Though he had recovered by now from the violent ordeal up on the cliffs above, Svalinn had been irrevocably changed by the experience. Physically, he now had his own battle scars: tooth-marked all along his forelimbs and across the broad set of his golden hindquarters. Mentally, the boy had hardened, aware now of things like his own mortality and the fleeting life of others. He couldn't bear to think of all the what-ifs, or alternatives to how things had turned out, so he had focused wholly on returning to peak condition, and soon whatever grudges he'd held over the situation were gone altogether. Several weeks more had gone by in relative quiet, so he was not expecting the challenging summons, and considering he had never been challenged before, he approached the silver-ghost caller with a most inquisitive nature than a wary one.
Upon arrival the boy stood back, wisely keeping his distance from one of their newest recruits, which wasn't his typical prerogative, but he was used to being the instigator— not the instigated— so he exercised a measure of caution with the behemoth. Save for his own youthful lankiness, he rivaled the titan in size, something Svalinn himself wouldn't have noticed, given that he had been raised and whipped by a she-wolf half his size; a fact that made him feel smaller than he actually was. But this could not compare to the other's apparent battle-worth— with a layer of adult musculature and three times as many scars.
Svalinn swallowed dryly and cocked his head slightly at the male. "Yeah?" he asked, straight-forward but unable to mask his uncertainty in that moment.
Surrender?
Svalinn blinked, trying quickly to adjust to the conditions of his first actual rank challenge, but as he came to terms with what was happening, or what was about to happen, the golden vandal began to smirk in the face of his very serious opponent. He could care less about his numerical standing in the pack, but he absolutely wouldn't pass up the chance to spar. "Take it," he barked back, lunging open-mouthed and gleeful at his opponent.
But unfortunately for him, he didn't necessarily understand that Vaati had not come here just to fuck around with him. Svalinn treated the whole thing like a game and got soundly whooped because of it— realizing rather quickly (or belatedly, depending on how you look at it) that this wasn't a practice anything. It felt more like that time up on the cliffs...
Svalinn shrieked his resignation as Vaati got a hold of his ruff, and relented his rank to the explicit victor of their fight. Once released, the boy scampered away, presumably to tend to his wounded pride by calling Vaati mean names behind his back.