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To each, a separate world exists, founded in oneself and inclusive to greater and lesser extents only of all those whose lives cross paths with theirs. So it was that, while the rest of the world turned on, moving ever forward as the fates demand, the small Doryu household tucked deep into the Terra Expanse, was all but a bubble in and of itself. Detraeus’ world, for the days that followed leading his family back there to protected isolation, did not expand beyond the rocky paths winding out from their mountainside home. The first night, he stayed for his mate.

He spent it tucked with her in their shared bed, relating his anger, the injustice, the conflicts, and the tear between what his daughter wanted and what every instinct in him told him need be done. In the days after, he stayed partly for his mate — who continued to insist that he remain, keep their house guarded, spend time with his family here, ‘One more day of wait will not change everything…’ — but also for the words Akara had spoken on that first night.

He knew—

—or hoped—

—that she would not hate him. Not truly. Not for this.

And he told himself, over and again as repetitive as rain that even if she did — even if she truly did — his duty was to her and not to his selfish heart and want of hers. He owed her a duty beyond his own pain. If it caused him to lose her on some emotional term but spared her well-being, her life, and that of her child, then it was his responsibility to act regardless of her wishes. Better to sacrifice that and suffer his own pains than watch her be damaged by those he knew to be dangerous.

But still, he lingered.

He moved once to attempt reasoning with Akara, early, but at her rebuttal, silence, and stiff stubborn intent to ignore and avoid his presence, Detraeus quickly abandoned those efforts. Stubborn as he was, he did not think it his duty to cajole her. Only to act on her behalf. He was the parent, after all. And she the child.

His son, he knew, lingered close, taking his sister’s ‘side’ at every angle, and Detraeus allowed that to stand as it was. Ataya seemed to position himself at his opposite and contest every move he ever made on principle, so Detraeus saw no reason to argue with the boy here. Better, at least, that Akara have some shoulder to lean to regardless of how innocent — and ignorant — she was of the dangers she placed herself and her child in.

After the course of a week, when the snows began to filter through in small drifts and the winds whispered of storms more fierce to come, however, Detraeus grew restless. Moreso than he had, to the point where he itched to move. Needed to act.

Every day, every hour of indecision, was one wasted that could never be regained, and time added to uncertainty. Detraeus detested indecision.

Detraeus frowned, turning to eye his daughter after her shove and retreat. In the days between their first evening back and the present, his opinions had not changed, but they had weathered in a sense. Weathered his daughter’s anger, and silence. Weathered his mate’s coaxing and his son’s…everything. Ataya dedicated himself to his sister and his own private spaces in the hours of meantime, saying nothing aloud to him but making it clear enough that his sister had a reasonable enough basis for her upset with him.

Detraeus…understood her want to hope for better. But he knew the truth. And protecting her from reality was more important than catering to her wants and whims. After watching her retreating shape disappear through the door, he hesitated only a moment before following after.

The night was cold. Thick frost on the ground, and snow in places, though it wasn’t snowing currently, and the air dark and nipping. Detraeus frowned as he moved out, approaching until he stood some several paces behind his daughter’s crouched shape at the lake’s edge. “It is cold, Akara…you should stay in. Do you…need anything?”

“You’ll become sick…” Detraeus lingered, eyeing her a moment before glancing to the house. “I could fetch you furs, if you intend to stay. But coming in would be preferable. How is your health?”

Detraeus grunted. After a moment, however, he moved back up the path to the house, boots crunching through the frost and thin snow as he went. Once he had scuffed them at the front steps, he moved in, down the halls and to the closets where spare furs were stored before gathering several in his arms and moving back out. As he arrived at his daughter’s back, he stretched the largest out, like a dark sheet, and layered it over her.

“Carrying two in you…you must be careful. As…you must always be careful of yourself.” He frowned. Nothing he said came out precisely right. He knew she was beyond upset with him, for her own reasons, but he still wanted her health seen to. And part of him — however futile the want — desired at least a chance to explain himself, so that she might understand his fears.

Detraeus frowned, hesitating on his words. His was not a story for children — or most anyone, for that matter — and thus he had kept it where it belonged. Private, and unspoken. His mate knew, but only because he could not bring himself to open to her properly, fully, until she knew all that he was and had been in important part. Now, however, his daughter was no longer the child she once was. Still, in many senses of the word, a child. His child. But a woman also, if a very young one, and the infant in her proved that as surely as anything.

He considered his words carefully before directing his gaze out over the frosted lake.

“I have no memory of parents,” he began at length. “Not because I was not born to them as you and your brother were, and not because mine would not keep me, but because I was taken from them. Like goods, or a bag of coin, stolen from a person or caravan. I grew, ‘raised,’ in the largest city of Seren’s creations, and I learned there what it is that a person of their ilk will do when they have paid for the freedom to do whatever it is that please them to do…to a child, of a race they consider subordinate. I swore every day there, and every day after that I would bring to their kind what was due in time. My goddess lead me from them…but even when I met your mother, older as I was by then, I could not bear her touch — even in a simple form, as fingers on mine — without a shock of fear which would cause me to recoil as though burned. Seren’s creations are not a people…they are something imagined by a twisted divine with purpose wreak damage on the rest of this world.”

Detraeus frowned, some of the tension in his posture chipping away at his daughter’s reaction, but others still on the defensive. He hated to see her so torn, battered, and upset. Hated to see her cry — to see her suffer at all. But as much as part of his instinct wanted only to push away at all that hurt her, he knew that in this case, it was far more complicated than that.

And portions of her statement made his tail flick.

‘If you did not ‘mean’ for me to learn this way, then how did you mean for me to learn of it?’ part of him thought, stiff with the obvious answer. She did not. She had not. She had intended to keep this from him — a massive portion of her life secret from him for as long as chance permitted — and she was upset that chance had not allowed her an indefinite period of secrecy. Detraeus pursed his lips, but his brow furrowed, shoulders sinking a fraction at her last words.

“Afraid…” he repeated, half beneath his breath and quiet on the night air, but audible as it was visible, his breath white against the backdrop. After a moment’s hesitation, he dipped to a crouch, half behind and half to her side, studying her. Respect. Honesty. Obedience. Love. He hoped for these things from his children. But fear…? Detraeus shook his head. “Akara…I have never wanted for you to fear me…where have I failed, to cause this?”

Detraeus frowned, bristling briefly but forcing down his initial words, sharper than they needed to be. When he did speak, his voice was still firm, but quieter and serious. “I do care, Akara…about you, about our family, about everything I hold dear to me. All these things…you, your brother, your mother…are blessings that I once never began to dream would be accessible. Now that you are part of my life you are everything…why should I risk that—you, your safety, the safety of your child…for a boy born of a hateful bloodline, dangerous, and twisted. He is a stranger to me and not worth—not a fraction of worth…compared to you.”

Detraeus hesitated only a moment before reaching. He ran his hand down his daughter’s back, rubbing lightly before resting it in an almost uncertain perch at her shoulder. Even after this many years — and while he was infinitely better than he once had been — similar gestures of affection came with a degree of hesitance and deliberation.

“You…understand that I would do anything, and everything for your safety and well-being…?”

Detraeus opened his mouth, and then shut it, eyes closing instead as he pulled his daughter in close and held her there. He tucked a kiss to her hair, as he had when she was only a small child, and relaxed against the embrace. He did not know how to explain, better, all the dangers she was asking him to open her to. But he did not want to harm this moment with her, holding her after a week of her avoidance.

“I must see him…”