Rolling on a river

Though Cascade's habitual half-smile didn't waver and her lithe form's posture gave the appearance of a certain blasé, laissez-faire attitude outwardly, inwardly she was suffused with the wariness and canniness of a predator stalking prey. Ok so, this could be fun after all - she would just need to walk a fine line between "fun" and "helping Valen" was all. She smiled at Ash's adorable insistence that she'd make the best wife (did he even know what a wife was?) and returned his affectionate shoulder bump, and listened politely while the woman (Arian Adravendi, it seemed was her name) spoke her piece. She let Ash's rambling on the subject draw the two strangers' attention, while she herself just continued to watch them without a word. "Hm," she said simply when Ash had trailed off. Valentine's sudden appearance right as she was opening her mouth to speak wasn't really surprising so she just waited to speak up until after Arian had her little explanation-time, but it was kind of disconcerting sometimes how unexpectedly he could pop out for such a big wolf. "Wouldn't it be safer to stay home while you're pregnant instead of stirring hornets' nests? The lands have been quiet enough for a good while, so why take the risk when you could be fortifying where ever it is you live instead of going around giving people ideas?" She didn't drop her friendly demeanor as she spoke, her head tilted to the side - it wasn't a threat though in hindsight it could have sounded like one, she was genuinely curious what would drive a pregnant woman to go visiting one of the potentially most dangerous packs in Alacratia in her condition. Hell, even if one of the packs didn't outright attack her wouldn't just knowing she was pregnant and unable to defend her pack make someone want to jump at the chance to attack them?

Valentine seemed to know both Arian and the strangely-marked bodyguard, hardly surprising considering it was Valen, and Cascade wondered - given that it was Valen - if he'd slept with either or both of them and if that would make any possible negotiations easier or more difficult. Some females could be so unpredictable and irrational about that sort of thing after all.

Her eyes shifted to him and she gave him a lopsided grin and a shrug as if to say "all yours, Boss" but made no move to leave. She wasn't, after all, qualified to be making or breaking alliances, but she was intensely curious about how Valen did things like this She hadn't grown up with the benefit of a pack, not in those long seasons since she'd lost her way from Taurig's pack as a young pup and then found her way into Imperium as an adult, so the little social niceties and cues that a lot of these pack wolves took for granted were lost on her. Not that she wasn't capable of being polite (clearly!), she just didn't know how all this, this politics, worked. But it felt a lot like hunting, which she'd always adored, and it piqued her curiosity.


""

I hope you can make me laugh
Six feet down when we're bored of each other