Blackfeather Woods creates the only emotion

The gilded merle had hunkered so low by this point that her creamed underbelly was flush with the patchy, snow-covered earth -- legs tucked beneath her like a domestic cat, as if this would protect her if the sunlit icebear did strike. 

She withheld a flinch as her name left his lips, ground out between angry teeth that were still slightly bared in her direction. Her speckled crown dipped jerkily in affirmation, even though it didn't seem to be phrased as a question. His own was quick to follow and recklessly, Imaq chanced a glance upwards without thinking. Thankfully, his face was turned away so that he missed the blip of oceanic blue in her cursed gaze -- but Imaq just so happened to glance up in time to catch the abhorrent expression on his face. 

Oh. She blinked in realization as it settled heavily over her, like a pile of snowmelt slipping from the trees to whack her right between the shoulder blades icily. It was nothing Imaq had done; it was just...her.

Imaq knew well that she was different -- her parents had never lied about that and she had seen her own reflection in still water. But she knew very little about her mother's kind and Eelisi had been the first domesticated canine that anyone in her Kalaallit had ever seen. Salik had said that her dam was beautiful and that Imaq was too, a spitting image of the golden piebald who'd birthed her. But in her own experience, this had proven untrue thus far. Taikon's face was one she had seen etched into the hard lines of every northron male she'd approached with hopes of joining his Kalaallit.

Abomination. Cur. Mutt. 

These were all words synonymous to Imaq. 

Suddenly withdrawn, something seemed to sag in her shoulders and her chin drifted slowly to rest upon her paws -- eyes averted once more. The buttercream shepherd suddenly becoming the perfect picture of dejection, defeat. So absorbed was she in the sudden whirlwind of shame and despair that had gripped her -- the Waterwitch almost didn't hear his next question. 

"I don't have the words to explain myself to you," she murmured to him, hushed tones only slightly louder than before as she switched to northern though she doubted he would understand. "Imaq...look," she tried again after a moment, her ingrained training to answer him too strong to ignore. 

"Rowan find. Rowan...Rowan, home." She told him, as best she could, lilt breaking on the last word. For all that she had wilted under the weight of his prejudice, a new flame of panic flickered to life in her heart. 

Would his disgust only deepen when he pried the rest of the answers from her? Would it look the same as the other mens', when their gazes had fallen upon the swollen bump of her belly -- or later, on the son she carried in her jaws? 

"I-Imaq...go? Leave?" The halfbreed dared to question him, breathy words catching in her throat. She half hoped that Rowan -- or anyone who might come to her defense -- would draw from the shadows and prevent this bully of a pack mate from answering her. 

How unfair of the inua to keep her alive through everything, even when she begged for a true death, and give her a home, budding friendship too, only for it to be ripped away again so soon.