lost aggressive youth

He had thought to take the man on a hunt, perhaps blow off some of the excess energy that had kept them both awake and alert well into the night. But looking at Grim, he wondered if there was more to the sleepinessness that kept him out here. He had found this boy on the knife's edge, his choice between life and death as easy one way as the other. He had chosen to accept the boy into his pack, into his family. Now, there was something clearly bothering him, and the Warlord knew it was his duty to find out what. To let Grimshaw in, when the Warlord had been holding him at arm's length. Weary after all his losses to take another wolf into his heart so fully.

The dark coated boy explained, his voice weary and soft, of what plagued him. The ooze had been even more unkind to him than others, leaving him with bad memories he couldn't shake. The Warlord shook his head, knowing he had failed Grim by not seeing it sooner. “Drowning is a fear I've had myself” he said, thinking back to the time when the heavy-set Warlord hadn’t had the faintest idea how to swim.

“And it's not a fun one, and I didn’t have the ooze to cloud my judgement, and torment me at the time. Does the water by the ocean set it off?” he asked, wondering how he might help the other wolf work through this torment. He moved forward, leaning his shoulder lightly against the younger wolf, letting him say what was in his heart at his own pace.


"Sirius Fatalis"