Heron Lake Plateau It's almost like a Hallmark movie, but with tentacles.

She would have been lying if she said Colt's words didn't infuriate her, yet Towhee did her very best to keep her cool and let him air his grievances. She had expected him to complain about the rapid relocation and the big fight upon their arrival, yet his issues seemed more general—and much more personal—in nature. He barely mentioned recent events. No, he seemed really hung up on her disability, which of course made the Alpha prickle and curl her lip.

"X is here," she rejoined (with no small measure of relief, carefully hidden for the moment), "and he's proven extremely effective." Her orange eyes lingered on a tuft of fur on Colt's head that the hawk had disturbed and now it was Towhee's turn to smirk. She knew the hawk was watching and listening to everything happening here, and she silently hoped that her words would reassure him.

"I don't lead alone," she countered in the next breath, expression quickly growing stony again. "They may prefer the title of Betas but I look to Uncle Elwood and Aunt Finley as my equals and we share the workload. And not just with each other," she continued, "but with the rest of the pack. Deaf or not, I can't be reached for every emergency, so I rely on the pack to lean in. We all work together and support each other."

She leered at Colt, despising him in this moment for not being supportive and getting hung up on a disadvantage she could not help and tried so hard to overcome in order to prove her worthiness. At the same time, he seemed to overemphasize her role. "I don't lead hunts," she said frankly, "because I leave that to the more experienced hunters. My greatest strengths lie in fighting and defending my home and you can fuck right off if you don't think I've proved my abilities there time and time again. Seriously," she concluded, signing, -Leave,- since there was no mistaking its meaning.

Despite the dismissal, Towhee then abruptly demanded, "You said yourself that recent events came down to shitty luck. So where's this coming from? Do you have any specific instances of where you feel I'm not 'fit to lead'?"