Alastor didn't know what to do with himself. After being spurned from being at her side by Relm and banished from the medical den by Irilyth, the demon wolf had bided his time outside waiting for word on his paramour's condition or what had happened with their unborn pups, but when he received nothing and was turned away again, he didn't know what to do. After storming off, Alastor had paced Alias Island, walking the perimeter of its shores three times before the repetitive circuit just drove him mad and he wound up heading into the mountains, where he had found and slaughtered a mated pair of cougars just for the hell of it. The bodies were little more than masses of torn flesh and sinew when he was done with them, completely unidentifiable as big cats. It had left the wolf covered in blood and with more than a few slashes on his body, but nothing that wouldn't heal.

Sufficiently exhausted from his murder, Alastor trudged down the winding mountain paths as the sun began to set into the darkening twilight, arriving at his family's den just as night was falling. He lumbered into the cave, his body feeling heavy from physical and emotional fatigue. His mind, however, was still racing with a thousand thoughts. Relm, their children, his children... Unplanned and yet not unloved. He hadn't gotten a chance to process or understand what was happening before it was done. And then their mother, cold and calloused to send him away... She had denied him his right to be there for his pups when they lost their lives, refused him the chance to be supportive for his own atonement. How dare she. Alastor was clearly in a dour mood when he returned home, his face sullen and scowling while he headed straight for the shelves stocked with wines and liquors Elysium had acquired through trade. He didn't notice if Manea or anyone else was home yet, he was so engrossed in his thoughts. Giant paws grabbed the closest bottle of something brown and smelling strong proofed, then immediately downed a deep gulp, letting the burn eat away at his pain.

"Alastor Mendacium"

Manea followed the path that lead her up through the mountains to their cave as the sun set toward the horizon, quickly darkening the world around her. It seemed there was never enough time in the day to accomplish everything the pack needed, but she had been really focusing in on the pack over the last little bit to make up for the extra strain she had unintentionally put on Avacyn in the time that she had stepped away in the grief of her fall out with Alastor. Yes, Avacyn was old enough now to be taking on more responsibility, but her daughter also had her own things to sort through now that Albion was in the pack and she was trying to navigate the murky waters of the relationships she wished to have. It was the least she could do to give Avacyn a string of days to herself to get caught up on her personal life before they got back to their usual routines. It just meant that by the time she was getting back to their den she was very much ready to rest and relax with Alastor.

As she neared the cave, however, the hint of blood on the air made her worry flare and her attention immediately go on high alert, her steps picking up speed until she was trotting quickly up the path toward their cave, the scent only growing stronger as she made it up to the clearing in front of their home. It certainly wasn't the first time Alastor had come home covered in blood and scratches for whatever reason, but as she rounded the corner she could immediately tell that something was very wrong. "Alastor?" she questioned with concern as she went across the main chamber to where he was currently downing a bottle of strong liquor, clearly just coming home from fighting and killing out his anger as he tended to do. "Alastor, what happened?" she asked as he put a paw on his shoulder to get him to turn toward her, wondering to herself if she should take the bottle away from him now before he got too far gone.

Manea | Temno | Ciemny

Alastor heard paws entering the den, but he did not turn to greet whoever had come home. He was drowning in his thoughts and his emotional turbulence, drinking swallow after swallow of high proof liquor until he felt the burn melt away the anger and pain and upset. Manea's voice cut through the silence. So it was his wife who had come home. Alastor didn't turn to address her. She spoke his name again and asked what was wrong. Again he did not respond. How could he? What would he tell her? He didn't want to speak the painful truth, let alone think about it. A large paw rested on his shoulder, urging him gently to turn around. That was when he finally relented, turning his head but not his body to regard his mate with a blank expression, but deep in his black eyes a violent and painful storm raged.

After looking at Manea for a long moment, Alastor lifted the bottle of bourbon back to his lips and swallowed again. He wasn't drunk yet, but he was starting to feel the punch of the alcohol in his brain. He could still remember though. He could still remember and he desperately did not want to. The bottle that had been full was now half empty. Alastor set the bottle down with a hard clink of glass on stone and turned his face away from Manea. Ashamed? Maybe. Protecting her from what he had inadvertently done with Relm? Also possible. "Relm was pregnant," he muttered under his breath, gemstone claws scratching restlessly at the stone floor of their den. "She just had a miscarriage. Irilyth's looking after her."

"Alastor Mendacium"

Manea finally got some kind of reaction from Alastor and got him to acknowledge her presence as her paw rested on his shoulder. He didn't turn to face her, but he at least lifted his gaze to meet hers for a moment. She knew his expression well and could read the emotion in it that others might miss and the pain he was feeling was easy for her to see past the distant expression he tried to wear. Dread settled like a heavy weight in her gut as she tried and failed to guess what could have happened to cause this kind of reaction from him. Alastor cared about very few things deeply enough to be effected this badly by it and her thoughts immediately started to race, wondering if something had happened to one of their children or to Kichi or Ikigai—but just has her thoughts turned to Relm she finally got her answer. His gaze turned back away from hers as he sat the bottle he was drinking from down with a clink of glass on stone and he uttered the words she had genuinely hoped to never hear him say. Relm was pregnant.

At first a flash of utter disbelief and anger hit her and her paw began to pull away from his shoulder until her mind replayed the words back again. Relm was pregnant. It felt too intentional for him to say that in the past tense for it to be a slip of the tongue. That made Manea pause, her eyes trained on his face as she waited for him to elaborate and forcing herself to listen at least long enough to get the whole story. As he explained further, saying that Relm had suffered a miscarriage, she understood. There was a feeling of relief that she quickly pushed away over the fact that she wouldn't be forced to kill her husband's bastards, but she knew that this was not going to be of any comfort to Alastor in his current grief. Her savage demon had one true soft spot and that was for pups—especially his own—which was why this possibility had always haunted her so. She never wanted to see him suffer like this even if there was technically a law broken. There was no sense of justice here, no thought of wanting this to be a lesson for him and Relm. She only wanted to ease his pain.

"Alastor..." she managed quietly after a moment, her ears folding back with sympathy and sorrow etching deeper into her features. She didn't know if there was really anything she could say that could make this situation any less terrible for him, but she had to at least attempt to comfort him where she could. She attempted to try and slip her paw around his broad shoulders, wanting to pull him into her and pull his head into her chest if he let her, but if not she would just embrace her husband instead. "I'm so sorry," she told him genuinely. Maybe it would be an unexpected reaction from her given the situation, but it was what felt right. After a moment of thought she realized he had said that Irilyth was tending to Relm and confusion crossed her features as she asked, "Why are you here? Why aren't you with her? If it's because I wanted you back here at night you don't have to keep to that right now. You can go be with her."

Manea | Temno | Ciemny

Alastor hadn't expected sympathy from Manea. He hadn't expected anything from her, if he was being honest. He knew a law had been broken—the one most paramount to the Mendacium beliefs—and he knew the consequences of breaking that law. It had not been intentional, and while he might not have done anything to actively prevent the failed pregnancy Relm had suffered, he had not taken any steps into ensuring it came to be either. He had not intended to knock up Relm, nor to father bastard children with her. It had simply happened—and just as simply it had been undone. Alastor knew Manea detested Relm, didn't trust her, and this would only serve to further that conviction. But right now Alastor didn't care. Quite frankly, he didn't give a damn. He had sired pups, wanted or unwanted, and he had lost them. But worse, he hadn't been permitted to be a part of their meager existence in this gods damned world. He hadn't been there to comfort Relm as she birthed their children, hadn't been there as they perished, hadn't been given the opportunity to grieve or help bury them. Hell, he didn't even know what was being done with the corpses! What sort of father lost children and didn't even know what became of them?! All because Relm had scorned him, demanded he leave, forced the whore bitch his wife used like a sex toy to drive him away!

Manea hesitated in her reaction, and Alastor was looking away when the rage passed over her visage. He did hear her soft-spoken words saying his name, however he did not turn to face her. Empty black eyes just stared into space, body caught somewhere between tensed in fury and slumped in defeat. His mate's large tiger paws slid over his shoulders and he did not resist her touch pulling him down into an embrace, cradling his thick head into her fluffy chest. Alastor let the familiar comfort and warmth of Manea surround him, blank eyes starting to mist over while she caressed the back of his head. Manea offered him sympathy, but Alastor gave no response. Sympathy did nothing for him. It was nothing against Manea, but the entire concept was so ludicrous to him. Why be sorry for an outcome she would have wanted anyway? Alastor wasn't sorry for himself. He deserved this. Manea had nothing to feel sorry for either.

After a beat, Manea asked why he was here instead of with Relm. A hard, broken laugh left Alastor, his body jerking with the reaction as the demented grin of the old Alastor slowly crept its way over his muzzle. Yes, why wasn't he with Relm indeed? The single laugh soon had a twin, and then another, and then Alastor was fully laughing like a madman. The pain in his voice cut through the sound that normally would have been a positive thing. This was the laugh of a damaged mind once more exposed to the trauma that had shattered it in the first place. "She doesn't want to see me," he replied with an incredulous inflection, as if he couldn't believe his own words. "She demanded I leave and then had your golden bitch kick me out and not let me back in." Alastor would have his revenge against Irilyth eventually. The bitch had it coming to her for the mistake she'd made. "They wouldn't let me be there for them. They wouldn't let me see them. I didn't get to mourn them or bury them or even know how many there were. How many sons or daughters. I got driven off like a cur." Alastor laughed and laughed, the tears spilling from black eyes to cut down ebony cheeks and splatter against the stone floor. All he had ever wanted in his life was to be the kind of father his own sire had failed to be. Thanks to Relm and Irilyth, he had been denied that chance.

"Alastor Mendacium"

Manea held Alastor's head to her chest, continuing to stroke over the back of his head as she cradled him against her neck even as she felt the tense and jerk of his muscles at the mention of Relm and her questioning for why he hadn't stayed with her when he found out about the loss of his children. It was far from the first time that she had witnessed Alastor's mental breaks, the psychotic nature of his broken mind filtering to the surface, but it still just reminded her of just how deeply all of this cut him. She had already known that if this eventuality ever came to pass it wouldn't go well, but this just cemented that fact as she listened to the deranged, pained laughter that bubbled from her mate. She didn't move away from him, still keeping him close as he explained what had led him to being here in this moment. When he told her that Relm had sent him away, using Irilyth to keep him out of the den as she went through her miscarriage, her eyes widened with her own disbelief, almost wondering if his grief stricken mind was twisting the turn of events to make this half truth she was hearing. She couldn't imagine Relm ever forcing Alastor away, nor could she imagine Irilyth standing up to Alastor like that—and yet here he was, laughing like a mad man and telling her how the two women wouldn't allow him to see his perished children.

No matter how broken he was in this moment, she knew that he would have done nearly anything to be with his children in their last moments. It did occur to her the very strong possibility that there wasn't actually corpses for him to say his goodbyes to. The possibility that Relm had actually forced him away to keep him from seeing the remains of what would have been their pups was at the back of her mind, but she knew that knowledge wouldn't ease his pain. He would have wanted to be there regardless because he did actually care for Relm. Why he did she'd never know, but he did and that was a fact she had come to accept. He would want to be there for this wolf he cared for and the pups that he had sired regardless of their eventual fate—and that was something that Relm had callously refused him. Her ears flicked and she squeezed him a bit tighter, her teeth gritting together with a protectiveness for her heartbroken husband and an anger toward his mistress that had allowed this to happen.

A slow sigh passed her lips as she sat her anger gently to the side, not allowing herself to think about her own feelings in this moment. There would be plenty of time for that once she helped Alastor regain some kind of grip. She glanced up at the near by shelves of supplies where Alastor had pulled down the bottle of alcohol from. Up above that shelf of more general supplies was a couple of vials of the medicine that Irilyth had come up with long ago to help keep Alastor from completely loosing himself. Manea tried to not resort to those drugs unless he really needed them, but in this case it felt like it would be more of a relief for him than anything to quiet these wild, tumultuous emotions. She gently lifted him from her shoulder, finding his gaze for a moment before reaching up for the vial and pulling the stopper free with her teeth for him. In her expression he would be able to see the barely restrained cold fury, but also the concern and love for this fractured man she called her own.

She brought the vial to his lips, telling him, "Take it." It wasn't a question or a request, but a command. It wasn't all that often that Manea forced Alastor to do anything or pulled any sort of dominance or power outside of their sexual antics, but in this case she was doing something for his own good that he might refuse otherwise. Only once he had taken the medicine did she set the vial down again and lift her paws to his cheeks, gently stroking away the tears that dampened his dark cheeks, searching his obsidian gaze with her aqua eyes. "Do you want me to go back to them with you? Demand that Irilyth let you in to see Relm? To tell you where they're buried? Do you want me to go mourn with you?" She joined him in his anger, felt his loss and his mourning, took on his heaviest loss so that he wouldn't have to face it alone. She knew this likely wasn't what he would have expected from her, but with every misstep their bond only grew stronger. He had seen her through her lowest points and so it was up to her to do the same.

Manea | Temno | Ciemny

Alastor was too lost in his swirling maelstrom of rage and sorrow and hurt to really notice anything going on around him. He was vaguely aware of Manea's presence surrounding him, trying to comfort him and soothe the pain, but it was far too late for that. The fissures in his mind were breaking open, a rift that could never be fully closed—just held together as best they could. Right now, those fragile tethers keeping his sanity were fraying fast, almost broken completely. Alastor was clinging on to sensibility by a thread. One good push and he would come unwound at the seams. He wasn't aware of Manea moving or shifting, empty abyssal eyes staring blankly into space while violent and frenzied thoughts raged around inside his fractured brain like a hurricane. It wasn't until he felt the cool edge of the glass vial press up to his lips did Alastor realize he was being told to drink something. He blinked and furrowed his brow, gazing down at the liquid in the bottle before his face.

His lips curled back from sharp fangs in a silent growl, sneering at the medicine. When Manea demanded he drink it, Alastor snarled and slammed his paw down on the ground, shattering the bottle in his grasp into the rock. The flash of pain and sting of alcohol in the fresh cuts on his pads helped to reel his struggling mind back together just enough for Alastor to feel like he had any kind of control. In that brief moment of clarity, he took the bottle from Manea and downed the contents in one big gulp, gripping to the vial so hard it began to crack but didn't shatter just yet. Manea was swift to relieve him of the breaking glass, setting the vial aside so he couldn't cause any more damage or harm. Alastor tried to just breathe, but even breathing hurt right now. Thinking hurt his head, breathing hurt his chest, existing just hurt everything. The gentle rub of soft paw pads over his cheeks made him look up, meeting Manea's eyes while she wiped his furious tears away. He hadn't expected her to be so sympathetic to his pain. Manea was proving yet again why he had taken her as his mate.

His violet queen offered to go with him to see Relm and Irilyth. Alastor shook his head. "No. I have no desire to see either of them." He glanced away from Manea, ashamed for having to involve her in this catastrophe of a mess. "I would not ask you to come with me or mourn for pups you have no ties to. I doubt either of them will tell you anything anyways." He knew Relm would be tightlipped about the entire matter, pretending like it never happened. Irilyth might break, but given how she'd stood up to him, maybe she wouldn't. Maybe the golden bitch would remain silent in solidarity with Relm, if she knew anything at all. Relm would likely have disposed of the remains herself. That left Alastor alone in the dark and uncertainty. This was his kingdom come; his penance for the sins he'd committed. It was what he deserved.

In the wake of his rage, Alastor just looked exhausted and broken. The medicine was kicking in, and with his fury and adrenaline subdued, all that remained was emotional and mental fatigue. His eyes were glassy and heavy, his shoulders slumped. The sting in his paw made him glance down at it again, seeking the shards of glass sparkling where they had embedded in his paw pads. He lifted his paw and inspected it, turning it this way and that while rivulets of blood trickled down between his digits. Funny, it hurt more in the aftermath than it did in the moment. He suspected this loss would be much the same way.

"Alastor Mendacium"

It did sometimes feel as though she was in an ever present battle with Alastor to keep him from destroying himself and at times the constant destruction and struggle to help guide him in the right direction was tiring, but he was worth it. He was worth forcing to take the medicine that would help him and he was worth dodging the shrapnel of broken glass and the splatters of liquor as he smashed the bottle he had been holding, he was worth prying the empty vial away from him to keep him from shattering that as well. Whatever he needed from her, she was willing to do it for him because of this deep, unfathomable love she had for this fractured, broken brute. She did look to his injured paw with a bit of lamenting at the fact that he certainly wouldn't let Irilyth treat him now so the easiest form of treatment was now out of reach. She didn't want to bother Ikigai this late, but if the cuts turned out to be deep enough to warrant it she might have to.

As she made her offers for ways she could help, he denied having any desire to see either Relm or Irilyth. That at least she could understand, though she did want to give him the option just in case he still had an interest in confronting them about this himself with her there to back him up. She had yet to decide how far she would pursue this on her own, but she knew she would in one way or another. A frown pulled across her lips as he looked away from her, his expression hard to read but undoubtedly seeing the shame he carried. She was quiet as he expressed how he would never ask her to mourn these pups that she had no tie to and his doubt that Relm or Irilyth would tell her anything if she were to ask. Her paws trailed down from his cheeks to his shoulders as he spoke, feeling his muscles as they began to loosen and his shoulders slump as the strong medicines began to take effect. She glanced down at his injured paw with him, watching the rivulets of blood move between his paws as well while she gathered her own thoughts.

Her paws shifted from his shoulders to gently take his paw between her own, holding it still while she began to carefully remove each piece of glass, continuing to tend to her husband in the time when she felt that he needed her most. "You are a Mendacium and my soul mate," she told him quietly as she worked, glancing up toward his face occasionally to make sure he was listening. "By blood or not, those pups were my family as much as they were yours. That is all the tie I need to mourn them with you—regardless of what their fate would have ultimately been had they lived. Your pain is my pain. If you mourn so will I." She removed the last piece of glass from his paw pads and glanced up at the shelves, grabbing a rag that was folded up there to wrap it around his paw to at least keep it from getting dirty or dripping blood around the den until morning. She wrapped his paw and tied the corners of the rag together, deciding that was as good as it was going to get for the time being.

She sighed and released his paw, bringing his gaze back to hers with a cold, stern, assuredness lingering there as she added, "Also, do not doubt what I could get from Irilyth and Relm." While she did not want to bring harm to the woman she loved, if it was for the sake of bringing her mate any peace of mind or closure she would do what she had to. As for Relm... The woman had been notably submissive to her since she joined the pack and Manea doubted that this would be any different. She would not have the same regret over having to force anything from Relm if it came to that as she would Irilyth. Her expression softened again as she took in the exhaustion that was coming to the surface now that the drugs had taken effect, her paw reaching up to his cheek again as she leaned up to press a gentle kiss to his forehead. "Come on... We can figure this out in the morning," she assured him, standing once more and making him walk with her to their bedroom, getting him to settle on the furs before she joined him, making sure to position herself between him and the door just in case he woke up with any ideas. She kissed across his ears, whispering, "Get some rest, love."

Manea | Temno | Ciemny