His breath was ragged as his paws beat upon the ground, long-legged strides eating up the ground beneath him ravenously. He had done it, after all of this time spent sitting and waiting, after all the miles he had covered this past week, he had finally found his mother. This was what he should have done sooner, he chided himself, but the thought was rapidly buried under the pureness of his excitement. She was so close, he now knew, having picked up her scent within the fringe of the Cedarwood Forest. They could have her home before the night's end, they could be a whole family once again before the morning's light. All he needed was his father to come with him, to help him fetch her. After all, there had to be something lurking within that forest, holding her captive. She couldn't have been so close to them and not come home. She wouldn't have chosen that.

At last, he crossed back into the Archer domain, but his speed did not relent. The trail of his father was easily picked up, the man most likely patrolling the borders or searching for a nightly snack. A sharp bark snapped through the air as Sven breathlessly beckoned the elder Archer to him.

"Father! he called out, pale tongue lolling from betwixt his jaws. "Father I found her! I found mother!"

His senses told him that his father was no heading toward him, coming to meet him halfway as he had expected. Yet even as Sven slowed, his tongue escaping the barricade of his fangs as he panted, Skoll was not moving as hurriedly as he was. He found it curious, but then Skoll often didn't rush at anyones call, and he supposed the man could still be excited without racing. Then he saw him, visible only by the twin moons that were his eyes, and a smile crossed over his youthful features only to be chased frantically away by the flashing of his father's teeth and the anger that erupted from his vocal chords.

The boy dug his paws into the earth, swiftly ceasing his momentum as his ears fell back against his head and he cringed downward. His father's shouting was enough to drive his enthusiasm away, and utterly confused the boy. He'd known his father had given up looking for her. He never would have thought that he had forsaken her.

"I... I found mom," he answered, his voice heavily perplexed as his tail curled up toward his stomach. "I know where she is so... so now we can go get her, we can bring her back home." Why didn't that make Skoll happy? Had Sven interrupted something? Did it matter? What could possibly be more important than Piety?

He wasn't sure he'd ever heard his father holler so loudly, so angrily at him before. Sven was all but flattened against the ground under the weight of the sound unleashed upon his eyes, submissive to every degree--excepting that ghostly gaze. His silver eyes remained frozen to his father's face, a wide ring of white surrounding them even as his brows knit together in their confusion.

It was too late now for his father to try and confirm that Piety had chosen to leave them behind, or had been pulled away by any selfish strings of fate. Sven had been living too long with his stubborn and childish hope to shake it now; it had rooted itself too deeply within his heart, and to pull it out would be to tear apart his very being. And still Skoll persisted with words that physically caused the boy to ache.

His jaws parted with silent words, his throat burning with want to weakly correct the elder Archer, and yet he couldn't bring himself to utter a thing at all. It wasn't until his father's wave of torrent of anger seemed to suddenly subside that Sven at last began to feel his own build. Skoll turned away, became sullen, and when his voice raised again, the message was clear; the boy should feel guilty for what he was doing to his father. Even as he did feel the burning of shame, a piece of his heart lurching toward the man who had, indeed, always been there for him, Sven also felt the flames of outrage licking against his ribcage.

How dare he make this a choice between them both.

With renewed passion, Sven was back on upright legs, no matter their shaking. His grey eyes held a dangerous light to them as they glowered back, and his tail began to raise, slowly but surely creeping up into the air to curl defiantly above his back.

"You aren't the only one who could have left," he retorted in a hollow hiss.

"Is that what you would have just assumed about me, if I was gone? Or is it just mom that doesn't get your faith? If you have a reason to doubt her, fucking tell me what it is! But for all I know, there's a damn good reason she couldn't come back and I'm not just going to give up until I know either way!"

That was love, that was what Piety would have done for him, for both of them. He just knew it. So what was it, then? Was his father really the liar all along? Or had something happened between his parents that he had been kept in the dark about? It shouldn't be so difficult to pinpoint; that it was only made him angrier.