Where did I go Wrong?

OOC: No immediate family members please.

Gryphon hadn't been exactly avoiding his family, but he'd made it a point to limit his time near any of the dens, and spent much of his time patrolling the lands during the twilight and dawn hours or deep night to keep from running into anyone. A large part of that was fueled by his growing paranoia over the state of the pack - hardly any active adults, no one making the effort to train any of the yearlings, and two big litters of pups that they were expected to provide for. How was he supposed to protect and feed his family's pack without a mentor who would take the time to train him? Was even Lykos being trained in his duties as the heir? What were those duties even? He assumed that there were some but so far Lykos seemed just as cut adrift as he was.

The very existence of one of those litters of pups had come as an extreme shock to the already-edgy yearling Gryphon. There had been no warning, no explanation, just suddenly there had been pups. Oh, in hindsight there had been physical signs, but he wasn't a healer and he'd never had anyone sit down and explain to him the birds and bees. He didn't know what it meant when his mother's scent changed and she seemed to be getting fatter and fatter. He just assumed that she was... well, getting fat. And that wasn't really something that was all that polite to comment on to someone, so he'd never brought it up on the few occasions that he might have had the opportunity to approach her. But never once had she said "Hey kids, Vereux and I are planning on having pups, you're going to be brothers" no, she'd just done... whatever it was that one did... and bam, there were these interlopers, this... competition.

It was clear to Gryphon that he and his brothers were being replaced, and it hurt. After all, these pups had a father, and none of them would ever look like the male who had sired Gryphon's litter and vanished. None of them would remind his mother of what he could only assume were bad memories every time she looked at them. None of them had died or been too sickly to have a childhood. No, they didn't have the bad blood that Gryphon and his brothers did. She could love them more.

Trotting through the odd trees, Gryphon bit viciously at a low-hanging branch, snapping it off in his jaws. It wasn't fair. He'd left Imperium by choice to come here with his mother, to help her start this pack and to protect her, and now he felt like she'd abandoned and betrayed them. Having a litter with a virtual stranger! Putting the pack and the unknown wolves in it over her own family! He may as well have stayed in Imperium for all the good he was doing here. At least down there he wasn't cold all the time, and it wasn't like he wasn't just as thoroughly ignored here as he was there. At least down there he didn't have to smell the new litter all the time, and that Vereux who's sniffing around Avalon had apparently been successful. He snapped off another, thicker branch and this time he moodily flopped down with it to slowly and methodically begin stripping it of all leaves, twigs, and every scrap of bark.