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The day was hot and sticky, and the flies were heavy. A kill had been made earlier that day, in the cooler hours of the dawn, and now that the carcass of the deer had been mostly picked clean, only Ralastor was left in the area. Heat and insects made the increasingly powerful odor of the meal highly attractive to scavengers, and it was not in Ralastor’s nature to share even a scrap of his hard-earned food with anyone who didn’t have his permission.

Despite the oppressive heat, he lay sprawled next to the torn apart body and watched, panting openly to keep his body temperature down, for any who might try to steal from him. It was incredibly petty, but he took a certain delight in denying sustenance to crows and foxes that thought they could pilfer from him, leaping out and snapping at them, occasionally even hitting home and leaving the intruder with a painful reminder of why this was not a good pack to mess with.

Absently, he wondered where Kumonryu had gotten to. The young male had been absent from the feast, and it was unlike any normal wolf to miss out on a pack meal.

Attentive as he was to the approach of other creatures, Ralastor overheard the young voice with little effort. His ears perked up, curious, and he got to his feet. He was too far into the territory for it to be a stranger, but none of his pack members had daughters that he was aware of. That meant that either he had some very brave and very foolish outsiders wandering through his lands, or one of his boys was keeping secrets from him.

Walking slowly in the direction of the voice, the Warugaruga alpha kept to the trees, head low, movements quiet. It was in his nature to skulk, to watch, and so he crept ever closer, trying to stay hidden despite the glare of the sun and the darkness of his coat.

Judging the time to be right, Ralastor emerged from the shadows, expression grim. "Hello Kumonryu," he purred, looking less pleased than his sickly sweet tone of voice might imply. His tail flagged high, annoucing clearly he was in no mood for any defiance or insubordination. Blood from the kill still stained his muzzle, and it lent a certain manic look to his appearance. He turned his face to the child.

"Your father is right. You will rest soon." His dark eyes flicked up to the young male. "Just as soon as he and I have a little talk. Daddy has some explaining to do to his boss."

Ralastor turned all of his attention upon the pup, approaching her in a deliberately predatory fashion. He stalked around the father-daughter pair, following her behind Kumonryu to get a better look at her and judge her personality. Thus far, he was hardly impressed. Without tearing his eyes away from her, he said:

"Shame it's a girl pup. A boy or two would have had so much more potential. But I can work with this, I suppose. What sort of dam did you get her on? One with half-decent fighting blood, I hope?"

He licked his lips. Yes, there was certainly fear in the child's body language, but fear could be stamped out, and fear could be used. Many wolves fought best when they were afraid for their lives. Many wolves fought hardest when they were afraid of the price of failure.

At the little growl, Ralastor's ears perked up and he smiled broadly.

"Oh, yes, I would agree she has potential. And with my training, well. You've seen what I accomplished with my first litter, inferior though their mother was. I daresay she has better instincts than they did, too. We can teach her to be a soldier yet." That said, he turned away from the girl and slid up alongside Kumonryu, brushing past him very closely, very dangerously, very dominantly.

"Although I suspect her father may be in need of a lesson or two to remind him of what is expected of a soldier. Why did you not tell me of this sooner, boy?" he asked, voice low and on the edge of a growl. Although he was only a little bit older than the less dominant male, Ralastor deliberately chose a demeaning epithet to express his disapproval.

Ralastor licked at some of the bloodstains on his muzzle thoughtfully, and began to walk deeper into the territory, expecting his underling to automatically follow. "I do appreciate your intelligence in bringing me something I can use," he said seriously, no longer deigning to loose Kumonryu in the face, "but the issue is that you kept something from me, something that might have been important. As the alpha, it is my job to know everything, you see. Small bits of information that are meaningless to you, combined with the rest of what I know, could potentially be very powerful."

He bared his teeth in a smile to himself. "And I'm sure you know by now that power is what I'm most interested in." For the moment, it seemed Ralastor's discipline would be purely verbal - but with this tough male, there was always the risk that the physical punishment was just waiting for the right moment to come.