Redhawk Caldera you don't get me high anymore

It was tempting to pick up and leave, what with her mother's scorn and broken faith in her. But what good would that do? It would make her look as guilty as Fox suspected and she was no good to her mother or her unborn siblings that way. She wondered mournfully whether the Alpha female would even let her anywhere near her or the pups now. The best she could do was lay low and wait for everything to blow over in time.

That was easier said than done, of course. Wondering who else might refuse to believe her story and shun her, Raven did not seek out her pack mates in the days following the altercation. She kept busy hunting, sometimes for meat (which she left in a stockpile for Fox) and sometimes for supplies. On this particular gloomy afternoon, she sullenly searched for something to take her mind off her teats, which were now leaking a clear fluid that made her look all the more a harlot.

This got stupid long xD... I APOLOGIZE FOR NOTHING

Kaizer's activity at the borders had increased as Fox's stomach grew. Instinctively he patrolled almost constantly these days, even though he hated it, even though there were other things he wanted to do. But as he thought now about the list of things he wanted to do, he realized that it had become terribly short in his complacency with his place in the pack. He had come to give flight to his ambitions; start a family and care for them as his alpha-male spirit bade him to. But Fox had not been very receptive of him after her heat. He still didn't know that her own mate had died the day before his arrival, that it was grief keeping her from the duty of the breeding pair of the pack that dictated they be a couple, but it didn't matter to him.

He was slowly coming to the conclusion that he wanted to overthrow her— force her to accept him as her mate and male superior.

He took a break from his patrolling (which was undoubtedly the source of his malcontent imperiousness) to hunt something, and it was lucky that he managed to catch a hare on his first attempt, because failure would have meant further frustration. He carried the meal with the intention of bringing it to the alpha female, but he paused when Raven's hormonal scent hit him. He followed out of morbid curiosity, but the stronger her scent became, the more nauseated he felt. The thought of another man's children being inside her literally made him sick.

Out of duty he located her, frowning deeply as she came into view and biting down on the rabbit harder than he needed to— essentially grinding his teeth. He'd meant to feed her, but now that he saw her, he suddenly had the morbid thought that she should starve for choosing another over him; the jealous prick. But it was easy for Kaizer to swallow such foreign, personal emotions— yet unaware that his feelings for her were making him feel a little crazy— and he made a noise for her attention, dropping the hare for her to take.

A distraction came in the form of a pack mate. Raven flinched slightly at the noise, then turned to see Kaizer presenting her with a dead rabbit. Her brow furrowed at this demonstration of kindness before it dawned on her that he was probably trying to feed her because he thought her pregnant. A beat passed as she struggled with how to feel about that.

"Thank you, but I don't need this," she said slowly and pointedly. "You should take it to m—Fox."

Kaizer's expression, which he'd originally fought to keep neutral, suddenly became laden with unchecked frustration. "You need to eat," he said forcefully, eyes falling pointedly to her stomach. His gaze lingered there too long before returning to her face, his tail lashing as the rest of his body devolved into outwardly expressing his inner frustration. Had he honestly not noticed her heat? How could he have been bested this way? Who had earned her affection if not him? It wouldn't be until much later that he'd realized he was more angry with himself than with her.

His mouth snapped shut, careful to cover his ready-to-bare teeth as he wasn't exactly threatening her... maybe. He dipped his nose and pushed the bunny forward, his stomach feeling knotted with anxiety.

She didn't miss his pointed glance at her midsection and it made the usually calm and balanced Raven want to scream. She was being betrayed by her own body and punished by those who should take her at her word, especially as a highly-ranked caregiver. It was so depressing how quickly everyone was dismissing her as a liar and traitor. Maybe this was penance for disappearing for so long.

Raven bit her lips for a moment, then parted them to enunciate every word slowly and clearly when she replied, "I. Am. Not. Pregnant. What do I need to do to prove it? Cut myself open?" She flinched slightly, then snorted dismissively at her own words. "Fox is pregnant, however, and so you should take this to her."

Perhaps fortunately for Raven, Bluesummer was slightly more reasonable than her "strike-first, never-ask-questions, not-even-at-a-later-date" mother. He took her words, the emotion behind it— the pain of her tone— at a level deeper than face value. He thought himself a perceptive wolf, not one easily deceived, and though he couldn't understand her symptoms without it being attributed to pregnancy, Kaizer knew he was young still and didn't know absolutely everything.

He balked at her, his face stricken out of its irritated expression and now straddling a fine line between confusion and marginal disbelief. "You're not pregnant?" he echoed, trying to hear the words again, trying to understand its possibility. "But you—" you're getting fat! And your nipples! Your smell! He had to fight his own mind in trying to comprehend why she would lie about this... or rather, why she wouldn't. "You haven't been with another male?" he asked then, unable to hide what his true concern was.

His befuddled reaction was so authentic that Raven immediately felt guilty for being rather terse with him. She blinked, trying to quell the hope blossoming in her chest and failing. Did Kaizer believe her? Although her mother's refusal to hear her out had definitely sunk her morale, Raven remembered that her uncle had given her the benefit of the doubt too. Maybe the rest of the pack wouldn't follow Fox's example and ostracize her. Her heartbeat quickened.

"No," she repeated emphatically but with significantly less waspishness in her tone. Now, there was gratitude for the opening. "I'm not pregnant. I know it looks that way but I swear I'm not." Her ears skidded backward slightly at his overly personal question. Normally, she wouldn't have readily talked so intimately about herself but she was happy to tell him, "I've never even been with a man. And I haven't had a heat yet, either."

His ears strained forward, trying to make sure he heard every word, every syllable she had to say. Something like a shiver clawed its way up his spine and he wasn't sure what it was at first until he realized that he wasn't holding his breath anymore. It was relief he felt— tentative and uncertain, but definitely there. Because Kaizer almost desperately didn't want her to be pregnant, he was pretty susceptible to a notion of the possibility that she wasn't.

Bluesummer took a step forward, feeling a weight begin to lift from his chest as he fought to accept what she was saying as fact— despite what his senses told him; despite everything he knew. The likeliness of him believing this from the mouth of any other woman besides Raven was slim to none, but he would likely never have this experience to compare to another, so it'd be a long time before he could admit to the massive amount of leeway he was allowing her and only her. It simply made him feel better to accept it.

"I've been avoiding you," he said suddenly. "Because I thought you..." What excuses could he give her? What excuse even mattered? "I was jealous," Kaizer finished lamely, feeling his body grow uncomfortably warm with the admission of an emotion that had little to do with instinct.

Well, that was unexpected, to say the least. Raven's mouth opened and closed as she processed Kaizer's words. She had been avoiding everyone, so she could hardly take that part personally. But why should he be jealous? It caught her off guard but made her incredibly curious at the same time.

"Jealous? What? Why?" she questioned frankly, yellow eyes squinting uncertainly.

He felt his body tense at her rapid-fire questions, inwardly flailing as he immediately began to feel as if he'd been thrown into a pool of freezing water. Flustered now, his go-to expression was a darkening frown, snorting as he realized he had no desire to explain what he'd been jealous of or why. He wasn't even sure of it all himself, so he stupidly repeat-blurted: "what?" He shook his head. "No, it was nothing— it was stupid, I mean. Forget about it," he managed to fumble out, snatching up the rabbit suddenly and plowing forward to move past her.

Let me know if you mind the slight PP. :)

"Wh—" she tried to say when Kaizer abruptly snatched the carcass off the ground and moved past her. Raven spun, though a very peculiar sensation indeed distracted her and prompted a knee-jerk reaction: she curled to nose at her own underside. A bead of milky fluid had dribbled from one of her rear teats and dripped down the inside of her thigh. Raven grimaced for half a second before swiping her tongue over the stray droplet to be rid of it.

By the time she looked up again—no more than six seconds later—Kaizer was already becoming a smaller and smaller speck in the distance. "Hey!" she shouted after his retreating figure, brow furrowed. She was tempted to chase after him but what good would that do? If he didn't want to explain himself, the timorous Raven wasn't about to force it out of him. She huffed out a frustrated breath and let it—him—go.

Not at all, I can work with it ;P

As Kaizer staggered away, his heart hammering, his mind swirling, and Raven calling after him, he realized what a coward he was being. Since when did he run from anything that wasn't a detriment to his physicality? Since when had he become afraid of telling the truth? Since when had he gotten these... feelings?

He shuddered in disgust, slowing to a stop nearly thirty yards after her last word had died on the winter air, and he kept his back to the girl who had chosen not to pursue him. That fact didn't matter to him; it had been wise of her not to come after him anyway, because then he would have been too concerned with getting away from her, rather than thinking about the reason behind his craven retreat.

The Bluesummer rotated, spotting Raven as nothing but a black dot on the horizon, and beginning to walk back the way he had gone. His pace was decidedly dejected— sluggishly embarrassed, maybe— but by the time he reached her again, his stance had straightened, and his confidence was reborn as he dropped the rabbit at his feet again. "I'm not good with handling my feelings because I usually don't have them," he said quickly, having clearly worked up the nerve to say that exact sentence the entire way back to her. "I didn't mean to turn my back on you like that."

Funny how quickly he seemed to cycle through phases, turning something that normally could have lasted days or weeks, into mere minutes. "Seeing you like... this... is throwing me off, too," he huffed, head tilting very slightly.

Defeated, Raven sank to her haunches and bent down to begin licking at her other dribbling teats. This is a good thing, she repeated like a mantra in her head, though it was hard not to think of this development as more damning evidence of wrongdoing. Eventually, she ceased her movements and sighed—then yelped an instant later when a voice spoke from practically right on top of her.

"Kaizer—!" she exclaimed, ears folding and mouth snapping shut as he began to talk. She listened, her confusion only growing. "Kaizer," she repeated when he was done, "you lost me way back at 'jealous.'" Raven fell into a silence which demanded further explanation.

But he must have reconsidered yet again. With another muttered, "Forget it," Kaizer left. This time, he did not turn back, maybe because Raven didn't bother calling out again. She just stared after him, baffled and a little frustrated, feeling an absolute lack of closure over the encounter. Just let it go, she coached herself with a shake of her head. Life was already dramatic enough without trying to board the Bluesummer's emotional carousel.

Speaking of which, Raven blinked down at the moisture seeping from her underside. Her lips pinched. It was more uncomfortable than anything. With a resigned sigh, she began seeking someplace to sit and give herself a tongue bath. It was best to keep this little development under the radar, Fox's especially. Even if it could be helpful—this meant she could hypothetically nurse her younger siblings if needed—Raven knew the Alpha female would never let that happen so it was all rather moot.