A Ballad of Sacrifice

Absinth met Aresenn's hardened gaze with a steely resolve, her eyes reflecting the fierce determination burning within him. Her ears twitched as the wind howled outside, a grim resolve settling over them both like an unspoken pact. The fuck was this situation? She had to do as she had said, take the punches as they came.

“Survival has always been the bare minimum,” She responded, her voice a low, icy whisper that cut through the tense silence. Her hackles rose slightly as she spoke, the tension evident in every fiber of her being. “We’re fighting for something beyond mere existence now. For them. All of them.” She glanced down at the pups, their fragile forms curled against the cold, her gaze softening momentarily.

Aresenn’s vow stirred something deep within her, igniting something within her she failed to label. She straightened, her posture exuding strength. It was her agreement. Her own, voiceless vow.

Her gaze locked onto his, intense and all-consuming. “Aresenn.” Her voice was firm, unwavering. “Blood means little to me. Bond does. They are mine.” It didn’t matter if she hated Aurelia; it didn’t matter at all. These babes were suckling on her, warming against her own pups. Hers. They were hers.

Awaiting her bird to deliver its message was an easy task, softened by her own prodding and lapping at the children at her teats. She checked each and every one of them, driven by motherly instinct to nurture their newborn lives.

When the brute, Rhazien, finally arrived, he was as decrepit as she recalled as he joked at the children’s expense. “Fucker,” She rumbled out, her tone filled with a sultry kind of hate as she nearly rose to face him – feeling the weight of the pups trying to keep warm against her urging her to settle back down. “You don't recognize your kin? Check your eyes, old man. Sephiran has killed his lovely Aurelia, and left his heirs motherless.” She grinned, a bitter, taunting thing. She met Aresenn's annoyed glance with her own smirk that teetered on the hate she felt for the older man. She was warning her fiery brute of the action that burned within her limbs. The fight.

She remained silent as Aresenn began to hiss out an explanation, her attention split between shooting Rhazien begrudging eyes and a softer look as she cared for a whining pup. Her heart was a battlefield, torn between the fierce protectiveness she felt for the pups and the simmering hatred she held for Rhazien and the chaos Sephiran had unleashed.

wormwood