Wolf RPG

Finley stalked angrily along the borders, every so often shooting the distant landmarks irritable glances as though her situation was all their fault. Liffey was late. She was supposed to be home before dark, but once again her darling daughter had chosen to flout her authority.

This was the third night in a row.

Fin was ready to bury her.

The alpha paused for a moment to turn fully away from the Caldera and gaze out at the plains, searching for an approaching form. When Liffey had been little, she'd been late coming home only once and she had apparently run like hell to get home in time. She was all apologies and tears when she'd arrived not too long after sundown. Fin hadn't had the heart to punish her. She'd just given the girl a kiss and taken her home to cuddle up as a family for bed.

Finley knew the daughter that came across their borders eventually would bare little resemblance to the daughter that had cried the night she'd first come home late. This one would be sullen and cold, and she'd snap at her before Fin could say a word.

The Blackthorn sighed wistfully, her gaze sad. And then, she randomly snatched up a stick lying not too far from her and began whipping it back and forth, snarling furiously like the bear she'd once stolen a kill from.

Elwood wasn't as concerned with Liffey's behavior. He worried, of course, after what had happened to Lucy -- but the difference was that Liffey was nearly an adult now, and he knew that she could take care of herself. When he looked at her, he saw her mother. Finley, too, was headstrong and enjoyed the freedom of travel, and it was perhaps those similarities that caused the friction between mother and daughter.

He generally didn't interfere, but when he heard Finley's growls, he knew he needed to investigate. He found his wife near the borders, giving a stick the beating she probably wanted to deliver to Liffey. His first reaction was to laugh, but he bit his lip quickly, not wanting to draw Finley's ire. Instead, he slowly slunk to her side, leaving a hair's breadth of space between their bodies.

"You okay?" he asked with a sidelong glance.

After Fin's attack upon the stick came to its grand final - her flinging the branch with all her might into the wind - she stood huffing and glaring off into the darkness where it bounced and skittered to a stop a few yards away. She panted heavily, unaware that her mate was steadily approaching from behind. Her thoughts were a million miles away, wherever Liffey was (hopefully not quite so far as a million miles, but Fin couldn't resist the hyperbole).

Her ears twitched when she finally picked up on Elwood's approach, but she didn't turn to look at him. She glared hard into the dark, only dipping her muzzle to her paws when he spoke gently to her. It was a great moment for her tohp say something introspective or thoughtful about parenting. She could have explained her feelings towards Liffey's behavior lately and how it spoke to the distance between them and the ever growing wall that divided them. Fin could have been honest about how terrible it made her feel and sought comfort from her mate's wisdom and encouragement about this situation.

But.

"Your daughter," she said with an exasperation that paired nicely with her incredulity, "This is the third time this week she has ignored her curfew. She's just.. she's so irresponsible and thoughtless. I just don't know what to do about her."

Fin took a deep breath and fumed while somewhere her own mother was doing the most epic of eye rolls.

Elwood flinched as Finley let go of the stick and it went flying. It wasn't anywhere close to hitting him, but he couldn't help the reflexive maneuver. He looked over his shoulder at the direction in which it had gone, then refocused on Finley. She spoke without looking at him, her voice edged with frustration.

She was pissed at Liffey, and Elwood's first thought was to point out that Liffey was just like someone he knew -- that someone being Finley, of course. But he held his tongue, knowing that that particular train of thought would just result in irritating her further. However, he couldn't bring himself to speak ill of his daughter. Yes, her thoughtlessness was aggravating, but she was also days away from stepping into the adult ranks; she was growing into herself and becoming more independent, whether her parents liked it or not.

"She's growing up," he commented, a note of wistfulness in his voice. Despite the trouble that Liffey was capable of causing, he still found it hard to believe that she and Lagan were nearly nine months old. It seemed like just yesterday they were tiny, underweight puppies fighting against the odds of the summer famine -- and now Elwood had blinked and they were almost fully grown.

Her mate was quiet, giving Finley a little time to settle down. Unfortunately, she chose instead to take that time to gather her next series of complaints over Liffey's behavior as of late. When Elwood made his wistful comment, Fin could only look deadpan at him. Of course he would remain neutral. He was far too level-headed sometimes.

Her tail lashed through the air as she rolled her eyes back towards the landscape. "She's growing insufferable," Fin retorted before launching into her next prepared diatribe, "And I love how she blames everything on me. As though I'm the one who's acting different lately and it's my fault that she's acting like a spoiled little brat. As though I've given her no choice but to act like this because I have the puppies to raise and because I have a pack to lead. Because I can't just go off gallavanting with her across the world whenever I feel like it."

Fin took a breath and scratched at the ground with her claws, her mind reeling with anger, frustration and now a bit of self-pity.

He opened his mouth as Finley began to rant and rave, letting his jaw hang slack as he was barraged by the disdainful words directed at their daughter. He understood Finley's frustration -- truly, he did -- and he started to gather his thoughts, realizing that he would need to use a different tactic. Finley wasn't looking for justification for Liffey's actions; Elwood knew that sometimes she just needed to vent, and evidently this was one of those times.

"I know," he said, nodding. A slew of rational yet agreeable words sat on his tongue, ready to smooth his mate's ruffled feathers, but when he inhaled through his nostrils in preparation, he detected a very faint scent that froze him in place. It was almost too indistinct to identify, and yet it was unmistakable.

"Oh," he breathed quietly, shifting so that he could look Finley in the eyes. It all made sense now: her irritability and short temper (well, shorter than usual) were caused by her imminent heat. The logical part of Elwood's brain started to shut down as he silenced the pesky voice saying something about bad timing. They had the firebirds to care for and a pack to lead, blah blah blah. Eljay, Lagan, Liffey, and Lucy hadn't been products of good timing -- so why would there be anything different about their potential third litter?

Without mentioning his swift change in demeanor, Elwood rubbed his nose against Finley's throat with a low, purring growl.

Elwood offered his empathy quietly, but Fin wasn't in the mood to notice. She was oblivious at the sudden shift in his regard of her, and also of the tell tale scent she had been unknowingly wafting all over his face with the angry lashing of her tail and irritable shake of her coat. She was too busy venting. And glaring. And bitching. And... well, just being unpleasant in every conceivable way.

"I just don't get it. God knows I love the girl, but it's like.. When are you going to wake up??" she barrelled on, ignorant of how Elwood leaned in to sniffle at her, "I mean, sure, before Fox and Peregrine.. I would've gone off with her in a heartbeat to go visit Wildfire. But I have responsibilities now, I can't just drop everything and run off to visit family whenever I feel like it, no matter how much I want to. We don't even know exactly where this Drageda place even is. It would take us days to find it! And by the way, what the hell kind of name is that - Drageda? Could they think any more highly of themselves? They probably live at a place called 'Green Hill', it's like, accept it, you're the 'Green Hill Pack'. I mean, talk about sucking your own ego's dick and what are you doing???"

Fin ended her diatribe with a sudden jerk backwards as Elwood had made his move. She blinked incredulously at him, oblivious to whatever natural go-time signals her body had been giving off while she was raving like a lunatic.

Finley continued to growl and spit fire, but Elwood's eyes had glazed over. If she quizzed him on what she had just said, he wouldn't be able to come up with a single coherent sentence. He had tuned her out as soon as his instincts started to take over, and had she not stopped talking abruptly, he probably would have silenced her himself with a paw to her lips.

He blinked, realizing that she had asked him a question. "You're..." he said dumbly; how could she not know what was going on? Despite her obliviousness, he couldn't stop the burning that he felt from within, and he moved even closer to her, promptly closing the gap that she had made only seconds before.

He reached out to lick at her cheek, seeking to show her, rather than tell her -- though it seemed she wouldn't make it easy for him.

Fin stared at her mate, bewildered by him. She quirked a brow as he mumbled at her. "...absolutely right, hot stuff?" she offered, trying to finish his sentence for him since he seemed incapable of doing so. Elwood looked like he was stoned. Had he swallowed some shrooms while she was distracted with bitching about their kid? She sniffed at him just to make sure, but found nothing out of the ordinary besides the scent of his arousal. And something else...

Her mind began to spin as the puzzle pieces slipped into place. No wonder he was acting so weird and she was acting... Well, she was acting perfectly within her right as the mother of such a terrible daughter. No hormonally driven flaws there. But anyway... she was in heat. Her body thought it was baby time.

Was her body fucking stupid?

"Woah... Woah, okay, slow down there pal," Fin said as he moved in towards her with his intentions plainly written on his body language. Her body shifted into a more dominant stance as she backed away. Now that she realized what was happening, it was growing swiftly harder to hold onto the better sense that was telling her to make this stop. "We have, like, a million other kids to look after. Is this really the time?" she said, wondering even as the words slipped out of her mouth if it even mattered. Instinct was calling her to breed, and her mate was suddenly looking so very... breed-with-able.

He wasn't used to being turned down by her, so when she stopped him with a firm tone of voice, he flinched as though he had been slapped. Her words didn't fall on deaf ears, though; she was right, he realized, even through the fog that had clouded his brain. They had the firebirds to look after, and Airi -- and Eljay, Liffey, Lagan, and the rest of the pack depended on them as well.

In that moment, hell froze over as Finley and Elwood swapped positions.

"I...well..." he stuttered, slowly surfacing from the haze. He felt particularly uncomfortable in his groin area, as his urges went unmet, but he sat down and wrapped his tail tightly around his feet, licking his suddenly dry lips. "Are you sure?" he asked quietly.

Elwood managed to pause in his attempts to woo her. Finley had no idea if that pleased her or pissed her off, which is probably for the best. She could almost see the fog clearing from behind his eyes as he gazed at her, looking rather worse for wear. She winced sympathetically, but his question caused her ears to fall and her eyes to widen slightly.

"No," she answered in a small voice, watching him. Logically speaking, now was a terrible time to have another litter. There were already far too many little mouths to feed and not enough dependable adults to feed them. If Finley were to get pregnant now, they'd be down one dependable adult and plus, like, thirty more little mouths. The mathematics may have been off, but the level of badness in this idea was pretty on point.

"I mean, we..." she paused thoughtfully before answering his question a second time, "...No."

Finley had never been great with the listening to her logic.

She started to crumble, and Elwood was at war with himself. Half of him agreed with her -- she was completely right, they had too much on their plates to even consider producing another litter. But the other half was wavering right alongside her, hoping that she would give in to her instincts.

Rather than say anything else to try to convince her, Elwood stepped away from Finley. He gave her a searching look and gestured inland, towards the caldera, where they could have privacy to make this decision once and for all.