In his life, he'd lost anyone he ever cared about.[/html]
Zeneca, he'd concluded, was not the same. His icy daughter didn't even recognize him, and the pair had separated on terms that were, to say the least, bizarre. Shandom Qi'Vaex knew he'd wronged the beautiful girl, but he never could have imagined it would have meant he no longer had the three children he loved but could not bear to see. In the back of his mind, he'd always assumed they would come back to him, when he was ready. However long that took. Of course, that was wrong. That had been so very, very wrong.
Naniko was gone, of course. He'd gone to Anathema to visit her and smelled by the borders that the white woman had departed. Shandom could not help but imagine, quite selfishly, that it was his fault. Had his advances run her off the land she loved? Was it possible that she came to visit him and was killed along the way by unfriendly hands? Or perhaps there had been an accident, an illness, something - regardless, Shandom felt that he should have been with her, at the end. He was certain, for whatever reason, that she was dead. No other justification could be created for her abandoning Anathema. For abandoning him.
Linquilea went without saying.
Shandom paced around New Dawn, even more elusive than normal. He felt the pain of the pack in his heart and tried to take it upon his shoulders; instead, it just made him more of an outsider. The scarred Gamma ached for his Alpha and friend Zalen, who lost his made and could not be feeling well either. For the women who felt threatened by this loner, and for all the other small trials of his packmates and family. He had no friends here; simply family, and at the end of the day you could not always turn to those members for help in matters of the heart.
The Gamma found himself in the ruin of a building he'd once tried to disassemble with the help of Soran; neither had succeeded. And now, with his large head tilted up to examine the building in the setting sun, the Gamma could not help but whine for his failures; and so he sat, rested his head on his paws, and thought about what he could do.