Blacktail Deer Plateau This is hungry work

Kavik was not offended by her tone, and she had not really expected him to be. Like her, he was calm about most things. And they were friends, as he pointed out. It would take a lot more than a snappy retort to turn him away from her. She sighed through her nose, giving him a once-over and thinking not for the first time that she would let him give her children if he wanted to. But the thought was so inappropriate and out of place for her that it shocked her to her core. Why did he have to be taken? Him—the only one she’d thought of in this way, besides Corvus, since she had come to the Teekon Wilds. And he was taken by a… a deformed woman.

She hated herself for thinking such thoughts, but it was her upbringing that brought them to her mind. In her birth pack, someone deformed like Liri would have been demoted or overthrown by now. But Grezig was not quite as ruthless as her parents. And she counted Liri as a friend. Besides, the woman could fight, according to Kavik, despite her injury. Grezig had yet to see that for herself, but she had no reason to distrust Kavik’s words—except, perhaps, if he was looking at his mate through a rose-tinted fog. 

Throwing caution to the wind because she hated keeping secrets, she tossed her head and said, “There are only two wolves, so far, whom I would allow to father my children. Corvus… and you.” She looked him dead-on in the eyes as she said it, unflinching, challenging. Waiting.

But her conscience could not allow her to be so careless. After a few seconds’ hard stare, she let her eyes flick away from his. “If you were available, that is. But you are not.” It was weak, this amendment. She should have let her previous statement stand, just to see how he would have reacted, but her logical brain told her that it would have implied so many things she didn’t mean. She couldn’t risk it. Now she looked at the space between her paws and had half a mind to run in the opposite direction from him.