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“Time for bed,” he growls.
Azlan
I do not sleep well that night.
I punished Ava thoroughly, though I knew she was acting out of compassion and care for the cubs. She needs to obey me first. Care and compassion can be liabilities in my world, traits to be twisted, weaknesses to be used. My punishment might have seemed harsh and unfair, but it was entirely necessary. I have seen the way my brothers look at her. It is not lust in their eyes, but a cool calculation. I have an unpleasant feeling they are up to something, and it is very unsettling. I wonder if I am growing paranoid in my old age, or if there is more afoot than I realize.
I take a walk outside the ship, to check the camp and to try to soothe my concerns. Skol is on watch.
“Your human is quite something,” he says, apropos of nothing.
“Yes, she is,” I agree.
“Hello, brothers.”
Kain emerges from the shadows. He does not ever seem to sleep. There is something in him, a wildness, or perhaps a true madness, but he keeps both well in check. Kain has been restless since I first met him as a cub, and he is not comfortable with my approach of a slower response to this latest raid. Everybody is trying to rush to solve these problems, but that is no doubt what Leonidas wants. We must be slow when others want us to be fast. We must be calm when they want us to panic. I refuse to give in to every impulse being created inside me, thanks to this situation.
“We need to talk about our response,” Kain says.
It is all he wants to talk about. It is all anybody wants to talk about.
“Leonidas will be expecting us. Worse, he will be anticipating us. If we go in force, there is every chance innocents will be hurt. Our younger siblings, his other offspring, come to mind,” Skol says, beginning with a point of view I agree with.
“He relies on the fact that we are not willing to kill as he does, and to cause pain as he does,” I reply.
“Which means we need cunning,” Skol says.
“Yes.”
“I have an idea,” Kain says. “But you’re not going to like it.”
“Tell me what it is.”
He tells me.
I do not like it.
I dislike it so much, I forbid it ever be spoken of again.
8
Ava
As days pass by, I start to settle in at the pride lands. I am needed and sought after by many of the young cubs, which gives me not only something to do, but a sense of belonging I haven’t felt in a long time. Azlan was right. They have accepted me as the alpha female. I am unofficially pride mother, until the rest of the females can be freed, a process that is being argued over with increasing intensity by Azlan and his brothers.
“Ava! Herk put mud in his ear!” One of the older cubs calls for me while dragging what I gather is a younger sibling in his wake.
“Why did he do that?”
Herk’s motivations remain unclear, but the mud in his fuzzy ear is stuck fast. He is about four years old, a ginger and white fluff ball, and is complicating matters by being insistent that the mud remain in his ear.
“It hurts!”
“Alright, let me take it out.”
“No!”
“Alright.”
