Would you change us? He didn't know. The Patriarch gazed at her for what felt like eternity, eye glowing with a worried disturbance, shoulders sagging with discouragement. Their relationship had been a rocky one, the most complicated out of any he'd seen of any others; the Patriarch had insisted his independence, both from she and from the rest of the pack, and maintained heavy walls to defend all that lurked within his grim, twisted mind. He'd hated her for breaking through at first, especially since she had managed to do despite his utmost efforts to keep her out. How had she done it? The idiot still didn't know. He hadn't wanted to be happy. He hadn't deserved to be happy. All along, and even as she rested on his shoulder so lovingly close, he wracked himself with guilt. The beast had committed too many sins to deserve happiness.
But would he change it? The brute could not see himself capable of it; she had not controlled him, per se, but something within him rendered himself vulnerable and controllable. Perhaps it was the newness of the experience, the unknown features of falling in love, and the lack of defense he had against such a foreign thing. Eye lingered on the lake, features sinking to an emotionless gray. Would she herself change any of it? Had she ever considered turning her back on him, leaving him behind? Leaving behind that scarred, sarcastic idiot with nothing going for him and a thousand sins on his soul? What, he wondered, could possible keep her to stay?
What they had gone through he did not consider necessary for their relationship. It had been a tedious, complicated time of their lives; the brute had questioned for weeks if they would patch things up or not, and by the end of it he had grown used to standing alone once more. Jefferson was glad they were united again—but had things not succeeded, the Patriarch would have simply moved on. He didn't deserve that happiness anyway. "Yes," he said boldly, though it was probably not what she wanted to hear. There was simply too much that had happened, throughout all their relationship, he might have altered somehow only because his conscience constantly demanded he do so. "But it's too late now. Things worked."
He turned his gaze to her, however, with an earnest eye that questioned the same of her without a word.
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