with my hat in my hands

Humbly Meriadoc approached Valhalla's borders again. If he was going to be staying in the West and routinely (hopefully!) visiting his siblings he needed to speak with their alpha. More than that, he needed to apologize to the woman. He still held some residual bitterness towards her and the treatment not only of his mother, who had literally given Valhalla her life, but of him and his siblings. Meriadoc couldn't deny that he wouldn't be who he was today without those events. Besides he owed her an explanation regardless of the feelings he'd had at the time. She had been his alpha at the time and he'd been old enough to make his own decisions so he needed to own the mistakes that had kept him away from home.

He stopped at the border and howled politely for Aurielle. In all honesty he wasn't looking forward to this conversation. Castigating oneself in front of a superior and then falling on their mercy was never a fun thing, but he thought it a necessary step to restoring good relations with Valahalla and its Queen. He would do this for his siblings, for his mother who likely would have insisted he use the manners she'd taught him, for the alpha he'd probably disappointed, and for himself because whether he liked it or not, his mother's teachings rang true here. It was the right thing to do.