach. She wanted more reason to be furious, more reasons to cling on to anger instead of slipping into a feeling of helplessness, but he wouldn't give it to her and she hated it. She was so utterly dependent on him for every aspect of how she wanted her life to be thanks to her family's beliefs and her refusal to fall into the same weakness as her mother. The thought, no matter how unlikely, that he might have feelings for someone else that could try to steal him away from her terrified her in a way she didn't really want to admit.

After he swallowed a few breaths to recover from her strangling, he declared Relm under his protection in the same way Kichi and Seraphina were and insisted that his feelings for the pink wolf were not romantic in nature. She held still like that for a few moments longer, searching his face to make sure he was telling the truth, before her fury finally began to fizzle out and leave exhaustion in its wake. She sat back a bit with a shaky sigh, letting her paw slip down from his throat to join her other paw resting lightly on his chest while she sat basically in his lap. She looked down at her violet paws resting among the long, plush ebony fur on his chest and tried to find a way to just feel numb about the whole situation, but it was difficult. Her hormones running amok certainly didn't help matters, but it was times like these when she was reminded how he was the only one that could truly throw her off balance and pull emotions out from under the controlled, calculating exterior she usually kept. He was the only one that could ever make her loose her cool to such an extreme degree.

"No, I wasn't tormented and tortured growing up like you or Relm, but I still had trials of my own," she told him quietly after a few moments, still not meeting his gaze while she looked down at her own paws on his chest. "Growing up raised to believe that I was the future of an entire family, the one that was sent to bring greatness back to the Mendacium name, and yet somehow still resented and scorned by my own mother... The pressure to be flawless and never have a misstep or risk disproving the family's beliefs...." She sighed tiredly again, letting her claws gently comb through the fur on his chest absentmindedly. It was an expectation and a pressure she had never allowed herself to let go of. It was the reason she worked so tirelessly and refused to have anything less than the best for their family. They all depended on her and failure was not an option.

She knew she had never really discussed the details of what brought her family to its current state and with as raw and vulnerable as she felt in that moment it spilled out as she tried to explain why his actions hurt her so. "My father was killed before I was a year old. My mother never truly loved my father so as soon as he was out of the way she was so quick to move on and throw her family away with him. I had to be the one to maim and banish my own mother from the family and strip her of her name for breaking our most sacred law when she had Desponia... I understand that our traumas are vastly different, but I'm not privileged or perfect either." She hesitated for a moment and finally brought her gaze up to meet his before she added, "I know I put on a damn good show of always being confident, but... I'm not. Not always. The fear that I might lose you, that someone might steal you away, is always there."

"Manea Mendacium"