bones break

The sunny clearing with its riot of herbs, some of them still showing signs of their once carefully organized and contained beds but most simply sprawling where they wished. No doubt the garden was a major boon for healers and the like. He, however, didn't know much at all of herbalism. His interest in the land was the warmth of the sun soothing his new pains, and the pleasant scent of the few herbs that still managed to grow through the drought.

Even stretched out along the top of a crumbling rock dozing, he was only half-asleep, easily roused by the sound of a paw or a shadow of movement. Old habits died hard, and not even here in the confines of the pack could the old warrior completely let his guard down. Perhaps especially in the confines of the pack... not all those who had died at the jaws of their Abraxas kin had been culled as pups. He suspected more than one had been killed more to keep them quiet about the more psychotic practices of some of their kin than for any real weakness, and he could recall at least one suspicious incident of a cousin murdering a youngling on the justification of a conversation she had supposedly overheard the youth holding with herself, a conversation that no one had confirmed and the cousin had gone unpunished for her overly precocious decision. He was loyal to the Abraxas, but he was not interested in needing to kill or maim another of their wolves because they had decided on their own that he was too old now to be of use to them. When he died, and die he must, one day, it would be on his own terms, not some idiot thinking that they were the best qualified to decide his usefulness was at an end. Until that day, the old wolf knew he would be best served to be on his guard even in pack bounds.

He gave a growling sigh and shifted in his sleep, stretching one aching leg out behind him to ease the pain in his hip.