After Kiera was thrown out of a cliff by her sister, Zira, and presumed dead, a dark plan began to take root. Strangelion (Gevaar), the pride’s ruthless leader and father to both Kiera and Zira, turned to the orphaned cubs, Nuka and Vitani. With cold indifference, he declared that their mother’s supposed abandonment of the pride had left them without a place among the outlanders. They were to leave the pride and face life as stray cubs—or face death.



But Zira, ever the opportunist, stepped forward with a cunning proposition. She claimed the cubs as her own, vowing to raise them herself. She assured her father that this act of supposed compassion would restore stability to the pride. In truth, it was the first move in her calculated plan to secure her position as the pride’s leader and manipulate her way into the Pridelands by appealing to Scar.



Zira fed Nuka and Vitani a web of lies from the moment she took them in. She painted Kiera as a heartless mother who had abandoned them for her own selfish desires. Every mention of their true father was carefully erased, replaced with the falsehood that Scar was their sire. She drilled into their young, impressionable minds the idea that they were Scar’s heirs, destined for greatness under her guidance.



But Zira’s plans began to falter when Scar, upon meeting Nuka, dismissed the young cub as weak and unworthy of his lineage. This rejection enraged Zira, who had already begun weaving a narrative to position herself as Scar’s queen. Determined to keep her ambitions alive, she concocted a new story: she claimed to be pregnant with Scar’s cubs, despite her barren state.



Unable to bear cubs of her own, Zira turned her focus to exploiting the fertility of others. Her first target had been her sister, Kiera, whose children she had stolen. With Kiera now gone, Zira set her sights on a young lioness in Gevaar’s pride who was pregnant with her first litter. This lioness, unaware of Zira’s schemes, became the unwitting pawn in Zira’s plot. Zira planned to take the lioness’s cubs as her own, presenting them to Scar as further proof of her loyalty and worthiness.



Meanwhile, Nuka and Vitani, desperate for love and acceptance, clung to Zira’s lies. They grew up believing that Scar was their father and that their real mother had abandoned them. Zira’s cruelty and manipulation hardened them, shaping their identities and loyalties. Nuka, eager to prove himself to the mother who constantly belittled him, became desperate for her approval. Vitani, though stronger in spirit, internalized the belief that loyalty to Zira was her only path to survival.



Zira’s deceitful reign left scars on everyone it touched. Her relentless hunger for power destroyed lives, fractured families, and created a legacy of pain and bitterness. But for Nuka and Vitani, the truth of their origins would remain buried, their lives forever shaped by Zira’s lies and manipulations.