CAUTION: Spoils aspects of Innocent Hopes, Twisted Realities, as well as aspects of When Nothing Remains and events of Usurpation of the Darkness through chapter 73.
Seriously, major spoilers here.
Assuming you wish to continue, read on…
Background: Beryl, wherefore art thou Beryl? Specifically, between the time when Lily tried to convince your brother to do something suicidally dangerous, and when you showed up in the nick of time to talk her down from yet another attempted murder? Well, as it turns out, he was sort of busy defusing the former situation, and unaware of the latter until too late…
I've gone over the important parts of this in the main story, but hey, readers want to see it first-hand. Who am I to argue? Even if this entry fought me tooth and nail to get down in a satisfactory way.
Beryl hated being put in a position to choose between people he loved, plain and simple. He hated it even more when one of those people had forced him into said position.
That didn't mean he didn't know how to make such a choice. Something was going on with Lily, but it had been brewing for days and consisted of her acting increasingly erratic and illogical. That was not even on the same island of severity as Thaw's current problem, which was going missing after being told he should be infiltrating a pack of known killers and torturers with an ability he had only just manifested and didn't fully understand.
"Thaw?" Spark roared from somewhere nearby. They were currently searching one of the dark, empty caves the pack had traveled through after coming out of the weird, spiraling tunnels. It was a place of no importance on its own, but it was one of those Thaw would know how to get to, so here they were. Ember was checking some of the tunnels closer to the dangerous pack's territory.
Beryl would have been with Ember if he thought Thaw was actually going straight for the suicidally dangerous mission Lily had tried her best to talk him into. He liked to think he knew his little brother better than that, though. Thaw had heard Lily, let her words into his head, but he hadn't defended her when she was called on her horrible intentions. He wasn't convinced, but he wasn't completely unconvinced, either.
So he would be out here somewhere, but not to immediately try and infiltrate a pack nobody was even sure how to reach, save for through a firmly blocked tunnel. No, he would be somewhere else, not too far in case he ran into something he wasn't expecting, not too close so nobody would stumble across him…
Somewhere like this, where nobody had any reason to go. But as Spark's calls echoed across the empty cave, Beryl knew he hadn't quite anticipated his little brother. It was too open here, too big and echoing and empty. Thaw liked interesting places, small places… He liked the forest, too, but there was nothing even close to that down here and the path to the surface was too far.
Beryl took off, abandoning the ground in favor of ascending upward, toward the ceiling and the hole he remembered from the trip down here, the path up into the eerie tunnels. Thaw had said he found them interesting, and they were apparently devoid of life, just creepy enough that nobody out on other business would want to go there.
He knew he had figured it out the moment he carefully angled himself up into the slanted tunnel barely wider than he was. Thaw's scent, a comfortable mix of Ember and Pearl, lingered in the air.
Spark was below, but Beryl didn't call back to him. This felt like a talk he wanted to have without his well-meaning brother looking over his shoulder, not in the least because Lily might come up. He hadn't told anyone in his family exactly what Lily did, just enough so that they understood why Thaw might have bad ideas going through his head about the enemy pack. He didn't want to tell them, to call their well-deserved wrath down on Lily, until after he knew exactly what was going on with her. Why she had thought it was wise to do what he had caught her doing.
His jaw clenched at the very memory of walking in on that travesty of a scene; he would rather have accidentally stumbled across Root and Storm getting busy in a forgotten corner, though that would have been horribly awkward. Seeing his friend, lover, whatever Lily was, trying and possibly succeeding at using his brother for her own selfish ends? Further, seeing her doing it badly, looking as haggard as he had ever seen her? Snapping back at him when he objected?
He would deal with Lily once he wasn't so mad about what she had done, and once he wasn't worried sick about Thaw. He had thought his brother wouldn't take her words to heart, but he had up and disappeared a short while afterward. That was his fault, too.
"Thaw?" he rumbled, catching sight of a mottled tail turning a corner. "You here?"
There was a quiet snort from further up the spiral. Of course, Thaw knew he was there. He wouldn't be trying to get away if he didn't.
"Can we talk?" Beryl asked softly. "I won't tell anyone else you're here, if you just want to be alone, but I'm worried for you. Everyone is."
"Okay," Thaw huffed. His multicolored muzzle appeared where his tail had been, and just like that Beryl was looking his little brother in the eye.
Thaw didn't say anything more, which was normal for him; he had a thing about not talking much, though Beryl didn't quite know whether he was just naturally a dragon of few words, or whether he intentionally kept quiet so as to better hear others.
"You know, it's family policy not to do anything too dangerous without getting a second opinion," he said gently. "Need one now?"
"That's for Sire, not for me," Thaw said quietly.
"Good ideas don't only work for the first person to come up with them," he replied. "So?"
"I do not know whether Lily had a point, and I am out here trying to think about it on my own," Thaw said slowly. "I was not going to go running off to find that other pack right away. But I did want to think about it, without her pushing me or you getting mad at her for suggesting it."
"It wasn't a nice situation, I totally understand not wanting to be in it," Beryl agreed. He hadn't thought he'd come across as angry with Thaw, but maybe his little brother didn't quite get that. "I wasn't mad at you."
"But you did tell her it was an awful idea, and I am not so sure that it was," Thaw objected. "I don't want to argue about it, though. So I came out here."
"And we don't have to argue," Beryl assured him. He leaned forward to bump his forehead against his little brother affectionately. "But we can talk it out calmly. What part of her idea has you thinking?"
Thaw tossed his head. "Nothing. Everything. She came to me to go in and find out about them because she thought I could do it. She might have been pushy about it, but wasn't she right? I could do it if I tried."
"I'm not so sure about that," Beryl admitted. "When you changed, you kept your coloration." Which was weird when one thought about it, but as much as he would like to divert this conversation into a less serious topic, that wouldn't help. "How many two-heads are white and blue and pale green all at once? You would stand out in a crowd, and there are not a lot of dragons travelling around down here."
"I did think of that," Thaw huffed. "It is not so strange, and the truth is far less believable than me saying I am just weird-looking. They would not suspect it, so long as I was not blatantly obvious about not knowing how to work my own body. So I would have to practice… But I could do it."
"Maybe you could convince them that you weren't one of us, you're right, it's crazy enough that they won't immediately suspect you," Beryl conceded. "But what if they just don't like anyone not from their pack? They could drive you away or kill you just for being from somewhere else, not for what shape you are. Even if they let you in, they might suspect you are a spy. It would not be impossible for the light wings to make friends with a normal two-head if they could find one."
"These are all possibilities, but I would not know until I tried it," Thaw remarked.
"Yes, but taken together they mean that trying it is not a good idea," Beryl said firmly. "I would not do it if it were me, and you do not need to do it either."
"But I could," Thaw sighed sadly, looking deeply unhappy. "Does that mean whatever happens with that pack if I do not do it is my fault?"
"No, and anyone who tells you otherwise is not being truthful," Beryl growled. He shuffled forward until he had Thaw's head on his neck, and a wing over his brother's back. "You don't have to do anything for the light wings, they're a whole pack of adults who can fend for themselves. Maybe you could, but that doesn't mean you should. Look out for your own well-being first and theirs second, because they are doing the same."
"You did not do that," Thaw murmured into his ear. He hadn't pulled away from the embrace, which Beryl took as a good sign.
"But I did," Beryl replied. "I stayed with the light wings to teach them things they needed to know, because they were more or less helpless. I only did the things I thought were relatively safe for me to do, like training them to fight. I helped, but only after I made sure I'd live to continue helping. If Lily told me to go infiltrate that No-scaled-not-prey fleet, I would have said no, no matter how convincing her arguments were."
Though he would have done his best if anyone from his family were captive there, or Lily herself… The lesson he was teaching Thaw here wasn't complete, it was far too absolute for real life, but it was a baseline rule Thaw would do well to learn anyway. Right now, he was feeling pressured to do something risky because someone had told him they needed it; he needed to consider his own safety paramount, not the needs of others he wasn't obligated to help. Subtlety and shades of grey could come later, when they wouldn't be actively tempting him to overthink things in the moment.
"That does make sense," Thaw huffed. "Lily did not think that way."
"I really am not sure what Lily was thinking, but it was nothing she would consider if she was thinking properly," Beryl said firmly, remembering to keep his anger buried for Thaw's sake. "She might not follow the rule of caring for herself first," and now that he thought about it that was extremely applicable to her, "and that might be hurting her now, but that gives her no right to demand the same of you."
"I think I understand better now," Thaw rumbled, pulling away from him. He looked behind himself for a moment. "But I do not want to go back to the cavern just yet. Can we go exploring? Together?"
Beryl considered it; his gut was saying he needed to get back to Lily and shake some sense into her, but it was also saying he wanted to say yes to this request. Thaw didn't ask for things very often, and when he did it was because he really wanted something.
"Let me just go tell Sire and Spark to call off the search, and we can go," Beryl decided. He'd pass along a message, have Pearl keep a watchful eye on Lily without knowing why, just in case… Lily could wait a little longer.
O-O-O-O-O
He had been wrong.
Beryl watched Lily's chest rise and fall fitfully; her breathing was short and irregular, a sure sign that if she was really sleeping, it was barely a doze. There was mud on her paws – the smell told him it was only mud, which was a relief – and little specks of blood. Blood nobody had taken the time to clean off.
Blood that was at least somewhat on his paws too, so to speak. He should have come back and confronted her; Thaw's little trip to explore could have waited. Thaw would have understood. Probably. And he definitely shouldn't have let Spark and Ember come along; either of them could have done something, had they stayed. But no, he'd done things exactly the wrong way.
And in the meantime, Lily had snapped, and nobody knew why. Trying to get a complete recounting of her actions was like pulling scales with most of the pack; the people he knew best had almost all been out on guard or scouting duty during Lily's meltdown, and those who remained either weren't close to her, or didn't want to talk. Or, in Diora's case, weren't trustworthy enough to listen to.
Pearl had the best explanation, but even that was patchy with how Lily seemed to have been intentionally avoiding her in the leadup to Holly's defiance and subsequent punishment. Nobody really knew what had been happening, save for the obvious.
Lily twitched, her wings shuddering restlessly. Beryl leaned over and pressed her pressure point, just in case. With the way things were going right now, her waking up, sane or… not… could be a disaster.
She had been dragged to the far side of the cave, close to the bug-infested passage, and was being watched over by three light wing guards in addition to himself. They stood a good few paces away, two facing inward and one facing out toward the rest of the cavern. That, in itself, was a good indication of how people were feeling. They were more worried about Lily doing something than anything else.
A light wing was approaching, one with nubs where her ears should have been. Beryl wasn't especially happy to see Cara, not now, but the guards made no move to stop her. She and Aven were in charge of the light wing pack, as of Holly dry-heaving and feeling faint shortly after leaving the waste pit.
"Has she so much as stirred?" Cara demanded of him. "Cracked an eyelid open? Said anything?"
"No, and I have made sure she stays asleep," Beryl replied calmly. "But it is not real sleep, or at least not deep sleep. Whatever is wrong with her–"
"That does not matter, what matters is making sure she does not hurt anyone else." Cara clawed up a bit of grass and kicked it toward him. "We're going to move her somewhere safely isolated, soon. Can you or your Sire block up a tunnel in a way that can only be undone from one side?"
"Yes, but if it is the only tunnel into or out of a place, that may end up suffocating her," Beryl warned. He was torn on the idea of moving Lily out to somewhere else; on the one paw, being alone would probably be good for her when she woke up, but on the other, they were moving her out of sight. That didn't feel like a good thing for her future, long-term. People were scared or at least nervous about her presence now; it would only get worse if the specter of what she did was allowed to fester unseen in their nightmares. She didn't look that scary here, lying on the ground, vulnerable.
"The cave we decided on has two tunnels to it, one in the ceiling, so that will not be a problem," Cara said. "You will help move her."
"What will be done afterward?" Beryl asked.
"That does not concern you, really," Cara huffed, "but I guess it does not matter if I say. Aven convinced Holly to call on some of the Twisted Corridor pack to serve as witnesses, and we will be bringing together a small group to decide that."
"I see." He didn't particularly care either way about what observers from the other pack might say, but getting together a group to decide Lily's fate… that was a little too involved for his liking. "Surely it does not need debate? Something has made her sick, either in body or mind. We should nurse her back to health and find out what it was, in case it happens to someone else in the future."
"That is not my call to make, and I would not agree with you if it was," Cara snorted. "She went bad, plain and simple. Like Claw. We all saw her. Throwing her out is the least we could do to be rid of her."
Beryl bristled, aware that Cara didn't know what his stake in this was, but also aware that he couldn't possibly let that stand. "How judgmental of you," he snarled. "And if you grow sick tomorrow and lash out in your delirium, will you be happy to have us say the same of you?"
"Yes, if that means the pack rids itself of all who act like him," Cara growled, turning away. "But that will not happen. I have my sisters to temper me."
Beryl bit back a retort about her sisters not protecting her from sickness; that would be in exceptionally bad taste, given what Holly was going through, and he didn't want to get on Cara's bad side over an insult, not when he might need to sway her later. That was Lily's sort of thinking, but right now, when all three of her temporary replacements had reasons to not care about her well-being, and the pack as a whole was frightened by her… he needed to think a little more like her.
O-O-O-O-O
Some time later, Beryl walked through the cavern, away from Lily's fitfully slumbering body. He did not fear for her safety, not from random acts of violence, and walking among her people only reinforced his confidence in that. They were not angry at her, they were terrified.
"She just snapped, there was no warning," a young male fledgling growled anxiously to his friends. "I do not know what happened, why are you asking me?"
"Because you bragged about being as smart as she was?" one of his companions warbled. "Are you going to go crazy and try to drown Holly in waste too?"
Two of the female fledglings listening began edging away from the group. Beryl was out of earshot before the male could respond, but he escaped their disquieting worries only to hear more, this time from a pair of older females.
"It is not so bad," one rumbled. "Not as bad as him. But still very bad. I hope our next alpha can keep it together."
"Why can we never get anyone safe and kind to lead us?" her friend sighed. "I still have nightmares about Claw, and now Lily too… I want to go look at that other light wing pack. Maybe their leaders are boring and safe."
"We might be able to now," the first female agreed. "Wait and see."
That was no more encouraging than the first conversation he had overheard, but as he walked he only heard more of the same. For every light wing who wasn't talking about Lily, or what had happened, there were five who were worrying, venting their fears and frustrations and feelings of betrayal to their friends. It was not a good atmosphere; he could almost see the creeping confusion and mistrust festering in the air, like a heavy stench he saw instead of smelled.
Taking that into consideration and putting aside his own feelings, what Cara, Aven, and presumably Holly were doing was the right thing. Acting to remove the source of the fear, doing it by delegation and group decision with outside perspectives weighing in so as to make it clear that the new leaders were the opposite of tyrannical.
If their strategy didn't involve throwing Lily out into the cold, he would have been wholeheartedly behind it. But moving her out to that little cave he had helped block up, leaving her there, gathering to judge her when nobody really understood what had happened… She would end up exiled, or worse, executed. Not helped or given any sort of leniency. They needed to make an example, to restore faith in leadership.
Lily had faced that same need back when she took over. She had handled it by having the former alpha killed. That was not an example he intended to see followed with her, even if she was fully crazy with no way back.
Three light wings flew up from the tunnel that led to the other light wing pack, and Beryl noticed a whole group was already there to meet them, leading them toward where Holly was languishing, out by the underwater sea. That would be the delegation… They were moving quickly. It had only been… a day, most likely, though it was hard to tell for sure.
Another light wing was in the air at the same time, coming from somewhere else entirely and headed directly toward him. He wasn't surprised when they landed right in front of him; anyone looking to find him had it easy, spotting the single black set of scales in a sea of white.
He was surprised by who it was, though. "Honey?" he asked. He genuinely wasn't sure; Lily spoke well of her friend turned healer, but he had only rarely had any reason to speak to her before now. "Is it about Lily?"
"Yes, it's about Lily," Honey huffed. "She… I think I know part of what is wrong with her. She came to me, she has not been able to sleep. She had me put her to sleep, but that was only once and it was days ago."
"She had you…" He didn't quite understand what that meant. "So she needed someone else to do it for her?"
"And she might not have trusted anyone else, or maybe she forgot," Honey whined. "I did not think anything of it at the time, once she did not come back. I thought she had asked someone else to do it."
"But if she did not, then this could be the cause." It wasn't everything, or if it was he didn't understand, but it was something. A cause to hold up to Cara and Aven and use to demand leniency. "Have you told anyone else, because we need to spread the word–"
"I told Aven," Honey exclaimed. "She said it did not matter! Cara was there, she said so too, but I thought Aven would listen."
"What? What did Aven say?" Aven was kind and tolerant and that just wasn't something he thought she would do. Not on her own, as Honey made it sound.
"That it does not matter so much why Lily did it, only that she did," Honey whined. "I tried to explain that I was not telling them to get Lily out of trouble, that I was telling them because it could be a way to help her, but they did not really care."
"So you came to me," he concluded with a growl. Because he could be trusted to actually care about Lily beyond how she affected the rest of the pack.
"You are closest to her now," Honey said miserably. "Crystal is always out on scouting missions and hates what has happened. Lily does not fully trust me, not if she chose not to come back to me to be put to sleep. It is just you."
"Just me." He leaned forward and bumped his head against hers. "I promise, I'll use this information to help her." To help her, not her pack. Cara and Aven were focused on keeping the pack stable. Lily needed someone solely in her corner, and Honey was right for more reasons than she knew. He was the best person for that.
O-O-O-O-O
"It's a mess," Ember sighed. He was seated in the tunnels up above the light wing cavern, looking down on them all through one of the few holes in the floor. Watching from afar. "I have no idea how they're going to handle it."
"Which part?" Beryl asked, walking around to sit opposite his Sire. He couldn't see much through the hole from his spot, just a bit of wall and a few pawfuls of grass.
"All of it," Ember huffed. "It is good that others are stepping up to take over, but this has to have been a blow to their authority. If the new, better alpha went bad just like the old one, people aren't going to feel so great about the new new alpha."
"It's looking like alphas, plural, at least for now," Beryl corrected him. "I think that might make itself permanent even once Holly recovers, for exactly the reason you said. Stability." That, or they'd do something else, but he was pretty sure Holly, Aven, and Cara would be happy to split the job.
"Maybe," Ember agreed. "You know this pack far better than I do. Is there anything we can do to help them that they cannot do better themselves?"
"Honestly, no," Beryl said after a moment's thought. "They don't trust outsiders that much, and we all still count." He himself was probably the closest to being accepted, and he doubted anyone would let him take over in any capacity, or listen to him more attentively than they would one of their own. "Anything we could do, Aven, Cara, or somebody else is already doing."
"As I thought," Ember rumbled. "I'm not really suited for keeping confidence in authority, anyway, given the whole…" he flicked his wings and pointedly pressed his front paws into the ground. "You know."
Beryl understood that; there was something downright cynical about the idea of Ember trying to build up trust in an authority figure that wasn't himself, given that he could take over at any time were he willing to do such a thing. Nobody who knew what he could do but didn't know him as a person would ever be able to really take his advocacy for another at face value.
"What of Lily?" Ember asked solemnly. "I am not entirely comfortable with that little cave we helped trap her in, even if it does make sense as a temporary measure."
"That's actually what I've come up here to talk to you about," Beryl admitted nervously. "They're going to go talk to her, and I plan to go in beforepaw to check her out, but I don't think it's going to make much of a difference. She'll probably be exiled." It was the only decision he could see that would feel like a firm rebuke of her actions while not ending in direct bloodshed. Just an indirect execution, because she couldn't fly or fend for herself...
"That's not what I'd have done in their place, but it's not surprising either," Ember said. "What do you think?"
"I think she's sick and needs help, not to be thrown out and forgotten about," Beryl asserted. "Honey came to me earlier. She told me that Lily has not been able to sleep without outside help, and that Lily wasn't sleeping at all leading up to… all of this. I think that sleeping regularly might bring her back to normal. But nobody wants to try that." Honey had brought it up, and both Cara and Aven had shot it down. They had to do something now, not make her sleep and wait for a few moon-cycles to see if she got better. Claw never got better after a good night's sleep.
"You don't need to snarl at me, I agree with you," Ember said calmly. "I think it is possible that would work."
"Sorry." Beryl hadn't even noticed his own reaction to remembering that infuriating attempt at arguing for leniency. There was a reason he hadn't spent much time with the little decision-making council Cara and Aven had set up to deal with Lily; what they thought was good for their pack, and what he thought was good for Lily, didn't mesh at all. There was no reconciling that.
"It's not a problem," Ember said, waving a paw dismissively. "What do you plan to do about all of this?"
"I'm thinking I'm going to follow her if they exile her," Beryl explained. "Tag along, make sure she gets her sleep, whether or not she asks for it."
"And it must be you?" Ember asked. "What of Pina, or Crystal?"
"I don't know if they would be willing, and if they were, whether they would have the patience," Beryl admitted. He could be wrong, but asking either of them wasn't something he wanted to do. The truth was, he knew he could do it, and he wanted to. They didn't have to be involved.
"But you are?" Ember huffed. "Most people do not turn into a callous tyrant because they're tired, Beryl. I am not certain this is something that can be cured by sleep."
"Neither am I," he conceded, "but the truth is that we don't know what happened to her, and it is possible either sleep is all she needs, or sleep will get her lucid enough to tell me more and help me figure out what else would help."
"Yes. That would be a set of good reasons." Ember eyed him suspiciously. "Are you sure those are the only reasons? You have spent a lot of time with her, it would not be too much of a surprise if you have feelings for her that you didn't act upon…"
Beryl wasn't sure whether he was surprised by his Sire figuring out something was between them, or proud that he had been subtle enough about it that Ember thought it was something he had never acted upon. This was a strange middle-ground between discovery and obliviousness he hadn't expected anyone to reach. "Err…" He pawed at the ground, feeling immensely awkward. "Maybe?"
"I guess I could say it runs in the family," Ember huffed.
"But, I may have found out she felt the same way and acted on it moon-cycles ago," he admitted. "She said no, and then later she changed her mind and said yes, but we are not mates because neither of us was ready for that and she worried about how me being her mate would destabilize her pack, and then we came down here and didn't have time or space for any of that, and now… Well, you know."
Ember's eyes widened. "I see… I had no idea." He sounded vaguely… impressed. Beryl squirmed, wishing he was anywhere but here. "Maybe you do not take after me at all. Or, well, not after the Hiccup part of me. No pining after an aloof female for moon-cycles for you."
"I did that too, at first, but I don't think she's anything like Astrid." He didn't like that comparison, given how that particular attraction had ended for his Sire.
"I hope not, for your sake," Ember growled, eyeing him from across the hole in the ground. "Are you prepared for this plan to fail? For her to be fully insane, incapable of being helped?"
"Prepared? No." He didn't know how he could possibly be prepared for that. "But I know it might happen. I am not going to follow her for the rest of my life, waiting for her to come to her senses. This is not that."
"If it was, I would not want you to do it," Ember murmured.
"I am going to go after her and see if this easily testable treatment works to improve her condition, if she is still like that at all," he said calmly. "She needs help, I can give help. If it does not work, then that is all I can do. But if it does work, I will have done it. I cannot not try and help her, I could not do that even if I barely knew her. It just isn't right."
"And you will come back afterward, regardless of how it pans out?" Ember asked.
"I don't know how long it will take, and if it worked I would not want to leave her alone out in the middle of nowhere…" He hadn't let himself plan for what might happen if he succeeded in bringing her back to normal, out in the unknown with all her ties to her pack and past life burned behind her… That didn't sound like a good situation, now that he thought about it. But it was better than her dying alone and possibly insane. "But I do intend to come back, I am not running off to never be seen again."
"I don't plan to tell you no," Ember said quietly. "I don't have the right to, do I? Especially not when you are going to help someone who is in a bad place and probably needs the help."
"I didn't think you would," Beryl assured him.
"You're your own person," Ember continued. "So long as you promise me you will not waste your life on a hopeless cause, and that you will let her go if she cannot be helped… It sounds callous, and it is, but I do not want to lose you to an impossible quest."
"You won't, I promise." He bowed his head solemnly. "I'll go out, follow her for a while and make sure she sleeps regularly, and see if it helps. If it does, I will try and help her cope, and when it is done, I'll find you all again."
"Check this pack first, but we will probably have gone home if you are away for more than a few moon-cycles," Ember said. "You know, home. Not here, not their valley…"
"It's been a long while, hasn't it?" Beryl asked, feeling nostalgic. He missed their cozy little seaside cove and caves, though home was more the people than the place… That particular place was a pleasant one. "What about Storm? Lightning, Thunder, Crystal…" Lily, if everything went perfectly, though he didn't voice that particular unlikely hope.
"We shall see," Ember said enigmatically. "Now, are you planning on going right now?'
"I do need to speak to Lily before Cara and the others go to interrogate her," Beryl admitted.
"Don't leave without telling everyone else where you're going and what you plan to be doing," Ember said firmly. "I am not going to be stuck explaining all of this in your stead. It is awkward enough watching you squirm when you are talking about you and Lily being in a relationship. I don't want to be the messenger tasked with doing that in your stead."
"No, definitely not!" Especially not because it was awkward due to his own deception; it wouldn't be fair to make Ember pay the price for that.
Just as it wasn't fair Lily was probably going to be cast out of her pack, her life, for the sake of her people. Understandable, maybe, practical, but not fair.
He hoped it wasn't fair. He hoped that when he went to speak to her, she could truthfully blame it all on some outside force controlling her, or something else suitably out of her control.
But if she could not, if he could not help her… He had promised his Sire, and he meant it.