Mila

https://www.lioden.com/lion.php?mid=57572

Taking after her mother, who saved orphaned hyena cubs doomed to die, Mila spent her early years helping care for hyena cubs. However, as a young adult the urge to make her own way within the pride grew too strong. She left, searching for a new territory, in the middle of the night. She didn't realise that she wouldn't be able to escape who she was at the core, and was reminded of that the very night she left her mother's den site. A pissed off leopardess approached her, braving its way into the pride's territory only under the cover of darkness. With her were two cubs.

The leopardess told Mila to take the cubs, to do what she wanted with them. They were brothers, sired at similar times to different males. She explained that a male lion had forced a mating on her, and that she wanted nothing to do with his potential offspring. She was almost certain the larger cub was sired by him, and the smaller was sired by a leopard, but nothing in nature is guaranteed. As a lion had caused this situation, the leopardess had sought out a lion to deal with it, with Mila being the first she had come across.

Mila couldn't deny the cubs and took them on. She saw the fear in the leopard's eyes and the lack of understanding of the situation in the lipard's eyes, and she told their mother she would raise them. The leopardess was shocked that Mila would be raising them, rather than doing what she'd been too weak to do and killing them. She told her cubs, still young enough to be listening to their mother without question, to stay put, and then slunk off into the night.

Mila stayed away from the pride most of the time, aware that leopard's weren't as social as lions and the crowd might scare them. She still hunted in the secondary team occasionally, and the pride allowed her to take some of the kill back to the brothers she was raising, but she usually wandered around the sparse areas of the territory with her new sons. She would check the borders, warding off intruders, and sometimes revisit the hyena Clan to see her mother.

As she was the oldest and, at the time, only living grandcub of beloved Queen Zephyr, the pride hoped the once her sons were grown Mila would rejoin them.

Mila and her sons stayed on the outskirts of the pride for a while and it looked like the pride would lose their connection to their old queen. However, it was found out that Shaman Lynx had given birth to a cub, Shrike, with both Shaman Renn and Queen Zephyr in its lineage. Mila was excited and began hovering around Lynx constantly. Annoyed, Lynx gave up her cub to Mila and told her to leave her alone. Mila, soon to be birthing her own litter, took Shrike in as her own and raised her alongside her young, Plover, with the help of her sons. The unusual family sought help from the rest of the pride, Mila unable to care for them all alone, and they slowly became close to the other lions.