Overture Downs We operate under

She agreed with Sarah, but being unable to change someone didn't mean that one couldn't try.

Arbiter shrugged.  She didn't have all the answers -- at a certain point it was guesses and opinion.  Terance, of course, would be the better one to ask about Seabreeze, though she wasn't sure how much he'd want to talk about her, though perhaps now things had changed with Arbiter at his side instead.  They hadn't been together long.  I think she got impatient.  We had too many neighbors, prey decreased.  She and another woman who'd had pups -- father not in the pack -- decided to leave with their children as soon as they were able without much discussion to anyone.  If they'd stayed even a little longer, they would have been able to move with us to the hollow.  Instead they used our resources to have their children, and ran off into the sunset.   If it wasn't obvious, Arbiter was also not exactly fond of unpaid debts.  Especially one that would have been easy to repay if they'd just stuck around.

She wrapped up the history lesson with a bit of a scoff,  From the sound of it, those two women are mates now.  Where would Terance be if he'd gone with them?  They were keen to kick the pack that supported them to the side and Seabreeze was fine with leaving Terance behind, too -- they'd probably boot him out of the relationship too.  It was pretty bad when Arbiter thought someone was excessively selfish, but perhaps that point when her belief in loyalty overwrote it.  There were limits to blinding loyalty, sure, and even she had been contemplating leaving at that time, but that was more to perceived disrespect than hard times -- especially since Olive and Seabreeze got such preferential treatment merely for being able to pop out some pups, and then everything that happened...