Firestone Hot Springs You're saying the words that I want you to say

There was nothing more egregious to Stryx than the scene before her, no matter what she'd seen on the field of her practice, no matter what rogue tales filtered their way to her as she travelled, than a woman putting herself at risk in the way that Speedy now was. The way that Stryx had been taught forbade a physician from partaking in such a union. To have someone claim they were a healer but also a future mother, well, it didn't sit right with her at all — and she couldn't handle it.

No matter what Speedy said, Stryx could only see the matrons of the Order reciting their rules to her, over and over and over again. It put the unborn at risk, it put the mother at risk too — and when Speedy admitted to being the only medic of her pack, Stryx saw red.

You are the only physician, and you have taken no apprentices? You think it is wise to birth newborns when there is nobody to take over...? Why would you threaten the lives of your charges that way, that is incredibly narrow-minded. Did you think that you could birth a litter on your own without any possible complications? The words came flowing out of her; she could not help but get louder and more abrasive with each one, until she sounded more like the elders who had berated her.

If she were to die during the birth then her children might die too, or they would suffer beside a cooling body rather than a warm milk-heavy one; her pack would be without a healer, and all of this was wrong.

Stryx was fuming, although somewhere deep down she knew she was in the wrong for losing her cool—she could not stop herself from stating frigidly, You will be a terrible mother.