The Floodlands You never go to parties.

If had been a week or two ago, perhaps Quixote would have been out on his tail like Colt -- he'd been sulking around for what seemed like forever, questioned the move, questioned her, been generally unhappy even if he pretended otherwise.  He still had questions now, but the anger had been for more selfish reasons and it was pretty much gone.

Alphas, not perfect?! Naw, really?  He really wanted to say a bemused, 'You don't have to tell me that,' but caught himself before he made things worse.  With another wolf, he might have, but it he was pretty sure their senses of humor differed wildly and he'd just be trying Towhee's patience.  He did have to wonder if they'd been looking at the same pair of betas, though.  To him, both of them choosing to stay with the pups instead of helping to try to deescalate things said that maybe they didn't want those duties any more.  But what did he know?  Quixote didn't have a family and he wasn't in their brains, but it just didn't seem quite right for them to have left the dealing-with-others thing to people who were no good at it when there were plenty of other noncombatants that could have had pup protection duties foisted on to them for a few minutes.  But why didn't it happen?  What did that say about them?  Perhaps he was reading too much into it, but if there was gonna be some other impending shakeup, Quixote wanted to know about it in advance.

Since Towhee herself had already been discussed, his response in addition to a shrug was, I only said they seemed busy.  Other than that, Qui didn't really have a problem with them, though maybe Towhee should if they were shirking on refining her leadership skills.  In the end, he worked with what he was given, and even if he thought they were screwing up, they were still worlds better than what he was used to overlooking.  But that didn't mean that if the opportunity knocked, he wouldn't try to change things that everyone else ignored.  I'll think about it, though.  No promises I'll end up with the answer you want, whichever way.  He smiled faintly and lowered his head, knowing his rep had probably taken a few hits from this conversation, but eh.  It was out in the open now and it'd give him less to stew over.  Watch him end up deciding he should never lead if she wanted him to or that he was the only option if she didn't -- it'd be just his luck.  And what the heck would Colt think of this?