Amaranth

Amaranth, Founder & First Packleader of Scarborough Pack
(Art by the absolute legend known as Goose)

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Amaranth comitted her past to the flames and has run from shadows its flames cast to this day. The cycle of malicious upbringing and dictatorial leadership would break with her, along with any murmurs of the legacy of Jael's line. She would vanish into the aether, and be as a ghost in the memories of the western packs. And if her wicked father and his subjects came sniffing for their missing heir, well...

Surely, nobody would be foolish enough to follow her across the western mountains.

Surely.

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Year 0, Autumn - Pass through the Western Mountains

Basil's eyes stared into her soul, and she met his gaze with her own troubled expression. Slowly, his paw came down on Amaranth's shoulder, and her partner in this whole endeavor spoke with that voice she loved, calm like a river. "You are not your father, Amaranth," he reassured her. "You would never do half the things he's done."

Basil nuzzled against the young Packleader again, but the tension remained in her soul like a taut wire. When her paws found his body, the hug that followed was desperate, and she held him close. She remained pressed to him for several seconds, simply breathing the cold mountain air, letting the anxiety bleed out of her breath in clouds of mist.

Finally, she released Basil, and looked him earnestly in the eyes. "What if, deep down, I am like him, though? It's easy for me to help when I don't have the responsibility of the title, but when the pressure starts to get to me..." Her ears flatten. "Who will I be, Basil? Will I be any better than Nightshade?"

"Shh," the male reassured her, and put a paw to her mouth. "Shh. Packleader." He put emphasis on the word, with an expression in his eyes that quieted her soul. "You know what Nightshade would be doing right now, if he were founding a new pack? Not asking himself how the wolves under him would live. He would be seeking loyalty above all else, sycophantic worshipers who would do anything for him. When you ask 'will my decisions be just', you've already done more work than your old man ever did."

Again, he rubbed his wet nose against her cheek. "Besides which," he continued gently, "Decisions are made with your mind, heart, and soul. They are uniquely yours, bloodlines be damned. Nightshade may have sired you, but you are not his child."

That elicited a nervous laugh from Amaranth, who flattened her ears and smiled. "... I don't think the fear will ever go away," she admitted. "I want to be rid of it. Father's legacy. His crimes. Stag's crown, the whole thing. His war wolves thirst for blood, and if he found us, he'd force us into subjugation. Force me back into his lineage. We just need to keep pressing through the mountains." She let out a heavy breath at that. "And found a new pack. Keep quiet, and not let the news out."

"That you're the heir to Stag's Crown, you mean."

Amaranth nodded. "I just want to start over. Just two strays, a mission, and a vision for a better future. That's all we need to be."

--

The founder of Scarborough Pack. With Basil, she'd fled east across the mountains, leaving the land and the wolves she had known behind. It would be best if she not be followed. In many ways her father's daughter, she believes in the Old Magic, and has taken on a patron spirit, Weasel, whose presence is felt in the pack.

The two reverent lovers united to found Pack Scarborough, with the foundational principles of reverence for nature, the sacredness of life, and joyous revelry.