The brute had found nothing but hostility from the wolves of Rosings. He was not a man of pleasantries, nor did he do well to soften the blow of having lost their kind leader. His only comrade had come in the form of Pallas Stormthorn. Her rugged and intense presence was monumental in his state of being. The pale female allowed him to breathe in the forest he had claimed. There was a part of him that longed for the wandering. He did miss the shore and the companionship of the inky and savage form of Caiaphas. Times were difficult, though, and he knew he could not survive on his own. His taking of the pack had been out of necessity. 

As the ghost plodded through the wood, his nares spread to the scent of a woman. Her body reeked of a natural need and he could not seem to shake the aroma from his glands. With furrowed brows and a ruffled pelt, the great savage beast moved to follow the female through the tangle of trees and brush. His tail held aloft, the man caught sight of her retreating form in just the nick of time. Long limbs carried him swiftly in pursuit and when the distance on them had closed, his golden gaze settled on her. She was in dismay. But her rank surprised him. Lifting his crown, the ghost breathed heavily through his nostrils and frowned. 

"What is it that eats at you?" his gruff voice struck the air with some strength and he narrowed his brows further on his skull. 

When the words fell from her mouth, the brute threw his ears forward and his lips curled into a ghastly smile. He dropped his muzzle so that it pointed to the earth and shook his skull back and forth. No, these wolves were not likely to accept him, but he had anticipated this would happen. That alone had elicited the rumbling chuckle from within his chest. Her attempt to assert herself before him was even more humorous. These creatures did not need to speak their hatred. They need only continue to bristle at his approach. He could taste it on them. 

Looking back up, the ghost locked his gaze with her own. "I do not disrespect you. But you're wrong. I already reign. We share that space," he rumbled, lifting his brows. The words were not malicious. "Don't be foolish." If she should attempt to attack him and remove him from their lands, she would find a different nature in him. The quiet embers in his gaze would turn to a bright and beautiful flame... and it would ravage all that it saw. 

The female spoke of loyalties, and Kierkegaard found a strange sense of anger that rose within him at the idea of the wolves rejecting him simply because he was not pleasant and endearing like their previous ruler had been. He was a survivor; a savage and feral beast who had lasted as many years as he had simply because he had been willing to do what others had not. Claiming the rank of Alpha had been a necessary decision; the ghost would have perished in the wasteland of the wilds had he turned away from the opportunity that had presented itself. His figure had already begun to regain strength and life. The pallid wanderer would thrive again, and he would do so with or without the help of the Rosings wolves.
 
“Your failure would mean my own,” he insisted. “I did not come here on a whim. I came to survive. If I should run this pack into the earth, it would mean my own failure.” There was truth in what he had to say. This woman could accept it or she could cast it aside as falsity. Though he did not understand a logical thought process that consisted of him risking life and limb to claim land only to sink it and then abandon it. They all thought him a brute, and though they were not entirely wrong, they also seemed to think him a foolish man. Were he so doltish, he certainly would not have lasted as long as he had.
 
The unknown she-wolf then spoke of foolishness and he cocked his ears forward in a surprising snap. The knitting of his brows seemed to soften somewhat, but his dark lips still curved downward in a quiet frown. She had used the term bullied and he found it childish to call it such. The ghost was an opportunist and a survivor… nothing more. “And are you being bullied, girl?” he implored with a single quirked brow and a questioning expression. Was he so frightening and awful that she felt she was being attacked by his mere presence? If so, she had further issues to worry about. He was not the vilest thing in the wood.

The wildness inside of him had always been something to be reckoned with. He was not a submissive creature in the slightest, and the brute had seen many things in his time that would never allow such a nature to overcome him. Kierkegaard was not meant to follow in the steps of others. While he had lent his body to a cause, it made him nothing more than a mercenary for those in need. When it had come to it, the ghostly figure was self-serving, and he was capable of obtaining the things he needed in order to survive. The Demonte-Sairensu line was not composed of tragedies; they were creatures of darkness and would endure.
 
She left him a reminder that – should his reign prove to be unruly and unjust – he would not be welcome in those lands. With a soft nod of his skull, the brute peered at her with careful golden eyes. His expression remained, but he could still scent the need on her body. It drove him mad.
 
Taking a single step forward, the ghost breathed heavily and lifted his knitted brows so that they sat high over his fiery optics. “You have a need,” he remarked with a stern expression. “Should you need it tended to, you need only find me.” A bold statement from a brute who had stolen the spot of leader from her mate. Kierkegaard cared very little if the wolf Aaron was the one intended to bed this woman. He was a creature of the wild and instinct was a fickle thing.

The ashen brute had fathered many children in his time. He had a vagabond way about him; traveling here and there without much of a steady home, and so he had come across many who had sought the gruff touch of his limbs and the warmth of his body. Instinct allowed for him to bed with many, and it was no different with this woman… the woman whose name he did not even know. Though she seemed entirely taken aback by his statement, Kierkegaard did not retract it. He simply held her gaze with his own as she stumbled over her next few words and peered at him with an indignant stare. Certainly, it could not have been that upsetting to her, because she had not reacted the way he had imagined she would. There were no lashing teeth or bristled tufts of fur, but he understood that she must have needed to feel composed.
 
“Don’t act like it’s below you, girl. I did not turn you around and claim you,” he returned with a soft growl and his eyes sparked as they danced across her features. “I simply made an offer. Should you choose to accept it, you will know where to find me.” It was all that he was suggesting. He was capable, and she did not deserve to wallow home to the den where her mate would be quietly cursing his own life and wishing that he had not lost his throne to the brute before her.
 
Without another word, the soot-spattered man turned from her and disappeared into the deep tangles of the woods. His eyes did not glance back. If she should come to him, he would know what it was that she desired, and he would not have blamed her for her actions.