Hope Falls

"Kiaan is holding him accountable, bringing him back to reality with it all. He isn't going ro be an Avani, he'll be coming home."

---

"Oh please, I have watched you and the Queen's in-law having very cosy moments since her arrival. The older one, who injured you." Aoife raised an questioning eyebrow.

“Cosy moments? You’re losing your mind in your age.”

---

“You truly think so?”

"I will be dead soon, so I feel I can say it, ask it." Aoife remarked pleasantly. "Is having a mate what you heard of in the stories?"

“Since you are dying can I tell you that I am sick to death of everyone’s interest in it all?” Wyatt sighed. “Mate this, mate that. Tell me about it Wyatt! Talk to me about how you feel about your mate! Oh you have a mate?! That entitles everyone to prod and poke about everything! We all have to hear every little detail!” He rattled off sarcastically, wiping at his face. “Ruari wants to tell everyone how much milk to the drop his wife had for breakfast but it all makes me want to scream.”

"I think the ancestors fucked up your bond," Aoife laughed, stretching out her legs from her seated position in front of the fire to rest it on top of his. "Or it isn't real, not for you anyway."

---

"Whatever is happening with him is just... how he gets when he is away from Kiaan for awhile. You've seen it before, we all have. He clings onto someone to give him comfort."

“Does it make me a bad sister to say that it pains me to see them together now? That I imagine my sons… and what Idris has lost…”

---

“How can it not be real? I felt the pull toward her. I just hate that the bond makes everyone feel so entitled to every drop of information. It is torture. Like being a freak people pay to stare at in uncivilised societies…”

"No, no." Ishaan whispered. "It makes you a mother of twin boys. Perhaps we will be lucky and it will only be you to feel that bunch, if we are lucky, Idris won't ever feel like he has a missing piece."

---

"Felt." Aoife cocked her head at the past tense."
"Wyatt?"

“I can only pray he gets on well with Kael’s other children. That Daphne allows it. My heart will break if he has all these siblings he does not truly get to know because their mother and her wretched sisters get involved. If she chooses so he’ll be alone, because I can’t give him what we had, I can’t give him siblings.”

---

“Feel, felt. All the same with the bond. It is eternal, mm. Our bonds are.”

"Ours are, not theirs though. She is not us. You said felt..."

---

"Do you think Kael has the strength to battle her, to make sure they have a relationship?"

“Feel and felt are the same. She is my mate. It is a bond fixed by the Ancestors…”

---

“I think where Idris is concerned he’ll do all he can. He loves our son so much, Ishaan. But he is King. He will not be spending all day every day with the children. Daphne will be raising them more until they’re around Idris’ age, if not older. It’s just how things are mm?”

"Okay." Aoife laughed it off, leaning forward to catch his wrist - brushing her thumb over a part of his skin that had a scar on it so long ago it had faded entirely over the decades. "Hey, okay..."

---

"Another thing to speak to him about, you need to know how much contact Idirs can have with his sister. You need to know..."

“You think I’m a coward don’t you?” Indira asked sadly. “Too afraid to ask him anything in case he leaves because I am terrified of him not loving me anymore.”

---

“I do love her.” Wyatt said quietly as he watched Aoife. “And I was content in how it felt. I had been alone for so long, avoided people. I just thought the way I loved is the way I loved but… I have seen Ruairi and Avani. And it has thrown things into question. If I am just deep seated in cruelty and that why I cannot seem to love Florence the way Avani is loved by Ruairi.”

"Rauiri is young, he is battle worn yes but compared to those our age..." She shook her head. "How we love changes, with our experience. Life shapes us."

---

"I think the idea of freedom, what it means you can do freely, scares you."

“Not much I can do with freedom. I knew I’d never truly have it again when I decided to have Idris.”

---

“Shapes us that I am incapable of wholeheartedly loving the person the ancestors have designated for me?”

"People do not love the same," Aoife whispered, putting her tea down so she could wrap her arm around his shoulders instead. "Don't talk like you're broken, Wyatt. You weren't loud when we were kids, the wars, the wasting, made you a little bit more reserved but they would... almost everyone we knew died. That's okay though, you aren't expected to be okay after that."

---

"Mm." Ishaan sighed. "You need to set boundaries."

(( Night night ))

“I thought a bond would be as Ruairi has it. A big burst of love instead of this… quiet contentment. Perhaps I’m just completely incapable after all we have been through, all we have seen.”

---

“I need to get drunk if I am to think of such.”

"Perhaps it is not our bond, but hers you are feeling."

[Hr)

“It is still my bond. One that I am too broken to fully enjoy.”

"Shut up, you're not broken," She reprimanded, hand almost roughly resting on the back of his head to force it down against her shoulder. Hugging him properly then, resting her head on top of his, "You have a mate, mm. Whether it is one the ancestors blessed you with, or one that her wolf side has decided on and your soul has called back to it. It is good, it has resulted a perfectly boisterous little boy. I am glad you are loved so feircely by someone, and that woman has no concept of who she is speaking to - the sparring matches I have heard she has had with Queen Isolde, for sending you away last minute, when those wolves had taken you and she didn't feel she was acting. A quiet love when you are together, a loud defence of each other when the other is absence. It means no less than Princesz Avani and Rauiri's rambles and displays."

“It is not what she wants though. She wants more from me - and she deserves it. I can see her disappointment when I don’t have a constant stream of thoughts to project to her. When I do not want to spell out every emotion and the why and how. She needs it all vocalising, and it hurts her when it isn’t, when I dont. It just feels like she was put with me to punish her for something - because I know she’s not truly happy. A man like Ruairi is what she wants.”

"She loved you before the bond. When you were training Kael and the boy broke your shoulder, I remember you huffing about her audacity to show up at your cottage and fuss over you. Never mind that second war, when the witches hexed you - the way she physically winced as you were put onto that bed, like she felt every pressure you were too unconscious to feel." She brushed her thumb across his arm as she held him. "She fell in love with you as you are. If what she wants has changes, then that is not your fault, Wyatt. If what she wants from you has changes, then she is just stupid."

“She has always wanted more. This is why I’d rather pull my eyes out than talk to anyone about this. All anyone ever wants to talk about is my relationship with her. And when I finally tell people it is not the sunshine and roses they expect then all I am met with is a tome of reasons why she is the best person to ever exist and it just makes me feel fucking worse.” Wyatt shook his head as he got up and pulled away from Aoife. “I’ll not allow Kael to execute you.” He moved on from the subject, straightening up as he stood. “I’ll sort this out.”

"I wasn't defending her, I was trying to assure you that you were loved. If you want to criticise we can, if you want my real opinon then you can have it." Aoife frowned. "I think she is terrible for you, I think she is needy and obsessive. She'll only be happy if she stifles you down and not because she is a horrible person but because she has problems. Abandonment issues. Issues and problems she thinks you can fix because she is too much of a coward to face them herself. I think the ancestors are being cruel to you, putting you with someone like that, someone who quite frankly does not understand you. She is making you feel broken, when she is the broken one, it isn't right."

“She is not broken… none of that is her fault. It is just that we - we would have never ended up together if it weren’t for the bond. She is not a person I would have pursued and I think the same otherwise. But here we are, together, with Sullivan.”

"And you are not broken either so... I don't want to hear it again. I don't want to ever hear you are too damaged or broken from war, or weathered from age to love right. You love perfectly well."