Cracks in the Facade

Heavy paws carried the massive brute back to the den that he shared with Ikigai, dragging the corpse of a white tailed doe by the hind legs to bring it up the mountain path. It was fairly late with the sun dipping down below the horizon and revealing the half-lit moon that was peeking out from behind a few scattered clouds. He had been out for nearly the entire day, hunting for most of it and talking with his sister for the rest of it. In reality he had gone out hunting for most of the afternoon, killing a buffalo calf with a random stranger and catching a lighter, easier to carry doe on his way back to have something to show for his day out when Manea caught him on his way back to the island.

The conversation had started normally enough, the attentive Matriarch checking in on him and seeing how he was settling in to the pack and how his relationship with Ikigai was developing. He didn't mind sharing his life with his sister and had never really had an issue with being the supporting role to her greater responsibilities, but it seemed that with the added pressure of the pack at her back it had Manea pressing him to choose a proper rank within the pack, pushing him to strive for a more prominent position within it, digging to see if he planned on giving Ikigai their family name... It all became quite grating very quickly. As he was attempting to bid her a goodnight and walk away before he said anything he shouldn't, she punctuated it all with the mention of how she hoped he would strive to be an equal rank with Ikigai at some point.

He hadn't particularly bothered himself with the structure of the pack or where he fell in it all at first. He had simply assumed that as the Matriarch's brother and someone in the direct bloodline of the highest the Mendacium family had to offer he would already be of some importance around the pack, but it seemed that wasn't the case. His sister had made the structure of their family and their pack separate entities and in doing that his new mate had landed in higher favor than himself. Something as trivial as that shouldn't bother him and he reminded himself of this as he dropped his kill near the entrance of the den, but it still itched at the back of his mind like a scratch he couldn't quite reach. As he walked into the cave he quickly realized the former princess was in fact absent and that only soured his mood further. With a low huff he picked up a bottle of wine that was tucked away with their other supplies that they had organized at the back of the cave and he came to lay on a fur that was spread out in the common area near the entrance of the den, sighing as he pulled the cork loose and took a long drink of the rich, red liquid, drinking it perhaps a bit too quickly while he waited on his to be wife to appear.

"Deimos Medacium"