Lost Creek Hollow for the line in my life

wanted to post again bc i figured this was a new round/no posting order + it makes the most sense icly

though he should have expected such vitriol from the more clueless of the redleaf sisters, stigmata was visibly taken aback by laurel's assertion that he wasn't family - first - and that second, he wasn't welcome to linger if he didn't want to stay. he almost couldn't process the words, but as indra turned beldam right before his eyes, he knew what the bitch had said was true.

he wasn't family. no amount of aptitude, platitude, or servitude would make him so.

his ears folded, and stigmata took a bewildered, wounded step back. "i... misspoke," he choked bitterly, overcoming the embarrassment of having been denied by his own (ex)packmates, by returning a stiff, proud look towards the lead male(s). "it would appear that i have been ousted for daring to refuse hospice," he snorted with a tense roll of his shoulders. he had no intention of rebutting anything they had conjured about him, and what the leaders of lost creek said after laurel's spiel almost didn't matter. 

the wolves here seemed to think that their lives were at stake because of the cold weather, but stigmata knew that his life was only at stake if he did not spend it breeding a legacy in his own stead. winter was as exciting as it got for wolves - and the fact that these so-called carnivores all wanted to live easy, and grow like mold onto a single territory their whole lives, was proof enough that he didn't belong with any of them. he should have known when he met the wolves of bearclaw, who never ventured as a pack outside its stone confines, that these lands were too different for him to negotiate.

the sandraudiga's had ran an entire range of mountains, all year long, taking and losing as it happened. prey shortages were common, but they had never aligned themselves with the competition. would have failed down to a single member before turning to another's ranks. not ironically, stigmata was maintaining this tradition by having fallen again into forced bachelorhood, because of the way he saw things.

and these things had come to past, not for lack of trying. he had done his passive stint, lolling about in bearclaw's ranks, allowing himself to be considered a peon, and it had gotten him less than nowhere. so time for  the meandering paths were over. he could not conceive of the weakness the wolves of teekon had been born with, but he would not let himself turn into one of them, he vowed at that moment.

"i shall harry you all no more," the smokehound assured those gathered, and then turned to make a swift, cantering exit.