Living in a nightmare

Eligos didn't know what an aneurism was - he wasn't a healer - but if Riva knew that was what Danta had died from, and she insisted that he hadn't killed her...

He dragged in a ragged breath and dropped his head, eyes pressed shut against the flood of emotion that he didn't know what to do with. This didn't make Danta's death all right - if anything it gave him permission to grieve, to really mourn his niece for the first time since he had come to with her body. He hadn't deserved to before, her murderer. But now? Now the worst that he could claim was that he should have left the pack lands sooner after becoming infected. His pack members might never have caught the disease, this tragedy might never have happened.

He lifted his head sharply, twisting to look at Riva when she spoke a final time as she continued to bandage his wounds with faint surprise. Yes... he could come back now, couldn't he? All these seasons he'd spent trying to secure the pack's future, his family's safety, that had been wasted, hadn't it? Because he wouldn't die when he returned. The specter of his upcoming death had loomed over him for so long that being free... felt... odd. Like being without his armor after wearing it constantly.

"I... I will return with you," he promised roughly. He didn't know what would be between him and Pyrrhic now, with the knowledge of their last encounter still ringing in the silence. But he would return. "How are they handling it? All that has happened?" Pyrrhic, Deus, the pack - he didn't know who he wanted to know most about, so he left it open ended. As the pack's ranking healer - only healer, now - Riva would surely know. He wanted to be as prepared as he could be for what he had left behind.