[private] until the night turns

[Nashua]

He clenches his jaw, and the moment that Nashua stares at Gale, he tastes blood.

Those furious green eyes stay there, until Mazikeen tries to imply that his son learning to murder was an accident. No, he assumes, with an expression that fills with contempt. An accident would have been Bolder tripping over a Taigan log. An accident would have been bumping against Saffron or Bravely while they raced.

The blood seeping from that animal, and all over his son, was not an accident.

It wouldn't have even happened, if Bolder had just stayed as a horse.

"You both will pay," Nashua says, placing the blame equally between Gale and Mazikeen. The Alpha might have been spared his rage earlier, but now, the striped pegasus decides that she was as much at fault as the thing that possessed Gale. She was clearly as much as part of inciting this - of encouraging this - as the brindled shapeshifter.

Nashua is seething and his wings open, ready to loosen for a fight but Bolder steps away from all of them. The argument between the adults in his life - each one important to him - is unbearable. The young pegasus can't imagine returning to Taiga, to a life where he isn't learning from Uncle Gale or Aunt Mazikeen on how to be a better shifter.

But he can't imagine this, either.

Bolder allows himself to be drawn into his mother's embrace, like she had done when he had been small. For a moment, wrapped up in her, he can pretend that he is small again and the world didn't seem so vast with problems. "I love you, Ma." He tells her, and not willing to lie to her - not able to say that he'll be home soon - Bolder leaps into the shape of a tawny wolf and races towards the shadows where he can forget this ever happened.

Nash watches on, keeping a guarded stare at the two Hyalineans. They would leave, but not before his mate was permitted to tell their youngest son. He would do whatever means necessary, to allow his family that moment.

Mazikeen hurls more words at him - that he has been banished from Hyaline - for what? His crimes are pale in comparison to the Curse; he has not raped or pillaged his way across Beqanna. He has not torn a family apart. He has not -

Despite the way that he longs for nothing more than to lunge forward, he stills himself as Noel envelops them both in her white wings. They had been together for how many years now? Their meeting after the Alliance flashes before his forest gaze, and then finding her after, clearly pregnant with the twins. Had she trusted him then?

Had she trusted him that day they flew the Nerinian shore together, testing the updrafts from the ocean currents and swooping between the crags?

She's never asked him for anything, he realizes then.
Never asked him to stay after she had learned that she was pregnant.
Never asked him for anything, not even when his duties were split between the Isle and their family in Taiga.

"Okay," he tells her, a quiet, hoarse sound that comes from somewhere deep within. They would find a way to bring Bolder home. They would find a way to deal with Mazikeen and Gale.

They would find a way.

And so Nashua flares his speckled wings, taking to the sky after his mate does, finding their way back home.