Sometimes being a beta is all about wanting nothing but being close to your pack constantly, proud to know exactly when to nuzzle against downtrodden shoulders. Sometimes it’s about going on a big hunt with all your buddies, and portioning the game to everyone before taking a bite yourself. But sometimes, being a beta is the deafening silence before the kill, the dull ache of hunger you feel as you pounce, the guilt when you hold your victory in your hands and wonder what it’d be like if you took off running with it. It’s the gentleness of your consumption, as if chewing too loud would wake the sun itself. It’s the worry stinging the back of your skull that if you don’t spend time away from home, then pack could wonder how else you serve purpose
Sennights had passed and he still wasn’t used to it. Perhaps it was just habit, or desperate wishful thinking.
Louvel stepped into his home, into the comforting embrace of cavern walls and the quiet ambiance of flowing water and a crackling fire. A greeting had primed itself on his lips, a call to the space seeking life he had given so many times before yet withheld before it was fully given voice. There used to be responses, used to be voices echoing off the walls in reply. These days there was nothing, and by now he knew better than to even utter a sound. It would only be his own voice inhabiting the space.
Silence lingered, making every little sound he made in his routine to put away his boots and pack rings all the louder. It all felt so deafening in contrast to the smothering quiet that clung to the dwelling. He still hadn’t gotten used to it, and part of him wondered if he ever would. It might be easier to grow desensitized to the empty silence of his home. Would make things easier to no longer hold onto the futile hope that there might be another soul waiting for him, or that he might at some point hear the door with someone’s arrival.
Perhaps he was being too pessimistic, a notion he tried to keep a hold of yet again and again it slipped through his fingers. Optimism had been in short supply, and life had given him more reasons to doubt than to hope these last few moons. With all that had happened and all the ways he had failed those around him in the last turn, this silent solitude had begun to feel like something he deserved. A just punishment for his transgressions. Perhaps it would be better if things stayed this way.
No matter how much he felt he earned his isolation, it was not what he wanted. All he wanted was another voice, another heartbeat in this space, yet all he had was the quiet, the crackle of the fire, the flow of the waterfall, and the endless din of his own sinking thoughts. There were a slim few ways to remedy this, but more and more he found himself believing it was better to keep to his isolation, to spare others the burden of his neediness. His presence had caused enough grief for others already, why risk causing more?
With a bottle of whiskey in hand to take the place of dinner, Louvel settled himself near the fire, allowing the pop and crackle of the burning logs to provide something in place of conversation. Old routines replaced with new ones, old habits taking firm root once again.
