Rising Sun Valley leidon

"i have to go. just for a — a day. i need to look for dinah." she'd barely been able to look @Druid in the eye, barely been able to form the words. kissing each of the six growing pups, heda left the den and skimmed quickly from rivenwood.
there was a fear in heda that something might happen to the boys, or worse, anselm would not see this as all right. but for all his meanness, she didn't think he was that cruel.
and she couldn't stay; she needed to breathe and to keep and did just that, letting the bypass fall far behind her before the sobs took her over. heda told herself she'd get it out, let it pass, and look for dinah before she hunted on the way home.
she arranged her emotions into a schedule and wept until she had nothing else but disgust for herself.

To repay the breeding pair of the valley (he had forgotten their names already) Glaukos set upon the idea of guarding their claim, or hunting for them, the way he once did for Druid. At least in this instance he was not expected to do much of anything—the boy was more invested in stories.

No infection had caught in his wounds. There was no reason for that, Glaukos had barely attended to them once he'd found himself within the valley again, but it was a moment of good luck which he hoped would last a while. There was a patch of bare skin along his nape where the man (Akavir) had gripped so tight, the fur had come loose and fallen away. There were bite wounds to his ankles and ribs from the girl; but nothing bled now, and he felt well enough to patrol.

He was drifting. Glaukos did not want to think about Rivenwood; it would amount to nothing, he knew that. He did not want to face the feelings that Druid or the others brought out of him. He knew his anger was something of a problem without other soldiers around him, and without a general to direct it. He was mindless; soon, though, his patrol turned in to a hunt turned in to nothing but roaming the area—and then he heard it.

Someone was crying. It was faint, but unmistakable.

Against his better judgement he made his way towards the sound, and by the time he saw the red-stripe of Heda among the grasses, it had stopped, and he did not know what to do next.

the tread of the step was familiar; heda blinked and looked up, and there was the stern-eyed, silent figure of the bearish man who had tried to provide for she and druid.
until you, heda reminded herself. smeared in mud and tears, she was once more at her utter worst. but she reminded herself that glaukos had never seen her cry and speak cruelly to her in the middle of it, or accuse her of —
he didn't know her and that was best for him. as if to emphasize this, she stood with a softer expression, but did not approach. he was torn with healing cuts; she took a step forward, then stopped.
remembering what she had said with a nauseating stab of guilt, heda blinked. "are you coming h — back?" tones quiet, weighted. it shouldn't matter to her and yet it did. "i guess i mean to ask if you want to come back," she amended, suddenly numb. 
the golden eyes blinked again. "i wasn't there. what happened?"

This was the second woman from Rivenwood he had come across, and the second to hold the question. What about the situation was hard to understand, exactly?

What I want? That has never mattered. He countered, frowning.
—What happened? Heda had been den-bound with Druid, so to think they had not spoken of the events leading up to Glaukos' dismissal was an impossibility. What was she trying to get out of him? What did she want?

He breathes deeply to settle the ire in his chest.

I was going to see the children. I had finished a patrol. Before I could get there, Druid appeared and accused me of—breaking Rivenwood. Of ruining things. She told me she wanted me to leave. Glaukos did not want to think about that day but these women were insistent; they kept appearing and they kept asking.

I was angry. All I've done for her— his nape prickled with frustration all over again, but he stood firmly there and breathed, and swallowed it down. And when I did not answer her the way she expected, she came at me. I did not mean for her to be hurt. But I left, as she wanted.

Always doing as he's told.

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she worried her lip as he spoke, explaining his side. glaukos was visibly ruffled, wind upon the grass of a prairie. she tried to see him in two ways: first, as the man who had agreed to help her sister raise cubs. this was the natural outcome of so unloving an arrangement, she thought meanly.
say whatever you want, but at least druid had a plan. you're just a whore, skaigona.
speaking with anselm of a distant past had drudged up more than one dead thing from the silt; she tried not to visibly wince at herself as glaukos finished his words.
a nod came, then her eyes fell to his coat. her gaze asked what had happened, but she did not think he would respond. 
"i understand why you're angry. i didn't ask her to send you away. i didn't even know," her own speech desperate, flying, "until she came back bruised up and said she'd made you leave. i-i tried to tell her we needed you. i even offered that she leave and let me stay. no," her eyes burned now with a slightly unhinged hurt. "she wanted to do it alone. and i was scared of you after that," heda admitted. 
"and she's my sister," the red-nape added quietly as she bowed her head; no matter what happened, that loyalty to the blood who stayed had become a cornerstone of her very existence.
the tears threatened again, and these ones were from those first days on the shoreline, watching sweetharbor fall away behind her for the last time, and malakai, and simeon.
"i didn't ask, and i'm sorry."
atonement for flinging i don't care about his very soul as a final epithet that day. it would never be enough, and though her pain heda found something new: the need to have anguish inflicted, a deep and yawning necessity.

Glaukos had no firm ties to anyone, and he had never felt connected in the way that the sisters felt to one-another. When Heda went on to explain the fallout of the situation he listened but he did not understand why she cared so much what he did, and he certainly could not understand why she would apologize.

Her choices are not your problem. He states. She is the one to use me. I am the one that allowed myself to be used. You have no part in any of that.

He saw the way the tears came to her vision again. Were all women this sensitive? Druid had not cried like this but she had raged at him. So far only Fiona was level-headed enough to be of use to him; and once it had been Druid, but motherhood had changed her.

None of this matters now. I will not go back. I am no longer in service to Druid for our arrangement.

it made her want to recoil, but perhaps this was how she had made etienne. and so heda locked herself to the earth and stood fast. "what you decided is between you. how i feel is how i feel." what he had said, but for herself, where she would truly hear it.
it didn't matter to him. he spoke nothing of the children and she felt the throbbing wound of caracal's absence looming over them.
and before that, mahler's own interminable silence.
what about them? heda wanted to ask, but she saw how he closed to her, how his words were a firm ending to what she had tried to begin.
she dusted the drying mud from her shoulders and tried not to ruminate on the more crazed thoughts flitting through her mind. once she'd thought anselm could be a new beginning too. 
be well. take care of yourself. i'll see you around. all stupid. all condescending.
her golden eyes met his once more, filled with a conflicted flare of encouragement for whatever life he chose to live now.
heda wheeled around and trotted in the direction of the mountains. it was far too late to pick up any trails, but she'd search further than before. maybe she would find — something.

She didn't question his statement. She would no doubt return to her children and to her sister, and then he wondered if she would tell Druid of what they spoke about; in that case, the matter was resolved so far as Glaukos was concerned. He had told Fiona as much—he would not return since that would go against the wishes of Druid. Their contract (or whatever it was that had linked them together in those initial days) was terminated.

They shared a look, and then Heda turned to go. Glaukos watched over her until her shape became too small to his eye, and turned himself towards the valley. Somewhere between here and there he was sure to find something fresh to carry back with him, so that the breeding pair within Bearclaw would be pleased enough not to question his wayward habits.