A cut above the rest

She fixed her husband with a stern look at his feigned exasperation, though she couldn't keep the smirk off of her lips. "You're a calamitous individual on a good day. So pardon me for not having faith that you'll behave," she teased with a chuckle, tapping his chin with her nose to pull his attention back once his obsidian gaze began to drift down her body. She gave him a look that held a promise that he'd get to have his paws all over her again soon enough. For now though her attention returned to the territory that spread out in front of them while she waited for the wolves of Ashen to answer her call. To her delight, the girl that had sparked this interest arrived first, greeting her with much of the same poised grace that she had held the first time they spoke. She smiled at the Ashen princess happily, dipping her head in return. "A pleasure to see you again as well, miss Ikigai." She glanced at Alastor with amusement glittering in her aqua gaze as Ikigai addressed him, curious to see how he would react to the little darling. "This is the young lady I was telling you about," she told him, her tail wagging gently. "Isn't she beautiful?" She knew how much Alastor loved children so she was all too excited to see his reaction.

As she turned her gaze back toward the trees she saw a lovely black and white patterned woman emerge, a bit shorter than herself and covered an in interesting pattern of feathered stripes with delicate eye markings framing richly colored eyes. Her mutations were not as strikingly obvious as Ikigai's, but when she spoke she caught the flick of a serpent like tongue and the shift of her fur on her back seemed to suggest something was hidden among her scruff. She also noticed a few moments later that she didn't catch the usual look of claws on her toes and assumed hers were retractable like her own. It was all incredibly interesting to her, seeing these wonderful traits show up in these wolves she had only happened to cross paths with. It was hard to deny the coincidence in how these things fell into place, but for now she kept her attention focused on the here and now.

She gave Venom a smile as she introduced herself, dipping her head politely to the Empress. "A pleasure to finally meet you, Empress. Your daughter-" Before she could get further than that, she spotted a bit of movement behind the Empress and she paused, tipping her head to spot the speckled princess that had crept into their meeting while she wasn't paying attention, glancing her way just in time to see her fall into her mother as she tripped over her overly large paws. Not just too large for her current size, but tipped with talons it looked like. She smiled warmly to the flushed girl as she took a seat by her mother, lifting her large, feline paw to wave the girl closer. "It's alright, little one. I certainly know the feeling. Adjusting to these when I was your age wasn't much better." She gave a little grin and wiggled the toes of her tiger-like paw at the sweet child, glancing up at Venom again and telling her, "Your children are stunning, Empress."

Her gaze turned to look at the man that had approached in the mean time. It appeared it was a family affair to meet her and Alastor at the border, not that she minded in the slightest. The more of them she met, the easier it was for her to make an opinion of them as a whole rather than just judging off of her very high regard for the princess that brought her here. The Shogun was perhaps the most striking of the bunch with a black pelt splattered with vibrant shades of orange with a set of hour horns rising from his skull and talons on each toe like his daughter. Manea dipped her head to Hattori as well, offering him a smile as well. "A pleasure." She silently wondered how many more children the pair of them had, glancing at the two girls again. She was so used to the singular pups from her family's litters that seeing large litters was still a rare occurrence for her.

"Thank you for coming to meet with me, Empress, Shogun," she said said to them both once they were all gathered and it appeared no one else was going to appear. "And of course both of you, princesses," she added, giving Ikigai and the girl she had yet to be introduced to a grin. "My name is Manea Mendacium. This is my husband, Alastor." She glanced toward her mate, letting him greet them as well while her tail brushed his hip. "Ikigai and I crossed paths recently and I just had to meet the parents of this intelligent young woman. I knew someone as stunning as her had to come from an equally impressive family and I am certainly not disappointed."

She shifted on her haunches as she considered the family in front of her for a moment, curiosity in her aqua gaze. "I won't take up too much of your time, but I wanted to start building more connections. I intend to establish a pack for myself and my family once our children are born and weaned - whether that is by gathering followers of my own or by force I haven't yet decided." Her eyes shifted from the Empress to the Shogun and back again, accessing their reactions. "If there are perhaps any packs that you might have issue with or might want to one day see reformed into something new... I'd be interested to hear." She was straight to the point, but she couldn't imagine that an Empress and her family would want to sit around chatting about the weather.

Manea | Temno | Ciemny