i'm not like them, but i can pretend

Returning to pack life had taken a bit of adjusting for Alastor to get used to. He hadn't been in a proper pack for almost four years now. The rigidity of schedules, duties, tasks... it was all so mundane and boring. But he made due for Manea. He knew it made her happy, and he did quite enjoy the sense of power he got with being alpha male, the title he'd been promised to have by his treacherous ex fiancee, fulfilled by his soulmate and wife. The great black dire wolf had been out amongst the wild lands, investigating the pack due just south of them. He remembered the alpha of Abaven from the pack challenge, where she'd made her allegiance to the seditious pirate bitch well and truly known. As far as he was concerned, Abaven was an enemy of theirs—though whether Manea saw it that way to make it official or not was her own business. Apparently they had rebranded themselves as an educational institute, but that didn't give him any sort of false securities. All he knew was that he didn't trust the dark-furred bitch to their southern borders any more than he trusted the tawny pirate cunt.

Plodding up through the balm of the hot summer day, Alastor stepped carefree past his own scent markers at the border of the garden of stones—only to pause when he caught the scent of someone not from Elysium in the air. He froze, paw held aloft mid-step, and turned to follow the scent. It was vaguely familiar, and yet not one he knew well enough to place right away. But they were close, whoever they were. Dark obsidian eyes narrowed to deadly points as he followed the scent, prowling almost silently like a shadow through the large stones and boulders. He was on the hunt now. And just round a rock he saw his prey. She was a smaller wolf, dark-furred like him, stitched out and appeared to be fast asleep. A trespasser so bold as to nap on pack lands? She either had balls of steel or no brains at all. Well, he'd just have to be sure to crack that skull open and find out for himself.

Lips pulling silently back from lethal pearled fangs, Alastor crept up towards the girl. Just as he got within striking distance and ready to go in for the kill, Alastor suddenly realized why her scent smelled familiar. He saw the flashes of purple on the woman's tail, and memories from a year ago flashed in his demented brain. He saw her as a pup in the cave to the north after he'd met Manea. This was Manea's niece. All the aggression left Alastor's body in an instant, and his rigid muscles relaxed while he stood and finished his approach towards her much more casually. "You know, it's not a bright idea to go snoozing on a pack's territory," he called out to her, his trademark wide toothy smile on his face while he sat down near the young girl in the shade of the rock. "Hello, Nirvana. Remember me?"

"Alastor Mendacium"