Børre watched as she slipped from her seat and sank to the floor, shaking, sobbing, begging, their discussion of the issue of her father - a wolf far beyond the point of no return - tumbling to its despondent and desperate terminus.
"No."
He saw the look in her eyes, felt the apprehension, and smelt the tinge of fear coming off of the she-wolf - did she have some other expectation? All he had given was the truth. There was no other recourse.
"This is your domain. This matter is yours to resolve."
Børre was getting more and more of a precise clue as to what she lacked, the longer he spent in her presence. He rolled his shoulders within the limitation of his folded arms.
"To have anyone else handle it undermines your claim," to put it bluntly, "he is your Alpha."
As much as it was apparent that Jhann hadn't had the capacity in some time. If it were any other wolf, things could be different.
He didn't watch the act, but he did hear and smell when it was done, from another part of her camp. When she finally managed to free herself from the handful of harrowing moments and seek him out, he rose from the ledge he sat on when she ambled into view.
"It's done," came her hollowed-out confirmation; the roil of what she felt from having done it was too tight a knot to parse, but the redness of her eyes, the faint saline scent of what were now dried tears, and the soundtrack of it all that he had heard were some form of indication. He went to aid her in sitting, but she had become accustomed enough to the brace on her leg to wave him off. Or perhaps there was some other reason.
Børre stepped back, anchoring his hands on his hips, watching her as she settled, and dropped her forehead into her hands. "If you speak of this to anyone, only your actions make up the tale," that had to be clear. "Our people value strength."
Both of body and mind. But it wasn't only strength as she would learn, if she was willing to do anything other than lay down and die.
"I will assist with the rites and burial or burning," He remembered enough of their administration from sending some of his own to Freann in recent years from a failure to put down a similar wolf early enough, though the spiritual tasks had always been the domain of his uncles, and then his siblings, "Then when you're ready, we leave."
