As they lay, as he feels her warmth, his old heart is soothed - keeping him free of the aches and pains of his age and allowing him to quietly enjoy the peace of his family. It was not all of his family, not by far, but it was his and they were everything to him now that he was beyond the years of mattering to the world. He is nigh useless, proven by his allowing Natu to be stolen to this pack, despite it becoming their home, and while he does not give up -- he is glad to allow the world to run it’s course in a way he had not been before.

She sighs for him, against him, and he takes reassurance that she finds him a comfort still and not old baggage as his young children often seemed to feel. What he dreams, however, is a time spent amongst the forest - a frolic and romp to make them both shirk the duties of age and become a better father than simple a figurehead and black shadow haunting their mother.

Perhaps he has never been a good father. Perhaps he was destined to be his own father, negligent in fathering and more tactician and leader and lover. The future generation was important, but often he was the brains of those he saw as peer - too much to offer much brain to those beneath her belly where they lay.

He feels the weight of his shortcomings most acutely.

“Of course I shall venture with you, my love. We shall race amongst the shadows together. When do you wish to go? I will leave Samia and Thor here to learn a little of independence themselves.” It was a valid question, though he finds the answer hard to come by. “Maybe we will run here, then come spring, should all be right, we might take the children to hear the stories of my brother… let them learn of their Uncles they will never meet.” He looks in questioning, but feels in his heart, this was the way it would be.