Jade Fern Grove chafa

the days warmed; green mistings and the growth of leaves replaced snow. she found herself wishing to roam, to think of — perhaps not. glassblue eyes followed the trajectory of ducks on the wing, and she unthinkingly followed. dear ash star had given birth not long ago. it felt as though hers was not far off either. but this would reduce their hunters further, and she worried. ferns rising from wintersleep rustled against her ankles, and all on a whim she called out for @Akavir, wanting to sew back what had been broken before the next chapter of her life opened. and, perhaps, to solve a matter for them both.

the title tho, lmaooo

It wasn’t a call he expected.

There was a pause in his work—a blink. He looked to the horizon, his brows knit together in consideration, one paw hovering over the small weed that had only just sprouted in the garden of his ex-wife.

He had left the decision up to Arlette on what they were to do with it—and he could curse himself out for caring that Eshe’s hard work was beginning to show a lack of interest… at least while the creek wolves assembled themselves among other priorities.

He was coated in grime. Had it been one year ago from this time, he would have cared more—he would have wanted to be clean for the woman he had heart achingly fallen for. He wouldn’t have wanted to push dirt into the pale silver of her fur—marring it as he took her beneath him.

Now, her voice only elicited a sudden sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.

Partially tempted to send Arric to see what was so concerning to the Sharpfang of Riverclan, he considered it a moment. And then, with a chuff, he withdrew from his task—at least taking the time to brush some of the dirt from the inkjet of his fur before setting out to see what the woman he had assumed gone from his life forever could possibly want.

The sheen of sweat remained upon him even after his excursion. His pale champagne eyes cast warily upon the silver of her form—a form he had worshipped many a time.

His expression, though, remained unreadable as he stepped closer, blinking down to her—ignoring the pang in his chest at the missing limb.

“You rang?” It was sarcasm that came to the forefront—and he would be completely unapologetic about it, as he studied the woman who had become a stranger to him.

akavir did not need to be apologetic, or bend before her; that he had come at all surprised silvertongue, who stood watching him with blueglass eyes. they had both changed, she decided, and her far more than he. on first glance akavir seemed much the same, but as her silent contemplation went on, as she remembered the words arric had spoken, the woman felt she spied new and permanent exhaustion in akavir, deep pain, and of course, anger. always and in every way was he completely different from the shadowprince whom silvertongue had once known, but she saw now that she had been all too willing to transfer her desperate obsession to akavir, the warm gold of his eyes and rich darkness of his body enough to disconnect silvertongue at least in part from crowfeather. "in the desert, i found germanicus," she murmured, at last bringing herself a step further. "but i did not touch him. his — his children. they brought me down." and wren brought me back. she spared akavir the rest of it: her feverish toil, her hatred, her anguish, the adjustments she had been forced to make. there was dirt upon the creek man; she wished to bathe it from him, for she could not help the softness she bore for akavir. "i have come to tell you i failed. once in killing him, and secondly in abandoning all to find him." but her eyes asked why he had not come after her, why it had only been wren? and then eshe; he had chosen so swiftly. but why did she care? she could never have been that to him. silvertongue felt her chin trembling.

She spoke—and he found suddenly he couldn’t look at her. Had he been such a coward before? He didn’t think so. But the sound of her voice after months of not knowing—it was enough to make him want to go to his knees.

And he could not do that. She couldn’t see him break. Not anymore. The line between them had been drawn clearly upon his face—the scar across his eye given to her when she begged him to let her go.

And he thought he had. It had been almost six moons, now. To let her back in to his life… It would destroy him. He knew it. He could feel this, with every shift of the wind that brushed against his fur, stirring her scent over him, reminding him.

Germanicus.

He couldn’t hold back the sneer—Swiftcurrent Creek had cut ties with the wolves of the valleys and thus he held no knowledge of what had happened to the man. Apparently, though, he had children who had brought Silvertongue down.

He could not keep the disdain that dripped from him then—that she had wanted to die. “I assume this was after you made me leave you in a desert to die, then?”

Was this why she called him, now? To tell him she almost died after asking him to actually let her die?

She hadn’t needn’t gone after Germanicus. He would have done it for her. He would have tried to bring the entire world to its knees for her.

Her eyes might have sought his own—her chin may have trembled—but his searched the sky—to look at her would only relive that devastation.

her jawline tensed; she let it go; "si, akavir. after i made you leave me to die in the desert." and her eyes foughtfor his own, willing him to look back upon her, to allow them both the catharsis of such anguish. "germanicus humiliated me. he took the last dignities i possessed. i went mad, and in it, you grabbed me." she wet her lips, still vying for the eyes of the creek-man. "and i reacted in violence. i will not say i was out of my mind, akavir. i truly wanted to never see any of you again. the shame was too great, and forever i would have questioned why you — why you chose otherwise." for a while it had only been crowfeather between them, and silvertongue could abide this. but if akavir had ended their warmth due to disgust, she would not have been able to bear knowing. her throat tightened; "is there no hope of familiarity between us again?" the sharpfang asked, and though it was not a plead, the tone of it was solemn in its own way, despairing in soft windfall.

Germanicus, he spat the name, finally his eyes falling fmfo her own, expecting pain from such intimacy once more from her but only finding regret. He was nothing, Silvertongue. Nothing.

 Champagne gold met azure blue and he was unable to stop the surge of his form as he moved forward now, the distance between them rapidly disappearing as an Alpha wolf all but stalked his prey.

Chose otherwise for what, Silvertongue? I wanted you to choose life. I needed you to choose life because I loved you more than anything--more than my jealousy of Crowfeather and the way you loved him. More then-- But the words were torn from him-- her scent coming to him now and he could swear Wren now haunted him in this moment. Wren who made a promise and disappeared with the wind.

He stopped abruptly in front of her--eyes grazing her in a way that revealed he was more than familiar with her. The delightful curve of her hips--the arch or her nape and exactly the way she tasted like an addiction. His lip curled then. You forced me to watch a strange pack in the desert take you away to a supposed death that you wished for. What familiarity could you possibly want of me?

six months ago the lashing of the raven's anger against the stone of her heart might have broken the scant wall, reduced silvertongue to angered tears. and they did try to creep, burning her throat, stinging her eyes. but she would not give in, and stood hard and firm and resolute before him. "he was nothing to you," she breathed. "he did not take the same things from you. there is no way for you to understand why i wanted to kill him beyond everything else in the world. yes. even love." but she watched him now, searching the pained, enraged golden eyes; "i know about eshe," came her fernleaf whisper, poised as if to steal the man's very footing. but there was no rejoicing in her, and no pity. only understanding. "are you not exhausted by your anger? i have wronged you but i will not apologize for wanting the end of germanicus. nor what i lost." silvertongue gazed up at akavir. "i want to share with you again. i want to be for you at least in part what i was before. you are not alone!" she cried, at last softening somewhat, stricken.

His gaze bore into her—a gentlest shake of his muzzle at her exasperation—the haunting Germancius had put her through. “Of course I understand why you wanted to kill him more than anything. You didn’t have to do it alone. I would have—“ a growl let loose from his lips—were those tears on the cusp of brimming in her eyes?

It speared him, in that moment, and he quaked with the need to reach out and wipe them away before their salt could even taste the air.

And then Eshe was spoken—and his brow furrowed—but he did not step back. No, if anything, it drew him closer—his breath ruffling at the gracious curve of her features, his mouth idling closer to her ear. “What does Eshe have to do with anything, Silvertongue?”

Her words—a taunt to his heart because surely she didn’t mean in the way they had been before. Not with the soft and radiant curves of her pregnant form. Were they Crowfeather’s, once more? Jealousy was not a beast he dealt with often—but it surged in him now—did she not see?

“Do you even know why I was with her, Silver?” A hiss from his breath, his head bowing to hold her gaze with his own once more, needing her to see—how could she still not see?

i needed to do it! came the words to corrode her tongue, but then eshe was between them — where she had meant the argent woman to be. a boundaryline. again she wanted to speak, she matters because you are in pain, and again the words did not come, because his nearness galloped through her stomach; her pulse careened, and the children — her children, wren's children — kicked, tightening her jaw. his breath was warm upon her ear, a transparent wash along the side of her face. but she did not struggle a third time; her eyes burnt hotly up toward his own as she pulled away, stepping back. "do you know i do not care? do you know why? i will tell you; i will not let you wait, akavir," silvertongue darted along the trail of their conversation, defiant; "because she was not me. and because she was not me, i knew you would not let her be anyone to you." defiant! cruel! but there would exist only truths between them now, no matter how the knife-edge caught them both. akavir would not have hesitated for a moment had it been silvertongue coming to him in her time; she would not have had to ask. "but tell me all the same, cuervo, why you went home and chose immediately all the things you decided i could never give?" oh pain; oh; tears; she forced them back, and thought in desperation that she could return to wren in absolution and empty of the silver string which refused to be cut between her heart and the creek.

She knew.

Partial relief flooded him—for how could she not have seen he would have burned the world for her, if she so desired it? That the flame he carried for her to even do so could never burn an inferno for another—and yet the same defiance remained rooted in his grizzled features, for he would have given Eshe what she had wanted… if only she had been able to give him what he had wanted.

Just a tiny bit of fucking reassurance.

But he didn’t care to argue this—Eshe had torn his trust in so many ways—but his heartache was not for her. Not truly.

He braced himself from her demand—his eyes closing for a moment, his breath hissing out. But then they were open, knowing the intricacies of this moment and knowing he would have no more regrets—not when it came to the beautiful woman before him.

“Wouldn’t give, mo ghràdh,” he spoke, his tone quieting, then. “Not when your heart belongs to Crowfeather.”

The name was almost bitter on his tongue—his disgust of an otherwise kind soul only from the way she looked to him—as if the sun and moon rose and set upon him.

His gaze heatedly searched her rounding sides—the swell of life stirring a primal urge within him to pull her to a warm embrace—to soothe her. An urge he had to temper with logic—the right had never been his even before, and especially not now.

“I foolishly chose not to wait for you to see what I see. I chose a simpler path—one where it wasn’t supposed to matter to me the way you looked to him.” A path he wouldn’t have felt the guilt pull at him when Wren told him, again and again, that she was in love with the Sharpfang, also. A path where Eshe had looked to him as he had wanted—

An idiot’s path.

He inhaled sharply, trailing his muzzle down, never enough to truly graze her—and yet the very memory of her, still knowing exactly how she would feel and taste. And everything within him screaming that he shouldn't be here. Not if self preservation meant anything to him.

there came a rain that rose brilliant and brutal, and swept the grove and those therein; it was between these rivulets of water that silvertongue managed to say, "crowfeather no longer speaks to me." he had been there, for a moment, she told akavir, after the children of germanicus had been called off by their dog of a father; he had been there, her prince of shadows. and he had not moved to help her at first. and then he had offered to take her home, and she had begged to be his wife, and faded to her wounds. when she woke it was not he who was there, but coyotes. and so much of this was not something she had told even wren, for her wife — her wife — must be spared the voidlike hollowing of true knowledge. "i wanted it to be a dream. maybe it was. maybe he was never there, but i broke that night. it is true that i love him. it is certain i always will.  but i would never have commanded you give up the graveyard of love in your own heart, akavir." unfairness; fairness; it did not matter. she knew the fire in his gaze, knew what it heralded; she wanted him against all that was right and agreeable and even warranted — "he left. and you left, because i wanted you to leave. and wren found me. she removed the leg, she brought me to riverclan. she stayed with me there," and the glassblue eyes showed an insistence that akavir understand there was no other man for her save the way he himself had tied his heartstrings with her own; "we healed together. we became one. and when the time came, we sought men far from riverclan for one purpose." tears, slanting along the corner of her jawline; "still, do not ever believe for a moment i would not have come to you first, even after all that went on in the desert. but you had moved forward, and i wanted you to do it. for you."

There was a certain silence before the rain fell—the sweep of it similar in sound to the thrashing of a tide, and it matched the hammering rhythm of the man’s heartbeat. There was little to be said of her revelations of Crowfeather and his abandonment of her—his eyes remained riveted upon her, rain washing the sweta and dirt from him—pressing his gaze to narrowed slits… Or perhaps that was the news of Wren and her now known whereabouts.

It reeled him—this news. Not that the two were together—Wren had always insisted she had loved the silver dove. And Akavir had hardly blamed her—had disliked it, but all the same, he had not blamed her. In truth, he had carved his way to Eshe to help make room for the ex-Creek wolf… for her life had been undeniably miserable.

But hadn’t all of theirs?

And Wren’s promise had fallen short, as so many before her. She would not return to the creek, as she had said. Had not even bothered to let them know that she was well, after they had worried…

… And yet it was not surprising to the man that yet one more wolf in his life turned out to be untrustworthy.

The rain continued—his lip curled, and he moved forward then, curling near her, hovering next, but not touching—as if he could shield her from the angry surge of spring. “Come,” he growled out, taking this pause in what she had revealed to digest it.

To allow his heart to continue its sundering.

There, he would lead her to a hollow—a cavern in the depths of the grove he had found in his younger days. His more naive days—when his worries had been whether his parents would stay together or not.

He waited for her to duck in first to the cave—to spare her from getting sick when now, her sides swelled with the pride of life. And if there were tears upon his cheeks she would be none the wiser... for the rain had hidden it well.

a gargoyle perched on the dilapidated roof of an abandoned cathedral might have stirred more than akavir did then. she would have leapt in teethsome anger to her wife's defense had she known his thoughts, or sensed them. petrichor rose from his nightweave fur; his order scintillated beneath her skin and almost meekly she followed. and yes; when she looked up and toward him as she stepped into the slanting darkness of the aperture in the earth, she saw only rainwater sluicing upon him. desperate with propriety now, silvertongue wiped as much moisture from her fur as she was able and curled the flank nearest his with her moonbeam tail, a borderland. she would not speak again; her miseried eyes found the rain dripping from the trees above, and puddling the earth beyond; she watched wind bend the long grasses and saw, once, a skunk running for the cover of a mossed-in log. ears dismal in their planing, silvertongue waited, for this too, must pass. and silent she might have remained, had not one of those children kicked high beneath her ribcage, catching their mother with a surprised and unlovely grunt of pain.

Inward she swept—was that a flash from behind him, in the sky? Either so, or she was illuminated a moment as he realized he had lost her—as if again, except this time she did not brandish him with words and teeth, but with the announcement she and Wren were living their cozy life amongst the hollows. Both pregnant—the fathers an unknown mystery and unimportant to them.

He stole a moment—inhaling sharply—before stepping in as well. The curl of her tail acted a shield—a far cry from moons ago when instead of ensuring distance from him she would be in his arms.

Now, he placed his back to the cavern wall—head craning back, allowing the dampness of the stone to hold him for now as his eyes traced the crevices of stone and grime.

The rain outside was a symphony of tears—and if he could ever believe in the Goddess, he would consider that she wept for him now as the storm raged on.

Silvertongue remained silent—and then, a gasp of pain that drew him from his own—his form fleeting as he would initially begin to move toward her, and then halt abruptly, eyes searching her face.

Wife of another. He knew, if he touched her, she would brand him once more.

“Mo anam cara,” he murmured, the loss of her tracing each syllable as he rumbled lowly. “I have lost you… So why are you even here?”

Beseeching—the knowledge flitting between them as electrical as the storm outside. He knew she knew. She was meant to be with him—and him her. “You aren’t here demanding answers about Eshe, or worried that I’m lonely. You aren’t here to tell me of how happy you are, mated to Wren and pregnant.”

And then, his eyes traced her, and he drew forward—his soul be damned, his muzzle sweeping down to stare intently in her eyes, inches from slanting his lips to her own—to claim them as he once had before. “You aren’t here to just tell me that you would have come to me first in your heat if there was not something more. So tell me. Why are you here?”

perhaps part of the bleakest and most wonderful desire for a man was that one came to treasure time in their arms. silvertongue remembered how akavir had blotted her thoughts, riverclan, akashingo, everything; he would have eclipsed the sun for her had she even laughingly commanded it from him, and she wanted to lean against him now as the rain muted the land to watercolor hues and their warmth mingled in the space despite the fact she would not even allow herself to brush him this time. nothing he said was without merit, and drew from her a shivering answer. it was good, to waver beneath his eyes, to know she was safe to do so; to draw a breath that only shook because she allowed it to be heard. she could not bear the scintillating heat of that contact and its truth and its promise; she bowed under its great pull; "i came to — to ask if you wanted to join our homes together. but, akavir," and it hurt to breathe, to speak; "now i find the reason i came was to tell you i am going away from here, farther than i have ever been." the words galloped from silvertongue before she was able to rein them, but as she lifted her eyes to the raven once more, she knew it was true.

She breathed her words—leaving. She was leaving. Innately, he could feel the sense of a smirk barely press to the corner of his lips—bitterness, perhaps, but something with understanding: “Wren is asking you to leave. She will always run, Silvertongue,” he murmured—his words not unkind, and yet not hopeful for either woman’s future. Wren had wasted away within the creek only because of her inability to see her worth. If she was still running now?

She would only bring the Sharpfang down in her spiral.

But she had chosen. And while his lips hovered near, a final entreaty to her, because he knew… once she was gone this time, it would have to truly be the end. “So don’t go. Stay. With me.” His eyes, beseeching—a promise in them if she would only trust him. “I will raise them as my own, Silvertongue. I know you feel this, too. I know you know it was meant to be…”

but he was a man, and sometimes men only ever saw the backs of women as they turned to flee. silvertongue did not have the words to explain that they had fled to each other, run to each other; she did not think it was for akavir to know. his next words, his offer; they sundered her; laid her low. for a long moment she only stared in surprise and then a deep, burgeoning anguish. "should the price for this feeling be another broken heart? another broken family?" look how shadowpaw and stormpup had suffered. look how she herself had been taken to a heartless palace for such agonies shared in her own younger life. would he think she spoke of her own existence, or his? he asked more than silvertongue; he asked upheaval and shattering and wren's tears, enough, enough of which had been shed. the desire sparkled there — but it had never been their time. why should this moment be different? and why should he ask now? perhaps akavir did not see the curling tendrils of obsession in silvertongue when she spoke of wren; maybe he had only seen them in her words for crowfeather. did he know the difference? her heart ached; she refused to let tears fall; "let me go, akavir, for both of us." if she was lost to him, then let her truly be lost. a branch breaking. an ice flat cracking. a fire burning a swathe across a meadow. when she went home, crowfeather would be gone, akavir would be gone, and riverclan would be gone. that immediate dissolution of bonds — yes. for them both. she would run, finally. again. she would let herself follow in wrenflight. why not? 

Had he known her thoughts on men—the implications of them having women flee—he perhaps would have seen a side unseen to him before, for before, she had forced him to flee her. In recollection… Wren had also forced him to flee her—insisting he leave Silvertongue there, in the desolate sands.

To what...? Go back and gnaw her leg off like a damn rat? He would have stayed to fight the swarming wolves from her—Silvertongue had known this. It was why she had forced him from her. He should have thrown her over his back, taken her to a proper medic. She would have hated him for it, surely. But her health might not have become so dire. He could have lived with it.

It wasn't as if either scenario would see him get the girl.

The surprise she casts at him draws him away from her, already knowing what her answer would be. Resolute—did she not realize that a broken home would come when one partner stayed to spare the feelings of another?

A paw lifted to scrub at his face, and there, he leaned back against the support of the stoneface wall, his own features cemented as such. “We’ve made a lot of mistakes in the course of our time together,” he finally murmured to her, though his eyes once more trailed up the wall. “This is another one.”

But she had made her mind—just as she demanded him before to leave her to die—begged him to let her go and die—she told him to leave her be once more. Fool me once…

“To clarify, Silvertongue… You first said you came to find me because you didn’t want me to feel alone.” The words—a guise, he truly believed—had been spoken. “I’m not alone. I have my daughters. I have my brother. I have Arric and Arlette. I have a pack who are my family.”

Never, would he allow another to mistake him as alone. “So you can rest easy, knowing that.” Because that was the veil in which she sought him, had it not?

"then it will have to be a mistake, akavir." but her voice trembled as it filled the space, as she watched him resign himself; she felt the tearing between them as horribly as she might have felt, tooth to flesh; "to clarify, akavir, you came to tell me germanicus had told you — the things i did not, and the next thing i knew you were with eshe. as if i was — dirty to you. filthied. i came because in all those names you mentioned, you did not say a friend. a companion." arric and arlette would have children. the pack would move forward. akavir; he trapped himself. she wanted him to marry, even if it was some foolish lovesick girl, anything, anything to enrapture him from her. from them. anything to focus his heart upon pursuits which did not hurt them. the children moved, and she thought of wren, and her eyes misted with tears — "i came because i wanted — i wanted to find a way to be close to you. i came in selfishness," and the watery glassblue eyes found his with a fierce open look. let there be no secrets. if she did not leave now, she would fall into his arms, and she began to fidget, to move toward the drizzled doorway with great resistance winding each muscle. it would be the last time.

She moved—the soft shuffle of it drawing his attention, though he did not look to her. Not until she spoke of Germanicus—the implication of why she felt he had chosen Eshe. A scowl darkened his features and he straightened, jaw opening to say something—and then struck shut. “You think Germanicus changed my opinion of you?”

He let the statement hang there—pushing past the way she fell back and forth between trying to push him away and admitting to missing him—because that…

“If Germanicus changed how I looked at you at all it was that it showed me how resilient you are. Brave.” His eyes lingered to the swell of her stomach and he swallowed. “Loving.”

He released a shuddering breath—gutted. “I didn’t choose Eshe because of your past… I tried to have a relationship with Eshe because I knew you didn’t love me.”

"i did. you must understand what that looked like to me." and eshe — she pitied the woman who had come after her, dropped her head in shamed misery to speculate on what that must have been like for her, and for akavir as well. herself and wren had not come together under such circumstances, and for this she was deeply grateful. but even now she did her wife a disservice, for her heart had not let go of akavir and silvertongue was not sure it ever would. with no words to say, she inched her paw to his in the semi-darkness, daring to ask for something she had no right to request, a last touch she could carry with her wherever she ended up after this. something to guard, to nurture, to treasure, to hide. the slender throat worked with a swallow and she finally turned her glistening eyes on him. what else was there to say? "the valley is too filled with memories." not just for them, but of crowfeather too, and germanicus — akavir did not want to see her flee, but maybe he would feel fit to condone this flight.

His jaw flexed—no words came. She assumed him having cast her aside after the revelation of her true past—and he felt a pang within, that she believed him possible of that. He would have spoken as such—that she must have had an awfully low opinion of him to think it possible… but somehow, deep down, he didn’t believe that.

Yet, what did she even think when he insisted on returning her home from the desert? Had tried to save her, and she lunged at him, shrieking—wounding.

A brush of her warmth stirred him to focus. Her paw, barely grazing his—drawing his eyes sharp upon her features to try to study her, svelte frame limned against the dark grey of the rainstorm.

The valley is too full of memories, she said.

Was that her speaking, or Wren, who allowed her ghosts to haunt her? “Home is with those you love.”

A statement—simple enough. She had decided it was not with him, and his eyes fell now, staring to the cavern floor. Softly, then—trying to swallow the dryness in his throat, he wonders… “Can I listen to them, Silver? Feel them move?”

It was such an intimate request—but for one stolen moment, he could have wished the entirety of this had played out very differently.

there might have been yet another argument had she known his mind, silvertongue coming to flaring defense of the woman who had loved her through the madness. it was her own ghosts she wished to flee, or rather, she would make them into ghosts. the flesh-and-blood man spoke and involuntarily her paw jerked against his. there was no desire to stay in this valley. her heart was unravelling down its center. there could be two loves. there could not be two homes. for a stricken, desperate moment, silvertongue allowed herself the guilty imagining of a life with akavir: her children calling him father, the banded shadows of light and and darkness spreading over the creekland in the wintertime. akavir's arms about her each night. it was a beautiful dream. she woke from it with a shuddering sigh, a flicker of her eyes upon his as he asked for something she should not grant. "yes." and softly she shimmered beside him, to the floor of the cave, outstretched with the rising swell of her abdomen and its pinked readiness open to his eyes, and the intimacy of it sent a tremble racing through her figure.

Never in this universe should he have made the request—he couldn’t even fathom what he was thinking. But the words had spilled into the damp spring air and he waited with bated breath all the same—and she complied.

She complied, and the moment shifted—a surreality that hinted toward the dreams either would have had if fate had aligned differently—and for a moment, the roles had been placed to simply pretend.

So when she unfurled before him like a blossoming flower, his eyes softened upon the swell of her stomach and the vulnerability in her eyes. The rumble he made was barely held back—one of torment, perhaps—and he tipped his mouth down, placing the tenderest kiss to her rib cage—his head tilting to cup an ear to the life that lay within her.

And what a dream it would have been—that the faint movement he felt had been of his creation—something they had brought together to this world. His own dark frame lowered gently to the ground, an arm snaking to delicately hold her, his eyes closing for the exhalation of a sharp breath.

A year had changed so much for them—her last season, she had not wanted children… and he had. Until he had raised three without a mother—three yearlings who despised him. And everything had changed.

As he listened, he felt. The emotions within—the ache of knowing that this was only a veil. That once more he had not been enough.

“They will be beautiful,” he murmured softly, unable to resist from placing another loving kiss to her belly.

he gave all the things she had wanted from crowfeather, and silvertongue wept in silent silvered tears as she lay against akavir, the swell of her belly golden where he had caressed her. trembling, the thin paw rose; she touched the back of akavir's ears as he set another kiss against the rosy skin of her abdomen, slid her own stroke down over his strong shoulders. never would she forget; she would not allow herself to let the curve of the cavern-wall escape her mind, the rain falling beyond; she would never forget the way his arms were around her now, how he felt as if he could be the only father to the children moving beneath his adoring kiss. he gave all the things she had wanted from a man, all save those things she had come to fear in men; her flesh burned for him to blot them both out for a time, but she did not answer this; silvertongue lay beside akavir, hand still resting upon the back of his neck, and allowed herself a dreaming stillness of a world in which she had never discovered akashingo.