Shadewood Incoming Turbulence

For @Cry. Set immediately after this thread.

Chai had slipped away, back into the darkness of the forest. She wanted to be alone. She wanted to be here less and less. So then, what had stopped her from bursting past those borders, never to return again? Fear of punishment? Of looking weak, or worse, being labeled a traitor?

Clicking her tongue against the roof of her mouth, she kicked a spindly twig out of her way as she neared her den - a hole dug out between two mighty roots of an ancient tree. She really was soft. Too soft...maybe even weak. But oh how she hated how the other women were coddled just because they were pregnant! They were still wolves. They still had the same teeth, the same fierceness, if not more so, as the males. They...they could still take care of themselves! She didn't want to be restricted, to be kept away from the borders like she should just because she was a woman! She might be soft, but she wouldn't break. Settling outside the entrance to her den, she curled up tightly...almost defensively and began gnawing on an old bone, her frustrations splintering in fragments beneath her teeth.