Ravensblood Forest Keep me caged, My downside locked away

Dakarai gathered Olive in his embrace and reciprocated her actions comforting actions. The mates laid there for some time, and as his heaving and sobs stilled, so did her heart. The sound and feeling of her kindred spirit so hurt and anxious was a crushing blow. It was a side she rarely saw, since Dakarai often kept his composure and faced adversity with an uncommon sense of hope. Olive hadn’t lied – Dakarai was strong, the strongest man she had ever known, able to come back from such travesty and abuse time and time again. But Olive didn’t want her husband to have to bounce back and recover as often as he had been forced to. The fae wanted him to have a carefree life, where friendships and intimacy abounded and Dakarai’s only concerns were how to balance his pack duties and spending time with his bouncy, wonderful half-blue-half-green eyed star children.  Perhaps that wasn’t entirely possible when a wolf like Olive was your wife, but they would surely try.

Olive still nurtured a small sense of doubt that Ceannasach would actually brutalize their family. He was a father himself, not only to a family she had only heard about in passing, but to the young warrior Chusi and the litter that grew within Lotte’s belly.  Surely a family man such as he understood the gravity of such a threat, right? But she remembered his anger at the borders and his continually unabated ire [evinced by their meeting with Kitsch when he ordered her to stand down].  Olive wanted to not believe him, wanted to trust in him… it was a chance that the mother was not willing to take, but their circumstance forced her to take such a risk and have faith that the family would eventually come around.

Time healed all wounds, but Olive wasn’t sure they had the luxury of time. It was the ultimate discomfort. Olive had never been forced to do a single thing in her life, especially not out of desperation, so the experience was quite foreign. Is this what motherhood would be like? Sacrificing her freedom of decision for the ultimate good of her family? It was a prospect that had not occurred to the woman until she was forced to go against her instincts out of pure desperation... but this was no longer about her. It was about them. “We will,” She spoke softly when Dakarai promised her a good life. “We already have.” Then, a dark paw was delicately placed on her belly and she couldn’t help but smile up at him, proud of what they created, no matter what their decision to reproduce would incur.

“Can you feel them, my love? They’re excited to meet you – I can tell by the way they dance whenever you are near.”