you won't get away that easy

The volcano's eruption had forced all the packs to pull in their horns and just survive, but the worst of all that was passing now, and packs were returning to their home territories instead of sharing the west. Greater distance gave the illusion of safety, but Justice suspected that most were waiting for time to lull the other packs into complacency. She wasn't going to let Valhalla fall into that trap. No, if someone was going to come skulking into Valhalla's lands again, she was going to make certain that they were prepared to send them fleeing with their tails between their legs again. Most of the wolves in the pack had at least some skill in fighting, but she was willing to bet a whole elk against a river rock that most of them hadn't been keeping up on practice. Patrolling or sentry duty were important pack duties, sure, and most of the pack did all right keeping up with that, but they didn't get you into shape and they didn't keep your fight skills from getting rusty.

Once she'd made the decision to start testing the pack's fight readiness, she wasted no time at all in looking for her first victim test subject. It happened that Artur was actually in pack lands for once, and she wasn't going to let the opportunity slip out of her grasp as often as Gwen's oldest managed to slip out of pack lands, so she metaphorically pounced and managed to catch him at the border on his way back out to his clear annoyance.