Sawtooth Spire You took my hand and we pretended like I was your guy

With Phaedra and Thade both tucked in for the evening and one of Sagtannet's wolves stationed next to the den mouth to ensure they stayed put, Wylla loped down into the yawning valley for a run. She still had an unfortunate amount of baby weight on her sides that she was desperate to shed, and it was just plain nice to get away from the kids for a while. As much as she enjoyed their company, having saggy tits and contending with their extraordinary energy levels, even in such a spacious den, was getting a bit old.

It occurred to her as she traced a creek westward that she hadn't spent any one-on-one time with @Mahler since the birth of the cubs. She hadn't spent one-on-one time with really any of the pack's adults, but it was him she missed the most, something she would be loathe to ever admit to his face. She needed to catch up with Wintersbane as well, sometime, but it was the salt-and-pepper Eisen she hoped to run into this evening. The weather was warm in spite of the setting sun and though she wasn't the most romantic of wolves, it seemed fitting.

Her paws carried her up onto a wide, flat shelf of stone overlooking the flatlands far below, and here she was afforded a spectacular view of the ocean in the far distance with the sun glinting low on its surface. She sat, breathing hard from her run, and stared across forests and valleys to the coast that was once her home.

for the time being, mahler was set alone to his devices. his steps, though tired, became decisive, and soon the musiker coursed over the slopes to windholme and immediately plunged into the shallows.
the cold was invigorating; mahler shook water from his pelt and dashed up the bankside, taking himself upon another tour of beautiful sagtannet.
pleased to find wylla's trail near the rushing of a riverfeed, mahler paced after the delicate track she had left, upward into the stony cuts of mountainside.
where he found her appealingly curvaceous form silhouetted against the last glow of a dying sun.

But for the gentle click-click-click of approaching nails on stone, Wylla might've never known she was being watched. Her eyes were for the world beyond, the glimmer of light on the ocean, the rush of a river far beneath them, trees so innumerable they blended into olive green swathes with no beginning and no end. Rarely did she take time to appreciate her surroundings so thoroughly, but being confined to a den for a month would do that to you. Even a snail would've been lovely right about then.

Alas, Mahler didn't go as unnoticed as she might've given cause to believe. Eventually she flicked one long ear back toward him, then canted her head so she could regard him with one warm yellow eye. Strong, stoic, reliable as always—the same old Mahler, but now a wonderful father, too. The children adored him and Wylla privately adored watching him with them, even if she disapproved a little of the secret language they shared that she couldn't understand. Her own fault for being resistant to learning, she supposed. In the fading light he seemed weary and brooding, but she'd seen his smiles, heard his whispered words of love to their son and daughter. Knew the secret heart of him, she thought.

She hated that she was forced to share. That they would be forced to share.

Wylla wasn't willing to delve into that, however, and offered a wan smirk instead. I guess, she started, jabbing her snout lightly toward the crags below, it isn't so bad here.

her gaze was a warm gilding that chased any doubt from mahler's mind. his face broke into an open smile, answering wylla with the soft glow of his own stoneflower eyes, and he chuckled as he came to settle beside her. "i came here before sagtannet was made, and i looked and looked. and still," mahler went on, sweeping the expanse of the far distant sea, "there is still very much to observe."
his attention belonged to wylla now; he shifted closer and kissed her shoulder with a soft rumble of pleasure to be in her presence. even when exhausted, she was a tireless woman, serving the needs of their brood and now little astraeus with all that was in her. and while she was far firmer than he, wylla loved their children as fiercely as he could ever hope. 
tonight the evening-swallowed sun turned her into a haloed idol, and his chest ached with love for her; lips formed words before his ears heard them.
"do you think you vould vant to do this again? vith me?" mahler asked, hesitant only at the end.

Mahler was right about that. From way up here, Wylla could see a great many things, and yet it was only a fraction of the wilds. She could walk for the rest of her life and touch less than half of it. Truly, it was a marvel of nature, a utopia for wolves, although not without its challenges.

She allowed his gentle touch to her shoulder, feeling a tiny shiver spread from the point of contact. Outwardly, she did her best not to react, but Mahler was a skilled healer and couldn't miss the way the muscles there relaxed. Their children were proving a handful already and the displaced Astraeus, while never destined to be considered her child by Wylla, was only going to add to that. Small wonder part of her was tense—made worse by ire over Agana's careless abandonment of her cub.

She expected Mahler to comment on the children or share news on the pack, but instead, he said something so unexpected, her brain needed to buffer for a second. The tail end of his words almost wavered. She wondered why, but didn't ask or tease for once. Instead, she pulled a slow breath through her nose, then said, I guess that depends on you and your plans.

her musculature seemed to unravel somewhat, and so mahler brushed his muzzle higher upon her flesh, moving toward the tightest connections along the back of one's neck. her breath was more than a sigh and less than shock, and he continued on in silence until wylla spoke again.
"to live here. to raise my children." it was the summation of his life now, a beautiful wild land inhabited by his new descendants. it was what any man could possibly want, and yet mahler knew he would forever be dissatisfied if she was not the companion for the remainder of his life.
it could yet be many years.
he wished them to be hers.

Hrmmm, Wylla murmured, as much because she was mulling over Mahler's words as because he'd found the particularly sensitive spot on her neck that made her feel like her bones were melting. His life was an idyllic one. She thought there would be a lot more trouble to come in all of it, between those children living, the mountain changing, the wilds and their misfortune, and those god-forsaken foothills...

And your politics? she wondered, for that was really the question here. He'd made it clear before that he wanted to father every pup in Diaspora because other fathers had failed in the past. She didn't imagine that had changed with Sagtannet. If anything, she wondered if tasting fatherhood would make him pine to warm every woman's bed, father every litter ever conceived upon the mountain, claim them all as his own. It was unfair of her to think it of him after all he'd said and done, but ever did that shard of insecurity find its way to her heart and dig painfully in. She had to know.

wylla must be certain. mahler could not fault her for offering no immediate acceptance to his suggestion, and continued gamely on. he traveled the rise of her skull with his lips, brushed against the base of one ear. teasing now, though in it he tried to bring her respite.
"i do not see vhere i vould be happy to do this again." with nyx' brood close at hand, his time would be split again helping her tend them. not for the first time did he wish that all could be at harmony in one place upon sagtannet, but that was a reality he would not even suggest.
mahler hoped that would placate wylla, though he would have gone to great lengths if only to preserve whatever affection she bore for him.

Wylla was, at her very core, a tornado given wolfish form. What respite there was to be had occurred only when everything was perfectly aligned, and in Mahler's case, that was not so. She was too steeped in paranoia and jealousy and other ugly, thorny emotions to be able to see fields of green on the other side of any situation, so she pulled away with a soft snort and turned her head to face him full, so he could understand the sincerity of what she was about to say.

Phaedra adores you. The girl seemed far more enamoured with her father than she ever was her mother, which stung a little, but at least she had Thade. The boy was reticent, though, and it was difficult to tell whether he preferred her company or Mahler's, or no one's, but she contented herself with thinking he was her little boy, while Phaedra's was daddy's girl. She's going to be heartbroken when her papa doesn't have all the time in the world for her anymore.

It didn't matter if he would be happy to do it again or not. He'd already done it, and his children would suffer for it. Both sets, although she only cared about her own. If he sought commitment he would have to give all of his—not just to her, but to making it right for his daughter and his son. She's not going to understand when you tell her it was a contract, and they are not her siblings. This, delivered firmly. She would never stand for that. She's only going to see her papa spending time with other kids, and she won't understand. How do you plan to make that right?

as wylla drew aside, mahler felt the golden note of their meeting turn sour. he turned his dark ears toward her words, however, wilting somewhat as she brought to life the pain he would engender in his little daughter. thade too, would enjoy no benefit from the more frequent forays he might take.
but at her pronouncement that the children of nyx would not be siblings to his own, the man's jawline tensed. wylla could not order him to consider such a thing. in the silent moments that passed, mahler fell into a pensive expression, considering from all sides why she would insist on it with a cold word.
it was her right, he supposed, and prepared an answer. "perhaps that is vhy you should consider my offer." he had done so out of love, but let the reason be legitimacy for their brood. his voice remained soft, though now a guilty sway thrummed in his throat. "i vould be their father and your husband. her place vould be assured in title as vell as vord." 
"and i not know vhat i vill tell phaedra, only that i vill explain it as best as i am able." wylla had always been one foot ahead of him upon the details, and now — now he had made another error.

Thade, too, to say nothing of the forlorn Astraeus. Wylla didn't look at him like a son—he was merely an orphan she fed and kept warm so he would live, to strengthen and diversify Sagtannet with young blood other than Mahler's—but she hadn't overlooked Mahler's more fond interactions with the boy. He was already a sullen thing, and she loathed to think how bothersome he'd become when Mahler was away with Nyx. On the subject of Thade, she couldn't guess at a reaction.
Jealousy curdled in the pit of her stomach, made little better by Mahler's logic.
It was a cold sort of logic, no doubt meant to appeal to her sensibilities, as her heart was firmly locked behind her notion of injustice. It didn't have that effect, although it didn't quite have the opposite effect, either. It didn't make her angrier to think she needed to swear herself to Mahler in order to stick it to Nyx—she didn't care enough about her brothers' former friend to think that—because even doing so would not dampen the effort he made for his children with Nyx, nor elevate the effort he made for hers above the effort he made for them.
That was Mahler's greatest strength and greatest flaw both, in Wylla's eyes: he saw equality where she didn't believe there was any. He would adopt every child upon the mountain if he could, treat them as his very own, whereas for Wylla, the blood family was the most important of all, and she could never manage to treat non-blood the same as blood.
You're asking me to commit myself to a man who hasn't yet fully committed himself to me, Wylla remarked. He should consider her offer to legitimize her children—that was the gist of what he'd said. Not for lifelong commitment to one another, but for legitimacy and the right of a title over the other children he'd sired. That wasn't enough for her. I cannot hitch my life to yours until I see for myself that what you're upholding with her is really just a contract, and not some kind of emotional affair.
She would not be brought into a relationship with someone who loved another, and she was too paranoid to take his word for it with children on the line. It wasn't that she wanted him to abandon Nyx's pups. She would never see them as equal to her own or worthy of his equal attention, but they were kids and they didn't deserve abandonment. She just wasn't ready to trust that Mahler's choices were based in logic and not in lust and repressed feelings.

the man listened, growing neutral and impassive as he had once always been in grimnismal. these past years had done much to soften him, but mahler had yet retained more than a touch of the old stone. it turned his gaze into flat lilac as he looked out over the beauteous view that wylla had chosen. he did not know what else to offer her, for mahler in his burgeoning stubbornness saw her attempts to change what was as an injustice.
why did she persecute him when he had told her all before she had made her choice of him? wylla could have sought any man to father her two; it was him she had chosen, and he who had answered. mahler had pledged himself to their children and by that end had done as well as any other man could have done. 
nyx did not wish him in that way, mahler knew. she had made no overtures beyond invitation to be their father, and he had seen only the right of it. a sable ear flicked; the man knew he must answer in some way, and at last rolled his shoulders to straighten proudly beneath the intense sunlight of her gaze.
so. she would doubt his love again.
a breath, a blink.
"in the meantime, i vill do vhat i can to explain this to them both," the gargoyle murmured in a hunted tone, moving upright. for a moment he looked upon her, how the glow haloed her pelt and how his heart was moved for her again, but the expression writ in her gaze chased his own away, and if wylla had nothing more to add, mahler would depart back to some lonely copse along the furthest border to consider all that had been said.

She hadn't meant to turn their spare time together sour, but it was what she did best, after all. Wylla had only a grimace for a response. They saw things too differently for there to be any compromise on this issue: Mahler saw himself doing his duty to a wolf who was deserving of children. Wylla saw him fucking someone other than her. She saw children as the result of a relationship, whereas he saw them as the reason for it.
Their differing views, in short, made them incompatible.
She could not read his mind, but she could read the tense ice that began to edge his tone, and knew she'd angered him again. Good, she thought. If he was angry with her refusal to commit to him just yet, then it was his own doing. Let it remind him that he could not have his cake and eat it too. She would allow there to be no doubt in her mind before she finalized anything with him, and right now, paranoia would not allow her to take his word for it that he wasn't murmuring sweet nothings to his other woman.
Mahler departed. Wylla didn't stop him. She would've preferred the passion of an argument, to air their grievances, to properly set fire to them and allow them to burn and maybe, just maybe, they could then work past them and maybe she could begin to trust that his intentions with Nyx were not the same as his intentions with her... but Mahler was the ice water of a mountain spring and her flaming soul could not ignite him. He left and she sat in bitter silence, heart hurting from the secret rendezvous she imagined he kept from her.