Follow Khayone into his office

Once inside his office, Khayone pours both of you a drink - well-aged whiskey, neat. You take a sip of the brown liquid, savoring the smooth burn as it flows down your throat. You stare at each other quietly and unsure of what to do, you just continue to nurse your drink and ignore the growing awkwardness.

"Why so quiet?" challenged Khayone as he downed his entire drink in one gulp, "You should be ecstatic, Rowan! The world is yours for the taking. All you have to do is claim it."

"I'm just overwhelmed, I guess," you reply honestly, "I was uncharacteristically nervous yesterday and now that I actually know of my condition, I'm just relieved. Relieved that I did not disappoint you, the pack, or my deceased fathers."

Khayone gently slaps the side of your head, "Stupid cub. We would have been proud of you even if you did not present as an Alpha. Everyone has a role to play in society. It's both our gift and obligation to Gaea."

"What choices do I have?" you ask the man you consider closest to being a father to you, "What would you recommend me to do?"

"You have many options my young Alpha," remarked Khayone as he poured himself another generous swig of the fragrant liquor, "It really depends on what you want to do with your life."

"The easy way out is to choose a random breeder out there from the pack and mate with him until he becomes pregnant. After that, you'll have a few years to think about what you want before you had to procreate again, if ever you had to.

You could also choose to be our pack's stud and help our pack grow by impregnating all our breeders. Your Alpha genes would definitely help strengthen our pack as Alpha progeny generally inherit at least some of their father's physical bonuses.

If you choose to, we could also stud you out and charge breeders and interested packs for the chance to be impregnated by an Alpha. I've heard that there are some packs that would pay in spades for the chance to receive Alpha genes. This could be great for our pack as we could use the money to improve our village.

Or if leadership is your thing, you could choose to challenge me for the leadership of the pack at some point in the future. I would not say no to having you become the new pack leader, Rowan."

Khayone takes a short break to down his drink.

"You could also choose to leave the pack and venture out to see the world.

I've actually received an offer of marriage from the Solar Silence pack. It was originally meant for Simon, my son, but I think they'd be happy to get a stud like you as well. They've been having issues as of late as most of their fertile tops have left them for other packs, leaving them without a stud to rebuild their weakened pack with. The leader of the pack is willing to have you marry his youngest son, a beautiful breeder, if you join them as the new leader of their pack.

Our allies to the North, the Red Fang need some able-bodied men to join their exploration team to see what lies further north of us. Who knows what kind of people or races you'll meet in such a journey"

You listen to the different alternatives attentively and while the options are all interesting, you wonder if there is something that it truly different. Something unique that has not been by anyone in the Bloodrose pack before. You decide you had nothing to lose and asked, "Is there anything else? Maybe something truly different?"

"Well," Khayone hesitates for a bit before continuing, "There is something that could be interesting for you but it carries with it extraordinary risk."

You lean forward in interest. What could this be?

"As you might know, we werewolves are governed by a council of representatives from the 12 elder clans that united together decades ago in response to the purge that the kingdom of men once led against our kind. After the wars ended, the council grew bored of peace and started fracturing, leading to increasingly hostile relations between the 12 clans. In order to prevent a war between the clans, the leader of the Proudfang clan remarked that peace had made all of them soft. Werewolves, he argued, were beings of power and might.

He recommended that the council needed to have a lead clan that would guide the werewolves through times of peace and prosperity. The lead clan will be given absolute power to govern the unified clans and can only be vetoed if 7 members of the council disagreed with them. As this would give a clan quite a bit of power, the role had to be temporary and something that other clans could challenge and take for themselves. The council agreed that they should choose the lead clan through good, old-fashioned competition.

Thus, the Gauntlet was born. Every 3 years since then, the 12 clans send their best fighter to compete in a high stakes, winner-take-all tournament that determined which clan would be in the seat of power. In return for giving their clan this high honor, the winning fighter would win untold riches and their choice of spoils. If a fighter lost, however, the losing fighter would immediately receive the Daniel's Injection and be imprisoned as to be auctioned off to the highest bidder to do as they wished at the end of the Gauntlet as punishment for having shamed their clan."