“I already told you…I won’t kill the girl…” Aurelian said extracting himself coldly from a grip that was meant to contain him. “Did you love my daughter so little that you will not even seek justice for her murder…” The woman spat the words into his face. “It is because I loved her so much that I cannot spill innocent blood under the banner of her name…” The wolf prince answered calmly, wiping the spit from his face with the back of a bare hand. “How can you call that girl innocent? She is the daughter of a spineless murderer….by her very blood she is evil….” The woman said grabbing hold of Aurelian’s wrist once more as if to plead with him. “That man stole the life of my only daughter I would spill the blood of his in return…that he may know my anguish….” The woman said dropping to her knees, tears springing to her already bloodshot eyes. “That is not justice Emilia…would you make me a villain…condemn me even in death? When what I truly want, even above fulfilling my duties for the pack, is to be reunited with Ellesime…” He said but his words did not console only caused the distraught woman to tighten her grip. “I see it now…you are a coward….you mean to replace my daughter with an inferior human girl….” The woman said her fingernails breaking through his flesh in her desperation. “That is not love…you are a traitor…” She growled digging harder this time in order to hurt him. “I wish only to be the man that Ellesime loved…the man that she married….she is not here….do you not understand that! She is not here and I cannot bring her back again!” He ripped his arm free, the sudden jolt sending the woman to the floor where she lie dragging herself toward his retreating figure.
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“What is that you would do Aurelian? What is this justice you speak of? If not for Ellesime what of the others who have fallen? Your comrades?” Emilia snarled, a pool of white against a marble backdrop, like a fallen Grecian deity, this woman of surreal and tragic beauty. “I intend to make the girl my bride…that man owes me a wife…” Aurelian said his voice edged with bitterness. “Make no mistake Emilia I mean her no harm…I will treat her well…I would not have her heart harden…as yours has…as mine has…” He said looking down though not at the ruined woman directly. “As for her father…he is the killer of this I suffer no doubt but I would know if he is a murderer…” The young wolf said eyes narrowing dangerously as if to frighten the woman into silence. “Any human who I deem to have murdered unjustly…remorselessly a member of my pack I shall kill….and that includes the Princess’s father…” He said dropping down into a squat in front of the broken down heiress.”Any wolf who would murder a human…will answer to me as well…though exile seems a far crueler punishment for you than death given that you still have a husband and son…or has vengeance blinded you to them?”
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“How can you be so cold…what does it matter the reason? Reasons will not bring back our dead…the humans will continue killing until we are extinct…do you really think your pathetic farce of a marriage will ease their prejudice against us?” The woman said drawing herself up to sitting, knees at her side, head haughtily tipped into the air. “You would have me start a war….a war that we cannot possibly win…our numbers are too diminished…we are too compromised to repopulate…you mean to destroy the pack…to use them for your personal vendetta and I will not condone it Emilia…” Aurelian said rising to standing looking down at the woman with unconcealed disgust. How could this witch be the mother of his beloved? “How long will we remain cowering in these mountains? Pathetic…paranoid…there is only one way to resolve this without slaughter and that is to form an alliance with the humans…they only fear what they do not know…and do not speak to me of their murders…what of our murders…I tire of this argument…there is nothing black and white about it…I hate that man as much as you Emilia…with every fiber of my being…I do not recognize myself for all this unjust hatred but having met his daughter…can he truly be the monster I need him to be…” Aurelian’s face was tormented, that face that before Willa was so sublimely impervious, now fragmented and fragile. He blamed himself for Ellesime’s death she was fiercely independent and he hadn’t stopped her from going out, if only he had, if only, she might still be alive. “Go I will speak of this matter no more…I have to prepare for my trip….”
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(500 posts! Alright tomorrow will be a poetry day promise! I am nervous to post this one!)
mindlovemisery 