too old for this shit

She’d ventured eastward once more, thinking to visit with Abaven’s alphess, and to get some explorations in before the snows of Winter grew too bad to venture far from the pack. She had also thought to drop in and see if Rhythm was about but had met with a surprise—a new pack border that circled both the Range and the Knolls.

A frown still puckered her brow more than an hour later as she mulled over the find. Rightly, she ought to have called for the alpha and given this pack a study, but she had decided to leave it for perhaps her way home. But there was, at least, a thrill, if confusing. She’d caught Mask’s scent among the markers. But not as its leader. Had his ambitions fallen through?

She paused as her nose crossed a fresh trace of scent, and her head cocked as she studied the drag marks in the snow. The scent was familiar. Her uncle. He was elusive, like smoke. The times she’d passed through where she knew he lived and tended his herds, he’d never ventured out to her, even when she lingered long enough that her scent should have been noticeable.

It was baffling. Did he not wish to acquaint himself with the family, save for obligatory once-in-a-blue-moon appearances on the border? It had made her cautious about even calling for the man. But years were getting on. He wasn’t much younger than her father, who had grown so much more somber in the seasons of late.

She already had never met her aunts. Perhaps Baine, very briefly, when she was too tiny to remember, but she wasn’t sure. They had all left, disappeared, many without a word to her father, which troubled the greying crimson male greatly. The law had been set in the pack for a reason—he, and his mother before him, had wanted to be able to know that departing members of the pack were safe, and not merely dead in a ravine somewhere out there.

And even when Zuriel had left to explore the world, with his blessing… harm had still come to her. Aurielle had been told of Zuriel’s story the woman had given her father. It was a lesson to always be on guard around strange males. Her mother and brother’s kidnapping had only served to hammer such a lesson into her mind. Of course, when she’d met Amos, she had still been young and innocent to such tales, and her gut had said he was good, in any case.

Her father had very much wished to kill the man – Elias, as Zuriel had called him those years back – and yet his kind-hearted sister had pleaded with him to spare the monster. To let her help him. The thought was not one that filled Aurielle with hope for her aunt’s sanity, personally. To allow a wolf who had violated one’s very body to be anywhere near one’s self again, regardless of forgiveness, without flashing fangs and firm barriers in place, was insanity.

The decision still haunted her father to this day, even more deeply after Marina’s rape.

Aurielle drew a breath and slipped after her Uncle’s trail, padding along like a silent ghost, already half blended with the surroundings. If there was one thing about winter she loved, it was the snow. She’d decided that upon her first winter. The way it helped her meld into the background, to ghost along and then step from a veil of flurrying flakes like a long-maned spirit was enjoyable and fun.

It took little time for her to catch up with the thundercloud-grey and black male—he was dragging a load, and she was free of burdens. Loshir and Ayodele hung back to allow privacy as the young woman stepped to fall alongside Tornach, though with a respectful bit of personal space between.

“Uncle Tornach. How are you this day?”

A grown young woman and no longer a young girl greeted the male, with an easy grace very reminiscent of her father’s former nature. Alas, his nature had soured, save for when he was near his mate and son—even now, he tried to keep a strong face around them. And naturally, Aurielle was privy to his tenderness and his heartaches. The heartaches he didn’t dare share with Solveiga, for fear they would break her further with guilt.

Walk ---- "Speak" ---- "Hear" ---- Think