05/24, on the edge of Neverwinter Forest bordering Silvertip Mountain.
@JinxThe sky graduated from brilliant turquoise and royal to royal and navy and finally intensive pitch when the hours turned small. He brushed along the outskirts of the stately conifers with a powerful, enduring stride and took on a predatory presence, prowling doggedly for a chance glimpse of bright white fur against the stark black of night. Very little breeze in the cool morning air meant detecting her by scent was strictly limited by proximity, but he made no move to call immediately for the alpha female and neither did his large, capable paws stray haphazardly close to her border.
Over a month had passed since her open invitation for him to join her on the mountain, and in that time Bagheera had toured the Wilds for himself and come to the unwavering conclusion that there was nowhere else he wanted to be. It hadn’t been his purpose to secure that opinion, but it was where his travels and shrewdness had gotten him. At this point in his life, as general convention tended to go, he should likely have settled down with a mate and excessive numbers of children in a pack of his own, but he’d gone quite another route.
Her patrols had brought her further from the mountain in the past day or so. Hours spent searching and the stale scent of his paws passing beyond her borders made her conclude that Majesty had abandoned the pack, leaving Jinx to cope with an unbridled rage. The chocolate male had been her first pick for Beta, and she had only just begun investigating his worthiness in earnest when he ran off into the sunset. She hadn't even had a chance to tell him her intentions for him.
In the end, she would come to see his departure as a blessing. He had left in time to spare Jinx the same mistake Fox had made with her: allowing a wolf with any ambition whatsoever to crack the upper echelons of the pack, just to abandon them and leave the ranks unstable.
Still, the fury would burn on for a while before she ever discovered that. When she came across Bagheera in the pines beneath the mountain pack, she was still in a foul mood, and her good impression of the male was trumped temporarily by her wrath. Her head came up smoothly as she met him, with hackles bristled all along her spine and eyes showing a world of unrest in their amber depths. “Bagheera,” she grated, her voice suggesting familiarity but the tone contradicting her original camaraderie with the male.
The panther was nearing the point when he would choose to slink back into the more complete darkness of the forest to secure a few hours of sleep before dawn when his watchful gaze fixed wholly on a distant motion. In the hazy light of the moon her polar-white fur exposed her progression towards him along the edge of the trees, and his stride did not transition from its stalwart momentum until he came upon her, close enough to pause. Her timing was exceptional, though her disposition was hardly what he had expected to find when his eyes cast over her steely features.
In a darkly brusque turn from their previous meeting, she acknowledged him with bristling hackles that trailed her entire length. None of it would catch the seasoned and strapping male flat-footed, however, and he met it evenly with a sternly vigilant countenance and a few briefly prickled guard hairs of his own which he smoothed far more easily than she would hers. Jinx,
he drawled deeply, what a pleasure to see you.
His words might have seemed an outright contrast to his manner, but they were meant to be genuine. He had known the mighty Kesuk had such a side to her, and there was a curious bit of him that was thoroughly interested as he watched it rear its head now.
Some stuff has changed since my initial post. Specifically, Majesty was kicked out of the pack rather than just leaving.
“Your timing is impeccable,” replied the Alpha female with a cat-like lash of her tail.
”Not days ago was I forced to remove a wolf who I was strongly considering as my Beta because he defied me in favour of a trespasser.” She briefly wondered when she'd become so open with her frustration, but having said it, there was nothing she could do to take it back. Majesty had lost all his credibility in that instant, and if ever she saw him again, he would be lucky not to lose more than just that.
Jinx forced herself to tear her focus away from treachery, focusing it instead on Bagheera. She still admired him in recalling his logic, and being of the sort to get to the point sooner rather than later, she immediately asked,
”have you considered my offer? I could use another reliable hand around here, and you cut me as the reliable sort.“ Ironically, Bagheera had previously admitted that he was no such thing, a man who made few promises because he wouldn't necessarily keep them, but that had been forgotten in the time between their meetings.
I appreciate the heads up. :)
His timing was a matter of perspective, and he would have expressed it himself as long overdue. Listening as she divulged the basis for her seething indignation as he saw her then, Bagheera briefly regretted that he hadn’t arrived on the mountain’s border sooner as he’d originally intended, but he was far more certain and informed in the capacity he presented now, having done a round of the Wilds as a free agent without the scent that could otherwise have been traced back to her. He’d lingered as he’d pleased and consumed all he’d needed.
It was as well that she’d forgotten scraps of their previous encounter if she hadn’t interpreted quite correctly. Your offer is why I’m here,
he affirmed without hesitation and his eyes set on her exquisite Amazonian features. Jinx Kesuk, you may have whatever you need of me.
Her mountain would be guarded with wild ferocity and a stern logician’s eye, and those who followed her waywardly and did not measure up would be forced to become fit for their places within the pack or be forced out, as far as he was concerned.
Jinx was relieved when Bagheera confirmed her hopes, and it showed in the way her body seemed to settle into itself. The tension was eased out of her, for Bagheera had a similar build to Majesty and therefore would fill the gap left behind by the treasonous dog. Complete relaxation would never come to the leader, but for the first time in several days, the Kesuk was able to breathe easily knowing her pack would not fall to the internal plague of non-compliance.
“Welcome aboard,” she said with a grin that hadn't touched her face in quite some time. “I must say, I'm glad you returned here. I could not bear the thought of you wasting your logic on the softer wolves of this place.” Gesturing for him to follow her back to the mountain, the female asked idly, “where have you been since first we met?”
He easily caught every outward signal she offered and found he was pleased that she’d eventually softened at his presence. Despite the fact that they had only met once before, he counted himself a very good judge of character and highly proficient in picking interesting individuals out of a sea of dull, shallow breaks. She was a force to be reckoned with, for better or worse, and he stepped into place at her side as though they hadn’t actually parted ways well over a month ago.
Frankly, I didn’t intend to consider guarding anyone else’s mountain,
he said with a rumble of amusement. You had my foremost attention the moment I offered it. I only took the time to survey the region with particular emphasis paid to the pests you mentioned. Those I found, at any rate,
he murmured deeply, feeling no need to explicitly state the absence of the Vale wolves when he assumed she would already knew they were no longer there. He then cast his gaze sidelong at her as they walked. It seems I missed your founding party. I meant to bring a gift in acknowledgement of it, but I’m afraid you’ve found me empty-handed. The forest has been quiet this evening.
There was an inherent comfort in being joined by a rational creature. So few of the wolves who had found their way to her mountain were of the rational sort. Some of them, such as Mordecai, were proving themselves very capable of living by the rules of their species, but most of them seemed intent on breaking Silvertip's rules whenever possible. She hoped inwardly that with the ousting of Majesty and the upcoming meeting to call out his behaviour, it would end.
She forced her thoughts away, smiling at her newest members' straight-forwardness. “It wasn't much of a party,” Jinx admitted, though perhaps that was because she had expected some sort of resistance to her settling here. The pack's beginning had been exceptionally quiet. The party might have come had the warrior in her been called to arms, but that had only happened against her own wolves thus far, and one coyote who hardly counted.
“What do you aspire to, now that you are here?” the Alpha queried, leading them on a path that she knew ended at the edge of a glacial stream.
Not a single word of annoyance was uttered further. At her reply, he considered the idea that he hadn’t arrived any later than necessary, at least for the purposes of delivering the support he’d offered her. While he might have otherwise been present to advise her against putting her trust in the wolf that had eventually betrayed her values, it was arguably her mistake to make. She was half his age and he doubted she’d spent much time in the upper echelons of leadership despite her formidable capabilities. She recognised her misplacement of trust and would not be nearly so quick to make the same error in judgment a second time.
On the path along the way she asked him about his ambitions, which he took as a question of how much investment he was willing to make as opposed to what he wanted if he stayed. To guard your mountain the way I stood guard over Lilac Valley,
he said without reservation. The sentiment to that was fairly deep and he doubted that she would understand it in that moment. He would let her come to know on her own. You need only ask for more. However, I’m certain I’ll be of greater use if you wouldn’t mind telling me about those who already follow you,
he prompted.
She never had heard of Lilac Valley, at least not from any lips but his own. In fact, he had never mentioned the name of his home pack, but rather, the name of the one he had recently left behind. Whatever warm fuzzies he might have been feeling at the memory of his home were completely lost on Jinx, though she might otherwise have shared the sentiment. The thought of Shearwater Bay brought back a feeling of elation... And the thought of it razed to the ground by fire or Kaskae's ambition or both still churned her stomach.
“Some I am confident of, such as my mate Lecter and my son Ira,” she said, licking her lips. “There are also Sitri, Cara, and Kaname, three of my most trusted. We harbour a monk named Tenzin, a friend of my mate's, though I don't know him well.” She left out the part about how he had once held a place of merit in Northstar Vale's ranks. “Then there is Tyrande. I do not trust her. She does not know her place.” There were others—Erika, the odd warlock Tiarnan, and Mordecai—but she didn't see them as a threat nor an asset just yet.
Bagheera was not surprised to learn that the white tigress was mated and had at least one child, but some idea on some conscious level was certainly dashed by the knowledge. The virile DeMonte male made no show of it because he had barely given it a moment of his notice, but the intention of settling into an existing pack did not come without hesitancy brought on by biology. It was interesting in itself that the urge had skittered away when he’d been a lone wolf, when his blood had burned vibrant and youthful as it coursed through his veins in its stead, but that it now skulked back into hazy view on the threshold of the mountains foothills. Jinx, it had been established, was irrelevant in relation to the potential he appeared to be willing to shirk.
He was impeccably attentive to her answer and there was barely a pause before he began his follow-up. Then why do you keep her?
he asked incisively with a raised brow in response to the lack of trust she had in one of her members. With the rest of the names she gave him the impression that she had a formidably close circle of devoted followers, but the last only came off as a second mistake waiting to happen.
Bagheera's words suggested a potential that Jinx had overlooked until now. Tyrande was a threat to the pack's stability, and there was truly no reason to make allowances for that sort of personality. Yet there was something about the toxicologist that, criticism aside, the Alpha female liked. “Perhaps I will,” she smirked, but whether or not she would follow through on that was left unsaid. She led the brawny DeMonte male to the mountain and, after a brief orientation, left him to his own devices.