What we build is broken

Mortis was a recluse these days. While he forced himself to hunt, and contribute to the pack where he could, he didn’t leave the woods. He hunted in them, he brought his prey to the edges to be sorted. He returned home to his empty healers hut, with its dying herbs, and sat in in the darkness at night and failed to find sleep. Halo had been the light of his life, and he had lost her. He didn’t want… he didn’t want to go on without her. He didn’t want to go through the motions of living. But he had no choice, because he had children. They were a painful tether.

News reached him slowly, and he didn’t go out looking for it. But finally, it trickled down to him that Oleander had taken his mothers job in the pack. Bittersweet, joyful pain. Replaced. But he was proud of Ollie, even as he helped to erase her from this pack.

But that wasn’t all he heard. Oleander had gone and gotten himself a slave. It was an Armada practice that neither he nor Halo had ever agreed with. They weren’t the type to rock the boat, but they had silently disagreed. To hear that Ollie… what would his mother think?

He pulled himself out of the den, and made his way to the Col. leaving the words for the first time since the last Raid. He found Oleander's clinic, and made his way inside. The scent of fresh, living herbs assaulted his sensors. “Ollie, kiddo, do you have a minute?” his voice was scratchy from disuse


"Mortis Fatalis"