Fox's Glade silver basilisk

She snorted.  He sounded so certain about it, but she doubted it'd be so easy, I think you underestimate some of us.  Mostly her.  She played the long game and so she was not going to let anyone else try to wedge themselves in the ranks above her.  Treason did wonder what exactly he was thinking he'd do.  Brute force it?  Seemed unlikely, given how everyone else would respond. Try  to convince the lower ranked wolves to follow him?  Eh, probably not, he didn't seem particularly charismatic to her -- Rannoch and Terance certainly had him beat.  That just left patience as well, but then again he'd also skipped out on continuing his plans at the Creek.  

His derision of the Bearclaw wolves was starting to bore her a little.  He seemed to just have the one dead horse to beat -- at least Treason had several that had cropped up in that short period of time she met the Blacktail Deer Plateau wolves -- yeah, sure he got betrayed but what else made them awful, c'mon...  If he didn't have anything else to warn her about regarding them, why not move on to something else?  That doesn't make them any different than most of the wolves around here.  I've seen many come and go, despite promises of loyalty or even blood ties. You learn to expect little.  Which was irritating, sure, but it just meant she had very low expectations of everyone new to start with.  The Bearclaw wolves were back to being mere pawns that would either accept and follow orders or get kicked out on their tails.  

But if he didn't expect any of these problems, what did that mean for Stigmata?  What did that say about him?  Treason inquired evenly, But you joined a joyless, dysfunctional group that has so many pups they misplace some, and not a mated pair among them and you expected them to be reliable?  What does that say about their self-control and reasoning? Their character? Why would you stay with a group so fundamentally broken when you obviously weren't in a position to force them to change? The more she'd learned about the Bearclaw wolves, the more she'd questioned letting them in, but by then it was far to late to just to turn them away -- she'd give them a chance to burn their own bridges now.  Stigmata, though, had been free to leave at any time during his membership with their group.  It was one thing to take advantage of cracks in the armor, but was he just too stubborn to give up on a futile cause until there was no other choice? Perhaps he really did belong with them, just as broken as the rest...