As soon as she heard his body drop to the ground, she crumbled to the floor. The movement was as powerful as that of a waterfall plunging towards a layer of rocks. In front of her was her son's form as stiff as death itself, and his muffled choking that had once filled the air had now vanished. The silence pounded violently in her ears. And, the Goddess of the Moon, for perhaps the first time, felt empty. A piece of her was missing, stolen.

Her disguise was now gone, had disappeared completely as she fell to her knees and let the tears roll down her fair skinned cheeks as though the sky had started to flood the earth. She was no longer strong, indestructible, and unyielding. She was heartbroken.

Hate had successfully blossomed into a hole in her heart at the first drop of wolfsbane, a poison that had been hidden in the sweet cup of ambrosia that she had offered him, and it had travelled to the lips of her unsuspecting son under her suspecting gaze. She slammed her fists into the stone floor and nearly split the ground, over and over again she brutally attacked the very thing that she had stood on just seconds ago to commence her plan to rid the world of her own son's wrath. And, she hated it, but not as much as she did herself.

From her lips came a scream so torn that it nearly rattled the castle walls and shattered it down. The echo of her pain was felt in every wolf's soul, and in their unknowing grief, they howled. They had felt the Moon Goddess' agony so clearly that they could not tell if it was hers or their own.

Turning on her knees, she crawled to her son's unconscious body, and cradled his head in her arms. She leaned into his body, and she pulled his form up as far as she could to hold him as if he were a small child again. The warmth of her tears had washed away the red stain on his mouth to reveal someone who was once innocent in the cruel world that she had brought him into. And, she held him until the ache in her lungs became permanent.

'Am I wrong?' she wondered.

"Dalnim!" A voice wailed, rushed and panicked, running through the entrance of the castle and stopping in front of the mourning mother. Fear had been long stitched into his strong features at the Goddess' very first call. "What has happened?"

"I have happened," the Moon Goddess screeched into her son, her body convulsing as she collapsed into a fit of painful crying. "Look! Look, Morpheus, look at what I have done to my own son!"

He stared at the collapsed form, instantly recognizing the body of his namesake. The God of Sleep shivered as a newfound fear creeped its way into his spine. Morpheus was lost to the situation. 'Who would do this? He is a hero to the pack.'

"We can help him, we can." Morpheus had taken it upon himself to grip the chalice and sniff what little was left of the liquid. Though an alarm of beware was the first to reach him, his lips curled into a grin and he reassured his dear friend, "Oh, wolfsbane? This is fine, Dalnim. He will not die from that little bit of wolfsbane—no, he will definitely survive this."

"I know that!" Another scream had been pulled from her, forced out of her throat. Morpheus' ears twitched from the deep, guttural sound. He kept firm in his stance, but the crazed look in her addictive eyes almost made him falter.

"Dalnim," Morpheus whispered lowly, gulping down his fear of terrorizing the poor woman. An inkling of suspicion quickly invaded his thinking. "Did you do this? Why would you do this to him? Did you intend to poison him? To kill him?"

"No!" The mothers anger shook the pack house and frightened the beastly members even more. The crowd stayed locked away, safe in various hiding places. The pack of Ventus could not understand how such a celebration had turned into a punishment. "I had to stop him, I had to."

"Oh," Morpheus whimpered, bewildered. In all his thousands of years, he had never felt such hurt and terror. This was not the Dalnim that he knew and loved—a once proud mother was now mistaking a mere error for utter failure. "Dalnim-"

"I need you to do something for me."

The Goddess of the Moon had promptly interrupted him, and in that moment, he truly felt as though he was a mortal roaming amongst godly beings. In truth, he was but a simple God of Sleep in the realm of the powerful Moon. "Yes, Dalnim. I would do anything for you. That, you know."

"I am struggling, Morpheus," she spoke with a voice of dew. "I cannot put myself through it any longer. I have been forced to watch as my son attempts to drive the human race into extinction. How could he? Why? What possessed him to do such a thing?"

A series of questions lingered on Morpheus' tongue. His mind wandered as he watched her cry in anguish. That boy does not have sweet dreams of a mate, unlike many his age, but he has nightmares of death. The being formed by both a mortal and a god. Morpheus had watched him grow into a young man, but he was becoming increasingly worried. He had witnessed the many restless nights. Morpheus wanted to tell Dalnim—beg her to listen to the wise words that sleep has to offer—that her son had been suffering for so long.

Morpheus could not muster up the strength to tell Dalnim of his findings. He was never one to share the secrets of others, especially ones discovered through the sworn privacy of rest.

Dalnim continued woefully, "He has been wasting away his years. And, now he will have to rot for what he has done to me. Their brutal voices haunt me. It is all they speak about. The fall of my son."

"Please," he drawled, "you must not listen to the voices of others, especially those who only seek to appear better. He is your child. Have you already forgotten about what they turned Áine into? With their hatred, they had erased her true fate."

"Her children are-"

"Children! They are her children." It was the first time Morpheus had ever raised his voice to Dalnim, but in his heart, he could not bear to let her son become the ultimate villain of her life. "The only fault that Áine has as a mother is that she has misguided her eldest. She should have protected her from the very world you wish to gain acceptance from. Morpheus, that boy, does not deserve this!"

She gripped the bottom of her dress, clicking her tongue against her teeth. "Take him away. Now. That is all I will ever ask of you."

"I will."

That was the last time Morpheus let Dalnim near her own son, swearing that he would watch over him until the day he was awaken by the one who would finally change him—heal him of his stolen youth. That is, if Áine didn't reach him first.

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