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Tasso was silent for a few moments, eyes still closed, cheek resting against the cool earth. After she’d rolled his words around in her mind for a while, she said, “So you think he will do what he did with my mother, then, if she can’t join the pack?” Leave her heavy with pregnancy and return again only once the pups were weaned and could be taken away for training? The young female felt herself grew tense again, and it had nothing to do with the ache of her physical wounds. She knew she and her siblings had not been kidnapped; their mother had made no attempt to rescue them, had never called out to the night to try to find them. Either Ralastor had taken them away with her consent, or she simply hadn’t cared enough about them to want them back.

Both options left Tasso with a deep, bitter resentment towards the distant memory of her mother. It was her fault that Tasso was so weak, that Nox was so abnormal, that Brutus was so resistant. Their failings were in their blood, and no matter how much they bled for Ralastor, they would never be able to remove the taint of their mother’s inferior genetics.

A dark pang of anger and jealousy formed in Tasso’s heart towards these theoretical future pups, the ones with the blood of warriors and the automatic advantage in life. What had she done to deserve her permanent state of insufficiency? Why, she wondered for the millionth time, had her father decided to create pups with a wolf he knew wasn’t up to par? She had long ago sworn to herself she would never inflict that fate on a litter of pups – in fact, she had toyed with the idea of never having pups period, because the weakness in her own blood with be disadvantage enough. She had no proper understanding of how to cause a female to have pups, of course (Ralastor wasn’t about to explain the details to her) but if a male ever asked her to bear children, she would very carefully think about the fate of her future children. She would do what her mother had not had the intelligence to do, and spare several wolves a life like hers.

Suddenly, a new meaning seemed to reveal itself from within Dumaka’s statement. What was it he said? The lone female didn’t need to join the pack for pups to be possible? Was he talking about Tasso? He would have to be. There were no other females in the pack. “Or did you mean I could… have something to do with the potential for pups?” She quickly considered the males of the Warugaruga: the omega and her brothers, she obviously could not make children with. Coal was quite strong, if a little lacking in restraint, and Arcadius was clever if not exactly her personal favourite. Kumonryu was young with potential. In the abstract, maybe it was her duty to the pack to provide children to raise as soldiers. In reality, she wasn’t so sure she had any desire to – at least not with any of them.

Tasso felt a vague sort of panic swell up inside her chest. It was her duty to have pups, wasn't it? To expand the pack. They needed the numbers - after coming out of the fight with Isra Kaiya, that was more clear than ever. Her ears flattened against her head, and she sat up, repositioning so that it looked like she wanted to clean the painful wound on her flank when in reality the adolescent wanted to hide the blatant discomfort she felt from Dumaka.

"There are two or three suitable males," she said, diplomatically. She too was aware that this was a place easy to be overheard in, especially as the pack gathered around them to rest and recover. Tasso absolutely did not want to give any of her packmembers the wrong idea by naming names - if she had to breed, she would, but that was hardly reason enough to start encouraging them. "If the pack needs more pups," she said slowly, measuring her words with the utmost of caution, "then I will do my duty as it is asked of me."

((Probably not, no.))

"No," she said, beginning to clean out the wound in earnest. She winced, so painfully aware of all the cuts and bruises scattered across her body, and wished there were someone in the pack she trusted to wash the gouges on her face that she couldn't reach with her own tongue. Maybe she could ask one of her brothers to do it. She hadn't been touchy-feely with them in a long time, but this was less a matter of affection than a question of health and infection. She could always order Dumaka to do it, she supposed, but that didn't quite sit right with her.

"I wonder how dad would raise a whole bunch of pups at once. I guess he has more help now than he did with my brothers and I. I could always help, too." And there was some victory in that, she thought - to train and push and challenge the next generation to rise to the height that she had, to reach the tipping point and drive past it through pain and fear, like she had. It seemed cold, and sad, and empty... but it was a victory nonetheless, and she would take it if she were offered that road. "I bet you'd like to have some pups around," she teased suddenly, flicking her eyes at the omega. "Finally someone for you to give orders to, eh?"