Brenning had not gone on a viking in a long time, but with his daughter winning the rank of Warlord in the last breytast vindar, he had felt a renewed surge of excitement for going outside the pride’s borders and bringing back treasure or thralls. Proving his parenting skills and belonging to the pride was largely unnecessary at this point, since his daughter was the warlord, which basically showed he was the best dad ever. But the warlord’s parents should have nice things for their home and more than one thrall, even if Txur was a perfectly good thrall.
He had been up most of the night planning his viking with his son Kekäle, who was not interested in actually going viking at the moment, being engaged in the raising of Bren’s grandcubs (his grandcubs!), but still more than willing to help his father with plans. It had been a good night, and Bren had returned to the den with a broad smile, excited to share the news with his best-beloved wife.
When Bren came home, Lyti greeted him affectionately, as she always did, but they had been together for a long time, and they loved each other deeply. It was clear that she was unhappy, despite her efforts to keep it from him and act as if nothing was wrong. Her polite fiction was short-lived, as Bren asked her bluntly what was the matter, and if it was because he had been out all night.
“What?” had been Lyti’s reaction. “Why would I be upset about that? I’m glad you had a chance to spend time with Käle. The poor thing’s probably going a little mad having to stay at home with cubs, but I’m incredibly proud of him for choosing to do so, rather than abandon his family like some rogue whose mother squirted him out and left without instilling any family values in him whatsoever.”
It wasn’t like Lyti to talk like that, and the fact that she was doing so concerned and confused her husband, who was relieved that he wasn’t the source of her unhappiness, but concerned about what had put her in this mood. Or who.
“What happened?” he asked her, moving close to nuzzle her cheek. “Tell me and if it’s in my power, I’ll fix it, and if it isn’t, I’ll go bother our daughter the warlord and have her fix it it. There ought to be some perks to being the warlord’s parents, after all.”
Lyti smiled politely at Bren’s attempt to cheer her with the reminder of their daughter’s success, but it was no true smile and quickly broke up as she leaned into her husband’s large red body and then dissolved in sobs too heavy to speak through. She had played her role as a strong Stormborn lioness for as long as she could, but the fiction was no longer necessary and she needed badly to cry.
As alarming as Bren found it to have his wife crying wordlessly, he made himself bear up and be patient. Obviously something was very wrong, and pressing her was not going to improve things. He loved her too much to purposefully do something which would upset her further. In his mind, he was coming up with various scenarios in which he dismembered the cause of his beloved’s grief. Slowly.
However, when several long minutes passed without her letting up on the tears and it began to sound like she might actually choke on them, he shifted so that he was standing with one forepaw planted on either side of her and lowered his head to gently grasp the nape of her neck between his front teeth, as if he intended to pick her up like a cub. It was a trick he’d seen her use to calm their own cubs when they proved unaffected by snarls or cuffs.
As with their offspring, Lyti’s body relaxed and she was grateful. Her weeping had caused her entire body to clench up until she wasn’t sure she would have been able to relax her muscles on her own. There were still tears making dark tracks down the short blue fur of her cheeks, but she could at least breathe again, and her body didn’t hurt with her muscles’ tension.
“Now,” Brenning tried again, his tone gentle and soothing in a way one would not expect a reaver to be capable of. “Tell me.”
Lyti slumped against her husband with none of her usual poise. Her eyes were open, but they stared dully, not really taking in her surroundings, although her mind was still working and she was not unaware of Bren’s query. It took her several deep breaths to gather the requisite strength of will to answer him without reverting to her hiccoughing, gasping form of grief-stricken crying.
“Our son,” she began, at first unable even to bring herself to speak his name, afraid that doing so might break her. After a stricken pause, during which she felt Bren tense at her side as he prepared himself for the worst, even while attempting to offer her comfort.
“Our son. Njal. He is leaving the pride. Forever. To follow some…lioness.” It was clear from her tone that lioness had not been the first word to come to mind when Lyti thought of that person, but her upbringing prevented her from using her preferred choice.
Bren was glad that Lyti couldn’t see his face, although he was certain she would be able to feel the fury tensing the muscles of his chest and in his paws, which nearly shook with the effort of keeping his claws sheathed. He loved all his children, even those who had not gone on to the sort of glory Svana, or even Kekäle had, but he did not love them as much as he loved his wife. It was her happiness on which his own depended. She was his everything, and there wasn’t even a question that he would do anything for her, no matter the cost to himself or anyone around him.
“I’ll talk him out of it. I’ll sit on him until he sees reason if I have to,” Bren replied promptly.
Being sat upon by Bren was no laughing matter, as the lion took after both his parents in bulk, taking huge, stocky muscle from his mother and solid, weighty fat from his father. If Bren sat on someone, they weren’t going anywhere until he decided to move. If he sat on them long enough, they wouldn’t go anywhere ever again, having likely been crushed or smothered by his hulking mass.
Lyti shivered as another torrent of tears threatened and she suppressed them – for the time being, anyway. Then she whispered brokenly in a tone that was nearly a whimper, “You can’t. He’s already gone.”
“I’ll get him back,” her husband swore. “If I have to hunt him down and drag him back by his, er, tail, that’s what I’ll do.”
Tail was not the body part he’d been thinking of. He’d amended his words not so as to avoid offending Lyti’s delicate ears, but because he had decided that perhaps when he found Njal he would simply castrate him, to discourage him from pulling any sort of stunt like this again. It wasn’t as if Bren didn’t already have grandcubs to carry on the line, and by a most decent lioness, too.
Lyti was not paying much attention to her husband’s vow, at any rate. Her gaze had turned inward and her chin dropped to the ground as she breathed, “How did I fail so badly as a parent?”
“What?” Now it was Bren’s turn to be startled and incredulous by his mate’s line of reasoning. “You didn’t fail as a parent. You have a son who’s a captain with a fine litter of cubs by a wonderful lioness from a good family, another who’s a reaver. You have three daughters who are well-spoken of in the pride and a credit to our family with their brains and intelligence – which they obviously got from you. And, in case you’d forgotten, you gave birth to and raised the warlord. It is impossible that you’ve failed as a parent.”
“No, I did,” Lyti argued, quite sure of her failure. “I was too lavish in my praise of Kekäle and Svana, and I must not have given him the attention he needed. I failed and he hates me.”
And that was all it took. Those six words reduced Lyti to gut-wrenching sobs from which she could not be roused by any tack Bren took. All he could do was to curl up around and beside his petite love and offer her promises that everything would be all right even though he didn’t really believe what he was saying.
At some point Lyti fell into a fitful slumber and Bren shifted to relieve his numb limbs and summoned their thrall, directing him to bring their daughter Soja to the den. They might not actually be able to fix things, but they were sure as hell going to try.
Word Count: 1,516