Deepwood Weald the birds and the bees and the cigarette trees

Private for @Arturo, tagging for reference.

NOTE: Each of the traveling threads is a day apart. ♥ This is day four, March 24, 2017. Shinhwa’s nineteenth anniversary!

Wary of the feral Cathán’s snapping jaws, Lotte chuffs softly to rouse Declan before touching her nose lightly to the cusp of one burnished ebony shoulder. She says nothing, turning instead to @Conan to brush the bridge of her muzzle against the honeyed velveteen of his cheek. As the three of them exchange scents, layering spice upon spice to strengthen and diversify the united scent of the Family, her coal-capped tail whisks with wolfish satisfaction. “Next sentries,” she whispers, not that the brothers need to be told. They are reliable and steadfast, familiar with the workings of Teaghlaigh and the discipline required to ascend its ranks. Lotte has forgiven them for bringing August along, deciding that the cowed female will be largely their responsibility. Banríon has little energy to spare on rehabilitating the shy and submissive waif, concerned as she is with the wellbeing of her pack and her children. Her focus is fiercely narrowed, mercilessly honed to the bare instinct of survival and the ticking time bomb that is her pregnancy.

After a beat, Lotte remembers that Arturo is waiting for her — there, at the edge of the weald, with concern in his hellfire eyes and weariness pulling taut the handsome angles and planes of his face. Like Declan and Conan, the masked leaders always patrol as a matched set; but inseparable as they are, Lotte feels as though she hasn’t seen her mate clearly for days. Traveling has been a miserable experience for the young mother-to-be — an increase in nausea and cramping has plagued her over the past week, and although the queasiness seems to have ebbed away and abated, the cramps are only worsening. The mischievous glint in her argent eyes belies her weariness and pain, and she flashes the Fearghal a dazzling smile as she sidles suggestively past him, the swell of her abdomen pressing against his svelte, reassuring warmth.

Sinuously, she threads her way through the spindly trees and fussily shreds the ferns beneath her feet; the instinctive urge to nest grows stronger and stronger, and it is frustrating to her on a deep-seated level that nothing feels safe or familiar or right. A whine tangles in her throat, the mask of competence, confidence, and calm falling away as she looks to Arturo with an intense expression of desperation. “Turo,” she hiccups softly, slipping to the ground and curling her tail around herself as she turns to her abdomen and grooms the thinning hair there. She realizes now that she could never have traveled with Arturo to see the new territory and forgives him, releasing the knot of petulance that bubbled painfully within her breast, but she is swept away by a single disturbing thought: “They will be born somewhere I have never been — they will be born somewhere Dagfinn will not know to look for me.”

With that bleak declaration, the young mother-to-be bursts into tears.

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The progression of Teaghlaigh to Hideaway Strath is slow but Arturo does not mind. It makes some of the others restless but Ceannasach focuses upon Lotte. She is heavily into her pregnancy and he worries about what the stress of moving will do to her …and their children. It is not ideal. Nothing about the fucking situation is ideal and he has made what he thinks is the best choice for his pack. What is best for their unborn children. Perhaps Blackfeather Woods would not return to their forest but it is but Arturo is too suspicious, too paranoid to believe that. He goes off of what he would do: he would pursue relentlessly so long as he knew where to find the culprits. He would pursue until he killed them all or he got what he wanted and he runs off the assumption that everyone will react like he does. In his business, he has to be that cautious. Mostly, Arturo doubts. He puts on a good face for the masses but there is a war brewing within him. He doubts his choice to uproot Teaghlaigh, he doubts that moving Lotte this late in her pregnancy — but the thought of losing her or his children is an unbearable one — he doubts his choice to make Olive and Dakarai disgraced. The punishment will be decided by The Family once they are within the safety of Hideaway Strath. If there is one thing he is endlessly grateful for it is that Hemlock has returned to them …he only hopes she can help Lotte. He feels a small ease of his worry at the knowledge that an expert medic is with them once again.

Arturo is pulled from his concern, the terse tug of his lips forming into a half-hearted smile as his queen brushes against him, her sides rotund with their children press against the svelte lank of his own. He swears that he feels one of them kick. The moment quickly turns for the worst as Lotte looks at him with desperation that seizes around his heart like a hand intent on squeezing it until it bursts. He draws in a sharp hiss of a breath as she hiccups his name and confesses her own plaguing thoughts seconds before she bursts into tears. The gangster swallows thickly. He has never been good with tears. He is quick to nuzzle up against her acting on instinct to soothe her the way he might soothe a child: with his presence, the touch of his body a silent confirmation that he was there. “I’m sorry,” Arturo’s deep, smoky, accented timbre is thick with emotion, with the burden that he carries upon his broad shoulders. Her tears disarm him, destroy him and it causes a flare of protectiveness and anger in his chest where it settles and burns insistently near his heart. The choice to move The Family was his, that is his fault. That he takes responsibility for, but that is all he will shoulder the blame for. “The Strath is beautiful, nightingale. Our children will be safe there, protected by the earth and by The Family.” He murmurs into her neck as he nuzzles his muzzle there, attempting to pepper kisses where he can reach upon her jaw. “Dagfinn is your other half, Lotte. I think he will always know where to find you.” Arturo croons to his wife in an attempt to soothe her, or at least stifle her tears. But he has never been good at these types of things. He rather feels like he is fumbling around in the dark but he tries for her.

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I am so sorry for her behavior. ♥ [throws a bucket of cold water over her]

Immediately after the tears start coursing down the black velvet of her cheeks and the hiccupping sobs start wracking her gravid frame, Lotte begins a fierce campaign against what she perceives to be weakness in herself. “Tyhmä, tyhmä tyttö!” she sniffles between hitching, shivering breaths, abhorring the husky thickness and trembling cracks that sully the purity of her warm, rich alto. It isn’t out of the ordinary for the rogue to berate herself in such a ribald fashion, but it is exceedingly rare that she actually buys in to such self-deprecating talk. Tonight, though? She’s bought it all — horse and carriage, hook, line, and sinker.

She hates his apology — hates the way his mouth moves when he says it and the way his dark, alluring timbre swells with sorrow and stress that he doesn’t deserve. The revulsion she feels upon seeing her husband so defeated causes her to shake her head violently in negation. “No!” she snaps, past the point of caring who hears her. “Not you — never you — ” she protests, her black-masked features twisting and contorting as she tries to fight off the next wave of weeping and loses. Lotte is overwhelmed with stressors emotional, mental, and physical, infuriated at herself for losing control to such a colossal degree, and unable to see anything clearly through the blur of saline. There is a deep-seated need to be home that she can’t get past, and she edges closer and closer to her breaking point. Absurdly, she wishes Arturo would get angry along with her, using her flesh as his battleground. The score of his teeth against her nape becomes an almost physical need as the masks jumble in her hands and she recalls Kitku’s perverted love for violence.

She would gladly go to war for Arturo, but she cannot fight this.

The gangster’s soothing words fall upon deaf ears, but it isn’t that Lotte isn’t listening to him. She is. She’s just listening so closely that the words don’t seem like words anymore. They’re just sounds — pleasant, rhythmic sounds — and she is impatient for them to stop. Once they do, she lurches forward on ungainly legs — nightingale, nightingale, Dagfinn, nightingale — and mouths with swift intensity at the fur that crests his shoulder. A desperate moan that, taken out of context, would pantomime pleasure, wheedles from her lips — and in that moment of broken silence, she hears herself and recoils with a gasp.

Quiet now, she examines the damp fur as if it’s someone else’s handiwork. Fortunately the flesh there is not bleeding or even bruised, but she is ashamed nonetheless. “I am sorry,” she intones softly, eyes dry. “I do not know what came over me. No matter where our children are born,” if they live, “my home is with you, Turo. I wanted to be strong for you — for Teaghlaigh — but I am not.”

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She is emotional and he does not blame her for it — for how can he? She is so near to giving birth and their life has been in constant upheaval since Dakarai and Olive came back bearing seeping wounds and words of treason. She hiccups words in her native tongue — words he does not understand and though he does not necessarily ignore them he cannot comment upon them and turns instead to what he does understand. She snaps at him for apologizing and the gangster’s ears flatten against the sharp plains of his skull crestfallen. Not because she has snapped at him (no he can handle that) but because there should be no cause of this in the first place. Yet, the gangster sticks by his guns. He is sorry, because he has played his role in this perilous play: by taking Olive and Dakarai back in, by allowing himself to be portrayed as a bleeding heart (when some days he questions if he has a heart), by making the decision to relocate his Family from Ravensblood where they are the target of a pack that he wants nothing to do with. “They will be punished. How I should have punished them the first time.” Now, there would be no retribution. Now, there would be no mercy. Arturo may have played his role, may have had his hand in the bad deal gone horribly south but he is not it’s antecedent. He is the simply the one left cleaning up the mess and what a fucking mess it was.

She lurches towards him — not the lunge she would no doubt be able to accomplish as she would unburdened by the weight of their children within her — but she comes forth nevertheless like a force of nature that he loves her for and latches onto his shoulder. Surprise coerces the growl, rumbling like thunder of a distant storm from his lips as they curl back to expose sharp, pearly white canines. The gesture may appear aggressive but she does not hurt him and he thinks he understands her pain. He is not angry. His reaction is just that — natural reflex to unforeseen stimuli. She does not break skin, does not maul him. He thinks she is just releasing her pent up aggravation and that he happens to be the closest thing in range. In many ways, this is better. “Don’t be. I ask much of you and I shouldn’t,” Ceannasach responds briskly to his wife’s apology, fiery gaze seeking her moonbeam gaze that is always soothing to him. “You are the strongest woman I have ever know Lotte.” He disagrees with her with a shake of his head, pressing forth with the attempt to brush his muzzle against her’s in a nuzzle, a gesture with undiluted affection.

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