"Hmm.." Lane hummed, sated. For now, at least. 

Her good sense was beginning to return to her, piece by tiny piece. She shook out her pelt, which had become disheveled by virtue of her previous activities. After giving the fur on her shoulders a few good licks, flattening it back into place, she turned to @Wintersbane. For the first time since their encounter began, she found her voice. 

"I.. was actually looking for you to tell you I was leaving," she admitted, meeting his gaze with a small laugh. Their romp had been unexpected, but certainly not unwelcome. Perhaps she would come to think of her rendezvous with Wintersbane as a fun little bookend to her time with the Duskfire wolves.

in the aftermath; wintersbane is content — and considering the consequences of it all but not terribly worried about it much. while, he had not informed lane of such a thing: he fully planned on being a father to his children and helping the mother(s) in any way she(they) would require of him. there hadn't been a chance and no preluding conversation about children ...not like he'd had with imaq and tzila.

she turns to him and begins to speak and it takes his brain a moment to catch up; stuck on a moment of a lag.

he hesitates; confusion furrowing his brows.

of course, this does not particularly come as a total surprise: she had said as much, mentioned moonglow, during their first meeting; and it was his own fault for mistaking their romp as a way to cement her place in the glacier; and it would be one thing if ...if she wasn't in heat but things could very well already be set in motion.

it is a long moment before the feverkissed tundrian finally answers; thinking thru his words always careful and calculated. i have no desire to keep anyone in the pack against their will, he begins. if you truly wish to leave then you can — he trails off with the infamous but hanging unspoken in the air. what if you are pregnant with my children? he inquires; trying to approach it all as business-like as he can manage. trying to keep emotions — the consideration that another potential litter he sired might never know him again is torturing him inside.

Wintersbane did not chuckle along with her, as Lane had expected. Actually, he looked troubled. Surely he couldn't be so attached to her already; they had spoken hardly a word in between hello and goodbye (although their "goodbye" did pack a punch, she had to admit). A long moment drew out between them, made awkward by the difference in attitude each seemed to have toward their encounter. The humor dropped away from Lane's expression.

As he began speaking, Lane's brow also knit. It always seemed to happen this way, didn't it? Even though Lane felt she was enormously clear with her intentions when they met at the border, Wintersbane seemed to be under the assumption that she was staying. Antares had been the same way. Was it a quirk of alphas, or of pack wolves in general, Lane wondered? Did they all believe that their own pack was the pinnacle of existence, and that there was nothing about the wilds that could draw a wolf back out once they had sampled the sweet life that was pack living? 

Lane might have given him a mouthful about his assumptions, and reminded him of her previously and explicitly stated purpose here, if he hadn't dropped such a bomb for his final question. 

"Pregnant?" she echoed, taken aback. "No, that would only happen if I was--" Realization crossed her features immediately. Fuck. Oh, fuck.

"--Fuck."

Lane's weight dropped to her haunches. She needed to sit down for this one. She shook her head. She was a trained medic, for fuck's sake! How could she have overlooked the telltale signs of her own first heat? 

"I.. guess that changes things..?" she murmured.

Lane's mind was racing. She knew that this called for a change of plans, but she couldn't land on exactly what she was supposed to do. Stick around? Stay until she knew one way or the other? Then what? She didn't know a damn thing about this pack, or their customs. Did she have the pups and leave? Did they get married? Oh fuck, she didn't know shit about this guy-- what if Wintersbane was already married? Would her children be bastards? Lane's amber eyes found the tundrian's polar gaze, pleading with him to answer the questions she hadn't-- couldn't-- even speak out loud.

yes. wintersbane rasps as she comes to the conclusion herself; glad that he did not have to explain it to her. he was old enough now not to find too many things awkward but there were some conversations best left between women and that was one of them. he considers reminding her once more that he wouldn't hold her here against her will — it wouldn't be fair to her; and neither, he reminds himself selfishly, would her taking off with his children be fair to him.

it was a devil's line to walk.

for the moment, the tundrian remains quiet; letting the news and consideration absorb. content in letting her ask the questions — if and when she felt ready to.

She waited for him to say something else-- to say something comforting, or encouraging. He was the leader, right? Don't leaders always have an inspirational speech up their sleeve? 

The silence drew out, and Lane began to understand that he wasn't going to rescue her. He wasn't going to swoop in with promises, declarations, or reassurances. Granted, even if he had done so, she probably wouldn't have liked it-- she probably would have felt patronized, and she'd never had any patience for any of that. 

"I know about you," she blurted, breaking off their eye contact. "You want a strong, loyal woman by your side. To put down roots." They had a mutual acquaintance who styled herself a matchmaker, so it would be fairly obvious who had provided the information. "That's not me. None of that is me." Lane had told Kukutux as much back then, and she meant it. Even if Lane was.. you know.. even if there were kids, she meant it. 

So they would be bastards, then. You know, hypothetically. The hypothetical children would be bastards. Lane's brow wrinkled. Half of her-- the practical half-- wanted to set things straight and start planning, but the other half was screaming, it was only one time, you don't even know for sure yet! 

"Will they have a surname?" she spoke suddenly once more, abruptly shifting the topic. Her mind was whirling, and Lane could hardly keep up.

for a moment, as her blurted out words process in his brain, wintersbane is visibly confused. eh? the tundrian king inquires only to realize a few beats later what she is talking about. kukutux. this woman must've been one of his prospects, then. it feels like so long ago that he'd sought her matchmaking skills — certainly the destruction of moonspear had only served to remind wintersbane why his time in husbandry was met with his misery.

after what happened with moonspear... my desires have changed. perhaps they were more fickle than he'd thought when he'd spoken to kukutux about it.

i've been widowed twice and in the events that destroyed moonspear and brought about the death of close friends i realize that maybe i wasn't as ready for marriage as i'd thought when i'd spoken to kukutux of such things. he'd been lost and nostalgic and yearning. he yearned now ...but not in a way that told him to title himself as husband once more.

all i ask is that i can be a father to my children. that they know me and i know them and that i can help to raise them. his time with quellcrist had always felt borrowed, like it was time that belonged to some other man despite that she was clearly his daughter.

i considered shedding the surname of my parents and adopting duskfire as mine own. it should belong to my children as well. he concludes decisively.

His words cut through the haze of hormones and panic that had engulfed Lane, and she brought her eyes up to hold the man in her empathetic gaze. Because of his experiences, he had come to think of grief as an inevitable conclusion to mateship, and that was.. well, it was really fucking sad. He didn't speak with an overabundance of emotion, but then again, neither did Lane very often. She understood that what took place inside the leader's heart might not be visible on the hardened, scarred exterior. 

As he continued, it occurred to Lane that Wintersbane might also view parenthood as a preemptive to a different kind of loss. However, he had not yet given up on it completely- not in the way he had given up one mateship. One more bad experience though, and who knows? 

Wintersbane had drawn Lane out of the depths of her own self-pity, for the time being at least. She inhaled, steeling her resolve. 

"Okay," she murmured her assent. Wintersbane would be a father, even if she couldn't find it in herself to be a mother. It was some comfort, to know that the hypothetical kids might make it out of this with at least one real parent. 

"I'll let you know if, if I'm.." She trailed off hesitantly, and then spoke again a bit more firmly. "If you're expecting any new Duskfires." Duskfire. Hopefully with a name like that, her children would belong here, even though their mother did not. Lane was increasingly beginning to realize just how important it was to belong somewhere.. to have a place to return to. A place to call home.

wintersbane holds an understanding that his way of thinking may not be for everyone — and probably looks rather horrible from the prospective that might see him as a potential mate. but ...he cannot — at this moment with the grief of moonspear still too fresh and horribly timed to shortly after he talked to kukutux about taking another wife — bring himself to change his mind; heart of stone as it was becoming.

wintersbane offers her a nod at her words. he has nothing left to say. it was a hard compromise to make and he walks the delicate line of not wanting her to feel like duskfire glacier was her prison. his condition was that the children know him but he had no qualms about raising them on his own if it came down to that line.

okay. he settles, stretching the stiffness from his freshly scarred leg; not sure what else to say.

Well then. 

They had both drawn their lines in the sand, and neither seemed inclined to discuss much else. Their conversation was hamstrung by uncertainty, in a sense. On one paw, it seemed premature to discuss more about the would-be pups, seeing as they weren't yet positive of their conception. On the other paw.. with both their futures hanging in the balance, how could they possibly revert back to some more mundane topic? 

How exactly their conversation concluded, Lane wouldn't recall. Her mind was a whirlwind, and the majority of her attention was focused on her lower tummy. With every step she took away from Wintersbane, she would concentrate on the reverberations as they traveled up through her body, trying in vain to determine if anything felt different yet.