Aufei's duty to procreate had always chafed on her. Which was a bit contradictory, she knew, she had always wanted a family eventually. Nowadays looking back, she chalked it up to the pestering, the pushiness, the beating into her head of what her life's purpose was that drove her away from wanting to do something she would have done regardless. It was that discontent that helped drive her towards her human in the first place, to seek at least a temporary escape from the clanleaders, and by extension her parents, who foisted so much responsibility upon her.

Ever since they became a pair, Aufei and the Scholar played a rather frustrating game with the rest of her clanmates. Her choice of mate was one she knew would be controversial at best. It was already unthinkable that a lifemother would choose an infertile mate. Choosing one that isn't even of her own species would be an insult to her tribe and to the gifts she had been given. And while being a lifemother afforded enough privilege that she'd be spared a fate so severe as exile, she didn't fancy becoming a social pariah. And even among the Scholar's people, the outlook was not much better. To most humans, Woolcoats being primarily a quadrupedal species carried unfortunate associations with unintelligent creatures, and were they to be discovered the pair would be shunned almost as surely as she would be here.

And so, for both their sake, the pair kept at an arm's length in public. At least, until now.

She had a son. That notion provoked such pure, wonderful joy in her. She had a family, with the man she loved. Their relationship had caused some anxiety for her at first, knowing how directly she was going against her tribe's designs, how impossible their relationship would be to maintain. An act of love and rebellion tinged with the somber knowledge that their conflicting lives would pull them apart no matter how surely they had bonded. And then he had given her a child. By some unforseen quirk, the fertility surgeries she had received had allowed his seed to take.

Her pregnancy was explained away with an affair. A father that Aufei would not reveal, no matter who asked. A lesser evil than the actual truth. Many pressed her, sympathetic to her story and wanting to hold the imaginary deadbeat accountable. He was from out-of-tribe, no distinct fur markings, an indeterminate height, weight, voice, an act of passion in the depths of her reproductive heat, the excuses she invented to explain his non-existence thankfully never came back to bite her in the haunch... though looking back they really probably should have. Maybe some idly suspected that her endlessly supportive human "friend" was moreso, but no-one acted, thank the gods.

And yet, when her son was finally born, when she held him, when she handed him to her mate for the first time, among everything else she felt, she realized that she was tired of this infuriating facade. That as far as she cared she had done everything right. She had a family! Is that not all she was raised to do with her life? Wasn't that everything her tribe wanted of her? She was happy, but at the same time a tinge of venom seeped into her mind. She wasn't going to hide anything anymore. She wasn't going to raise children in the midst of one big lie. If she was so 'valuable', then they could stuff all their opinions up their tail ends if they wanted her to stick around.

Not that she wanted some big reveal. She simply had no intentions of putting up a front. Like now, actually... as she endured a male she was passingly familiar with (was it... Grovvi... maybe?), attempt to court her with her mate standing not two feet away holding Aski in his arms. To be fair, the poor male's only real crime was not cluing into what she thought was obvious, but she supposed her unlikely mate wasn't one who would provoke jumping to such conclusions without assistance. Sooo...

A firm lick to the cheek of her mate and a subvocal growl was enough to drive the idea home. Grovvi's face flipped so quickly to slackjawed disbelief that she could have laughed were she in a better mood, but she could virtually feel the disapproval radiating off of him as he trotted away. Eh. Suppose she'd have to get used to that.

((ah, so, apology for the obscenely slow uploads. i draw whenever the mood strikes and currently that games workshop plastic has a firm grip on me lol. no intention of dying on anyone, but i think i just got too many hobbies to be distracted by, haha. thanks for views and sorry again for the slow goings))