OOC: ::Word Count:: 683  She deserved this just as much as she deserved Haku's punishment for sneaking unaccompanied to the city, for taunting his borders with only a few hundred feet separating herself from him. The silver-furred coyote knew his words to be true, and though that ring of truth penetrated the murky misery of the hybrid's brain, and as he turned to face her at long last she could not help but lower herself half to the ground, her muzzle firmly pointed downward, no longer able to meet so much as his forepaws with her golden eye. Her coal ears were folded flat against her skull, folded back into the shaggy silver mane of her neck, her tail even tucking downward. Powerful and wolfish instincts had forced Kaena into a near-perfect picture of submission, pressed nearly flat to the ground and groveling at her son's feet. There was little she could do to keep herself standing upright; the fear of being struck had crept back into her, but the difference was this time, her feet might as well be glued to the ground. She could not run from this forever. The silvery coyote could find no words to defend herself, only excuses, explanations, and those exploded from her without restraint—it was like whining, pleading, anything to keep his paw from rising from the ground and hurtling toward her face. "When I came to you that night, Gabriel, I tried to tell you," she started, practically choking on the words as a bubble of fear welled up within her, forcing a strange wetness into her single eye. Tears spilled over the edge of it, and she squeezed it shut, desiring to both block those from escaping and block the image of Gabriel as he moved to strike her, if it happened, when it happened. "I'm a failure. You know that. I fucked up twice before, I can't lead this goddamn clan, I proved it to us twice. Don't think I'm anything of a leader," she said, reflecting on her own periods of Aquila-ship. "Maybe you should just let Anselm be your Centurion and throw me to the wolves, then," the coyote said, self-hate overtaking her tone, a pained look crossing her face as she said those words, her teeth gritting. She could barely stand to speak them like this; just months before she'd been so happy to be back where she'd started. She'd been so confident in herself, so certain that she could fulfill her duties as her Aquila demanded of her. Now she was not sure of this at all, now even Kaena Lykoi, arrogant and selfish Kaena Lykoi, could see only her own failures. "I don't deserve this rank, I don't deserve this clan, I am not even worthy of my own family," the hybrid continued, now more babbling than anything. The words had started and now they simply would not stop. "I brought all of this on my goddamn self when I went to the city alone in the middle of the night, and oh, am I paying for it," she said, her voice cracking, growing more frantic and agitated as the words spilled from her. The tears hadn't stopped but she had yet to open her eye, and now they were flooding over even the closed lid of her remaining eye, streaming over her cheekbone and flattening the grizzled fur there. "I thought I could take care of her, I don't know. I can't, apparently," the silver-furred coyote said, her thoughts looping back to Vieira. She'd hurt her, too. She'd perpetrated the same shit that Haku had done to her, passing on a tiny fraction of her pain to the smaller, younger canine. "I hurt her just like he hurt me," she said, her voice practically a wail. She wanted to bury her head in the dirt and suffocate then and there; she wanted to melt away in nothingness in that instant. Nothing hurt more than that admission, and a sob wracked the coyote's body, now laying prone on her belly, her limbs too shaky to support even her own weight anymore. |
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