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The world had become cold.
Gabriel stood on the edge of a vast and unfamiliar wilderness, moonlight casting monstrous shadows as it peered out from behind gray-black clouds. Clawed talons reached towards him, seeking to destroy the blue-white halo that clung to his fur. This forest was no longer his forest, but belonged instead to the long-sleeping demons that had woken with the blue moon above his head. Even though Gabriel did not know that this was what he was staring at, he sensed something powerful in that rabbit’s home. Some part of his memory, some arcane and fading place, remembered that he had been told that once. From whom, he no longer knew. He didn’t see a rabbit—he didn’t see anything, nor did he think about anything, and this was good. Too many things had been weighing on his shoulders, and at least now, in the silent world of the shadow monsters and moonlight, he was content. For too long the day-to-day had been nipping at his heels, chasing him with the undying fervor of some devil child. Their numbers were growing, but he could not shake doubt from his mind.
For what felt like an eternity, but was perhaps only five or ten minutes, Gabriel stared up at the moon and felt nothing but cold. Then, slowly, the clouds pulled back and surrounded that brilliant orb, hiding it from view. Gabriel’s eyes, which had previously carried the green hell-fire all wild beasts know, went dark. He blinked, for what might have been the first time in a minute, and then lowered his head. The forest was no longer unfamiliar, and instead the one he knew and recognized. Whatever long-forgotten beasts of old had woken now staggered back into slumber, taking the unnamed fears that brushed against his sides and crept into his bones.
They began to ache, his bones, and the coy-wolf rose from the ground and shook his coat. He exhaled through his mouth in a breath of steam, and sucked in much colder air with a shiver. Something had changed. Gabriel could sense it in his blood as much as he could sense the snow hanging in the clouds above his head. It was a familiar sensation, one that did not settle well with him. Even though he recognized it, Gabriel did not know what he sensed. Something terrible, without a doubt. Like Armageddon was hiding just behind those clouds.
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318.
The evening was full of familiar comforts for the silver-furred Centurion. The shadow of night provided places for her to seek shelter and hide, obscuring her face from the rest of the clan. Her position now was more precarious than ever; she'd been acting so very strange as of late, and now with her recent encounter with Gabriel, running away... the silver-furred coyote feared for her very membership in the clan, let alone her rank. She crept toward the entrance of her own cave, sneaking past the sleeping Vieira. The silver-furred hybrid flicked a coal-furred ear toward the sound of the smaller canine's breathing, steady and slow as it reverberated through the small archive that she lived in.
The silver-furred coyote desired the night; there was an itchy, insistent feeling tingling in her toes and running up her legs, driving her away from sleep and into the night itself. As she exited her own cave into the crisp freeze of winter, she inhaled heavily, the sharp winter air filtering through her lungs and expanding in a mist of pale silver from her nose. That scent brought something at once intimately familiar and incredibly frightening to the silver-furred coyote, the latter a feeling she thought she'd never experience where Gabriel was concerned. For a long moment the hybrid remained, hesitant to continue onward. She considered turning around and trying to seek sleep once more, but such an effort would simply be wasted time.
Steeling herself with another breath, the hybrid woman padded forward anxiously, her yellow-golden eye seeking her tawny-furred son amongst the shadows of night. She spied him not far from the entrance of her own dwelling, and she swallowed. Now or never, now or live to face the winter alone, separate from Inferni and her family. The silvery coyote trod over to him lightly, unsure of what to say until she faced him. "Gabriel," she said softly.
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The wind carried a dozen or more scents from the forest and with them, half a dozen unspoken stories. A raccoon, male, disturbing the underbrush. Further along the poignant and overpowering smell of skunk came, wafting towards him. It was not until the soft crunch of frosted grass betrayed a body behind him that both ears turned back, refocusing his attention. His mother’s voice was enough to make his jaw tighten. Gabriel’s thick fur ruffled in the wind, but his muscles had gone taunt and pulled the charcoal-brushed tan upwards. Her presence had perturbed him, but not because of her arrival.
“How soon did you plan to tell me about her?” He asked slowly, as if each word was forced. This was not far from the truth. Gabriel had swallowed his anger, and it caught in his throat. To look at her, to face her, meant he would not be able to speak calmly. She had done something he found horrible—certainly, more-so because, above everything else, she had lied to him.
No sin was greater then that.
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The silver-furred coyote could see the annoyance emanating from her son's tawny fur; no one knew children better than their mother, and it was as plain to Kaena as daytime was. His tail was raised in a dominant matter and she could practically see the anger vibrating off of his skin. The coyote woman wanted to turn and run again, bury herself in the darkness and relative isolation of her den. Even if Vieira was there, it was better than here, facing Gabriel's anger.
The silvery coyote's golden eye was wide, staring at his back as he spoke words that resonated with venom. He did not turn and face her; this was an insult that caused visible stress to the hybrid, and her limbs began to shake. Fear was an almost foreign emotion to the old Kaena, but this incarnation of her felt it strongly, flaring up in her chest and pounding like the heart of a prey animal inches from a coyote's jaw. "I tried, I promise... it just didn't come out right," the hybrid started, her voice even quivering the slightest. "I'm not right in the head anymore," the hybrid lamented quietly, her muzzle pointing toward the dirt at her feet.
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Even though he was not looking her (he could not stand to see her in that moment) he heard the distress in her tone. It was a terrible thing; something that reminded him of a rabbit, snared in a hunters trap. Something else, though, something else hung in her words. He knew it, by God, he knew what it was but could not place it. It fell prey to the cold wind, which cut across his face and stung the old scar on his muzzle. This reminded him, suddenly, why he could not afford arrogance. Why Inferni could not afford his mother’s arrogance.
Only then, did he turn, face malevolent and eyes burning in the ever inconstant moonlight. “None of you are,” he growled, whiskers curling upwards. “I put too much into this clan to let you threaten it.” Gabriel did not advance—he did not trust himself that much. “First you let that bastard son of yours waltz in against my wishes, then you fucking hide something like this from me? That girl isn’t your goddamned property!” He barked suddenly, feeling Rikka’s influence rushing up from his memory. She had been horrified, and frankly, Gabriel was not far behind. “You’re not right, you’re acting like one of them!” Even though he did not think about it then, subconsciously, Gabriel knew that would cut her deep. His mother had spent so long fighting to maintain her identity as a coyote that nothing beyond attacking her children (something Gabriel had done before) would ruin her.
He needed her to understand, and this was all that mattered. If she hurt, she would realize what he needed her to. Conri had come to that knowledge, when he had shattered his ribs, laughing. Hybrid understood, but Hybrid had always understood him. Even Haku, though Gabriel would never admit it, understood this. This was how things had to be.
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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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Every inch of her body screamed at him, begging in a way that his wolfish instincts knew and demanded. It was his father’s blood that believed in this world, and had his mind not been filled with hazy white noise and the distant ringing (those damn bells again) he might have stopped obeying it. This meant nothing—his blood rushed up from his heart and it filled his world with nothing but the singular need to see her do what he wanted (or, rather, needed) her to do.
Except something he did not expect suddenly struck him with a force more powerful then the day she had slapped him on the coast. She was begging, and beyond that, she was crying. Whatever anger had been intended for her was suddenly caught in his stomach, where it churned uncomfortably. There had never been a time he had seen his mother cry; not even when her children had returned mangled and ruined from the fight with the Storm-wolf. His body had frozen, and now the blood fell from his face to his feet where the weight of the earth suddenly became so much he could not move. Something under the surface was threatening to pull him under, and suddenly, horribly, Gabriel wanted to take back everything he had said.
Her voice, like the bells, began to rise in both pitch and tempo, and both ebony ears fanned backwards as if he did not want to hear. But it was too late. A tidal wave of emotions flooded towards him, and his mouth opened to stop her, to say anything, but the words simply could not come. Instead he stared at her, jaws agape, and that horrible sinking feeling pulling all of his anger down from his throat into his stomach. The fur along his nape did not fall, but this was not out of anger—panic had begun to rise in his blood, evident by the way his breathing pattern quickened. Something was wrong. The goddamned bells were never wrong.
City. Alone. Night. Then, suddenly: I hurt her just like he hurt me.
Gabriel knew, in that instant, what had happened.
It was as if electricity had shot up from the earth, the way he reacted. His entire body spasmed, but he did not move forward. All four of his legs had turned into lead anchors, buried in the ground. They trembled like young oaks in a summer storm, but could not release themselves from the ground. From his nape to the base of his tail a flame rose, burning black and gold in the moonlight, making his body grow in the illusionary factor of all wolves. His tail went brush-bottle. But his face was the worst—what had been blank, startled by her tears, now shattered ultimately. The grimace that pulled back left all of his teeth exposed to the cold night air, opening with a breath of steam that billowed from yellowing teeth like some dragon of ancient lore. Flames burned behind amber, a ferocious green-gold that belonged to every wolf that had come before him.
A sound that was perhaps more horrible then this still ripped apart his throat, and the black fur surrounding those yellowing teeth only served to contrast their intent. Gabriel knew what he was seeing, and cursed himself for not seeing it before. Talitha had behaved the same when she had returned from Dahlia. His daughter had been destroyed ultimately, and she had needed her mother then more then anything. Gabriel had failed her Now, it seemed, he had failed someone else. Kaena had no mother to run to, no one to seek comfort in. It had been her mistake, but the fault lay with Inferni, with Gabriel for not doing more to protect her. She was aging, and she was not as strong as she once was. It was the thought alone—the thought of his mother, taken in the dead of the night by some brute—that made him want to both empty his stomach and find the nearest wolf and rip him apart from head to tail. Someone had to pay for this, and someone had to pay for this now.
The trembling spread up from his legs and into his body, setting the fur along his spine to life. He looked like a man possessed, and by all rights, he was. Bells, now silenced, had not warned him before this point. The silence, broken by his mother’s terrible sobs, was enough to make him mad. “Who,” he did not ask, only demanded. Gabriel wanted blood. His world had narrowed to one small path, and it was soon to be bathed in blood. This world was going to fall to blood and fire, and he would be damned without seeing a corpse laid out before him.
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The words meant nothing to him—the silver-furred coyote watched in horror as the tawny stranger she had known as her son transformed into a creature of pure, burned-black rage, charred and as coal-black as the depths of hell itself. She had fucked up, and she would pay for it. It was good that she'd at least owned up to her mistakes. Some animalistic part of Kaena had convinced her that his anger was at her; she hardly even realized the slip she'd made, the admission of fault that also implicated another. That same part of Kaena twisted his rage to almost devilish levels; she was almost convinced he would turn those razor-sharp fangs on her to tear her throat into ribbons. She'd failed him, she'd failed Inferni, and she deserved every inch of it. Some cowering part of Kaena crept forward, inching closer to Gabriel even as her mind imagined dark flames of rage licking upward toward the sky, exploding outward from his body. The world around him seemed to dim, as if in a tunnel, and suddenly the silver-furred coyote felt as if she could not breathe. It was caught in her lungs, stale air there expanding and choking her.
A single word echoed from him, and the hybrid visibly shuddered, the shake starting at her nose and traveling swiftly down to the very tip of her tail. Could she even speak his name? She hadn't in so long, though it had featured prominently in her head these past few weeks, chasing her, haunting her. She'd told Halo, she'd let her know—but even then, she hadn't said Haku. She'd said her it was her half-brother, and that was more than enough for the young Lykoi woman to figure out exactly who Kaena was talking about. The silver-furred woman was practically at the Aquila's feet, now, her quivering black nose inches from his ankles, having drawn herself up from the ground just enough to move closer to him. Now she was as flat as she could make herself again, still wishing she could simply disappear into the ground below and melt away through the eons of history trapped in layers of mud, rock, and mineral. The tears almost stung; they were foreign to the silver-furred woman's eye and their saltiness burned quite a bit, reminding her of just how shameful and low she was to have let him take her.
It had been a choice, hadn't it? Kaena had chosen losing her dignity over her life. It wasn't much of a choice, true, but the silver-furred Centurion figured she had gotten the best end of the deal. Or at least, she had. If that was true, though, why did she feel this way? Why did it tear her up inside and ruin her strength, withering it away over the weeks? "H-h-h-Haku," she managed to say, actually stuttering for the first time in nearly ten years. When she was a child, she'd been slow to master speech, and stuttering had plagued her in the early months of her life. Her father had been the one to break her of the habit, though his kind words and encouragment. Hesitantly, slowly, the ashen-hued coyote lifted her head, her muzzle rubbing against the side of Gabriel's neck, close to his shoulder. The conscious mind of Kaena Lykoi was still convinced the rage was for her, still certain she would receive punishment—death, even—for her crime, for her failures, and she simply desired to show affection to her son once more before she passed to the unknown, even if it was the very action to push him into enacting her punishment. "I'm sorry," she said, her voice barely over a whisper.
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She might have been glass, the way he saw her shatter. Ash and the remains of what had once been his mother, collapsing onto itself, blowing towards his feet, his body, pushing its unfamiliar heat against his own. Gabriel did not feel. His world had shrunk from the path before him into a pinprick, but he could no longer see beyond this narrow field of vision. The cold air sunk around them, but his body felt like it was on fire—he was burning alive, and the metal around his neck grew heavy and threatened to drag him down. Gabriel’s nails curled into the ground, gripping onto the only solid thing he could now hold on to.
Then she said it.
Haku.
An atom bomb went off in his body, and without warning, he let out a sound that was perhaps more akin to a roar then anything else. No words could explain the fury that rushed through him at that moment. Gabriel’s world went red, then black. They had been too fucking quiet for too long and now he understood why. That coward had gone behind his back after the only part of Inferni that would hurt Gabriel. Had he not been choking the earth he might have taken flight then and there and gone after the demon without hesitation.
She stopped him, rising and pressing her body against his chest, and somewhere through that black world he sensed her presence. Slowly, and very carefully, he forced his body to remain still—it was still shaking, still waiting for a singular command to abandon this place and put the demon’s head on a pike. Gabriel intended to rip his soul from his belly. He intended to burn what was left of the beast’s heart.
The words reached him, over that red-black curtain, and they were enough to pull him back from the brink. It was a gradual process; one that did not come quickly, so enraged was he. “No,” he finally said, his voice strained, as if he had swallowed sand. “Don’t.” Don’t apologize. He could barely speak. He could barely see anything—his eyes remained staring forward, dead and full of nuclear fire. “I’m going to kill him,” he promised, his voice a low, raspy whisper. Nothing would stop him—not the devil, and not even God.
Haku Soul would die. Gabriel would turn his world into ash.
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The rage was more apparent than ever to Kaena, exploding outward from him in a near mushroom cloud. It was almost visible in the air around him, snapping and burning upwards from the line of spiked golden and black fur that had risen along his spine. The silver-furred coyote did not know what she'd done; she did not fully comprehend what she had unleashed on Inferni and Gabriel, but she saw it—his shoulders were broad and strong, his body stood beautifully against the waves of rage, but even then, the silver-furred hybrid could almost see them sagging with the added weight of the admission she'd just given him. This was something else for Gabriel to absorb, something else for him to consider in the grand scheme of leadership, something else he did not need to weigh heavily on his mind. This was simply one more burden for him to bear, and the silver-furred Centurion simply did not want to be the straw to break the camel's back.
The silver-furred coyote felt his body quiver and quake and she drew back, almost fearful. Her eye had opened to look at him by now, and the tears had yet to cease; they still drifted their way down her cheek. It was a funny thing, the one-eyed hybrid crying—half of her face remained dry, the other half did all the crying. Perhaps it took on extra tears since her dead socket had no way to release them. It had been so long since she'd cried; the silver-furred coyote could not recall the last time she had done such a thing. Still convinced she was to receive retribution, the hybrid woman waited for it to crash down on her head, still regarding the golden-and-black furred hybrid with a strange wariness in her eye.
He spoke, and the hybrid marveled at the single words, simple and effective. She was not to be sorry to Gabriel? Why? Of anyone she might have lain this burden on, she should have been sorry to him above all of them—he carried this burden heavily, moreso than any of the others she might have told, because this weight was just one more added to that of being a leader. She had been in his paws before, she had experienced that herself. It was certainly no picnic. "It was my fault," she said plainly, some small and feeble part of her still nearly praying he would deny this statement, praying he would tell her it was all alright. Gabriel was not one for comfort, though, and his next words were perhaps more comforting than anything he could have given her. A small smile sprouted on the silver-furred canine's face, just barely breaking through the tears and shame, just barely showing on her scarred muzzle before disappearing again, somehow still convinced she was at fault, somehow still sure she would receive punishment for this crime. The silver-furred canine could not imagine herself as the victim in this situation; her mind simply could not process the situation in such a way.
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In his heart, Gabriel knew that punishment had to be dealt. Ancient laws, embedded in his psyche and his very flesh, demanded blood and death to rain down from on high. Even now, though, that too-sharp mind was finally regaining control and closing like a vice. All madness and thought crushed together, and the coy-wolf knew that he would need both to go after the demon. Haku Soul was not simply a wolf, he was something far more vile. All of the fire and brimstone of the ancient and angry God that Gabriel believed in would come down with the sword and the hammer.
This could not be done alone. Even as she tried to put the blame on herself, he was seeing his path laid out before him. His head reached forward, body following suit, and his thickly furred neck wrapped around her back protectively. One singular motion that begged for her to stop, to understand it was not her fault and never would be. Some men were wicked—his father among them—and these men changed so rarely. Exceptions always happened. One singular pillar still stood within Gabriel’s scarred visage; he had not and would not ever kill a mother or child. To him, these rules were law. Women and children were weak, and as he now saw, even ones as vicious and terrible as his own mother could fall to great tragedy. It was unforgivable. Gabriel would not allow such a thing to stand unpunished.
He would not be alone. Amber eyes narrowed and he breathed in the cold air, his mother’s scent (mingled with the saltwater of her tears), and breathed out one low and terrible question. “Where is Samael?” Tonight, he needed his half-brother. He needed a devil to fight a devil, cry hallelujah, amen.
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The edgy, quaking anxiety that had plagued the silver-furred hybrid for many weeks now seemed to subside the slightest bit. She had been able to distract herself from it for some time, drawing her attention elsewhere with the company of others, but always once alone again, once her thoughts truly kicked in, the hybrid woman felt that same fear rising up in her, the strange and foreign thing that was like an infection inflicted upon her by the Dahlian subleader. Kaena had yet to learn of his usurping of the leader, Cercelee, though she'd discovered the departure of the third in command, Cwmfen. The silver-furred Centurion could not have placed faces to these canines; she knew only of the former structure in Dahlia de Mai thanks to Onus. He had shed light on some of the inner workings of their western neighbor, but the rogue coyote had not been able to give Kaena any information as to why Cercelee would allow such a beast to be her right hand. He seemed as at a loss as she did, and it was partially in thanks to Haku and the threat he posed to Onus's children that he and Cwmfen had departed. The world felt like a less safe place with his watchful eye; if there were any allies she might have sought within Dahlia de Mai, it would have been that coyote—without true loyalty to the clan, only to his children, Onus provided a much-needed insider's perspective on their western neighbor.
Now that was gone, and Inferni had to rely on its own strength. Kaena did not think this was troublesome for the clan; their numbers were large and within that membership there were many strong coyotes, perfectly capable of holding their own. They might have been the smaller cousin of the wolf, but that made them no less vicious. For the most part, too, they were hybrids. Some carried dog's blood, many carried wolf's blood, but all had chosen the lifestyle of the coyote in the manner that Kaena had so many years ago. Perhaps they did not rip the wolf out of them as Kaena had tried to do; perhaps they did not subdue their wolfish instincts as well as she had, but there were many years of practice that the silver-furred hybrid had to rely on. She had lived on the border between coyote and wolf all her life, and she was quite experienced in rejecting the wolfish instincts that came with the package in most instances. This was not one of them, and though she felt the faintest edge of her strength returning to her, there was still that fear of being struck, reprimanded, punished. The monochrome canine could not shake the idea that she was totally at fault here, almost completely to blame for what had happened to her.
As she stood there, still shivering slightly and waiting for whatever might come, something rather unexpected for Kaena happened—both were in Lupus form, and it was not so much a human hug with arms as it was the canine equivalent, a sudden warmth and protective pressure over her back as her son leaned over her rather than anything else the silvery canine might have expected. For everything she loved about Gabriel, his affection was rare, almost fleeting—something to be sought after and savored like an exotic delicacy. There had always been walls between them, protective defenses and disagreements alike, but the hybrid felt them crumble in that moment, his embrace both an intense comfort and a promise. The words he spoke next gave more weight to that promise, reinforcing it in the silver-furred coyote's mind. Who else but Samael would fight as hard as Gabriel would for her? Some of her children were lovers, peaceful canines who did not so much reject their Lykoi nature and teachings as they played against it. Others were far more useful for fighting, and Samael was very, very good for that. It surprised her that Gabriel would seek to find Samael, but one fought fire with fire, and in order to deliver a monster such as Haku to the dirt below, Gabriel needed a monster. "I would expect he's still patrolling the borders as I told him to," the coyote said slowly, remembering how she'd told him to keep outsiders out, a preemptive strike before this accidental revelation. The Centurion wondered if he'd even stopped to eat since she'd given that duty to him.
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In Character
There were no allies left in Dahlia de Mai. There never had been, as far as Gabriel was concerned. A pack of wolves that allowed themselves to fall to the whim of a madman had no right to exist. If his intent to destroy Haku Soul took his followers with him, so be it. No part of Gabriel had room for sympathy, not now that his family had been hurt so deeply. An attack on Inferni, no, on his mother, was an attack on Gabriel, and it could not stand. For whatever else he was, the coy-wolf was a creature of ego. To have someone, some wolf no less, come and strike so deeply was something that could not go unpunished. When Talitha had run, crying, from Dahlia, Gabriel had only suspected the worst. It had been devastating to finally learn the truth, and more terrible when the culprit had been revealed to be his own half-brother. Gabriel had killed his blood sibling for such an act; he would not falter when it came to a man and a pack he viewed as his enemy.
She pressed against him, and he found her strangely cold. He felt her body move at the mention of that demon child, but it was not out of fear. Kaena knew as well as her eldest son that the boy would do anything for her. If he had been asked to pull out his eyes, Samael would for her. Now, though, he had to do something that Gabriel knew he would rise to without hesitation. Even if Kaena had not told the dark coyote, Gabriel would—and he would use that terrible rage to strike at the head of the serpent below them. If tonight they could find and destroy Haku Soul, the world would be a better place.
“Listen,” he said lowly, knowing that things could turn poorly for them. “I want you to go home and wait for us to return. If the worst happens, you and Anselm need to be prepared to lead. He will come for you if we fail.” Not only her, but the clan. Haku was a creature of habit, and he was predictable. If he managed to survive this night, there would be no options left. Lifting his head, the amber-eyed coy-wolf turned to scent the air. While a multitude of scents were carried with it, he could identify his half-brother’s. Though it was not fresh, Gabriel would not take long to find him. Especially with all of the angels at his heels.
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There was something Samael possessed for Kaena that none of her other children had. The hybrid had scorned it, turned away from it, and now she was ready to allow Gabriel to use Samael for it. Anything to snipe the monster from his perch, anything to taste vengeance. The hybrid knew what Gabriel needed Samael for, without the golden-black hybrid ever voicing these ideas to her. They were communicated silently, in the festering rage still lurking in the Aquila's eyes, burning brilliant white-hot hatred for the Dahlian subleader. Gabriel would go there tonight with Samael, and he would bring Haku down—or perhaps die trying.
These concerns were voiced to the hybrid then, in the murky and distant voice of her son, absorbing these thoughts. Her solo eye went wide and she could only whine softly. Of what use would she be as an Aquila if she were to suffer the loss of both her sons in one night, for no reason other than to seek their vengeance? Gabriel was her leader; she could not speak out against his will, but the motherly fear for the lives of her children was undeniable. It welled up within her and took hold of her conscious mind. To lose both Gabriel and Samael would be to suffer a worse blow than losing Zulifer and Zarah in the same stretch of two months, to be left with a clan alone—a clan that felt foreign and wrong without the founding leader and her first lover.
Though the silver-furred Centurion could do nothing to bend Gabriel's will, she knew that she had to plead for him to be careful with his life and Samael's. "You have to come back to me," she said simply, showing no disobedience for his order, but instead a perfectly natural mother's worry. Kaena did not wish to lose either of her children, and failure at the Dahlian packlands surely meant death. The ashen-hued canine had contemplating whispering Haku's terrible deed in Samael's ear just to see the fire light behind his eyes, but she had known that sending him alone to seek the brown-furred monster was a certain death sentence. After all, without knowledge of what had provoked Samael to such actions, Gabriel himself might have slain Sam for inciting needless war between the packs, should Kaena have failed to find their Aquila first.
Hestitantly, the ash-dusted coyote stood and straightened herself up, leaning forward to deliver a small and quick lick to her son's burned-gold cheek, unable to face him a minute more. If this was to be their good-bye, she would suffer it no longer. She began walking, slow and purposeful, stealing glances back at Gabriel as she went. When he turned to head for the borders in search of Samael, she would watch him, savoring every sight of her son, for she realized quite well these sights very well might be her last. Beyond that, she would obey him, retreating to the caves and pulling Vieira close to her again, holding the girl for pure comfort as she thought of her sons ravaging their western neighbors, wondering if they would come out of it alive.
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