Golden Child

A long moment of increasing tension grated on Chaos, who had never been particularly known for being a patient person to begin with. Valen's tail was twitching in a rather alarming way, and Chaos winced internally, waiting for the moment when he got his ass kicked.

But Valen's words brought a grin of sheer relief to the new alpha's face for more reasons than one. "I was really hoping you'd say that," he admitted, relief making him candid rather than teasing. "It'd be really nice to have you around. You and mom were always my heroes, and well..." He paused, thinking back to his mother, "Mom was never really the uhm... the alpha type. So if you were willing to stick around, even though it's Imperium... I wouldn't ask you to join if you don't want to," he added hastily. "I wouldn't want you to leave your home even if you don't want to be a member."

He gave himself a mental slap. Enough of the uncomfortable, sappy, emotional crap. Valen would be just as uncomfortable with that nonsense as Chaos himself was. So he just gave his dad an urchin grin, one with more than a hint of bloodthirstiness to it. "Having a group of warriors already trained and ready for a fight will give us a base of operations for wiping those slaver bastards off the face of the earth. Think about it, you won't have to worry about Rhythm while we're off tracking those assholes down, they'll be able to secure our backtrail, and if another group is stupid enough to try getting revenge, they'll have to go through a fighting pack to get it." And this time they'd damn well be ready for slavers sneaking in to grab helpless pups and mothers.

It occurred to him then, that if Valen was serious about wanting to stay in pack lands, that there was another problem that hadn't occurred to him. Valen was hardly the only loner in these lands, and more specifically, he had a mate now that he would undoubtedly not want to leave his side. Chaos' face fell into a puzzled frown. Would she want to go back to Abaven? Would she remain as a loner in pack lands as well, or if he joined, would she want to as well?He could hardly deny his father's mate if she wanted to stay with him, but at the same time he couldn't really see Rhythm approving of anything that Chaos would put together as a pack either. But he also couldn't see Valen being ok with her being far away from his protection either, after everything.

He didn't really want to cause Valen any more problems that Valen already had, but he also wasn't going to cater to the Destructions on Rhythm's behalf either so if it came down to it, that was just what was going to happen. At least Valen was getting laid for his association with the Abaven wolves. Even if he wanted her, even if Rhythm was putting out for anyone but Valen, he would imagine that banging the old woman would definitely get Valen looking for blood - he gave an entirely mental chuckle of amusement at the idea of that whole bizarre scenario - so what would he get out of playing nice with them? And that was bound to cause trouble. Well, he'd cross that bridge when he came to it, really, and Valen hadn't even brought Rhythm up yet so that could go any way, couldn't it?

Man, this had gotten complicated quick.