Blackfoot Forest I sense a darkness in you...

@Slade Trying to push this plot along so Mel' can get back to BFW quickly. :P

 
She had seen that her stay in Bearclaw Valley was a short one. After resting for nearly five days, she found herself confronted by the angry leadership of the pack, someone who was not Kove. Who this Raziel was and where Kove was were two questions that flitted through her mind after their confrontation. She respected Raziel's wishes for her to leave, however, despite how low she held her regard for him. As soon as she could, the priestess gathered herself and left the borders of Bearclaw Valley, heading southwest. Heading home.
 
With what little strength she had, by nightfall the woman made it to a similarly foreboding and dark forest to her homeland. She wandered around for a bit, donning this forest's shadows as a cloak, though wearing it a bit haphazardly, looking for a place of repose. In place of the caws of ravens and crows, were the eerie calls of foxes. She could smell them everywhere, the little thieves. She knew they watched her as she wandered about, lacking the normal familiarity she had, even in an unknown place. They watched, and crept closer...

A barely audible 'whoosh' on the Queens left in the forest, and the fox that nearly grabbed her left hind, had lost its life with a muffled squeak, and an wet crunch. 

The shadow sire hid his volcanic stare from view, and kept silent track of the dark priestess and her undeterred pursuers through uncanny sound, alone.

He had to remain hidden, using her as a distraction, to lure the foxes out, and murder them. One by one. 
A pitter patter of tiny paws through the deceased trees, racing unknowingly past his statue form, but directly for her. 

Slade took a single full stretched leap, his left hind paw catching mongrel by the tail, and his right fore paw made purchase at the back of its neck, another sickening crack ringing throughout the land of death. 

The advancing fox on Meldresi's right stopped in its place, nose visibly twitching in the air, after the second death of its small rogue band. As idiotic as it's reason for existence, it halted its stalk of her, and came to investigate the scene where the Nightmare no longer was, but has clear view of, the grimy and desperate ingrate sniffing its former fellow attacker, now a potential meal. Just as it made up its mind to feast on the easy kill, Slade padded up to the oblivious fox, twin portals of Hell relevant in his eyes. 

A third and final grinding snap, followed by a moist thud, penetrated the air. 

Slade didn't bother licking the blood from his muzzle, for it would only fuel his thirst. A thirst for death. A desire for vengeance. As always, he would bide his time.
The Dark King had a mission to complete.

He took his time navigating through the well dead tree remnants, and soon got onto the travelers path, behind the cautious Queen. A few strides later, and he walked side by side with her.

She sensed the foxes around her from the start, knowing they would take the opportunity to strike a bedraggled old woman dragging her way through their forest. Her body was slightly tense, ready to fight back as many foxes as need be, but the sudden death cry of one of the vulpines made her relax. There was no need. Someone was there to help her.

By the swift, silent attacks, she knew it was no one else but a Dark Brother or Sister who had come to her aid. But who could it be? The Dark Priestess kept walking, seemingly ignoring the death and destruction behind her, but paid attention to each and every snap and crunch she heard. There were only three, one for each of her pursuers. She heard the wolf walking away, disappearing into the shadows of the woods before he eventually rejoined her at her side.

"Slade." It was moons since she had last seen him, the Dark King who had been one of the original members of the Dark Brotherhood. He had left a few months after her children were born, soon after a fight with Grimnir. His disappearance was a loss to her, he had introduced the shadowmark system that decorated the trees and stones of Blackfeather, and was one of the most talented assassins in Blackfeather. "What a timely arrival."

His noiseless steps continued, as he kept in time with her stride. This woman has captivated him once, and enhanced his view on the scale of beauty in life and death. The midnight murderer had killed in raw emotion, but now he saw the crime scene in a spectrum of vibrant colors, intense sounds, unhinged feeling. 
Giving her no eye contact, focusing on the surroundings, but speaking to her with his once familiar baritone voice, the low thunder as a speech manner that obeyed his every editation.

"Meldresi, what is the purpose of this?"

The obsidian brute had enough of his instincts shoving him to and fro of this female. Slade was having no plans of even returning to BlackFeather, not any. The damn imprint on his shoulder kept beckoning him from the farthest recesses of his mind. 
It was driving him sane. Literally, sane.

Meldresi's eyes flitted to Slade's side, barely seeing the faded red mark that she had placed onto his shoulder last winter. So it still remained, through all of these months? A small part of her was pleased with herself that she had made such a potent formula for dyeing fur, but there was a sense of melancholy as well. The Dark Brotherhood had faded from its initial glory. That was she left, to find answers to her predicament and find out why she had failed so far. Perhaps Mephala and Sithis sent Slade to her for a reason, not only to save her, but to send a message. She had no way of knowing for certain.

"I needed to find answers that I could not find in the Woods." The priestess paused nearby a hollow log, nearly empty, except for a few squeaks here and there. Mice or chipmunks, at best. "My return was delayed." She sat, graceful despite her emaciated look, her indigo eyes focused on the similarly obsidian wolf, her Dark Brother. "Did you happen upon me by chance, or did someone from the Woods send you?" She hoped that it was the latter more than the former. It would mean that the pack was still there, or at least someone she knew was still alive. The Night Queen had no idea of knowing what her precious Woods looked like.

Slade had a grim feeling of what had went and fell upon the once high now scraggly female that walked beside him. Yes, there was anger as well, but it was the anger fueled from past. Not present. He was still comming to terms of not being under her leadership.
And her being under someone elses.
Now that was something to be angry about.

"Your mate Alpha Burke sent me, while my nephew, Cry, told me where to pick you up from. They nothing of each other, but I knew of both of them. "

His face as unreadable as the uneven ground they tread on, he stared ahead, auds rotating to follow the various occasional scuttles and creature cries around them. 

"I must say, Meldresi, I had expected much better out of you, including your choice for Alpha. Burke obviously is one of the worst decisions you could have ever placed in category for such an important role. I pray to Sithis you have the Brotherhood under someone more fulfilling and less eager to spill pack secrets."

With that said, the Nightmare turned and focused his vivid gaze on her, intensely holding back the feelings he was so close to revealing to her in the precious time that she had once held his heart captive.

She was not surprised that Burke had made herself alpha in her absence; she had been gone for nearly a month, after all, and a pack should not be left without leadership for that long. The Night Queen did not ignore the disdain laced in the emphasis of Alpha before Burke's name. Slade disapproved then? If he thought he or someone else would be a better candidate, then he should have stayed in Blackfeather then.

The Queen did not recognize the name Cry, but she instantly thought of the black, snake-like wolf she had seen in Bearclaw, the one who drew the shadowmark. So he was related to Slade, and closer than she expected. A little plot already formed in her mind, but the Queen pushed it away, focusing on more important tasks ahead. "Ever since you left, Slade, the Dark Brotherhood and the pack have been in decline." Unbeknownst to her, the pack was regaining its strength with both Lusa's pups and five new recruits, three of which were being trained by Burke himself as spies. "Burke was the only one who stayed and worked to bring the pack back to life, as Beta. I never chose him to be my Alpha, for that matter. He only declared himself such as a cause of my long absence." Her eyes betrayed her indignation and disgust as she stared at the dark wolf, her voice coarse and cold as sea ice. "I do not like you criticizing my actions, Slade, after you left the pack without a word for nearly half a year. Perhaps things might have been different if you had stayed."

Slade stared at the female, his face traveling from her eyes to her maw, down to her chest, then the contact slowly snaked back to her own gems. 

"It is true, the fall of The Dark Brotherhood. Burke spoke much without speaking at all. He failed to realize how well I am on picking up things most do not."

A lingering gaze stayed on the ethereal beauty beside him, before he chose to continue walking. 
[size=large]Silent stroll in the ominous forest.[/size]

[size=large] She clearly had been disappointed by his uncalled departure, for the pack had been in glory as he were there, only for him to hear of its constant downfall. [/size]
[size=large]How has such has anything to do with his absence? [/size]
How could he have been the hope for darkness in the light she seemed to want shed?

Another stop. He turned and faced her, his voice disobeying his command to remain professional.

"You are mated to this man, Meldresi. Yet you had pups sired by another. I was there for you, passing hours of nocturnal bliss, I awaited the day for you to perhaps see the immensity and intensity in which I looked at you. However, the dawn broke, and with it, my stay at BlackFeather. I can see how my absence revoked right to anything dealing with your feelings, but for it to impact any ordeal with the Dark Brotherhood or glory of the pack? You may fool Burke with such nonsense, but I believe it is I who escort you back to your home, Dark Priestess."

Slade debated between walking again, only to speak to the ebony hellion again. 

"I have realized the consequences of leaving you BlackFeather, the Brotherhood, all unattended. I am here however, because of only one of those, and that is you, Meldresi. So as one who regrets their action, I will seek forgiveness for that one action. Not for the wolves I have killed not for the lies I have told, not for the things I have stolen. I apologize for leaving you, Meldresi. Will you forgive me?"

The brute cast her a gaze that told of his sorrow at the action, the commitment he had desired, only to leave, his inability to watch her birth and raise pups that were not his, him being forever unable to rule by her side, to only be second best. Never to be his, nor him to be hers.

Meldresi barely flickered as Slade's eyes ran down her body for a brief moment before dancing back up to meet her eyes. Meldresi had always known that the dark wolf had an attraction for her; most of the original wolves she let into Blackfeather did, after all. She wondered how he might have truly felt knowing that she was pregnant with Keith's children, and then became Burke's mate. She always wondered what Slade was thinking, to be quite honest.

She followed after him, matching his stride despite the strain and freezing in place when he did. So he finally admitted it, verbally. The priestess took the news unsurprisingly. She had known that he felt something for her — perhaps she had felt something for him, once — but she always wanted her courtiers to admit it first, to make the first move. He had made his move far too late.

"The Dark Brotherhood would not have been in such decline, because you could have done something to help. You and Bane needed no training to become assassins, but the recruits after you did. You could have stayed to help me train them." True anger, the kind that was kept locked under a tight mask for moons, began bubbling at the cracks created by her weakness. Meldresi started to lose her cold regality as her fangs bared slightly with contempt. They had both lost their professionalism, now. She snapped her mouth shut to listen to Slade, listening to the emotion that seeped into his words. The Night Queen softened, ever so slightly. She met his sorrowful eyes with blue fire that began to cool into embers. She spoke again, regaining her coolness. "I will begin to forgive you if you tell me why you left."

Could this man who had called himself fearless admit his fear he had gained while being a member of being in her pack? He swore off love, only recreating the feelings with more substantial drift in her direction. Slade was a hypocrite. An undeserving hypocrite. 

"I left because I was foolish enough to feel, Meldresi. It is feelings that make one like myself naive, and because of the feelings I had begun developing for you, I fled. You had Bane. If anything, I thought you were betrothed too the Ivory Warrior. I had observed him as I spoke of you inbetween our duties, and his demeanor moved as one who was mated. It was only to your name in which he acted of such. "

Slade turned from her, his shame unbridled, ill constrained, and bordering wrath at internal wills within himself. 
Dark auds flicking behind him, he shook his head, repeating himself.

"I was afraid."

Love. Some would claim it had no place in the Dark Brotherhood. Once, Meldresi might have agreed. That was before she had her children however. Watching them grow, encouraging them to become assassins, spies, and priests themselves, seeing how fiercely loyal they were to the Dark Brotherhood and the pack...love had its place in their society. Love meant trust, and sometimes, you needed to trust your fellow Brothers and Sisters.

"Afraid?" She repeated. Fear was something the Dark Brotherhood dished out constantly, keeping their enemies afraid and confused until the moment was right. Fear was what most Brothers and Sisters thought could never touch them, like Slade. But it was quite the opposite. Fear could be very helpful to the dealer. "Afraid of what? Afraid that your feelings would make you weak? Soft?" She encountered the same argument time and time again. "I am afraid all of the time, Slade. That does not stop me." Fear for her children, her pack, her mate. A fear that the north would not forget her, that they would sweep down from their taigas and slaughter them all in revenge. "Love can harden hearts as well as soften them. Yours very well could have done the former, Slade."  

He could risk his downfall on the topic of love, subjecting himself to its mercy. He could be that man who was snatched onto the honey trap, never to break free. But if such were to happen, would be be able to lead anything dealing with the Brotherhood?

Slade listened to Meldresi, his hellish state understanding her face, his auds her words. They made sense. Of course they did. And this woman had convinced on matters that made him scoff once. 
He understood.

After the ebony beauty had admitted her viewpoint, he remained silent. What was there he could say? Silence. Silence meant alot to him. 
His face was one of evident weighing of options, but it was clear his choice.
And he would indeed have to come back to BlackFeather.

I think it's about time to wrap this up. Last post?

Meldresi let out a gust of hot air after her spiel, her ears flattened on her head. A steady throb matching her heartbeat began to beat on her head, and if she had fingers, she might have rubbed them into her temples. Her eyes closed for a brief moment and when they opened again, she looked into Slade's eyes. And she saw many things conveyed without words.

He would come back.

Of course he would. Where else would he go?

With a flick of her head, Meldresi gestured the dark wolf onward, deeper into the forest. They would camp here in this forest tonight, and within a few days' time, they would be back in Blackfeather Woods. If it still stood.