Now Look What You've Done

Manea sighed softly and looked away from Relm with a slight shake of her head as Relm broke down into tears, looking off toward the entrance of the den while she waited for the woman to collect herself. She had tried for so long to try and find some kind of common ground between herself and Relm for Alastor's sake. She had tried to make some sort of relationship or friendship between the two of them, something that could prevent this animosity from building between them—even if it was only one sided. Perhaps that was more than she really needed to do considering Alastor clearly had no intentions of doing that for her with either of her lovers, but she had tried regardless. Those attempts had all felt fruitless in the end. Even still, if she hadn't just finished putting the fractured pieces of her husband back together she likely could have found some empathy for the woman who had just suffered a miscarriage, but now even that was difficult to find. There were only a few things in this world that she genuinely cared about and now Relm had injured one of them with her actions. Her sympathy and her patience were thin if not nonexistent.

Eventually Relm did find a few more words for her which brought Manea's gaze back down to her again, but what she said made Manea's hackles bristle, looking at the other woman incredulously. She scoffed, shaking her head again. "What you want with him..." she muttered, her paws flexing and claws digging into the fur under her feet to prevent herself from acting on the simmering anger that she was doing her best to keep in check. There was simply something in the way she lamented about her position in Alastor's life, almost as if she was trying to pull pity to herself for being stuck in second place behind her and their family, that rubbed Manea the wrong way and made her blood boil. "You should do yourself a favor and remind yourself of that more often," she growled, a snarl twitching at her lips. "I've allowed this fuckery purely because Alastor wanted to keep you around, but I've happily kept him from things that hurt him before and I'm certainly not afraid to do it again."

Manea rose to her paws, deciding that she was done here and that she ought to leave before she truly did something she might come to regret, but then Relm spoke again, saying how she needed to stay detached and mentioning how she wasn't sure how much more she could take. Manea glanced back at her with confusion, replying, "Then why are you staying? If you want to be detached, if this is hurting you so badly, then just leave! You have created this hell for yourself and you will have no sympathy from me if you continue to drown yourself in torture of your own design." Her last plea to leave Irilyth out of this and to give her the punishment instead made Manea sigh and look down and away from Relm as she was quiet for a moment. "I don't want to punish Irilyth. I understand that she was simply protecting her patient, but at the end of the day she broke rank and disobeyed a direct order from her superior. It doesn't matter if I don't punish Irilyth or not. Alastor will see to it that she is punished. You've ensured that two of the wolves that I love dearly are hurting or soon will."

She looked back to Relm one more time with a hard, cold look in her aqua gaze. She had no idea how Alastor would feel come the morning once he woke from his drug induced sleep, but there was only one thing she could really do to punish Relm and she was going to take it regardless. Whether or not Relm felt this was a punishment or not didn't matter to her—at least she didn't feel like she came here and did nothing. "You are being demoted from General. Starting immediately you will now be Master Fighter." She turned then and began to walk away before Relm could say anything else. As she passed through the entrance of the medical den she spotted Irilyth waiting for her outside of the den and she motioned for the smaller woman to follow, leaving Relm alone.

"Manea Mendacium"