Leila had heard the call for the hollow, and it had drawn her to a state of panic. She remembered well, clearly, what had happened last time, and she descended the bluffs on swift paws toward the grove where she knew Dragos still remained. Perhaps, if she is fleet enough, she can intercept him before he goes after that cry. It was the very same as the first, and so she has a strong suspicion on what has happened.

Leila darts into the clearing she had last seen him, pelt ruffled and breathing heavily. “Dragos-?” she called out as she struggled to catch her breath, scanning the trees. Was she too late?

@Dragos

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The call goes up, and Dragos is not the least bit surprised. Ice freezes his blood, brings him up short. His father wishes to take a pride, to build the empire he once ruled. The Hollows would suit the Savante perfectly. But he had already been defeated once - why again? After everything, why now?

Dragos knows why. He wishes he didn’t.

He will be expected to be there, a soldier to guard the rest of his family or to watch Alexander take the crown. Either way, he has to be there. He has to protect them - or at the very least offer himself up as a better target. If the Dieudonne come - and they will, he has no doubt - they will want blood. They will want vengeance. And if he is not there to be that pound of flesh…

Will they strip it from the others?

He lingers in the jungle, hoping in vain for one last glimpse of @Leila before he has to leave. Hopefully he can convince her to stay away.

"Leila," he answers her, turning toward her voice and quickly picking his way through the trees to find her. He’s getting better at moving through the jungle, and spotting the tigress in the shadows. "I have to go." He doesn’t explain why - it’s obvious. "Stay away from the Hollows, please."

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Leila does not immediately see him, and her throat clutches in panic, turning to move through undergrowth in a moment of foolish conclusion leaping. He is too large and too strawberry to hide amongst small green ferns but she pushes her nose beneath them to check anyway.

The sound of his voice makes her jump and turn with immense relief, shaking leaves from her striped fur and striding purposefully toward him. It's then she registers what he had said and she shakes her head earnestly - flustered and frightened. "No." she says as she draws close, "You mustn't. Remember- remember what happened last time @Dragos, you can't."

Selfishly, she thinks of his scarred face, his permanently marred paw. What if Apollinaire is there? "Please, stay." With me. She cannot bear to see him wounded again.

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When he sighs, it isn’t with frustration. It isn’t in anger. Dragos is simply tired - tired of walking away, tired of saying goodbye. Because it is this time, really. Goodbye.

"I have to," he argues softly, "my family are there - I need to protect them." @Leila has to understand that, right? She has to know why he has to go to them.

"Last time - that’s why I have to be there now. What if your queen calls another attack on my family? What if they come looking for me?" Dragos manages to keep his voice even as he speaks, but his throat feels tight. He doesn’t want to be there, but he has no choice. The idea of going near the Hollows, where he was maimed, makes him shiver.

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"You might bring them more danger if you are there." Leila says sadly, desperately. She is no stranger to the distance he seems to use as protection - hadn't that worked?

Leila flinches as memory of the last time she had been at the hollows arise. She recalls, unwillingly, cowering in the shadows of stalagmites and trying to block out the scent of blood. "What if they hurt you." she pleads. "What if they kill you, Dragos?" He is so fixed on preventing damage to his family that he thinks himself indestructable, Leila thinks.

A lot of her concern is selfish. The unreasonable part of her wonders if perhaps this is a loop in time. If he leaves her sight, maybe he will return to how he had been before, and all she will see of him again are bared fangs and lost, hateful green eyes.

"I need you too." she protests, moving forward so she could try to - ineffectually - block his path.

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He can’t exactly argue with that logic, but he can’t not… go. He can’t sit here while his family might be hurt - or worse. He knows he can’t make it worse - he can control himself. Maybe they’d not bring cubs this time, foolish enough to attack a full grown lion. "I can help," he insists weakly.

Dragos needs to leave; every second he lingers here someone could be hurt, but Leila’s eyes have him pinned in place. He can’t look away from her, as if she’s a magnet. "So what if they do?" The whispered words slip out before he can stop them, before he can think better of them - it’s one thing to have such a deep-rooted self-hatred left unspoken, and another thing entirely to say it out loud. But he means it - so what if they hurt him more, so what if they kill him? Would his death bring peace? He has never seen it work before, and he doubts his family would let his murder remain unavenged. He stays alive for them; he has not fought for himself in so long, he does not remember what it feels like to care.

The lion’s paws free themselves from that magnetic pull. Dragos half turns away to take the path to the Hollows, but Leila gets in his way. He growls - only for it to cut off in his throat, strangled to death by her words. "No -" he manages, stepping back. "You don’t. You don’t need a risk in your life, @Leila. If Wolfbron knew you helped me…"

He has tried so hard not to think about that for weeks, but it rushes to the surface now, happily flooding him with worry.

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I can help, he protested and Leila shook her head firmly. Was it selfish of her to do this? She did not want to keep him from his family, but the ugly, frightened part of her was certain should he disappear into the woods, there was a chance she would never see him again. The thought alone makes tears prickle at the corners of her eyes.

“Please don’t.” her voice quivers, cut by the hollowness in his own. How can she describe to him how badly she cannot let that happen? “If-if that happened….” she can’t finish the words, unwilling to speak it. If she did, maybe it’d come true.

The tigress stares him down, paws stubbornly braced as he breaks their eye contact, begins to move. She doesn’t flinch at the growl that rises.

“You’re precious to a lot of people.” Leila struggles out finally, “To me.” Her tail lashes unhappily behind her, “I know the risks, Dragos. Don’t think that I don’t. But Wolfbron doesn't control me.” It was a troubling, complicated situation she had gotten herself into, but she was not a creature that turned her back on her friends. Even if each those friends seemed to be hellbent enemies. “So… please. Stay. For me.”

@Dragos

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What if it happened?

He can’t make himself ask. He doesn’t want to know.

“You’re precious to a lot of people. To me.”

Dragos has to ignore the way his heart jolts.

He doesn’t want to think about the risks, the consequences - none of it. Dragos wants it all to stop, so they can just be happy again. A few weeks of happiness with @Leila is all he had, until everything caved in around him. He’d not seen how precariously things had been stacked, until all it took was a little shove to ruin it all.

The lion catches himself staring into a pair of big, warm eyes looking up at him. "Okay," his voice is a hoarse, rough whisper. It’s not possible to say no, or walk away. Dragos can’t. He just can’t.

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He doesn’t turn to leave again, and Leila is hopeful. They have made so much progress, somehow, and this little corner of bliss is a desperate solace she needs right now. Home is fraught with external conflicts leaking in, and she had been shaken to see Louve return from the firnen claim badly injured. It’d happened to Dragos, and now her. If anyone left her sight, she was worried about them.

"Okay,” he says and Leila exhales shakily, moving to push the crown of her head into his pale mane, lest her paws wobble out from under her immense relief. "Thank you.” Leila muffles into his fur. He will be safe another day. “I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you again.” Because that was what it had felt like, after the badlands, after the Caladan challenge. Truly.

@Dragos

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She moves into his space, pressing into his mane. Dragos’s breath is unsteady as he lets it out, tries to force out the tension running through his body. He leans into the tiger’s touch, wrapping a meaty foreleg around her shoulders. "Anya segítsen nekem," he whispers roughly, a desperate prayer for a goddess who had never bothered to answer him before.

"You can’t keep me here forever," he reminds @Leila - and himself - softly. Today, he is weak enough to let her come between him and where he is meant to be. But tomorrow? The next time a challenge comes, or war marches toward his kin? Dragos has to be there, on the front, where it is his place to bleed and die for them.

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