Destined Path

Chapter Twenty-Four; Beds Made

Onyxia

The wind blew as infuriated and roiled as my mood. It started a month ago, I noticed how Alex's camp moved further and further from the main city. At first I thought they were actually moving the camp, but then I started noticing the things that were being packed away and bundled together. They were preparing to leave. One month and no one mentioned it to me. Not even Alex, who had barely spoken a whole sentence to me since our daughters had been born. In fact, he was ignoring me. Even in bed he'd sleep with his back turned and not even a toe or fingertip touching me. It burned. I hated it. I hated it more when I started training again. I had every person trying to talk me out of it, all this sudden advice and opinions, but you know who didn't have one? My husband. All I got was a 'If you wish it.' when I announced that I was tired of resting from birth and wanted to train. I expected a fight. I expected feeling. Alex shared none with me, no emotion, no warmth, nothing.

It wasn't the children, he was with them every second of every day. Constantly. It made me feel like I wasn't good enough of a parent. That there must be talk that he cared for them more than I did. That wasn't true! I feed them. I bathed them. I held them. Sung them to sleep. I was their mother, they were my children too! I released a sharp breath of pent up anger and resentment. It wasn't just my husband that was treating me like a stranger. It was his men- our men- they could only spare glares and heated comments my way. I was their queen, yet they held no respect for me. I felt like I was back to the start of my marriage. The outsider. The invading insect. Viking scum. Cracking my bleeding and bruised knuckles, I marched into the camp. Anger heating the dripping sweat down my spine from training. I gritted my teeth as they sneered at me. I just needed to grab a change of clothes then leave, far away from these brutes, to bath in the lake. I needed to cool down. I needed to think. To process what happened this morning.

Alex strolled through the camp, unbothered, not correcting anyone's impertinence. He threw me a flat look of boredom, snacking on an apple. I halted, staring at him, further fuelling my fury. "You cut your hair!" I accused. His hair was cropped to a short fuzz around his sculpt. He had cut it off completely. I fisted my hands. "So when you want to cut your hair, you can do it freely, but when I was going to do it, it was an issue and I needed to ask your permission?" I snapped, knowing that I sounded like a fishwife, and that the surrounding men thought as much. Judgmental bastards. "You are a child, you know that? You are an insensitive, arrogant, bearded child!" I screamed, hearing our children cry in the distance as a result.

Alex rolled his eyes, "You had to wake them up." I threw a rock at his head, unfortunately missing. Infuriated tears burned my eyes.

This morning he played his cheerful, friendly façade with my mother, as he took it upon him to take and destroy my things. Burning most of my clothes. The hellish thing was that everything he destroyed was things from before we were married, so the only things I had were from after. Things from his people, his gifts, his choices, what he wanted from me. He ruined everything! I stormed towards our tent, not finding our children there because he limited my access to them to whenever they needed me. Letting out a scream to release my frustration, and anger, and just everything inside me. I couldn't take it anymore. What was his reasoning for doing what he did? Well, I was a Queen now, and so I simply didn't need them anymore. Since we were apparently leaving tonight to head west.

Logan snored on our bed, obviously exhausted from chasing the children in the village around all morning. I let him be whilst I collected a change of clothes – I only had a black tunic of Alex's and another pair of trousers- and anything I needed. I stared at Alex's knife imbedded into the wooden pillars. My own knife had been missing for a week now, I had a feeling he took it because it was next to me when I went to sleep and missing when I woke, but I haven't spotted it. Walking over I pried it out of the wood, and hid it amongst the ball of clothing. No one stopped me as I exited and moved towards the dense forest away from the camp and settlement.