It was over.

After months of struggling to maintain the pack, care for my young, and ascertain that Halcyon would not go downhill into his death once more, I had failed. FAILED. The word was stamped across my mind so bright it was all I could see. The pack had shifted, sensing perhaps the weakness in this royal family. The curse that Tesseract muttered so quietly to himself before. Maybe it was true. My parents were slaughtered. My rule was short lived. An Empress I had been for a breif blip in time. My teeth grind, clenched so hard that an ache begins in my jaw until I relax them and glance back at my pups. They were growing fast, almost yearlings. Aspis was the largest of them but broad like my mother. Archana was more a cross between me and Halcyon, Idrisa a spitting image in size of Halcyon, and Perun more like me. They were my embers with their black and fiery nature and colors.

I felt shame. Shame at this loss of my newfound home but also a sort of bitter excitement to be returning to my homelands. Each day meant I drowned in my homesickness. The place where so much love and pain had come from - but Pine was there and she would certainly shelter us. There is a sort of relief in this upset because now I could focus solely upon my children. I had been torn before between duty and my need to be with them, a struggle, but no more. It had been taken from my paws and while I hated myself for it, I also felt comforted by it.

It is no wonder I am so at war with myself. The bitterness stings like bile in my throat as I pad towards the alabaster wolf who stands tall, ready to begin his own journey. My children follow behind me, a line of future leaders, perhaps, or scholars. Whatever suited them.

"I am Aster, once Empress of these lands," I say calmly, my voice flat but not unkind. My shoulders are steeled and tensed against whatever derision this wolf might try to heap upon me for my failure. Instead, my emerald and blue eyes are like iron. Daring, unabashed. I might feel ashamed but I would never allow another to shame me. "Take care of these lands." I didn't know what else to say, what does one say to another who would take their place?