Steadfast

Thank you Ragna!
Private line chaser boy ❤️



There is a she-wolf in the hunting party.

Or, to another clan, she would be a she-wolf. They name things differently here.

On their meeting, that unceremonious shift of him-the-outsider into their well-trained team, she stands still and stares at him. She looks like no wolf he has ever seen, her mane of fur bursting with life, strange long whiskers drifting around her like a creature from the coldest Dreamlands. For all her warmth with her packmates, she seems as ice to him. Ice, and the bite of winter. She looks him over with cool assessing eyes, and says only, "You'll do."

He learns in time that she is named for a creature of scales and teeth and seething fury. Agilata; the high dragon. She carries it well. She is ruthlessly capable on the hunt, yet so strangely soft with the others of her clan. To him, ever a wolf made of bristling temper and mean spirit, it makes little sense. Softness, he thinks, ought hold a hunter back. And yet.

He doesn't mean to cause trouble. Not always. But he has been full of teeth all his life, his heart an angry thing that sits in his chest brooding on its own resentment. When it snarls, he cannot always keep it behind his fangs.

He snaps at Mizava. Once. Just once. But once is enough. Nearby, Agilata had been resting, nuzzling doe-eyed at the adolescents from her last litter. It takes only that moment to transform her, and another to bowl him over with blinding speed and fury. She snarls at him, pupils narrow and gums drawn back; her teeth snap reprimand into the thick fur at his neck. 'Do not', she says, in the only language his heart knows, and he stills beneath her, a strange relief settling into the marrow of his bones. He growls, and subsides.

Satisfied, she releases him and steps away, a soft warning snarl rippling over her muzzle as she leaves. She doesn't spare him a second thought before returning to her children. Soft again; warm and friendly as all this foreign pack seem to be.

He stares after her, quietly intrigued, and wonders what she will do if he tests her again.

--

What she does is this:

She takes him down.

Again and again, she does it. Whenever he snaps, whenever he snarls, whenever the bristling thing under his skin seeps out - she takes him down. She bowls him over, or fixes teeth in his scruff, or simply snarls. Whatever the method, he goes down, and down he stays.

There is a strange calm in it. An implacable sense of peace. With Agilata, he knows where he stands. He knows where the line is drawn, and she will never let him doubt it. Beneath her teeth, the snarling in his heart goes quiet.

He isn't sure what she thinks of him, for all of that. She doesn't hate him; she approves of his hunting prowess; she gains a quiet satisfaction from putting him down when he misbehaves. All these things, he knows. But beyond that, he isn't sure. Whatever it is, though, it must be enough:

One day, when her heat is almost upon her, and she is sizing up the wolves of the pack narrow-eyed for potential mates, her gaze falls upon him. She stares for a long moment, cool and considering, and in the end she says: "You'll do."