AND WE'LL NEVER BE ROYALS
IT DON'T RUN IN OUR BLOOD
THAT KIND OF LUXE JUST AIN'T FOR US

It had been nearly a year since her mother left. Hepzibah did not mind so much anymore, although the memory of her parents was seemingly fading in her psyche, she wondered if she would remember them as she grew older. Sure, their blood was her inheritance. It was the declaration that she was misplaced royalty. She was the daughter of a Queen and yet, because her father was not Baphomet she was basically shunned by her older half siblings. Her mother had left her when she was a yearling and it displaced any sense of ranking she might have had. It had made her angry. It had made her withdrawn. In truth, it was still making her withdrawn. She had grown up being constantly reminded who she was based on who her parents were and now they were gone she was largely left alone. She was forgotten before she even had a chance to be remembered. A youth with no one to guide her meant she was likely to stray. And stray she had done. She had wandered within Moladion with reckless abandoned and within the confines she found that no one was afraid of Demons. No one hushed their words when speaking about them. Demons were hardly the force she was led to believe they were. It made her angrier. Did the Demons in Iromar know they were living a lie? She bet they didn't. A large ego and an imaginary reputation. Hepzibah was disgusted that she was descended from such a legacy. That the culture she had been so deeply immersed into was so diluted at this point. She thought about finding Hell herself and forcing her mother to reckon with her but she hadn't the foggiest idea of where Hell was. Thus, she contented herself deal with the life she was dealt and forced into. This was not ideal. This was not what she wanted. This was not the life she would leave behind her when dead. She would rise above it all. Above her bloodline. Above Demonkind. She would leave her own imprint upon this world and they would tremble when they heard her name.

Because she was a packwolf, because she knew that she would never make it outside of the safety of the pack, she returned to Iromar. Not with her head tucked or slinking through the swamps she knew like the red of her toes. With her head held high, her bright gold eyes bright and her tail waving slightly elevated over her haunches. She crossed the borders without any hesitation. Let them come at her. She would submit to Lillith and to Andras but show her someone else to submit to her and they would find her silent with her chin held high. Perhaps it was an immature outlook in her life, but what had anyone else done to make her respect them? There was no one here that had done anything in the past year that was even remotely noteworthy in her mind and therefore she would not degrade herself to make them feel better about their lack of accomplishment. She was tired of being the underdog. Of being the outcast. Of being the mud in their paws. She may be young, but she had more courage than any of them. And she would prove it. She would rise above her birthright (or lack there of) and she would show them all how wrong they were to discard her at such a young age.

She lifted her voice to the heavens in hopes of attracting either Andras or Lillith. Gone was the angry teenager. Instead there was a calmer, focused creature that would take the world by force, whether it was cooperative or not. Gold eyes that stood out in the grey world of mist and bog watched for the familiar silohuette of either alpha. She would show them that she mattered. She would carve out a place for herself and rise above everything that they had ever predicted about her--the good and the bad. Hepzibah, while only a merely near two years of age, had managed to grow in leaps and bounds; having left her childhood behind the day that her mother walked away and seemingly never to return.

WE CRAVE A DIFFERENT KIND OF BUZZ