Bearclaw Valley So you say I'm complicated

Even as she spoke, claiming to be honest, he couldn’t keep from thinking how easily it’d be to get rid of her—either by running her off or ending her life. He considered it for a long moment, and how quick it’d be, but the thought was eventually cast aside. That she came from the woods was not reason enough to kill her, not when he knew that not all of them were terrible; his father was someone he looked up to, to a certain extent, and Meldresi had been a wonderful woman in his eyes. It was Cicero alone that deserved to die, as far as he was concerned, thus he humoured her claim.

“Peaceful?” he repeated. “Why were you ever there if you want peace? Are you stupid?” There it was, that sliver of his childhood self that would never die off, rearing its head. “And why here, of all the packs out there?”—her being there was suspicious, still—“What led you here?” He waited, body practically a statue, eager to hear his name: Cicero. Cicero had pointed his home out to her, he was the reason she was there, and for that, he would kill the both of them; that the patchwork male had no way of knowing where he was never crossed his mind, thoughts corrupted by a fabricated variant of reality.