The Betrayal Knows My Name

Walk | Talk | Think

Hurt and hate burned in her chest, making each step she took away from her husband and the woman who had wronged her more resolute than the last. In her mind, she had been in the right; Destruction had failed to fulfill her duty as godmother to her children, regardless of the slight she had given to her friendship with Bane and Tahlia, and therefore she was hardly qualified to keep the title any longer than she already had. It would have been better suited for someone who would keep their word, someone who would ensure the safety and well being of her pups. Of course, vanity and pride played into it. The partially blind woman could never had allowed the slight to her children to go without repercussions.

It had just never occurred to her that she would have repercussions of her own to answer to. She heard Bane walking behind her, thought he might have intended to slow her down, talk her out of the judgment she had given, but stubbornness made her ignore any thought of it, to keep walking forward and not turn back. He could try to stop her, but-- But she had only expected words, her ears even primed backward to catch them. The sharp pull on her tail as he took it roughly between his jaws while she continued to walk nearly tripped her, and as he grabbed her, forcing the weight of his body over her, she did stumble, failed to catch herself, and fell under him.

She was too shocked at first to properly react - never before had he lashed out at her in anger, and honestly she never would have thought him capable of it. But for the first time, as he set his paw upon her muzzle, keeping her head pressed against the ground, and dropped his muzzle so that there was no missing the way he bared his teeth as he growled at her, Tahlia felt fear. She squirmed, tried to move enough to get her feet under her or between them, but he had her pinned. She could go nowhere, move nowhere, so long as he pressed down on her. It was a new type of vulnerability she had never experienced before, and without any idea of what Bane's anger could be like she was frightened.

He lectured her, berated her, in snarls and growls that made her body shake, each punctuation of his words eliciting flinches from the vain woman as she clenched her eyes closed. If he intended to snap at her, to lash out with more violence, then she did not want to see it coming. But the countering statements he gave to Destruction's current position, her courage in coming to face them despite everything against her, things that Tahlia had failed to take into account in her own rage, were nothing compared to the punishments, the threats, he left her with. Would he? At any other time she would have said with certainty no. Bane was always sweet, always gentle, always so loving to her. But now...

She was full of so much uncertainty, felt so humiliated, so afraid, that she could not hold back the tears that were filling her closed eyes, though just by a tenuous thread of self control did she stop herself from crying outright. But it was only made worse when another voice spoke up in her defense, the last one she would have expected. Destruction had been able to hear everything, see everything, that had transpired between herself and Bane and yet despite all the hurtful things Tahlia had said to her she was intervening on her behalf. Unbidden, Tahlia sobbed, renewing her efforts to get away with more determination and fight. It took considerable effort, and perhaps a little distraction on Bane's part courtesy of Destruction, but she managed to scramble away from him, crawling to her paws and then a distance away. Her watery eyes, sightless and seeing alike, were downcast shamefully, unable to look at either of them, as she hastily broke into a run to get as far away from everything that had happened here before her strength gave out on her and the weight of everything brought her down.

-Exit Tahlia-