Herbalists' Cache perjury and defamation

Valiant flushed beneath his pale fur at being called lover boy. That came a little too close to boy lover, which had been jeered at him in his dreams not long before. He couldn't imagine Brave ever being that awful to him, but there were a lot of things he'd never imagined until meeting Alejandro St. Clair — he wasn't about to write anything off.

Still, it felt good to get at least some of these things off his chest. When Brave asked, he admitted with a nervous laugh, "Yeah, I think I will. H-she... we said we'd stick around the same area, so that we'd run into each other again. So I guess when I head back, I'll see if she's still around."

He didn't know what to say about being stricken. This did feel an awful lot like the thunderbolt that was rumored in their family; he'd set eyes on Alejandro and had felt suddenly and irrecovably changed — but that didn't happen for two guys, did it?

"I don't wanna talk about her anymore," he said, trying to play off his discomfort as disinterest. "How are you doing? Have you met Aunt Dawn yet? Her pack isn't far from here. It's beside a stream kinda near those mountains — you'll know it by all the birch and aspen trees. You just have to get to the other side of the forest there, and you'll see it."