Hushed Willows [festival] if my heart were a turntable

You didn't need me. It was odd to hear something like this for someone like Charon, who, despite his aggressive outlook on some of the wolves that'd left his pack, was really just an insecure little boy who felt thoroughly unloved and therefore snapped at those who left so that it was their fault and not his. He frowned, as he had never even considered this at all. It wasn't up to you to decide whether you were needed. You promised, he said. That you would serve us until we released you. You only asked for leave. I expected... Well, better, he supposed. In Charon's eyes, Gannet had been needed because he had not heard otherwise. It wasn't up to him to decide otherwise, because he had been a thrall. But like Althaia, he had left. Maybe, Charon thought, he should have raised his children with more understanding of the ranks in life. Maybe Hydra was the one who had given Gannet the wrong idea.

More words lingered on the tip of Charon's tongue, but he found them altogether too hard to say. I thought we were friends, he thought idly to himself, but he couldn't get himself to say them. Because it was so very clear that Gannet did not feel the same way. Perhaps 'friends' was an odd thing to be with a thrall when you were Alpha, and perhaps that was why he was thwacked in the nose with this lesson by his ancestors, Charon thought to himself. But for as much as it was possible for an Alpha to be friends with a thrall, Gannet had been Charon's friend.