Grizzly Hollow coffee mug

@Veho

Even with his insistence to the contrary, it was hard to shake the guilt she had in letting her children down. Her only choice now was to look to the future and prove that things were different. She would not be full of false promises and little action like a certain Lyall. Her eyebrows lifted slightly, crumpled ears shifting forwards as she looked towards him from the corner of her eye, her face still averted. Before it would have surprised her to hear him speak of Rook in such bleak terms. The two were mates after all-- though the shift in his phrasing did not go unnoticed by her. But in the wake of Rook's actions it no longer surprised her that Veho now viewed him with such hesitancy. Even Oula had grown tired of Rook's antics, and if she had known the true reason for Rook's most recent departure she would have no patience left for the Lyall at all. 

But what did surprise her was that Veho viewed her with anything approaching warmth. He did not think it broken, with her belly weighed down by a stranger's cubs? Even after she had poked and prodded at him just to get a reaction to prove he cared? That she acted at times like a petulant child?

"My place..." She said quietly, almost to herself. "But I don't know what my place even is." She glanced towards him. Still, especially now it felt like too much to ask more of him when he had given so much already. But there was some of herself left, whatever bits were left of her rotten heart he cared to have. She turned her body to fully face him, her rounded visage pointed towards his.

"Nothing you ask is too much of me. Anything you need, whatever you want from me, you can have it." Even if that 'anything' was nothing at all.

There is a family of deer nearby. Hunt Opportunity

For that, Veho had no answer.  He hardly knew how he fit into Grizzly Hollow any more, much less how all the other moving pieces slotted together to make a moving machine.  And though it wasn’t quite his place to tell each and every wolf where to be, he still felt poorly that it clearly upset her, and he had no advice at all.  But what she said next concerned him even more – did she really feel like she had to give him something in order to have a place?
 
The alpha shifted forward, bumping his nose against Oula’s as he gave a soft sigh.  “Oula, you do not have to give me anything.  You have already given me our children – I could not possibly ask for something more of you.”  Nothing could top being a father, after all, and he had no desire to take her own brood from her, either.  He would focus on his remaining daughter, for now.  “But I miss the time we were able to speak as friends, without guarded words or worries.  More than just co-parents.  So if there is anything, it is that.”  It might not seem like much to others, but someone he could count on as a friend meant the world to Veho.

Maybe end here?  Unless Oula has more to say?