Danger! Danger! High Voltage!

He looked up at the woman and then looked back down. “No.” He said seriously, his voice not quite deep enough to be an adolescent’s but deeper than the shrill high pitch of a pup in his first season. The woman’s lingering vision annoyed him, or maybe it was his already worn down nerves at the root of his anger, but her fixed vision certainly didn’t help. “What’s your problem?” He asked incredulously, his tone spiteful, his muzzle wrinkling to flash his needle-sharp pup teeth, and blazing yellow eyes narrowing on hers. She was far from the first stranger he had encountered, but she was the only one that seemed content to grate on his nerves, or at least the only one to have caught him in such a foul mood. He was already large enough to pass his mother in height at 28 inches but still not quite large enough to match the stranger’s height. Not yet anyway. He had never fought before but he wouldn’t back away if it came to that, of course it wouldn’t matter if he won or lost, his mother and Vali would be sure to put her in her place afterwards.

Whatever the loner’s issue was it was probably irrelevant. One of the few lessons he had learned from Bass, although he may not have intended it, was to look down on loners. He was convinced that anyone who couldn’t function with a pack was an invalid, unable to use the simple and mostly inherent skill of cooperation. If a loner sought to change their status, that was entirely different in his mind, but in his mind a wolf that intentionally chose to live alone was a wasteful example of the greatest species on earth.

speaking Thinking You