Loki wasn't surprised to find that Hel was gone when he'd showed up with a pair of hares for Imena and the pups. Aksel too was getting trickier to keep safely near the den, and having the two of them both getting into trouble at once usually meant that one or the other would be able to slip away uncaught. At least Everest and Acadia were a little easier for Imena to keep an eye on. Aksel, he'd noticed now that the boy was well and talking a lot more, had taken to calling Imena his mother, which made him more than a little uncomfortable. Maybe a little, should he admit it, jealous. It implied that she was part of their little family group, that she had some right to the children, and Loki was getting more than a little bit of an urge to escape the stifling bounds of normalcy implied by the traditional mommy-daddy-babies thing he found himself in. But never would he leave his children.
Speaking of, he was hot on Hel's trail, following it from the den where Imena still watched the others. She was surprisingly tricky for a pup - maybe it was his genes that did it. He ignored the border markers - what meaning did they have to him anyway? Particularly with such an important trail to follow, he would risk the Valhallans getting pissy about it. But the trail was coming to a fast end, as he could see the grass wave from his gray-coated daughter marching purposely back in his direction trailed by... another pup? Well, Valhalla may be willing to allow him to stay near them but he couldn't see them just believing him if he said "No ma'am, I wasn't kidnapping your pack's pup at all, she just followed me home is all" so he'd need to send her packing quick before someone found it missing.
Leaping forward, he landed with a flourish between the two pups... and then almost fell on his face as his gaze finally fell on the second pup. The pup... the spitting image of the female he'd come across after his encounter with Skoll. A hair darker, maybe, but he'd only caught a glimpse of the female in the faint light of the cave entrance before she'd fled into deeper darkness and things... happened. He was probably just imagining it, his repressed guilt making him see things. He drew a deep breath, trying to even out his shock, but only made it worse as he drew in her scent... a scent that was quite obviously mixed with that of his former victim.
A queasy feeling rose in his stomach as his gaze remained fixed on eyes that matched his own pups', eyes that matched... his... and he could not make himself move.
"Speech"
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