Sequoia Coast this post is sponsored by screaming. it helps!

Despite the need to rest her shoulder, Mallaidh doesn’t really listen. As long as she keeps moving, the rhythmic pain from each step, gives her enough of a distraction. After the intrusion, despite those injured, their patrols have sped up. They never should have been able to cross but the storm had been a good cover when they’ve been lax.

Eventually, she needs to break away from the borders. She knows she should take another wolf with her, especially with the injury and her pale fur stained pink along her throat and chest but only noticeable up close. She’s tired of trying to wash it out with the coldest waters.

By the time she reaches the end of the fields by the gravel of the ridge, she’s got a pronounced limp of her front left leg. She doesn’t notice the fresh blood soaking the base of the scabs since the metallic smell has made permanent residence in her nose. Mallaidh does not make the effort to climb, trailing the rest of the way through the fields toward the cape.

The chilling touch of winter forced him to take a brisk pace along the edge of the world. Though he knew it did him little good, the warhound remained close enough to the sea that it could lap against his limbs as it rolled into shore. The wild fur along his neck and shoulders stood like jagged quills against the afternoon sky – a dismal grey that seemed to stretch on forever. It draped him in a backdrop of greyscale, almost as though he had wandered from it himself. Were it not for the tinge of beige against the sand, it would have been a dreary sight to behold.

The further that he trekked, the colder the weather grew. Just before he latched his sights to the – surprisingly – familiar figure, a cruel gust of wind kicked up against his frame. The titan gritted his teeth together sharply, clenching his jaw against the touch of the wicked winter air. With a shift of it, her scent was drawn toward him and flushed through his flared nostrils. The aroma of her coat was not just familiar to her, but it cast a memory of others that he had happened upon from her same dwelling – the stargazer included.

A low howl slipped from his lips and lingered against the air like a crack of thunder. He called to her so that her attention might have been drawn to him, but the warhound did not know if she would change her direction to cross his path. The distance between them was still great enough that she could have abandoned all chance of drawing near to him again. Still, he waited.

She does not notice the figure in the distance, mind having wandered off to something else. As easy as it is to distract herself, she finds her mind often blank. Only a few things seem to matter in the following days. Either all her anxiety has cleared or its reached so high she’s incapable of actually feeling it and teetering between the two is a wild ride (if she were to really think about it).
 
The dark figure on the sandy shore starts to materialize but still remains part of the background. A large rock, a tree, something… else entirely. The first hint of moment—seconds before the howl—she’s torn from her haze and snaps to attention. She fights back the grimace as her body shakes to the sudden bolt of pain. Before the howl comes to a conclusion, Mallaidh adjusts her direction for the stranger and after a few yards she realize it is not really a stranger.
 
Other than the fact he was kinda weird.
 
Mallaidh lifts her own nose and howls back her final recognition, hoping to invite him closer; it’ll take nearly twice as long for her to get to him as it would for him to get to her.

The call was returned after only a moment of pause. The titan drew his crown upward and halted in his tracks for only a moment before he recognized her intention was to have him approach. Without rush to his pace, the brute forged across the expanse of land between them. He wondered if the girl had ever found the wolf she had been searching for when they had first crossed paths with each other. If he had been forced to be honest with her, he would have had to admit that he had all but forgotten that he was going to keep an eye out for the wolf called Saarthal. When he had talked with the cocoa-tipped female last, he had assumed she had been talking about Dalia.

It was not until he closed much of the space between them that he noted the fresh scent of blood against her coat. His brows furrowed over his mismatched gaze, and his pace slowed considerably. The titan's gaze wanders in a sweeping manner to search for anyone else who might have been nearby – anyone who might have caused damage to her. Nothing but the sound of the winter winds touched him. With a quiet huff, the sea wraith drew his skull upward and canted it to the left. “You've seen trouble,” he remarked in a smoky voice.

He picks up her message and crosses the distance between them. She pushes herself to make an effort but eventually she has to stop and allow him to come the rest of the way. She shouldn’t have left Drageda along but she’s thankful to have run into someone else she knows. Even if he had been a little weird, she never felt all that threatened by him.

“Yeah,” she says, her face void of expression. She has so many questions she can hardly put words to and answers she may not get for a while. The wolves she wants to talk to about this aren’t necessarily available and might not have the right things to say. Maybe someone who is only slightly a stranger will help. “You should see the other guy,” she says, turning slight to observe the dark red of her coat and a frown settling in.

Ford had never been given a reason to behave threateningly toward the dark-faced woman. She had been on a search for someone that she cared about previously, and though he had prioritized his duties to Dalia over the needs of the stranger, she did not act in a hostile manner toward him. They had parted ways with a clearer understanding than when they had first met, and he had not thought her to be an incapable dolt, so that was that. However, seeing her again was a peculiar thing for the great brutish beast. More than this, seeing her in a wounded state was far more curious to him.
 
There was a quip about her opponent that caused a ghostly smile to curl his features. As was typical, the expression did not quite reach his hollow gaze. Instead, his eyes roamed her figure and sought the holes that had been created in her frame. He held this for a moment before he latched onto her gaze and canted his crown to the left just slightly. “I should hope they’re much worse off,” Ford commented in a rumbling tone. Though she did not appear as though she had been ravaged by her assaulter, it was difficult to maintain an injured form in winter.
 
“What happened?”

She snorts. “Yeah,” is all she says at first. She smiles a million miles away when she glances over to him. Her tail swishes and then she sits down, deciding it best to take some weight off her injured shoulder. “He came into our territory but I intercepted him.” All of it turned into a blur when she tries to think about it but it all leads to the same place: I killed someone. He was trespassing. He made the mistake. He had to have known what would have happened if he’d been caught.

“What’s the worse you’ve ever done in a fight?” she questions, lifting her nose a bit. “Have you killed anyone?”

The woman responds with a soft affirmation before explaining that there had been a man who had crossed into their territory, and she had been the one to catch him. It was noble to think that she had battled in order to protect the ground that she called home. Loyalty to one's claim was oftentimes just as important as loyalty to those who occupied the space with them. He would have commented on the impressiveness of it, but he was stopped with an open mouth by the question that slipped from her. How curious, he thought to himself as his brows narrowed on her and his dark lips curved downward in a thoughtful frown.

The warhound did not believe it was wise to issue a response so quickly, so he mulled the question over in his head for several long seconds. “Yes, I have,” was his stoic answer when he finally did offer it to her. It was then that he turned to face her with a searching expression. “I drowned a man in the sea and his own blood for an attempt he made on my family's life,” Ford then elaborated, but his tone did not reflect an ounce of regret. If it was what the dark-faced female felt, he did not believe that she should.

“Sometimes we must do terrible things to protect what we care for.”

The answer does not surprise her. Yes I have. Yes I have. It’s the same answer she has now. It involves protecting his family, somehow, and she’s thankful she can say the same. However, Ford is a little weird and she doesn’t know how far the connection goes. She’s kinda weird but not quiet in the same way (at least she hopes), but she smiles at the stupid thought. She likes him, similar to how she’d liked Ingram.

“He died, too. One bite to the throat. He was going for a packmate,” she explains. It was the only answer. There wasn’t any way to stop it, surely, and Ephraim is safe even if a bit wounded. That is what wolves did, though. They protected. Her mother has killed, she thinks, or at least she suspects, and she wasn’t a bad wolf. There’s still hope for her, surely.

Ford studied her with a solemn expression on his face as she told him what had happened. The prospect of taking the life of someone else did not bother him the way that it should have. He knew that it was not looked at with great respect among others, and so he had opted to play his cards safely. The woman did not seem as though she was entirely pleased that she had been forced to act in order to save her companion. It was a trying thing, to be forced to face the prospect of what you would do to someone who was attempting to take something you cared deeply for.

“Then you have done a great service to your family and your home,” he offered her words of assurance. There was a thoughtful pause there, where his hollow gaze lingered on the darker portions of her frame. He wondered where she had come from to feel so deeply about her actions – how she had been shaped to care for life of devils. “Do you regret it?”

I hope you don't mind if we wrap this up? <3 Archive or reply once more, sorry it's a bit awkward!

Ford gives her a weird sort of assures and she nods, appreciative. If she hadn’t done what she did, Ephraim might be dead or worse off. He was likely to die anyway with the amount of wolves on him in a short amount of time and his refusal to listen. She just doesn’t like it was her.

“No, not really,” she says and licks her lips, rolling back her good shoulder. “Thank you.”

She’d left Drageda for the day to get a bit of clarity in her head and she’s found some of it, at least. Enough to hold her over. “Sorry, but I should probably get back. Thanks again.” With that, Mallaidh dips her head and turns to leave.

Hopefully we can have another soon!

The girl seemed as though she did not regret her actions. At least, her words said that she didn't. The man studied her with a cold gaze down the length of his muzzle. His mismatched gaze lingered on her dark features for a long moment before he turned his attention away and nodded his head stoically to her thanks.

It was then that the girl decided to cut their meeting short. In the back of his mind, Ford wondered if she was uncomfortable with their line of conversation, or if she had endured enough talk of murder for one day. He did not aim to stop her from leaving. Instead, he nodded his head and followed her retreating figure until she had faded from view. Only at this time did he leave their shared space and turn his attention back toward the bay.