Stone Circle you make my heart beat like the rain

A tension he hadn't known he'd been holding in his chest suddenly released, and an odd twitch under his eye smoothed out at the same time. So he'd been right - there was something between them - and for better or for worse, he'd thrown open the door. But looking at her right then, he couldn't bring himself to regret it. He thought of Chemukh and the babies he'd lost and tried to feel that age-old sorrow, but it remained muted and grey at the back of his mind.

Poppy was warm and alive, and it was difficult to love the dead as much as the living. Murdock shuffled his old family off into a little box - he'd see them again one day - and finally closed the chapter on that part of his life. He'd thought for so long that he'd been over it, but a new feeling was filling his heart, and he realized now that he'd only been pretending, wallowing, lingering.

"So then we're mates," he said with a tiny grin, a little thrill going through his chest. Something inside him that had been out-of-sorts for as long as he could remember suddenly clicked back into place. "Should we celebrate or something?" he asked then. There'd been a week-long festival when he and Chemukh had wed. But that had been a different time with different wolves, and the alpha had just lost her daughter to the veil. Whatever celebration they might have would be just between the two of them, and Murdock couldn't think of anything better than a night under the stars; he and Poppy and a blood red moon.