Moonspear so if you meet me, have some courtesy

[b]Myself and my sister have mates,[/q] Hydra drawled, gaze turning to Praimfaya as they moved. Each step taken was one that Hydra knew where her foot would land; three years upon this mountain granted her the ability to maneuever here, particularly the borders (her most frequent of haunts), with her eyes closed, and more could come within the season; but mated pairs are more invested in the future of their cubs. Some breed to breed and care not for what is begotten, and abandon the child. You might not think it a burdensome thing, and perhaps one might not be—but if each she-wolf begot a bastard within the pack, and only one remained of them all, or there was no father to help hunt for them... it fell on the rest of them, and meant less food for all—themselves included. The future must be considered. It is harsh, but that is life; it can be cruel. Hydra sighed a little.

Explaining further, she expressed: It is not simply luck that caused each of my brood to not go hungry this year. There were many mouths to help feed them despite the lack of prey. We must also keep ourselves fed; it is how the children continue to be fed. To become a mother is a great responsibility, but the pack shares in it. If they go hungry, the children go hungry, Hydra made her points. If Praimfaya was to become a leader herself, it was best she not go into it blindly and be told that it was an easy thing that all should be able to do because they could. That was putting the pack, and the children within it, at risk.

Again she thought of Speedy. These days, the woman plagued her... though she hoped such a time would come to an end. With the famine, perhaps—and she, terribly, hoped—the lot of them had died. Starvation would have taught that wretch a nice little lesson in the most awful of ways, and she would have deserved it. Freezing cold, and hungry—maybe the woman would have even survived long enough to see her children quiver with their own hunger pangs. It would have served the tawny liar right; she never should have done it, and then they would never have known pain. Speedy had herself to blame. 

Hydra looked to Praimfaya and nodded. In these things I am strict. Else history might repeat itself; fool me once, shame on you—fool me twice, well, her ear twitched. Hydra would never be the fool, not if she could help it. As far as her remark on it being fortunate, Hydra nodded. It is; and for our small number of children, we were able to assist Vercingetorix when he came to us. He had meant to stay, to help protect and to hunt—but he had been killed beforehand, leaving Dragomir and Isilme's life entirely in Moonspear's hands. It was quite clear by the way Hydra treated either that she would never call them a burden, nor did she think of them that way. She felt responsible for them and adored Dragomir namely, given his long time here and their time spent together as she mentored him. They, to her knowledge, were not even bastards; she had assumed Vercingetorix and Aurewen to be mated, the latter simply abandoning her ties and her life due to lightning and her Heavens. 

The matriarch jumped deftly over an errant root, landing atop a hard pile of snow and continuing forward; she paused moments thereafter to paw at the earth, leaving scent-marks behind from the glands there.