Blacktail Deer Plateau because her words had forked no lightning

WALL OF TEXT INCOMING

Grezig sighed heavily when Minori promised not to spread the information around. “Well,” she said, gathering her thoughts. “Let me try to make this as succinct as possible.” She cleared her throat awkwardly. “I want pups in the spring. Originally I was going to ask Corvus to be the father, but then he disappeared. I don’t know Issun at all so I went to Kavik. We’re close. Well… we were. I know he is mated to Liri but I only wanted him to father my pups, not to become mated to me.” She sighed. How naïve she had been.

“He agreed, but said they’d have to ask Liri first. That was fine with me. I wasn’t trying to cause a rift in their relationship. I just wanted pups, and for that, I needed a willing male. So… we went to Liri eventually, after a few days or weeks. I cannot remember. But then… something happened when Kavik started talking about how much he loved Liri, trying to butter her up before he asked her.” She stopped here because the memory was painful. She shook her head, remembering the flash of pain in her heart, the way her hearing had faded to a dull roar as Kavik had kept talking about how much he loved his mate.

“I realized,” Grezig whispered. “too late that I loved Kavik. I couldn’t…” Her voice cracked and she cleared it, hard, and then shook her head and sat up straighter, forcing the emotions down. Her eyes became dull. “I could not go through with the plan of Kavik impregnating me. I called it off, but I was distraught. Liri must have realized right away what Kavik meant to me. Our relationships have all been strained ever since.” She shook her head again. “That is… partly why I left a little while ago to try and find Illdan’s family. I was hoping things would calm down by the time I got back, but… they didn’t.”

Grezig’s eyes were hard now, and glinted in the light. “It’s not about Kavik anymore. I’ve been worrying about Liri’s ability to run this pack for some time. It is wrong of me, but I—I cannot look past her deformity, and her soft heart. It is not bad to have a heart, but I worry that she cannot… be strong enough in lean times to lead us properly.” The beta sighed. “I am not fair to her, but it does not prevent my feelings. That’s why I wanted to spar her. In my natal pack, spars solved any dispute we had. I assumed that if she won, I could just give in, become subordinate, go back to caring for the pack and forget all about our problems. Maybe that was naïve but… clearly, pushing down my emotions only made everything worse. But then… she rejected the spar and now I don’t know what to do.”

Grezig was tired after speaking so much. She didn’t think she’d ever spoken so much at once in her entire life, and was actually kind of embarrassed about it. She gave Minori a shy glance, and then looked out at the trees, wondering what her friend would think about all this.