Bearclaw Valley can you still sleep, the way i used to?

The face he once saw as belonging to someone he must protect from further harm morphed ever so slowly into something recognisable. Gone was the broken girl, her body long since mended—save for the tail that could never be replaced—and her attitude raging. She was no longer the quiet one of the sisterly duo, a realisation he was forced to make as she strode towards him and then back—and right there came the steady flow of words, the edge like a razor blade as her voice sliced through the air. The way in which she stared, eyes harbouring the frigidness of his bloodline’s origin, set his hackles to raising and muscles tensing; her comment, so terribly straightforward, took him not by surprise, though the tone of her voice did have his tail sickling over his back as a reminder—this valley was his and her words were unwelcomed.

Upwards rose her muzzle and immediately he flashed his incisors, a silent warning; the intentions behind the gesture would remain forever unknown to him, yet his perception painted her display as something far from tolerable. But she continued to speak and he, for whatever reason, listened—but the words had no effect on him, aside from the furthering of his agitated state. “There is no us when it comes to you and Laurel—I didn’t have sex with you, I wouldn’t have sex with you,” his voice was low and accompanied by several stiff-legged steps towards her; at this point, he’d taken notice of his wife as she drew up alongside him, though he did little more to acknowledge her presence than offer a flick of his ear. His attention was focused solely on Indra, whose words suggested something that would never quite reach reality.

“Laurel is not my mate and she never will be because that’s not something either of us want—we’re friends and we’re both content with that.” Perhaps he should not have spoken for her, perhaps he should have spoken with her prior to deciding anything, but as far as he knew, Laurel had no romantic interests in him and he wasn’t going to try and force something that wasn’t there—not again. “And I am enough to fill all leadership positions. There is no alpha female or even a pair of betas—there’s only me and it’s going to stay that way until I say otherwise.” This was his valley, his home, his pack to control. He would not share that power with anyone that was not his and his alone, because he would not let himself have the throne be torn out from underneath him like the pallid king before him.

Alexander took a moment to steal a glance in his companion’s direction, her advancement forward making it nearly impossible to not offer some piece of his attention to her—but it lingered for but a mere moment, hardly enough time for him to even blink, before lurching back over to Indra. His body went rigid and he drew himself up to his full height, staring down at the fiery girl as if daring her to take another step forward. “What I do for Laurel doesn’t concern you so stand down and back off,” he ordered, voice like gravel as he fought back a growl. There was much that he tolerated, spanning from the crude comments and overall insulting nature of her words towards him and his companion as of late, but to be approached so casually and then chastised? He could not allow such behaviour to continue, not when, to onlookers, it was a challenge made against him perhaps not as a leader but definitely as a man—and being the wolf that he was, he had to put an immediate end to it.