Secrecy was not something that Aurum normally approved of. Ever since the disaster that had been the secret planned assassination of his brother, Aurum had come to associate secrets and all things related to them with death and destruction. Still, when Vathmos looked away for a moment, a look of pain and shame in her averted eyes, the lion knew that he would never tell another soul anything. Vathmos was his friend, and he never wanted to hurt her in any way, and it was obvious that if he ever spoke a word of this to another soul, he would be hurting her in a way that would be unforgivable. It would be even worse than the whole bloodrage debacle when they had first become friends. With his chest weirdly tight and a strange sense of anxiety settling in the air, the proxy nodded his head, "I... I promise I won't tell another single soul. You have my word, Vathmos." Aurum kept to his word, so stubbornly so that it was almost agonizing to think about. So, Vathmos was in good hands. Still, Aurum couldn't help but feel a little shiver of stress run up the middle of his spine. What could Vathmos possibly tell him that was so important, and so dramatic that he couldn't tell anybody else?

I came out wrong. The simple phrase itself was enough to make Aurum ache with sympathy, mostly because he knew all too well what it felt like to be rejected by your own kind. He might not have felt the exact same way about his fellow lion that Vathmos felt for her fellow hyena, but he could certainly remember many a night spent wallowing in exhaustion and sadness, wishing he was good enough, or born right enough, for his friends and family not to hate him. That alone was enough to make Aurum want to snap. Not at Vathmos, but for Vathmos. After all, what fucking right did they have to say that she had come out wrong? Vathmos might've argued that since they were her people, her tribe, that meant that they knew better, but the proxy definitely felt like calling bullshit on such a thing. Still, he remained silent, allowing the hyena to finish in her little explanation of why she couldn't return to her own kind. His heart ached from deep inside his chest as she turned away from him, and he let a long moment of silence pass between the two of them, seemingly processing. Once he felt he had let the air hang long enough, he spoke softly, "Vathmos... I can't imagine what that must be like. How awful that must be. And I'm sorry that you have to suffer like that. But also... I feel really sorry for all those fuckers in those hyena tribes who won't have you alongside them. Because, those marks or not, you're still amazing. You're a good friend, and a valuable asset, and no matter what they think makes you 'wrong,' they've got their heads up their asses." He tried to keep his voice from growing too aggressive as he got to the end, his claws digging deeply into the earth to stop the anger inside. It was just... Vathmos was his friend. She didn't deserve this.