This was horrible. Terrible. A nightmare! For weeks she had thought she was pregnant, and now she found out she was not. She wished she had never gone to Cour des Miracles... as if that would have changed anything. She wished she had never gotten excited and spread the news about her pregnancy through her pack, to her mate, to her mother. She wished, she wished... and she wanted to be alone. They only planned to spend one more day near the Court, and despite the news the stubborn alphess still wanted to go to Casa di Cavalieri to see her sister even though she could no longer gush over being pregnant, so she and Jiva would leave on the morrow for the Casa. But for now, the alphess of New Dawn meandered aimlessly through the unclaimed territory just outside of the Court, hoping some time among the wild would clear her head.

How had they confirmed Ayita's diagnosis that this pregnancy was false? After much deliberation and convincing, Titania transformed. She had been so far along in her pregnancy – or what she thought was a pregnancy – that if she changed it would have been traumatic to her body. But when she did there had been no affect. No pains, no labor, and of course no nearly-aborted babies. She had shifted in front of her own mother, and when she came into her Optime shape crying, her mother held her and comforted her just as she had when she was a puppy. At least Orin was around when she found out the news.

“I don't want to believe it...” she muttered to herself as she picked up a stone and chucked it at a tree. It glanced off, and Titania wanted the violence to satisfy her tumultuous spirit, but it did not, and that only served to anger her more. Why! Why would Luna do this to her? What had she done? She worked hard to build the pack, she loved Zalen with all her heart. Was their love not enough? What if he thought she did not love him enough?

“Oh... no,” she stopped abruptly and turned her eyes to the sky, though there was no moon waiting for her in the daylight. Her heart leaped into her throat and tears stung her eyes as the innocent alphess came to the only natural conclusion... “Does he not really love me?!”

Somewhere not far off a horse startled and reared up, and Titania whirled to see hooves kicking in the air far off. There was a streak of brown as someone was thrown from the beast just before she ran. The alphess was shocked, she had been so distracted that she didn't even notice the horse and rider until all the commotion happened. She didn't even think to go see if the woman was hurt, she just stood there looking dumb for a minute until the gasping woman got up and started walking towards her.

Some might get tense in this moment, with a stranger coming toward them in an unfamiliar land, but the worst thing that could ever happen to Titania had just happened and she did not have the will to fear a stranger right now. Okay, maybe she would have guarded herself against a more foreboding stranger, but this one wasn't really all that threatening. She was just another woman, like herself, and she did not seem threatening, especially not the way she was hugging her bruised ribs.

Her ears perked when the woman asked her question. Well, she supposed it was a fair enough one to ask seeing as she had just been thrown from the horse because of her. “My mate,” she replied. And then all her Alphess pride whooshed into her core like metal to a magnet, and she would not give a stranger any reason to think she doubted Zalen's love. “I was reciting Shakespeare.” She lied, covering her tracks and hopefully deterring the woman from the point. But she still couldn't cover up the way she looked positively distraught, like she had been crying recently.

“Are you alright?” she asked, not knowing that once, a few months ago, this very woman and her own mother had had a stand off full of bows and arrows and misunderstanding. “That was a nasty fall.” This was a good way of distracting her from the problem - remind her of her own physical pain.

She noticed that the woman was about to ask more about what was wrong with her, and she appreciated it when she stopped. Her eyes looked the sand and brown colored woman over to see if she was bleeding anywhere, but she didn't see or smell any blood so she figured if anything she must have just been bumped around a bit. People didn't die from being a little knocked around... did they? The alphess was inexperienced, and knew little about what could harm a body to the point of death.

“Maybe you should sit down,” she offered, gesturing to an old fallen tree. It would make a nice place to sit. The girl seemed nice enough, she surely wasn't all territorial over her or this place and she liked that, so she walked over to the log and sat down and patted the spot next to her. Maybe the woman would feel less threatened if she sat down with her, she thought, instead of looming over her.

The greeting she gave though, it made Titania think. She had seen it before... from her pack's old friends, the Ichikans. It was a common greeting gesture. Had this woman been one of them before they disbanded? “It's nice to meet you, even if you had to get a little bumped up for it to happen. I'm Titania Moonsong, of New Dawn.” She was about to ask if the woman had been an Ichikan, but she would have been interrupting so she let Eclipse continue.

Her eyes flicked and she thought she could see a small circlet where the arrow had punctured the woman, but she might have just been imagining in because she wanted to see it. She nodded affably, smiling. “That must have hurt. I've never been shot, thankfully, and I hope not to, either.” She grinned.

Then she said something that might have made Titania blush, only she was sort of used to those comments by now, and kind of expected them being an Alphess and all. Not that she didn't appreciate it all the same, and her ego wasn't that inflated, but it was starting to become known to her that she wasn't exactly displeasing to the eye. Still, she smiled graciously and shook her head, although she didn't go as far as to disagree with her. “Thank you, but... I mean, maybe many men would be my mate, but would they love me? Zalen is my mate, and he loves me. I know it. At least, I thought so...”

Her voice grew meek, it was a very uncharacteristic thing for her. Her eyes finally fell away from her new friend and cast down to her hands as she twisted her fingers together. She didn't want to think about it, she had hoped that they could just keep talking about Eclipse falling off the stupid horse or if she was an Ichikan or not... she sighed and looked at her fat belly. “I thought I was pregnant.” She still held the weight, she had only found out a day ago after all, but now she was starting to convince herself that the chub was all wrong, and that she should have noticed sooner. “I came to visit my mother in the Court and tell her that she was going to be a grandmother, but she could tell something was wrong. We went to see her friend, a midwife, and she told me that my pregnancy was false. A hormonal pregnancy, and that was all... just a silly girl... no... babies...” she gasped out the last word as emotion wrenched her throat closed. She dropped her head into her hands, more out of embarrassment than anguish. She was grief stricken that she was not pregnant, but now the humiliation of it all was starting to sink in too.

“I did not even know it could happen. I didn't know how to tell. I told my mate that we were going to have puppies... I told the entire pack... and now I... how do I go back home and tell him I lied?” The alphess was lost, so lost that she turned her eyes to the stranger, seeking intimate answers from an unknown soul.