As he left the borders behind him, Nightjar shook out the shaggy mane at his nape and steeled his resolve. Wildfire would be on her way now, to the pack that managed to shake her loyalty, and Nightjar had reaffirmed his own loyalty. They were rivals now. Littermates they may be, but Wildfire and Nightjar would never again view one another as comrades, or even as equals, for Nightjar believed wholly that Redhawk Caldera was a superior pack.
He made a beeline for the rendezvous site, where Raven was busy tending to mussed fur on her shoulder. The gentle third sibling, oft so perceptive, must have sensed something amiss, for her gaze lifted to Nightjar's face and her brows knit in a silent question. The warden glanced sidelong at her and shook his head with a wrinkle of his snout that put to rest his well-meaning sister's concerns. Trouble at the border. He might speak with Raven later of what exactly happened, but presently he sought rest.
He went to the furthest edge of the rendezvous site, where he slumped to the ground and curled in his broad paws. His fur, incredibly dense with the changing of the season, poofed out around him. And he settled his broad muzzle across a thick forelimb, doing his best to silence the unrest in his heart.
He woke before dawn and his single eye immediately went to his mate's belly. It was still flat, her teats still small and furred. Silently, Peregrine climbed to his feet. He began to walk, a bit mechanically at first, then more swiftly and fluidly as he moved downhill toward the borderlands. He thought back to earlier this year, during Fox's first pregnancy. He even went as far back as Hawkeye's. They had shown symptoms as early as week two or three. What did it mean that Fox's body didn't appear to be going through any kind of change whatsoever?
The dark Alpha began to lope along the invisible boundary line, head turning to and fro as he swept the terrain. He tried to ignore the creeping feeling of dread that seemed to crawl up from the pit of his stomach and pool in his chest like cold water. He was almost done with his patrol by the time he was ready to face the fact that his mate almost certainly wasn't pregnant after all.
But why? What did this mean for them if it hadn't taken? Or had it taken...? Perhaps her body had absorbed it for one reason or another. It could be due to the time of year. But why would she have gone into heat in the first place then? All of these questions whirled around his brain, torturing him. He could see his dreams of the next batch of Firebirds circling the drain and the feeling it bred in him was akin to mourning.
Finally, Peregrine finished the patrol. Heartlessly, he began to climb back up toward his wife, hoping that she would be magically sporting a baby bump when he got there. But when he arrived at the rendezvous site right around sunrise, she was still fast asleep, her sides flat and her womb empty. Biting his lip, the Alpha male turned and trotted away, telling himself he should hunt. There would be no pregnant mate nor litter but there was still a pack that needed his provisions.
Hours passed without success when Peregrine finally began to close in on a young badger he had been stalking through a small glade near the caldera's foot. Before he could move in for the kill, a howl rose into the air. The Alpha remained motionless, save for his ears, which flicked toward the source of the call. When he realized it was Wildfire announcing her imminent departure from the caldera, Peregrine suddenly stood, staring off into the distance in astonishment.
He had not only lost the newer Firebirds, he had lost one of the originals now too? He had known it might be coming but that didn't make it any easier, especially not with her impeccable timing. "Fuck," he whispered under his breath, unsure of what to do with himself. His concentration was shot, so he abandoned the badger's scent trail and began to mechanically climb toward the rendezvous site. Fox was no longer there but he passed a puzzled looking Raven and arrived to see his son sprawled on the leaf-littered ground, looking disgruntled.
Peregrine padded over to him. "I know how you feel," he remarked, sitting with a sigh. He figured Nightjar was just as sad about Wildfire's departure, unaware of his son's hand in it.
It was the right thing to do. Nightjar knew that in his heart of hearts. But why was it so difficult? The warrior had faced a plethora of physical threats in his young life, and none had hurt so badly as this. Emotional pain was new to him and it stung in a way that made him uncomfortable. It was like a punch to the gut, but persistent and unable to be quelled.
Nightjar registered the crunch of leaves underfoot long before Peregrine arrived, but the uncertain young man didn't lift his head until the alpha was looming right over him. He half-expected Peregrine to know what he'd done, and moreover, he half-expected to be told it was the right thing. To be reassured that, no matter how badly it stung, Nightjar had done right by his pack and his family. But Peregrine only stated that he felt similarly, prompting his son to lift a brow as though to say, you do?
With a grunt he hoisted himself off the ground, folded back his ears in respect for his father and alpha, and told him, "she said she didn't abandon us." But the more he thought about it, the more he didn't believe it wasn't her plan all along, even though he was the one who had sent her packing. The mind, particularly his, was funny that way. It could easily turn things around and make you believe it. "She said she was leaving. Disloyalty. I escorted her out." Wildfire had said to tell the truth, right? That was the truth as he saw it. "But she said it wasn't abandonment."
In truth, he didn't really see it as abandonment either. He'd tossed the idea around in his head that turning your back on your birth pack in favour of a different pack, except one you'd founded yourself, was technically abandonment, but he wasn't about that life. He wouldn't hold Wildfire's decision against her, wasn't angry with her for leaving and didn't feel abandoned in the slightest. It was a simple face of us vs. them. Wildfire had chosen them, and so she wasn't an "us" anymore, and so she couldn't stay. His logic.
He bobbed his head absently at his son's response. In a way, she had abandoned them, yet Wildfire had at least gone about it the right way. And Peregrine could hardly hold it against her. He had left a pack once too, in search of greener pastures. He had an inkling that his daughter's decision to move was somewhat similar to his. Charon and Floki were both young, strong, healthy bachelors. Perhaps she would start a life there with one of them. Maybe she would even have pups—his grandchildren—one day.
Nightjar's next comments dragged Peregrine out of his thoughts. "What?" he blurted, brow furrowing. "Disloyalty. I escorted her out." The black Alpha's ears fanned backward and he repeated, "What?" in a slightly sterner voice as comprehension dawned on him. It wasn't difficult to decipher what must have happened, even with so little information. Wildfire must have told her brother her intentions and he had taken it upon himself to escort her away.
"Nightjar! You didn't harm her, did you?" he asked a bit sharply, then sucked in a rapid breath as he fought against the urge to rebuke Nightjar. Had his son actually done a bad thing? No, not really. But all the same, "I don't appreciate you taking it upon yourself to exile our members, especially not those born and raised here, NJ. I appreciate your dedication to your trades but... I didn't even think she was decided?" he thought aloud, jade eyes squinting slightly. "In any case, you should let your mother and I decide who stays and who goes," he finished on a slightly brusque note.
His ears splayed backward and he shook his head, sighing. First Fox's failed pregnancy and now this. His son had literally kicked his daughter out on her ass. And he really couldn't fault the boy. Perhaps he himself had been too lenient, allowing Wildfire to dither while she decided whether to stay or go. He supposed he had been hoping she would stay in the end. In any case, Peregrine knew his feelings were biased because Wildfire was and always would be his baby girl and he was a little impressed by Nightjar's apparent ability to be objective despite familial relations. Well, it was just another promising sign that the nearly grown boy would possibly make a stone cold king one day.
And he wouldn't have any younger competition anytime soon, a depressing thought which struck him like a dull blow. "Hey, I don't know if we mentioned it to you but I don't think the new pups will be here as soon as we thought. Maybe in spring." Hopefully Fox would go into season again then and everything would work out... assuming, of course, that neither one of them had suddenly gone infertile along the way. Between that thought, his existing disappointment at the unhappy news and now Wildfire's fresh absence, Peregrine swore he could feel his bruised heart throbbing in his chest.
Peregrine's tone sent Nightjar's ears back and he tucked his tail and head, acknowledging the alpha's right to admonish him. But if Peregrine thought his words and reasoning would change the way Nightjar handled the situation, or how he would handle a similar one in the future, he was mistaken. Nightjar was hardwired to treat wolves as either comrades within the same pack or rivals. There was no in-between for him. There was no dallying around on the land of one alpha while entertaining the idea of following another. It was black and white to him; always would be.
"She already decided that alpha's better than you," he reasoned despite Peregrine's admonishing tone, "else she wouldn't have wanted to leave." Was that the real reason Wildfire left? Definitely not. Any other wolf probably seriously doubted the possibility that Wildfire could view another alpha as better than her father. But Nightjar's view of the world was coloured in instinct, not feelings, so that was the only logical way of it. Wildfire felt a different alpha was more worth following than Peregrine. It was her decision, but Nightjar knew where his loyalties lay, and anyone who questioned Peregrine's and Fox's rule was definitively not permitted here.
He wasn't the alpha but he felt he had a right to that decision. Maybe one day, his cockiness about it would get him chucked out on his ass. But the future was out of his grasp and it wasn't something he would ever think about anyway.
His father changed the subject, directing it now at the cubs they'd thought would soon be on the way. The male frowned and let his lips pull downward, but didn't say anything. So far, his track record with cubs was abysmal. He despised Elwood Jr. and it was likely by now that everyone knew it. But his younger siblings, blood of the alphas and blood of his own? It would be an entirely different story, and he was genuinely disappointed to hear they wouldn't be coming. He didn't really know the nitty-gritty details, being sexually immature and therefore not interested in such things, but he did wonder how it was possible that they wouldn't be here after the many, many times he'd watched his father mount Fox (and then walked away with a strange sensation in his stomach).
Peregrine did not reply to his son's allegation verbally, though he turned it over in his head. He sincerely doubted Wildfire's line of thinking had even gone in that direction at all. He was pretty sure one of Ragnar's sons (if not both) had lured her, as had the sense of a new adventure and a life of her own. But because of the depression creeping in like some black fog, he wouldn't soon forget Nightjar's words, nor how they briefly hurt his feelings.
Noting the juvenile's frown, Peregrine repeated, "But hopefully in the spring." Wildfire and Rave had been been excited by the idea of younger siblings but it occurred to him that he didn't know now Nightjar really felt about them. He was dimly aware of the boy's distaste for Elwood Jr but the Betas' offspring was different than the Alphas', his blood brothers and sisters. "Are you looking forward to helping raise them?" he wondered, black head canting.
Hopefully in the spring. That seemed like a very long time from now. They'd just barely got into autumn, and Nightjar didn't know how many seasons there were between autumn and spring. The adults frequently spoke of winter, but for all he knew, there was more than that. He turned the thought over and over in his mind that there would be puppies eventually, but he had himself convinced he'd be pretty old by then.
Peregrine's next question begged a response, so Nightjar simply said, "yes." He was looking forward to having young siblings to teach how to fight and how to walk the borders, like Peregrine had taught him. He was also looking forward to ensuring his siblings had the best of everything at the expense of that other puppy in the pack, or any others that might occur between then and now. Nightjar wasn't a nice guy, that was for sure. "Will they fight?" he wondered. Hadn't he always been a fighter? Was it possible to tell? These questions came to mind but he had not the brains to adequately answer them.
He answered in true Nightjar fashion: simply and to the point. Nonetheless, his response heartened Peregrine. Good, his expression seemed to say. He smiled, teeth showing, when his son asked whether the pups would fight. Before answering, the Alpha tried to decipher the meaning of his son's question. Did he want to know if they would fight each other? Or him?
"When pups are first born, they're blind and deaf for the first few weeks and they can't do shit," Peregrine said bluntly. "That's why it's very imperative that the pack protects them," he added, appealing to Nightjar's inner Warden and big brother. "They grow and develop quickly, though. By month two, they're pretty fight-capable. They're very malleable too, which means you can teach them anything. The sooner they learn, the better chance they have of really excelling at a particular skill."
Nightjar seemed to consider all of that a moment, then accept it. His boy said nothing more, which was not particularly surprising. The Alpha didn't mind the mutual, companionable silence, though his mind inevitably drifted to Wildfire's unceremonious exit and Fox's failed pregnancy. Sighing, he stretched out on the cold grass, set his head on his legs and tried to catch some relief in the form of sleep.