Feral Snippets

Lily B65

They hadn't known why back then, but Lily wasn't in the habit of dismissing her own visions. Neither of them had expected the outcome, but it wasn't unusual in their world. A lot of supernaturals lived by the "kill or be killed" mentality. "We're just as much at fault for giving you the information," Lily said, hoping to shift at least some of the blame off of Nat.

"No, you're not," Natania growled. "I would have found them eventually. I chose to kill them." Then she hesitated. "Why did you? Didn't you just say you don't help with extinction events?"

"We don't give out widescale information like that, but we don't care about a grudge against a singular group." Clients were clients, Vincent only cared about so many people. She didn't particularly care either except for the guilt their wolf carried. She'd have done it again if it meant getting Nat in their lives, but she wished the wolf would let her take the guilt away. Lily hated seeing it pick away at her, bit by bit. But Nat would never allow it, and Lily wouldn't betray her like that.

"Do you know why he did it?" Natania asked quietly.

"Something about them killing his mother."

Natania furrowed her eyebrows. "That can't be right. My grandmother abandoned the pack after my grandfather cheated." She snorted. "I guess shitty men run in the family." Natania chewed on her lip. "As far as I'm aware she's still alive, though I've never gone looking. She fulfilled her child requirement so she was free to disappear."

Lily shrugged. "That's just what Ray remembers." She glanced at Natania. "Did you want us to look for your grandmother?"

She scoffed. "Gods no. My family is cursed."

Lily contemplated her for a minute. "What about your mom's side?" It would be easy enough to find out where they were now.

That made Natania pause, then she shook her head. "Nope, I don't know them, so they don't know me. I don't want to find out I killed them in that fight. Besides, I don't know their names, are you just going to randomly look for a sand brown alpha? That wouldn't even help. Our colour genetics can be weird as hell."

Lily laughed. "We have our ways." What she didn't want to say was that they already knew who her grandparents were. They had done a deep dive into Rigaldo when Nat had first arrived, and the connection to Tali had also led them to Abigail. She hoped it was by chance, wolves didn't always keep in touch with their families and Tali had been at least fifteen years their junior.

No reason for them to keep in touch. No reason for Rigaldo to have ever heard Abigail's name, or Natania's. Lily desperately hoped Natania never discovered that. She wouldn't have kept her from her grandparents but she was going to bury that fact as much as she could manage, until it never saw the light of day. Rigaldo had been looking for a clone of Tali, any wolf could have had similar colouring, he'd just happened to stumble upon his niece by marriage. She'd choose to believe it was a fluke and not intentional. The alternative was just... disturbing.

She cocked her head and changed the subject. "You know everyone else refers to you as gold, but you always say honey or sand." Sand did not do their wolf justice at all.

Natania looked at her like it should have been obvious but Lily genuinely had no idea. The wolf stared for a moment then rolled her eyes. "Because Rigaldo was silver," she said, through gritted teeth.

So she didn't want to be part of a set, Lily thought. That made sense. Honey it was.

Natania growled, "He used to refer to me as his golden sun or some stupid bullshit like that. Made me want to gag. I guess Tali was into that nonsense. He'd get so mad that I only ever referred to him by name." She looked haunted for a moment then shook herself and snorted. "Maybe I should have called him moon moon, fucking stupid, might have been funny though." Natania looked back at Lily. "It's an effort not to snap at Thomas and Sara for calling me sunshine, even though they did it first."

"Ask them to stop?" Lily suggested.

"No. He doesn't get to take that from them." She sighed heavily. "I'm sure I'll get over it eventually. Now that he's dead and buried." Natania picked up her box again, she didn't want to keep talking about him. "You know you don't have to help us with this. You could just hang out."

"I don't mind." It wasn't like the boxes were heavy, she was a vampire.

"You've already done a lot for us," Natania said hesitantly.

Lily ran a hand through Nat's hair, she couldn't help it, it was so soft, then tapped her chin. "If I didn't want to be here, I wouldn't be."

"You could be here without doing labour."

"Nat," Lily said. "Shut up."

Natania snorted. "Yes ma'am."