Ouroboros Spine I had a violin somewhere, I was gonna play it all sarcastically

Her world truly was black and white. What was any shade in between but inconvenient? There were thousands of colors on the scale, but the ones that mattered to her were the ones at its beginning and at its end: pitch black and stark white. They were simple. Easy. And anything in between complicated things unnecessarily to the woman, who was raised to be as simple as this, by creatures just as base as she. At her first year, she had been chased off by her mother, who would have no competition by the only wolf who stood a real change against her: the youth she raised. She would have more cubs, and Tonravik had been a threat... and instinctively, she understood why she was chased, but did not have the cognitive power to recognize this scent as familiar to the one that had come when her mother chased her from the lands she was born on the third day when she had come too close. Her mother had put many in their place and curbed others from heat, snapping and stressing the pack out...

She remembered Razorback. More cubs this year by her mother. Which meant her siblings were likely out there, her brothers seeking to make their own name for themselves and perhaps a sister, too (unaware that she would be the only daughter of her mother).

His words brought her another step closer, poised to attack, and oh, she would, if he did not stand down. She was not for words, but she needed him to understand this simple thing: "I do not pick." Not within the first year; it was true, wolves mated for life unless something befell the other and sometimes, other underlying circumstances. But this was no choice of hers, but their own; perhaps she could respond, in her receptiveness, to one, but even still, it mattered not if he was not the strongest. They could be challenged. Best to kill the bird with one throw of the stone when the time came. This, to her, was not childish. This was life. Tonravik would couple with the strongest male, and if there was only one that chose her, so be it.

To Tonravik, things were black and white. Always. The survival of her young, and that they be strong, themselves, was, to the alpha, the most important; it was their future. Tonravik now moved toward him to reach out and (attempt to) grab his muzzle; her own scent frustrated her, as surely as it frustrated him, but the action would ground her, stabilize her aggression lest she suddenly desire an all out brawl.