Kier could feel the heaviness of her attention lurking behind him, could feel the way the way the air seemed to suck itself towards her and hold it there; he knew she was warring over whether or not to speak, knew it would be a feat if her guilt won out over her stubbornness. He’d never known it to happen in all the time they’d been together; he was always the one who had to apologise and make it up to her after any little gripe or snipe, even if she had been at fault, and if she didn’t speak now, he foresaw a lengthy few weeks of silence between them until he finally broke. Right now, that idea didn’t break him down like it usually did, didn’t melt away his annoyance — it strengthened it. She didn’t have any right to make herself the victim, not now. Eris was stubborn; Kier was stubborn, too. He just rarely got the opportunity to be so with her, what with having to be the bigger person; such was the penance of taking for a mate someone so wilfully childish, but he loved her. Loved it. Loved it to distraction. Worshipped the ground she walked on. He could have this moment of anger. Except he knew he couldn’t, because if he never caved and Eris never came crawling over with an apology, then what would their marriage be? They’d live it in silence. He knew he would give in. And that only made these minutes of cold, quiet anger that much more potent; he clung to them with a stubborn entitlement and an exhausted weariness.

That wasn’t supposed to happen. Kier finally broke his silence — he scoffed. Such a quiet, doubtful sound. Eyes still closed, still unmoving. Now his silence took on a tense, insincere quality; it was clear he was listening, that his eyes were still closed just because he was pretending not to be. And then she began to shout at him. Kier growled to himself, tail-tip tapping ominously against the wet ground as he felt the tremours of her angry stomps disturb the post-storm peace. The fur on the back of his neck began to prickle up as he lay there, and it was all rather childish — Kier was still lying there like he was clinging to the peace he was owed, Eris was disturbing that peace, and both were growing more and more irrational. Finally, he tore together the strength to push himself up and snap around, still half-lying on the wet earth, twisted to face her; his whole right side was caked with mud and blood. “Oh, excuse me,” he snapped back at her. “Excuse me, Eris, for interfering with your carefully crafted plan — I should have made a reservation. Yes, I should have RSVPed — it was so rude of me to come traipsing into my territory when you clearly had things so wonderfully under control.” It’s not my fault they — you — did. Kier almost sputtered with disbelief, so frantic with indignation that he suddenly had the strength to push himself up properly, broken rib forgotten. This was their first proper fight. Born out of fear and confusion and an inability to accept blame on both sides. “Not your fault? Not your— Eris, you couldn’t have predicted this? You couldn’t have predicted that Moonblight, who knows this territory a thousand times better than you do, might not be able to guess where you had hidden them? That Laertes, as dear as he is to me, might not turn his coat to help his sisters? Did none of these things cross your mind?” It was so hard being the thinker all the time, the one with the head full of plans and contingencies and escape routes and numbers; he felt exhausted just saying it all aloud. “You heard the reports — you knew you were taking your life into your claws when you decided to play a game of 50/50 chance between me being the first to find you and them.” And what a desperate chase, a frantic, rain-lashed search it had been. And still you did it, he almost added, if he had trusted himself not to cry, had trusted the words not to shatter into the confused tears of a child. Knowing what it would do to him if something happened to her, she still did it — but he knew she didn’t think like that; she was invincible, she was the one she thought about, and he was the one left fretting. 

His voice had cracked under the weight of his emotion, his relief; for a second, as he stood there facing her, his frown becoming so desperately pleading like he was realising again that she really was alright and he really had found her before anything could happen, he wanted to relent and go to her. But he didn’t. He forced himself not to. Eris didn’t take well to scoldings, she’d just buckle down and get angry and storm off like she didn’t care about you at all — but this time, oh, this time he couldn’t dote and apologise. She could be so bullheadedly fearless, so belligerent, like she was as tall as the sky and made of armies and not a little, rasping runt — it was part of what made him so infatuated with her, so in awe of her, so in love with her, that bullish arrogance like she hardly even cared about him. Like he was just a mite to her. It thrilled him, kept him as constantly on edge and shivering as it kept him comforted. But, oh, now it terrified him too. She’d already antagonised Kate; she had to learn, had to learn that one day her luck might run out. The thought sent such a thrill of cold terror, of pre-emptive grief, through him that it was easy to fuel the next wave of displaced anger — he wasn’t angry at her; he was terrified. He knew that in all likelihood he would outlive her — and he would spend his life denying fate and pushing back the clock and covering his ears. He would spend his life clinging to her. It was a tragedy he could already see the end of, and it broke him.

“We took their KITS, Eris,” he hissed, slow, like she was stupid, desperate to drive it home to her but also just furiously angry with her idiocy. For the first time, his near-mocking nastiness turned on her — they were both so cruel, it was only right that it turned on each other occasionally. But it dissipated back to exhaustion in a second — exhaustion because everything he’d done had been for nothing. “Of course they were going to come for them. They were going to come to camp — THAT’S why I was keeping them there, so that when Bermondsey — and yes, I’ll bloody well say his blasted name, your sensibilities be damned — inevitably came looking, they’d meet a camp and we could kill him — not just US. Alone. In the middle of the woods.” Kier’s voice was louder now, slightly cracked by the despair of the situation and of the failure, and in the endless, hovering silence, his words punctuated like cracks of a dismal, dreary whip. From ‘alone’ on, he sounded almost plaintive, keening, like it was such a lonely thing. “There was no use in hiding them, Eris — the point was for them to be FOUND.” He suddenly sat — slumped, his legs buckling and the pain in his rib that had been forgotten suddenly flaring back to life — touching his paw to his head and bowing it, eyes closing like he had a headache. He was so close to just giving up. He almost wanted to relent and say it was my own fault for not keeping you better informed, but he refused to — he wasn’t going to give into her. Now the League blamed him for something that wasn’t his fault; that was part of being a husband. He absorbed her sins as his own, took the blame so she didn’t have to, so she could melt into the shadows and he was the one in the guilty, glaring spotlight despite any innocence. That was fine. But it was still irritating. Supremely irritating that he didn’t even understand WHY he now had this extra bounty on his back — he was in complete ignorance about this, and yet he was the supposed mastermind. It was that confusion that fuelled his frustrated, uncomprehending anger with her.

And as he sat there, as he rubbed over his eyes with his shaking paw, as he felt the full weight of all his physical pain, as the fact that she was alive, she was alright, truly sank in, the anger turned to rage. Because he couldn’t get this relief out through affection so he had to channel it into hysteria right back at her — he had to scream because he couldn’t cry. When he dropped his paw and looked up, his anger was burned over his face. And then he was screaming at her, pushing himself up again, lashing his tail just as she had, pacing as best he could with a broken rib screeching fire at her. “AFTER ALL THAT HAPPENED,” he shrieked at her, and it was the first time in history — save for the hysteria the night of the miscarriage — that the world heard Kier raise his voice to his mate. “YOU PUT YOURSELF IN DANGER. WITHOUT TELLING ME. WITHOUT EVEN SAYING GOODBYE. WHAT IF I HAD TO HEAR, ERIS, SECONDHAND, THAT MY MATE WAS DEAD? THAT MY BEST FRIEND IN THE WORLD WAS DEAD? HM? DID YOU EVER THINK OF THAT IN YOUR SELFISH HEAD? I LOVE YOU. I NEED YOU. AND YOU JUST LEFT ME. SOMETIMES, ERIS, YOU ARE SO UNCONSCIONABLY SELF-CENTRED — WE’RE SUPPOSED TO BE A TEAM.” He was hysterical with fear, with rage — hysterical with relief that she was alive. He didn’t care about the League. There was only Eris. There was only ever Eris. He took a step towards her, one paw further ahead on the ground and a feeling of such emptiness in his chest at how easily everything could have been different, how easily everything could have gone wrong, staring into her eyes like he was pleading with her to explain herself to him. The anger stripped itself from his voice like bruised flesh, leaving it raw. Leaving only desperate eyes behind.

“What were you THINKING, Eris?”

I thought you'd have beaten out silly things like that. Kier’s lips pulled back in a silent, quivering snarl, the tentative one that a lion had over a kill. Clearly you didn't do a good enough job. “Yes, insult me, Eris — you’re very good at that.” And it was true — the insults rolled off him, they had to; he knew she was rarely physically affectionate, let alone verbally, knew the signs of her love for him were subtle, silent, unspectacular things: she let him hang around, she backed up his opinions and stroked his ego and badmouthed the people he ranted to her about, she came home to him each night. And, really, most of the time he found it tremendously funny — her insults, her belittling. He loved it, lapped it up. Now, though, standing there with a broken rib, with her turning her own inability to accept responsibility into stinging slights at him — like he didn’t have feelings, or like she knew he’d take it because he always did… He suddenly felt a year’s worth of hurt. Because once in a while he just wanted to be told he was loved.

If her anger strengthened, his hurt did — he still paced, he still shouted, but now he was just trying to get through to her; not to make her see sense, but to make her see that he was hurt. He kept throwing her glances as he limped back and forth, kept trying to look at her and see if her ice was cracking; but every time all he saw was a set jaw and a turned away head and a stubbornness that defied even love. They took mine. And that was the final blow. “They were mine too, Eris,” Kier cried, turning and stopping to stare at her plaintively — and it was broken. So youthfully, pitifully desperate. So hurt. Part of him was still so terrified that she blamed him for Kate, for it having been his sister that ruined her, like he was at fault because it had been his own blood, his family, who had taken them from her. He never let himself be selfish enough to say from them, because making sure Eris was alright, making sure her mind was kept together, making sure she stayed alive — those were the priorities. His own right to grief always fell by the wayside, and in a way he felt she thought he didn't have the right to feel it. He was responsible because Kate was responsible, and he took on his sister's sin just as he now took on his mate's. He worried so sickly that Eris held him to blame, that it would fester and rot and grow until one day she left him, and he never had the bravery, the courage, to ask her and have his fears confirmed — or worse, to plant the idea in her mind and watch her feelings towards him slowly twist and change until she resented him because he had told her she should. 

Now, though, he felt it all. All that old grief. All that hurt wailing just below the surface, the hurt that had never really healed, never had the chance to. 

The anger came back — the anger always came back — and it helped to mask some of the vulnerability, helped to cloud it in red. His tail lashed again as he took back up his pacing, his shouting. He grew angry with her again — because if she was angry with him, he was sure as hell going to be angry with her. He could do that, too. He could be as immature and hateful and furious and stubborn. He could shroud himself in it just the same, even if it was an insincere response, an attention-seeking fakery, to her own anger. He fed himself indignation to get his protective rage back up, to stoke it. He paced, and lashed his tail, and felt the burn in his ribcage.

Eris was SPOILED, that was the problem — he had spoiled her and now she had no sense of consequence, of outcomes that didn’t suit her delusions, of righteous anger with her, of—

There’s. . . new kits.

Kier stopped, turning his head to look at her. She kept on talking but he didn’t hear her. He didn’t hear anything. He just stood there, trying to comprehend those brief words she seemed to make nothing of, seemed to gloss over like they were an irrelevant part of the story. New kits. Kier’s eyes were locked on her as she talked, but he took nothing in — not the dripping rain, not her voice, not the distant roll of thunder as the storm passed out of the valley. All his anger had faded, and there was no name for what took its place — because it wasn’t anything. It was complete numbness — not because something was wrong, but because he was completely uncomprehending. Everything was empty because everything was confused, and there were no words for that. His mind had ground to a stop; his expression had turned to the faintest of frowns, and as the moments passed, a terrible feeling began to creep in, a terrible feeling that he didn’t dare entertain. Hope.

Finally, unaware of anything she’d been saying, he interrupted her. “What do you mean, new kits?” His voice was nothing like it had been a minute ago — there was no anger, there was no hurt, there wasn’t much of anything, because he wouldn’t let there be. It was incredibly quiet. He sounded like a doctor asking a follow up question, except for the faintest tremour, the faintest betrayal of his emotions, the faintest fear — because he hadn’t actually let himself think the words yet, hadn’t let himself think what she might have meant in case the crushing disappointment, the grief, took him over if he was wrong. Kier took the smallest step forward, eyes still not leaving hers; they didn’t stray because he didn’t let them, because he was so terrified that if he dared the briefest glance at her stomach in a silent question, this fragile, tenuous maybe would be shattered entirely, and any budding life would die, and it would have been his fault — his fault for asking the question directly, for daring to think it. He didn’t even know how he felt about it because he wasn’t letting himself think what it was. There was nothing. He couldn’t dare let there be the hope of anything. “You don’t…” He took another quivering step forward, head bowed submissively like she was going to attack him, voice so quiet, so afraid. His voice was breathy. “You aren’t…” He couldn’t say it; if he did, all this fear would rupture and he’d burst into tears from the sheer overwhelmed panic of hearing the terrifying hope confirmed. Those half words would have to be question enough. They were already too close to tearing him apart if he was wrong.

absolute novella, i'm sorry my love but i was EMOTIONAL


As soon as Eris confirmed it with her nod, Kier let out a shaky breath, his shoulders drooping like he was letting go of all his terror, or like he was feeling the whole world settle upon them — and it was the most wonderful thing in the world. The tremour in his breath sounded reverent — of Eris, of these kits, of life. While she drowned in her terror, in her guilt, everything good and holy flooded into him — the joy he’d been too afraid to feel, the love. He was much as much of an optimist as it was possible to be, it was the only reason he’d managed to get this far in life, by believing in himself to ludicrous extents — and, oh, in that moment, there was nothing that could go wrong, nothing that could ever be bad; she was fretting and he was choosing nursery colours in his head. Immediately, he moved to go to her — and he caught her just as she was sinking to the ground, slipping behind her and tucking himself slightly under, so the bottoms of her forelegs folded over the tops of his and he was supporting most of her weight. He always would. He always was. She was never too much for him. “Don’t know what to do?” he whispered, so gentle, so disbelieving, laid out along her back with his soft, damp belly fur melting into her spine. He supported the weight of her head just as much as he did everything else, taking it for her so she didn’t have to; he brushed his cheek against hers from behind, letting her rest against him. “Mousey, we raise our kits.” His whisper held all the warmth of rose gold, all the fragile, stable love.

He felt the heat of her tears slipping down his own cheek, darkening rivulets in the black and warming his skin. Kier had never seen Eris cry — never, not once. Not the night she’d miscarried their kits; not the night she’d told him with such frantic insistence that they had been taken; not the night she’d begged him to cry so she didn’t have to. She’d seen him cry plenty — Kier cried a surprising amount, enough for the both of them. And to see her do it now… To feel the wet warmth of it… It broke his heart. “Mousey…” he whispered, turning his head slightly so the bridge of his nose and his forehead pressed against her cheek instead, his eyes slipping shut. After a moment, he leaned back, gazing at her with such sorrowful, worried love, eyes beginning to grow misty. He was an emotional crier, an over-feeling psychopath; the smallest thing could set him off, and none more so than seeing his unbreakable mate cry. If Eris was crying, something was so terribly wrong. Drawing his paw up across the length of her side, he rested it on her upper foreleg, like he was still too shy to touch her stomach without her permission or invitation. “It won’t be the same. Your whole pregnancy was as perfect as anything could be — the kits grew and kicked, everything did what it should have done, you were as healthy as you’ve ever been; if Kate hadn’t done the things she did, there’s no reason in the world they wouldn’t have thrived. These kits will get that chance.” He gave her a small, searching smile, like he was trying to instil his own hope within her. It was still painful to speak of them, and maybe what he was saying was confronting, but the pain had a soft filter over it now — there were new ones to love and worry over, and unlike Eris, he didn’t feel that guilt of replacing them.

“Oh, Eris.” He brushed his nose against her cheek again, voice no more than a breath as his eyes closed; it took on a sorrowful culpability. He felt like they’d been reunited after a war; it felt like looking at her through falling ash, through settling embers and smoke from a forest fire, all that thick, gritty greyness that had kept them apart and that now encased them, hid them away from the rest of the world in that haze where nothing else in this life or the next mattered. There was only them. There was that unnameable self-consciousness that came of having been apart from someone so dear for so long, that shy sensation of hardly knew what to say to, how to act — and so they just stared, mouths opening soundlessly around words that didn’t hold nearly enough. So relieved, so self-conscious with the depth of what their souls said, so in love with her, a messy combination of all of those strong, extraordinary feelings. He felt that he was looking at her from across a war zone, that there was a sea of corpses and wounded and cats being slowly hauled up and imprisoned, some hazy fantasy of the League — and through it all was her, and he’d run to her. For the first time that night, he felt his head drop to the bottom of his stomach with all the intensity of full realisation — she was safe. She was here. They were together. The dead and dying could sob and wail around them, the ash could fall and settle — there was just them. He slipped his muzzle lower and pressed into the side of her neck, losing himself in the rained-out smell of her fur. It was all horrible metaphor, but that was how he felt — that the grey world was in stasis, and she was alive, and he was too, and the only thing that mattered was the feel of her body and the news she had told him. He couldn’t comprehend it; how could there be words for the feeling in his chest that was pure life?

“Oh, Eris.” And now, as he repeated it — his mantra, pleading and worshipful — his voice picked up speed, picked up tempo and volume and urgency; he pulled back to look at her, eyes desperate to make her understand. “I’ve been such a fool. You didn’t tell me — of course you didn’t tell me. That’s a mother’s right, of course I’d never dream of taking that from you. Oh, my heart, I’m sorry if I did — I was so selfish; you told me when you weren’t ready, I should have… I should have done so many things.” He collapsed his forehead against her again like he was overcome by his own guilt, lavishing care on her, lavishing forgiveness and apology, fussing over her, touching every inch of her. She was alive, she was alive. None of this mattered — in the past, forgotten, so insignificant it was just a pinprick in a life. “These kits, they’re not worth your life — if the League wanted their brats back, I would have handed them over. Oh, but that’s behind us, I can’t remember a thing about it — what brats? There’s only you, my love, there’s only you.” Again he ground his forehead against her temple with such frantic love. She was here. She was here. “These kits are everything. These kits are a blessing.” His voice dropped to a breath, barely audible, eyes closed. “A blessing.”

“So…” And now his shy, childish joy came back out, like someone had brought a puppy to class and he desperately wanted to go up to pet it but was too shy; his ears slipped back, and he suddenly looked very sweet, very tender as he gazed at her searchingly. The cheer slipped back in; he couldn’t not be happy about this news. It made him look terribly sheepish. He’d wanted to be happy all along, to rejoice; now, he let himself. Tentatively, like he was gauging her reaction. If he could have, he would have been slowly sitting, slowly sinking down to the ground like his legs could no longer support him in this daze of disbelief; as it was, his brows just pushed together and he brushed a hesitant, shy paw across her ribs — he didn’t care about his own; what broken rib? She was pressing against it; the pain was nothing — to finally, with a faintly trembling paw, rest it on her stomach. Like she was a lioness who’d snarl and swat him away. “M-mine?” he whispered — and it sounded so stupid. “They’re mine?” he breathed a little more articulately, eyes searching hers. He was trying to sound supportive, unjudgemental, to let her know that even if they weren’t, he’d stand by her, but he was just succeeding at sounding like an idiot. A stupid little smile played about his teeth, quirking up slightly at one side, so shy and nervous and dumb. “They’re— are— they are mine?”

And then he burst to life, alive with excitement, with planning. The war with the League was forgotten; it had never existed. Kier scooted back slightly, still holding onto her stomach so gently. “As soon as we get back I’ll have you made the softest nest in the world — pure luxury. You must be sore, what was I thinking?” He looked around frantically at the dripping forest, like he’d brought her out here. His memory was so fogged — there was just snippets of the future, of things they needed to do, of joy. His mind moved a mile a minute — kits, they were having kits. Focusing in on her again, he scooted closer like he hadn’t just scooted back, pressing impossibly close like he wanted to feel everything about her, desperate to feel her. “And I’ll have you brought breakfast every morning, in your lab or in bed, no matter how early — you’re always forgetting to eat. Oh! And dinner — no matter how late, no matter where you are, someone will find you with food.” He was babbling, falling over his own tongue. “And if you stay a little later in bed now, I won’t complain — more time with you is always a joy. I’ll stay with you, business can wait, my mate— OH! My mate is pregnant! My mate is pregnant— she’s the priority.” Then he added hurriedly after his dazedly theatrical explosion of joy, tightening his grip slightly on her stomach like he didn’t want her to not hear his amendment, “or I can leave you alone — of course you can sleep separately if that’s what you and these kits decide, I don’t want to crowd you.” He suddenly laughed, so nonsensical with joy. “I make it sound like there’s a little council between you all. No, no, but whatever you want, my dear. Whatever you need. Anything. Anything in the world — name it. You have full reign over the camp — I’m nothing, nothing at all, just your servant.”

And then, incomprehensibly, bouncing from one emotion to the next, Kier burst into tears. He looked at her with wide, joyful eyes, letting out a sob of hysterically happy disbelief, and pressed a little harder into her stomach with his gentle paw, stupid with joy. “You’re— you’re carrying kits? In here?” He laughed again, his own tears blending with the remnants of hers and creating black tracks against black fur. “I’m so sorry for everything I said — I was a raving fool. Such an idiot. You have nothing to apologise for — you’re alive; you’ve alive, that’s all that matters. More than alive — you’re full of life. Carrying life.” His voice had dropped to a reverent, disbelieving whisper. He twisted back over himself to press his ear and cheek against her stomach. Kier closed his eyes and a smile spread across his face. After a few moments, he opened them again and met her gaze. He was calmer, but his joy was the same. “We’ll be fine, Mousey,” he whispered, cheek still against her stomach as he looked up at her. He already felt them all to be in a delicate bubble of family. “These kits will be fine. This is our second chance. The gods have granted it — no, to hell with the gods. We’ve taken it. We’ve given it to ourselves.” He pulled himself back up and pushed his muzzle against hers, tail curling up over her stomach. “And no force of nature, nothing in creation, will take it away. Not this time.”