Bearclaw Valley lionizing

avicus was looking to her mother —
merrick stared at her as well, likewise, before gaze fell back to the rampant violence of the bruin-jaw, meted and whetted upon the flesh of his sister.
a roar of rage, impotent in the face of it; merrick jerked away. aventus was not ready to listen to reason, but both of them squabbled in disservice to ursus, and only one would prevail this day.
but the bruin-witch refused to entertain this. to yank one from the other would be to choose; to banish them both would mean the fall of the valley.
he looked hard toward his ravenqueen. not quite a moon since their fevered twisting in the ruins of easthollow, and he set his eye upon the lines of her, searching, searching, as their cries and snarls and scratchings — as his children ended this chapter of ursus with their inability to be as fervent as he had meant them.
torchglow finding the hardened indigo fire of her own. there was no point to intervening. he had invoked the name of death upon their house and it had not halted aventus.
but he would not watch; he would not give this a trial; he gestured that vesta should come and silently looked to the corvid before following — their children had betrayed the bear, who was more than all of them.
salvageable, yes, but not until they had gone out and been humbled, and in the interim —
ursus would open another book.
merrick was gone, and only the silent seethe of his blackfeather bride would humble him now.