Verdant Basin you are the sun and i am just the planets spinning around you.

Niamh couldn't help but feel proud, when Artaax looked at her the way that he did. It wasn't as though she needed a confidence boost on a regular basis, but at this point in her life, having lost both her mate and her rank (regardless of the fact that both had been lost because of her own foolishness), having someone look at her as though she meant the world to them meant everything to her. Artaax didn't know anything about Colt, about her demotion, about any of that. He'd never seen her as weak as she'd been when she'd selfishly tried to take care of Screech herself, or how needlessly mean she'd been toward Ceara. With Artaax, she was someone new- someone she herself admired, and wanted to be. It created sort of an illusion of a life she could possibly have lived- and could possibly live yet, and hedonistically, she drank it in like a lush. 

How had she earned the admiration of a wolf like him? She gazed at him with an amorous fondness that she had spared only for Colt before- but something else had awakened in Niamh, now that she was captivated by the illusion that she was someone completely different. This new Niamh wanted nothing but Artaax by her side, and the wilderness at her back, so they could roam together as king and queen. She wanted to rule alongside him, and envisioned a life where she would never be without power and admiration, so long as she held his mismatched gaze. Nothing could stop them- nothing could ever tear them down.