It was hard not to feel the sting of rejection after the Lagoon had abandoned him. He could see the disappointment on the young Lagoonie's face as he realized that he had lost, but Rehoboam didn't blame Orphiel. The recruit had tried his best, and even at a loss, his best was better than Rehoboam's other brothers had mustered.
Not a peep from their General or his son.
Given that Rehoboam had butted heads before with Frey, it was perhaps not surprising that the newly appointed General would turn a blind eye toward such a fight. What better way to get rid of a thorn in your side than to let it get picked up by a long-time enemy? Rehoboam couldn't complain about Bellona's continued presence in the Lagoon or Frey's lackadaisical care of Reh's little sister if he wasn't there at all. Hell, if Frey managed to keep Bellona occupied on the other side of the territory while it was all happening, she might not ever know her brother was gone at all.
That realization had been annoying, but not entirely unexpected. However, the fact that Tyr hadn't stepped in either was a blow that Rehoboam was not prepared for. He knew that Tyr tired of the bickering between his son and Reh, but he didn't think that the man cared so little as to be silent after the time they'd spent working to lead the Lagoon beneath Rade's absentee leadership.
And when the months went by without anyone from the Lagoon coming for him, Rehoboam was left to acknowledge that the brotherhood he'd bought into was nothing more than a bunch of strangers thrown together by happenstance, with no loyalty to bind them. And the longer he thought about it, and the way that this voice had been the only one raised in opposition to Isiksiz's many crimes or Frey's carelessness, the more he realized that the shining future he'd always imagined for the Lagoon might live on only in his own mind.
Fighting for it seemed less important the further away it got.
Either way, returning to the Lagoon was now fraught with a complication that Rehoboam had never foreseen. If you had asked him at the beginning of fall if he would ever consider coupling with the likes of Nyimara, he would have answered with an incredulous laugh and cuffed you upside the head for being so dense. The last mare on this planet he would have considered siring a foal for was the chocolate hued bitch that was so known for torturing anyone she came across.
And yet the evidence was there.
Rehoboam heard the call ring out over the land but had not immediately stirred. He was ill-prepared for the unrelenting heat of Salem's desert and the stress of his situation often resulted in phantom calls that he spent hours chasing, only to realize they were never there at all. It isn't until Nyimara answers the imagined call and treks out over the Dunes that the tobiano realizes that this was not a fluke, and that it was actually possible that Tyr had finally come. Too late, of course. Rehoboam couldn't leave now, but it was more than he'd been expecting.
And perhaps he could get Celestine and the child here after all.
Rehoboam followed after Nyimara at a lope so that he could catch up, and arrived just as she finished asking Tyr what it was that he wanted. His gaze skittered over her distended belly, and then forward to Tyr guiltily. He settled himself as a third point to their triangle, as he could not bring himself to stand subserviently at the pregnant queen's side. The sight of the Lagoon's Boss standing firm only exacerbated Rehoboam's self-loathing and shame for what he had done, and his gaze slid from Tyr's face to the distance with a hard set of his jaw to hide the way his stomach churned angrily.
"Been a long time Tyr."
He had nothing else to add, really, until Tyr outlined his reason for being here. Rehoboam was fairly certain that unless something had drastically changed in his absence, the Lagoon had nothing to trade for his release, nor was he comfortable with his freedom being exchanged for someone else's servitude. Nor, really, was he comfortable leaving at all (a concept that was still hard to consider in anything but the most abstract terms). Either way, it was not his decision to make anymore. He held no authority - real or imagined - and had been reduced to little more than a bystander in this conversation about his life.