Nile steadied her paws. Was this what she wanted? Did she want to see her mother? Would her mother call her a coward and a failure? Cobra...... that was her father. What if her mother was.... dead. She didn't want to know, but she had to. She needed to know. But Cobra wouldn't let that happen to Oleander, would he? Thank goodness nobody knows he's my father. Me and Lion swore to never tell. The day before they left, Cobra told them he was their father, and they begged their mother for answered. Memories flashed by, from the story her mother told them the day before they left, the reason she had to stay in that doomed tribe.
A mother with her two kits, no three, she had a brother who died at the claws of Cobra, his own father, she realized. She joined the tribe. She had told the tribe that the father was a loner, and nobody worried about it. But it was a lie. The "loner" was a rogue, by none other the name of Cobra. So Oleander felt she had to stay with her mate, Cobra.
Lion also felt those same sickening feelings, and he remembered hunger. It would seem that a jungle would have enough, but not in that year of famine. He remembered days without food, their mother too weak to hunt for her growing children . So they left and had to fend for themselves, and to hide from the terrible Cobra. He was the father who never loved me!