Games at the border

Mal pursed her lips. "I understand why it's in place. I just don't think taking a wolf's freedom away is the fairest thing in the world. It's not about love and respect anymore, not where it counts. It's an exchange. It doesn't feel that way most of the time, thankfully. But what if I wanted to leave one day?" As uncomfortable as she could see she was making Mort, she was not the type to hold her tongue.

She winced at Mort's next words. "In a real lion pride, yes," she answered. "Regarding my pack... some of the wolves were killed in the battle, I think one or two, but the challengers didn't target the males explicitly.... But, yes, I suppose the survivors did have to live with their family's killers." Maybe she shouldn't have used that analogy. It made it sound worse than it was.... or maybe it really was that messed up? Gods, she was really bad at this.... whatever 'this' was.

She couldn't even bring herself to smile, even ruefully, at his last question. "The tensions were never resolved. It was in part due to my dam The... the original members didn't like how she was handling things. They thought when she became the sole Alpha, things would get better. But they believed that she catered to the new members too much. They thought that motherhood had made her soft, too willing to try for peace rather than justice. It -- it was a lot of things," she exhaled, "and I was too young to see and understand all of it. But ultimately they weren't happy with her. So they planned a takeover. It happened maybe a month after I became a yearling."

She cleared her throat. "Things got ugly. I'm not sure if they planned it that way, but... my dam was killed, as were my two siblings. I thought that I was next, so... I ran."

She shook her head. "I don't know what happened with Pia. She might've stayed, she might've gone, she might've been killed, too. I didn't stick around to find out."