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The Bearheart Chronicles: A Druid's Tale	By : MelanaAdara Category: +S through Z > World of Warcraft Views: 2186 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own World of Warcraft and I am making no money from this story. Only my original characters are mine.

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Arrentai
Would I never learn the effect that alcohol had on me? My only excuse was that I missed Lizabetha so much. When Gillaen told me what I’d done I was angry with myself. I felt bloody awful, but I guess that was my own fault and I deserved no better.
I didn’t particularly want to eat when Gillaen suggested some breakfast, but I went with him anyway. I needed some fresh air. I couldn’t eat much, the myriad scents of the garrison assailed my senses and unsettled my already troubled stomach. I just toyed with the plate of food ignoring everything until I heard Gillaen greet Josstellan and Maelinastra. They’d been to Darnassus, Joss said, but he looked as bad as I felt. Although portals around Draenor worked well enough, those between Draenor and Azeroth were rather erratic, something to do with the two worlds being in different timelines he’d told me a while back.
My mind began to wander, then I scented her, just as Maelinastra said they’d brought someone with them. I turned and saw her walking across the plaza. I stood and walked toward her.
“I’ve missed you so much,” I said. She dropped her bags and I caught her in my arms. I couldn’t kiss her, not in worgen form; I’d risk hurting her, but still I held her close, my pain all but forgotten now i was reunited with my beloved wife.
We spent the day together, just wandering about the garrison and talking. There was so much to tell her. Although I made little mention about recent events, it still confused me.
We spent an enjoyable evening together with our friends, with good food and wine and a warm fire. Although I made sure to avoid the wine and stick with water. The one thing that puzzled me was why I felt uneasy with Josstellan. He was my friend, I’d known him for years, would trust him with my life, so why did I feel this way? He’d done nothing to give me any cause for my anxiety.
Lizabetha and I went to bed earlier than the others. We lay there, her nestled in my arms, and I began to doze. I was vaguely aware of her hands on my chest, gently stroking, toying with my hair. It was something she often did and usually I found it comforting. But now I could feel my heartbeat racing, panic rising. Her hand moved lower and I completely lost it. With a cry of alarm I pushed her away and cowered against the wall, snarling.
“Arrentai, what’s wrong?”
I couldn’t answer, I didn’t know. All I knew was that her touch had provoked a memory of something bad, something that had been done to me.
She moved away, calling out for Gillaen. Almost at once the room was full of people, so many scents, almost overwhelming me. Nerissina, the one person I couldn’t harm, trusted not to harm me, came close, putting her arms round my shoulders, hushing me as she would a child. I pressed against her, feeling safer in her arms.
“What’s going on, Gillaen?” Lizabetha demanded.
“What’s happened to him? All I did was touch him and he went crazy.”
“You have to tell her, Gill,” Nerissina said softly. “She needs to know, as does he if he’s to get over this.”
My brother stepped closer and I saw the man behind him, my friend Josstellan. Yet I couldn’t face him, I was afraid. I snarled a warning.
“Joss, you’ll have to leave,” Gillaen said. “I’m sorry, but seeing you is just making it worse. Can you fetch Fiona? She knows what to do.”
He turned and walked away and I relaxed just a little.
“This won’t be easy for you to hear,” Gillaen began. He was right. I listened in horror as he told us what had been done to me. I felt dirty, defiled. No wonder I’d reacted as I had. Gillaen had lied to me before but I couldn’t blame him for trying to protect me. Nerissina’s arms tightened round me as I began to weep.
Fiona came to my side. That was all right, she was worgen, like Nerissina; I trusted them. I wasn’t sure about anyone else. She reached out to touch my face, her soft voice soothing, lulling me into blessed sleep.
Gillaen
I looked from my sleeping brother, held in Neri’s arms, to Lizabetha, to Maeli, and sighed knowing the hard work that was to come, helping him to recover from the trauma, to rebuild his life.
Lizabetha turned her gaze from my brother and glared at me.
“Where is he?” she demanded. “Where is the bastard who did this?”
“Safely locked up. He’s going nowhere.”
She moved towards the door. I put a hand on her arm.
“Lizabetha, don’t try anything. He will be punished. You have my word.”
I saw her hands move in the gestures that were part of her summoning spell.
“Don’t even think of it,” I warned her. “I will not have your demons running loose in my garrison.”
She let her hands drop.
“I don’t know what to do,” she whispered. “How can I help him recover from this?”
I took her in my arms and held her as she wept.
“Just be patient. Be there when he needs you and let time work its healing.”
Nerissina released Arrentai from her arms and settled him onto the pillow. She brushed aside strands of his mane that trailed across his tear-dampened face and for a moment her paw rested there. Then she stood up and walked across the room to me.
“I only hope he is strong enough.”
I pulled her close, and for a moment we stood there, the three of us, gazing at the man that we all loved.
“He has us. We will give him the strength he needs.”
Maelinastra rested a hand briefly on my shoulder without speaking, then she turned and walked out. We followed her. Josstellan was in the main hall, sitting in one of the chairs by the fire. As I walked towards him he looked up at me.
“What can I do?” he asked. “I want to help, but if the mere sight of me sends him into a panic…”
I shrugged. I felt so helpless.
Fiona joined us then and we all turned to look at her.
“He’ll sleep through the night. I’ve made sure of it. Tomorrow the hard work begins.”
“Tell us what to do,” I said. “Whatever it takes.”
She nodded.
“You need to understand about worgen,” she said slowly.
“We are first and foremost creatures of the pack. No matter what veneer of civilization we present to the world, whether we wear human or worgen form that’s what we are. Every pack has a leader, an alpha male, who guides all the other members even if he doesn’t realise what he is doing. Here in the garrison we have accepted Arrentai as our alpha male. It’s nothing to do with the authority he has as an officer in your command structure. It goes way deeper than that. On a subconscious level we all defer to him. None of us would challenge him or invade his space unless we’re making a bid for pack leadership.
“Normally an alpha male would never put himself in a vulnerable position but Arrentai probably felt secure here surrounded by his pack, secure enough to let go control. He never expected an attack here. If he’d been sober he could have handled the situation, it probably would never even have happened. But it did and now he doesn’t know how to feel. Subconsciously he sees this assault as a challenge to his leadership and he is confused.
“We need to reinforce his confidence, his belief in himself. And at the same time he needs to be reassured that it’s all right to let people touch him, that we don’t want to hurt him. That is going to be very much up to you, Lizabetha and it won’t be easy.”
“But you won’t be alone,” Maelinastra said quietly. “We’re all here and you know we’ll do whatever we can to help.”
“What makes it worse,” I mused, “is that my brother is such an innocent.”
They all looked at me, clearly waiting for me to expand on that comment.
“It’s true. Back in Gilneas we lived a sheltered life, and pretty solitary too. The only girl we knew was a neighbour’s daughter, but she was just a friend, a mate. We never thought of her in any other way. Sure we talked about girls, what boy doesn’t; but we’d been raised to have respect for ladies, and our pa would have whipped us if we’d done anything wrong.
“We didn’t have any secrets so I know that Nerissina was his first and only lover back then. I knew how he grieved when we thought she was lost and how it hurt him that they couldn’t remake their life together after we were freed from the Scourge. But even then he was loyal to her, she was the mother of his child and he still loved her. Nothing changed until he met Lizabetha.
“I very much doubt he even realised that another man could or would think that way about him.”
“Gillaen’s right,” Lizabetha said quietly. “When I met Arrentai he was so lonely, so starved of affection. He’d been travelling alone for too long and he needed a friend. Maybe I did too and that’s why we ended up sleeping together. But afterward he felt so guilty; he told me about Nerissina, how he loved her but couldn’t live with her. In all the time we spent working together in Desolace, he never touched me that way again. Not until after he broke up with Nerissina. And he was totally oblivious to anyone else.”
We continued to talk for a while, throwing ideas and suggestions back and forth, but we got no closer to a solution, the only consensus being that it was going to mainly fall on Lizabetha’s shoulders.
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The Bearheart Chronicles: A Druid's Tale