Wheeling Gull Isle just you and the moon on my skin

 


Hemlock might have made him wait longer, protective as she was of the tiny things that she had brought into the world. If there was anyone she shouldn't have had to defend them from, it should have been Arturo, but she had been suspicious of her husband since they had left Lotte's grave. In the days since he had seemed different - this sharp and abrasive thing she was utterly unfamiliar with. Of course, she had not been present to see him in his grief, selfishly she had fled for vengeance so that she was not swallowed up and failed the pack. She still had, of course, but it had been in another way entirely. 

She looked him over in the moonlight, taken as she ever was by his appearance. Still full of roguish charm and the fire in his sun-kissed eyes, still strong enough to stand tall despite all that had come to pass in the mere week since their hearts had been broken. In that shared anguish Hemlock could only cling to whatever strength was left between them but at some points it still didn't feel like enough. She swallowed back the rush of words, as ineloquent as she tended to be, wordy, yes, but those weren't woven with the same care as Lotte's stories nor spoken with the skill of Arturo's tongue. She wanted to curl against him and yet she could not move, rooted for a time in the sands before she looked back to their children. She gives a brief nod, drawing back into the den and allowing him to follow her. 

She returns to her place coiled around them, wrapping her body to blot out any chill the night might have brought with her. The were so small, after all, and could not keep themselves warm but the kills that had been left for her she had stripped clean of fur to line the area that they slept upon. She would protect them as best as she could - even from those that she held dear. Hemlock ran her tongue across both children before she looked up to Arturo again. "You have a young son and daughter." His newest litter, despite the many he had sired before, and the unwitting last to truly bear Arturo's touch. It would be another even if Hemlock did not know - who looked upon them now with different eyes and a different being. 

Hemlock watched him closely and tried to take in his reaction. She did not know if in his grief he might break the darkness to grace them with a smile, or, if that time had come to pass, too. The darkness that had touched them had not receded in the light of the children's birth and they would bear too much of that pressure even if they did not know it.