Blacktail Deer Plateau I'm not made of stone

Grezig flinched at the sound of Liri’s call. It had been about a day since that… disaster, and she had tried her best to stay away from all others in the pack, shirking her duties as Beta in order to hide from the world. She was unworthy. She needed to leave. But she was a pack wolf and her instincts to stay in the pack were stronger than her emotional desires. The same reason she had called off the… the unspeakable thing she had almost gone through with. She wanted to leave the Plateau, to give Kavik and Liri a chance to… be together without her there. To get away from her own feelings. Feelings. Feelings were gross, and she wished, now that she’d experienced them, that she could shove them all back inside her chest cavity and close the lid. But they were out now, and still raw and bloody and she didn’t know how to pick them up. They slipped, wet with blood, from her (figurative) fingers and scattered around her in a windstorm.

But she had to go to Liri. She had to be the Beta now, but make sure it was clear that she respected the pale Alpha. She picked herself up from the ground and led herself, head down, to the woman whose husband she had almost… She did not finish the thought. It disgusted her, but somewhere in the back of her mind, there was still a twinge of deep sorrow. Despite her best efforts, she could not entirely squash her feelings for the dark male. Still, though, her regret over the situation was stronger than her love for Kavik. She needed to make amends somehow.

She dragged herself towards Liri, keeping her head down, her body low to the ground, her tail tucked between her legs. It was a strange posture for one so proud, but she was the most self-loathing now than she’d ever been before in her life. The posture suited her—regret and anguish clear in every minute detail of her body. Ears back, whine in her throat. She hated all of this. But she would not run away. She was proud enough—of the pack, if not herself—to know that running away would solve nothing. She had to face her mistakes lest they fester and infect her mind like an illness. “Liri,” she said, her voice hoarse and raw and cracking on the name. But she could think of nothing else to say, so she stared at the ground instead, waiting.