Alpha & Omega RP - DGFone & TW (Private)

[TheWhistlerify]

"The situation of your pack is no where as bad as mine. Don't you dare compare the position we're in to the one you're in. Remember that my pack's disobedience is the result of waiting 2 weeks after hearing your speech." Something about the way Winston was speaking made Tony wonder whether he has even told his daughter about this whole thing to begin with. Not that it was nearly as important as the fact that his pack was starving. "I can see you're hesitant about this, but let me remind you that this was all your idea."

"I'm not surprised that your pack is upset about today, Winston, but I always expected wolves led by you to be somewhat... understanding. I'd tell you to mention the dozens of puppies that haven't had a proper meal in two weeks to them but you know me. Telling somebody else how to run his pack isn't according to custom." He was silent for a short moment. "If you want me to guarantee my pack's cooperation then it has to happen soon. She will meet Garth tomorrow, at the moonlight howl."

Telling his pack that Garth would meet Kate tomorrow should get them to not do anything stupid until the following evening. With nothing else left to say, the Eastern Pack's leader turned around and began to walk away. "Keep this in mind, Winston; if we don't come to some sort of an agreement soon I will not be able to guarantee our packs' safety."

[spoiler]I'll be starting with boot camp, which is supposed to last 4 months. People who are now in the Artillery Corps told me that during those 4 months they spent only 5 weekends without going home, which is considered to be very good conditions. It will most likely be the same for me (unless I do something stupid like forget my gun somewhere, in which case just spending another weekend without going home will be the easiest punishment I might get)... To make you realize how little 5 weekends out of 4 months are; after boot camp my patterns will be either 11-3 (the larger number being the number of days I'll be away from home) or 12-2 or even 16-5 or 17-4.[/spoiler]

[DGFone]

Winston growled threateningly at Tony. "I don't care which pack is more hungry! What matters is that unless you keep your pack in check, there will be blood. And while I can tell you with almost complete certainty that your pack will suffer more, both of us know that a war between us is what neither of us can afford right now."

Tony didn't seem to respond at first, before the Eastern leader finally gave a date for when Kate and Garth will meet up together, and the two packs will merge soon afterwards. One day was a very short amount of time, but Winston knew that he couldn't delay that time any later. Kate will just have to deal with it when he will tell her tonight about what is going to happen to her very soon.

As Tony left with one final threat, Winston gave one last low growl before turning back to his own territory. It won't be good to be caught out here on his own, by either an eastern or a western wolf. However, as he began to walk back to the main pack area, he noticed someone was watching him, just as his own daughter emerged from the bushes by the creek. "Kate!" Winston was worried: she obviously heard something, but how much did she hear? Did she know that tomorrow she will have to meet up with an eastern wolf, whether she liked it or not? "Kate, I err..."

[spoiler]How about this: post when you feel like you can write something reasonable on a pad, and then I can decide if I would rather wait or not. And don't forget your gun. [/spoiler]

[TheWhistlerify]

As Tony's and Winston's conversation began to draw to an end, Kate found herself to still be rather dumbstruck because of what she had just heard. She was obviously concerned about the situation between her pack and the Eastern Pack, but finding out that the solution Tony's pack was waiting for depended completely on her... That made the whole thing completely different. She hadn't expected the future of both packs to rest on her shoulders.

Naturally, she couldn't help but wonder whether her father had had any original plans of telling her about this any time soon or whether Tony was right in saying that Winston was simply wasting whatever little time the both packs had. Another thing she didn't know was whether there was anybody other than her father and the Eastern Pack who knew about this. Did her mother know? Did the rest of the pack know? "It's okay dad..." said Kate quietly as she slowly approached her father. "I understand, it's... It's my responsibility."

[spoiler]I guess I could always use the 'Save Draft' feature. We'll see.
How come nobody's concerned about the fact that I'll be getting a gun soon? ._.[/spoiler]

[DGFone]

Winston looked over his daughter, concerned. While he was relieved that Kate seemed to understand what he was asking of her, he still wished that this wasn't the way she found out about it. "Kate..." he sighed, not really know what to say. Sure, Kate had just told him that she understood, but her voice betrayed her confidence. "...I'm sorry. I tried to find a way that didn't requite this, but there's nothing else. I hope you will understand."

He placed a paw on Kate's shoulder. "Let's go home." He wanted to tell her that soon, they won't have to worry about the eastern pack anymore, but he wasn't sure if he should. It wasn't him who was sacrificing his future for the sake of the pack, and Winston wasn't sure if saying anything else would cause Kate to feel bad or not. So he chose to remain silent as the two of them made their way back to the den.

Tomorrow she would meet Garth, and together they will unite the two packs. If everything will go well, there won't be any cause for concern, and Kate will even like the eastern wolf. But there was always the chance that Kate and Garth won't connect, which will mean... Winston didn't want to think about it. Everything will work out. It had to.

[spoiler]You can use that too. I used it before, and it works rather well. And I am not worried about the gun because I know from experience that it's not the gun, but the training that matters, and the Israeli army knows how to teach people how to use guns properly as to not shoot themselves on accident. Something people here in the US seem to lack.[/spoiler]

[TheWhistlerify]

Kate expected to feel at least the slightest sense of surprise or disagreement when her father told her that he hadn't found a way that didn't require her to marry Garth. However, the sensation never rose because she too had tried to think about reasonable solutions for the past few days and had come up with none. Yes, her father's solution wasn't too reasonable when it came to her and Garth (even though she hadn't a clue what the Eastern wolf thought of it), but, at the end of the day, it would guarantee the safety of both packs.

It was true that the Eastern wolves didn't belong to her pack and that the two packs had almost nothing in common, but that didn't change the fact that they were living wolves as well. Surely her own happiness wasn't as important as preventing all the bloodshed that would result from a fight between the two packs. Giving her father a quiet nod, she joined him as he quietly led the way back to their family's den, trying to look on the bright side of the situation.

There was no saying that she and Garth wouldn't connect. The Western Pack pretty much saw Tony as the bad guy in this entire misfortune but he was only trying to look after his pack and, having met Tony a couple of time when she was younger, there was no way a wolf raised by a father like him could turn out to be bad. It was a shame that she couldn't recall anything about Garth, who she might have met a few times in the past as well. Even if she could remember, the future leader of the Eastern Pack must have changed a lot since he was a puppy. Anything could happen, and for the time being she could only wait (as annoying as the "benefit" of the doubt was).

[DGFone]

Winston brightened up when he saw that Kate seemed to at least accept her role in ending any potential conflict between the two pacts, even despite the fact that she only learned about it moments ago. He lead her in silence back to the den where their family slept, feeling proud of Kate and how well she was dealing with the situation. Even though he had just been her main teacher in Alpha school, and knew that she would make an exceptional alpha, today he truly knew how well Kate had taken to her training and just how well she would be at her job and duties.

The two settled inside the den and lay down to sleep, both wondering about what the future would bring. If everything would go without any problems, Winston thought, then the two packs will be united in only day's time, and all the troubles will finally be over. Wait, day's time? As Winston thought some more, he realized that his timing was off: The very next night, it will be the full moon, and Kate will meat Garth. In his sleep, the wolf smiled slightly. Tomorrow will be a busy day getting Kate ready to meet her future mate and pack leader.

-----

Inside the small, rather muddy hole that Humphrey called his den, sunlight easily trickled onto the sleeping omega, waking him up from his nap. Yawning loudly, Humphrey was interrupted by a loud groan emerging from his stomach. The wolf frowned, knowing that food would be scarce for him, with any meat going to the higher up members of the pack, and with the current lack of meat, it will mean that he won't even be able to expect to get the hardest to get to bone marrow.

There was something that will take his thoughts off food though. Kate was back from alpha school, and that meant that for the first time since the beginning of winter, he knew where Kate was. And with the moonlight howl being tonight, he thought that he might as well ask her to accompany him to it. He frowned. Well, he won't be able to 'ask her out', as that would be forbidden, but he figured that he will be able to get her to be with him as a friend.

Determined to do so before he lost his confidence, Humphrey left his den and made his way to the center of the pack lands, where the head family's den lay in top of a hill, where an overlooking rock allows the grown alpha pair to observe the rest of the pack.

[TheWhistlerify]

The thought of the moonlight howl taking place on the following day kept pestering Kate on the way back to the den. On one paw the fact that it was so close made her really nervous (naturally), which was bad, but on the other paw the sooner the moonlight howl came the shorter the time she would have to spend in the clueless state she was currently in, which was good. This placed her in a sort-of neutral position. On the bright side she could at least expect tomorrow's hunt to go more swimmingly now that the Eastern Wolves would get a message that there's finally been some progress regarding the negotiations between the two packs.

Despite the fact that, overall, things looked quite bright (according to her calculations, that is), she found herself having quite a lot of trouble falling asleep after she and Winston had gotten back to the den. The posibility of her being unhappy with Garth as a mate was likely, but what if them not connecting very well ended up breaking the whole arrangement? She herself was determined to do whatever it took to protect her pack, even if it meant being in a bad marriage, but there was no guaranteeing how Garth would react in a situation like that.

It must have been fatigue and exhaustion that had eventually dragged the anxious Alpha into sleep because the next thing she remembered after her "little" thinking session was waking up quite early in the following morning. Not only did she wake up a little earlier than usual, she could also suddenly recall waking up a few times in the middle of the night after returning to the den with her, probably because of the thoughts that were still troubling her.

In Alpha School she would normally become excited upon waking up; looking forward to what lessons the new day would hold for her. The same was true about the mornings in the family's den ever since she'd returned. But now she wasn't feeling this regular desire to start her day. In fact she felt awfully tired, and something was telling her that it wasn't because of the fact that she has hardly had any sleep.

[DGFone]

As the leader of the western pack, Winston was used to being one of the first wolves to wake up on any given day. And in this night, he too had some trouble sleeping, worried about all the possible things that can go wrong with the pack joining, and what would happen if either Kate or Garth backed out of the deal. Tony told him just the previous evening that Garth was aware of what will happen, and Kate gave her approval as well, so theoretically there shouldn't be any problems. Still, Winston had felt some worry, and hoped that it wasn't anything to give a second thought about.

He got up and left the den for some rounds of early morning business, making sure that there won't be anything that he will have to deal with in an emergency. By the time he made his way back to the den, the sun had risen above the horizon and the wolf found someone unusual heading towards the den as well. "Humphrey, what re you doing here at this time of the day?"

The omega nearly jumped out of his skin when Winston came over. Humphrey wanted to see Kate, and was hoping to avoid having to deal with her parents, not so much that he was afraid of them, well... Eve can be frightening, but Winston wasn't, but rather that he didn't want to have to ask them to see Kate first, afraid that he would lose his confidence in the time between. But now he had no choice. Not to mention that Winston was the head Alpha and all...

"I uh, Winston, sir... I just wanted to see if Kate was free today or even tonight... We're friends and all, and I didn't see her since last fall and all, and I... I was just wondering..." He couldn't continue due to a combination of nervousness and a hint of fear, afraid that Winston might punish him for suggesting seeing Kate for any reason.

Winston chuckled slightly at Humphrey's discomfort, finding it odd how the omega suddenly lost his usual confidence. Other times, the two would have no trouble interacting with each other. "Don't worry Humphrey, you will be able to see her again soon enough," he reassured the nervous omega, "unfortunately, she will be busy for today, and I am afraid for tonight as well. But after that, I see no reason why you won't be able to talk to her." He noticed Humphrey's ears drop in disappointment, but didn't think much of it.

Leaving the omega behind, Winston returned to the den where his family was waking up, although Kate looked like she was already up for some time. The alpha wolf smiled at his daughter. "Kate, we should get you ready for tonight. You want to look presentable to Garth, don't you?"

[TheWhistlerify]

Kate didn't pay much attention to her father when he woke up and left the den. She was used to waking up in the mornings and seeing that he had already left the den to go on his regular morning patrol, and she couldn't think of a reason as to why this morning was going to be any different. Unlike what had happened yesterday in the middle of the night, this time she didn't have any reason to be curious about her father's whereabouts, and with the Eastern Wolves being guaranteed to keep to their territory for the entire day, there was no point in worrying that something might go wrong.

She didn't pay too much attention to time and simply lay there staring at the wall for a while, only to be snapped back into reality when her father returned to the den and approached her. Despite knowing how important her appearance and behavior were going to be during the moonlight howl, she couldn't help but get the urge to roll her eyes as her father said the word "presentable". Boy, was her mother going to be a pain in the neck making sure she looked presentable.

"Yes dad." said the newly-trained Alpha with a somewhat reluctant sigh as she sat up. She had hoped to get another chance at hunting and getting some food for her pack as soon as possible but she was getting the feeling that the day's preparations were going to have to postpone that for another day and leave somebody else in charge of leading the day's hunting attempts.

[DGFone]

Ironically enough to Kate's worries, Winston knew that his daughter won't be available to hunt today, so one of the things he made sure to do that morning was to make sure that Hutch was aware that he was in charge of today's hunt. Hopefully, with Kate and Garth having a set time meeting this evening, the eastern pack would know enough not to try and start a war right before a possible unification. Still, Winston had asked his second in command to take a larger party to go hunt, not only so that some of those wolves keep any easterners away during the hunt, but mostly as to keep most of the pack occupied during the day and hopefully not bother Winston all the time about a lack of food.

Right now, Winston and Eve had to make sure that Kate looked good for the moonlight howl. And knowing Eve's eye for detail, this will easily take up the entire day. Winston realized after a quick scan of the den that Lilly was the only one that didn't know what was going on, but no doubt she will be curious about it. Winston decided that he will allow Kate to fill in the news to her sister. Right now, he had another job to do. As far as he was concerned, the only one that he knew how to do well without Eve getting angry at him for being an utter failure: "I'll go and find a flower for Kate," he told his mate, "you can start with Kate."

What he didn't realize was that outside the den, when he dashed Humphrey's hopes of asking Kate to accompany him for the Moonlight Howl, he had left the omega quite devastated, who then walked slowly back to his den and curled up, trying to sleep the rest of the day. Or at least until the other omegas came to him in order for him to help them with something.