one shot

Chaos sighed regretfully at her clear dismissal of his flirting, but he didn't press it further for the moment. It was a little deflating to his ego to be so thoroughly ignored in that manner, but Chaos had plenty of ego to spare and wasn't going to sulk about it. Instead he just nodded to her explanation of her relationship with Valdis. "The north's not bad," he said conversationally. "I like that it encourages hard wolves, tough wolves. But it's just too far from all the other packs to make it worthwhile to stay here. You'd have to travel all the way to the south anyway to raid, and by that time your whole party is tired and at a disadvantage. Better to find other ways to keep a pack tough and still be close to most of the action." A very piratical, mercenary way of choosing pack lands, but he'd learned his lesson from segregating his pack in the mountains last time in the hopes of breeding a tough gang - they'd been tough all right, most of them, but they'd also just been too out of the way and out of sight for him to make a mark on the world. They'd spent too much time just surviving and not enough time actively training. "So did you grow up in a pack up here or as a loner?" he added out of curiosity.