I could really use one of your spikey hugs

She’d been patrolling herself when the sound of voices, young voices, caught her ear. One, she knew was Kaija, but the other wasn’t one of the Valhallan children. She now sat out of sight behind a tall stand of heather that had grown on a ride in the ground. While an observant adult would probably have picked her right out, pups could be quite… intensely focused.

She lost count of the times she’d been bowled over in the last season by Ardyn barreling after a rabbit. One breath the rabbit pelted in front of her, and before she’d been able to react, her own son had crashed into her, and then broke in to profuse groveling and apologizing.

She had a deeply amused grin on her features at the exchange, and, finally, even before Kaija’s muzzle shot up and she finally howled for Aurielle. Aoife shot out of the mists, and Aurielle’s head cocked, eyes glinting as she watched, before she finally sighed and decided to move.

Aurielle stepped from behind the heather and out of the mists, features wiped clean of all but a mild curiosity. But gods her sides wanted to split with the effort of keeping a straight face and the urge to giggle contained.

She studied Asmodeus, searching for his name in her memory. “Asmodeus? Why are you so far into Valhallan lands? And Aoife, darling, stay here, please.”

It was a good question. He was more than old enough to know the basic rules of any pack, and she was pretty sure even an Abraxas-led pack would have the same rules of ‘If you don’t own it, don’t walk on it.’

However, he was a pup, and he did seem desperate and insistent on seeing her daughter, and she knew he was indeed a friend of Aoife’s. The tiny girl wasn’t nearly as sneaky as she thought. So, she waited patiently to hear what he had to say, eyes slanting to the side to eye her daughter.

Walk ---- "Speak" ---- "Labhair an Sean-Teanga." ---- "Hear" ---- Think