Bearclaw Valley And now it's hard to breathe

I thought... "You didn't think at all," she countered coldly. Not with anything other than his loins, anyway. What a ridiculous thought that she would do such a thing with him only because they were friends. The truth was, Laurel didn't entirely understand why she had done it or what she wanted of him -- but she wasn't about to tell him that. He said she didn't need his help because she had Indra, but it wasn't like that. It was different, what In and she had. Xan, she wanted for a whole different reason.

Xan didn't understand. He didn't get how it would be different for them, for their pups, different than the pups of the Alpha female, the Alpha pair. Laurel felt she deserved to be there, not Xan's dumb mate, and she felt utterly betrayed by not getting what she deserved. She should be Alpha, Indra her Beta, and Laurel would make it so, with or without Xan's approval. That she had vowed, not for herself, but for her children. She would give them what they needed, no matter the cost.

She didn't respond to his questions about their children but when he asked about the title or him, or both, and if she really wanted to be with him, she frowned, some of her anger molded into sadness. "Of course I want to be with you..." She trailed off, the words painful and the knowledge that nothing would come of it even moreso. There was a twinge of anger in her heart that he would make her speak the words. Though some of it was a façade, for she wasn't as certain as she said but she was used to playing this game and hold hearts in her paws, Laurel still felt her heart thrum in her chest when she spoke the words, and if she dug deeper into her feelings she would find that she was really hoping, really rooting for him to say me too, I made the wrong choice. For him to fix it, to choose to be with her instead, or at least take a first step along this path. But she would unlikely ever admit those feelings to anyone else, because she knew that reality would prove her hope futile.