angels fall and darkness reigns

For @Cara if you have time/want. I made it aw just in case. :-)

Quicksilver was gone. Under normal circumstances the Roux-Abrhen's absence would not have concerned Sinaaq except for the fact that he had been gone for some time. At first, the darkling had assumed what he had came to expect from his companion: that he had ran off to chase some tail, as he usually did; or perhaps had gone off to see if he could add the Queen to his list of conquests. Sinaaq had never asked, never desired to pry and, truly, didn't care what the other male did. They were companions, sure, but that did not mean they had to be privvy to every detail of one another's life. Sinaaq was not Quicksilver's sitter and did not see reason to keep tabs on him twenty four seven. Days had dwindled into weeks and still no sign, no word from or of Quicksilver. Too much time had passed for it to be a “conquest” trip and there was no way that Quicksilver had been after Cara — he'd have sought Sinaaq out a long time ago. Despite himself, Sinaaq hadn't realized that he'd begun to count on Quicksilver's return to him like clockwork, and counting on anything, for the darkling was dangerous.

Despite himself, Sinaaq had begun to see Quicksilver as something as a friend — albeit an annoying one but a friend nevertheless, and as usual Sinaaq was left alone. Eventually, the darkling had learned over the span of his short life thus far: everyone left. The Dark Priestess had died, Adlartok had left, Solia had left, and now Quicksilver, too, had left. Left Sinaaq all alone in this pack, with these wolves he did not and did not care to know, and the childish queen and her elder, angry, domineering mate.; and not for the first time Sinaaq found himself at a crossroads.

Initially, he did not know what to do. There was nothing to truly keep him in the Spine, with Quicksilver gone, but no real reason to leave besides his own persnickety judgments. With a dervisive snort the darkling set his fierce, fiery gaze of liquid gold to the sunset in the distance, settling like a pretty, tormented and seething statue, staring so ferociously and darkly at the horizon as if he were attempting to actually set fire to it as he contemplated what to do.

thanks for starting <3

[size=medium]"in the land of gods and monsters,
I was an angel"[/size]

[size=small]Change was unavoidable, and departure as part of change itself was too inescapable. In a similar way to Sinaaq, the young Cara Moretti had too learned this lesson at a young age. Though her personal list of those who had left was not as extense as his, it still held an important meaning to the female. Still in all of this theory Sinaaq and she secretly shared, there were loopholes --or at least in Cara's side there were.

The absence of one of her the recent pair of wolves that had adhered to the Spine did not go unnoticed by the Queen. Despite the two males had done little to yet be considered remarkable by the Alpha, the absence of the friendlier of the two was quickly noticed. Even if they had been elusive since their acceptance it had been the weakening of the man's scent what had finally determined that the man was a goner. This brought a mixture of wonder and annoyance to Cara, who despite having been questioned about the pack morals at the time of their first meet was now being blatantly showed the lack of such in the male.
Petty.

At least the other was still around, or so it seemed.
With her nose to the ground and her tail held erect over her back she weaved her way across the Spine to him. Soon, her eyes fell onto the dark silhouette of the man, whom she found sitting idly like a gargoyle perched on a cathedral. Motionless yet eeirily appalling.
She watched him silently for a second before allowing a low chuff to reach out to the cold winter air.
He had not left yet he was doing nothing to be here; with the pack.

For Cara, departure and abandonment was a double edged stick with razor sharp kinves engraved in each side. Just as being abandoned was painful it was also the act of abandoning another what roused pain or longing into one's heart. And while this could be counted as a separate theory all of its own, it had, like the other speculations on the matter it's exceptions.

Cara, for one, was a rare example of this.
Whilst she held little attachments to those she related with, throughout her life she had built bonds that filled her with melancholy and others that she had found joy in destroying. Her father, her idol and her sister were prime examples of this.
While the first two had 'abandoned' her to leave their carnal form in order to become nothing but spirit, the latter had been target of her cruel abandondent.
Cara had been the victim and the criminal.

And however cold and emotionless the brute before her seemed she was sure that the incriminating suit of culprit also fitted him.
But would it fit him now?

[/size]

The low chuff caught his attention mere moments after it had left the Queen's lips to break through the chilling silence made more harsh by the cold dusk that had settled in around them. He had heard her approach, of course, her scent had drifted his way but it was not until Cara had given him a verbal acknowledgment that he returned the favor, glimpsing leisurely over his shoulder to allow his eyes of fierce, fiery liquid gold to rake upon her form with distant interest and mild but disengaged curiosity that he did not intend to act upon. Mostly, he was remember the way their eyes had met during the acceptance meeting, though odd Sinaaq chose not to capitalize upon it. There was little to no use in pondering, and no gain in caring enough to bring it up.

For a moment he looked away from her, returning his gaze back upon the horizon, studying the marrying of colors, fierce and burning as they were, reminiscent of the night he had slaughtered Glimmer for trying to take Adlartok from him. Looking back upon it now, the darkling considered that he should have let the bitch take his nephew and spare him the heartbreak of the ignorant child's betrayal that he now suffered from. If Sinaaq knew then what he knew now there was much that he would change, so many choices and courses he would alter in attempts to save whatever was left of cracked and fissured heart, so much more damaged than it had first been.

The first step to ensuring that it never happened again was simple and complicated. He would have to kill what was making him ill and he believed it to span from matters regarding the heart. Not so much the physical as the emotional, the mental metaphor of it; and despite what he put off Sinaaq was not incapable of emotions. "Sunsets like this make the skyline look like it has been set aflame," Sinaaq broke his silence before he glimpsed over his shoulder once more to stare at her, unabashed. "Wouldn't you agree?"

[size=medium]"in the land of gods and monsters,
I was an angel"[/size]

[size=small]The small greeting she did not earn a verbal response but even so, it at least managed to get his awknowledgement. While the dark wolf's companion had been the one to actively express his opinions during the rare questionaire that had been their joining, the male in front of her had always,then and now, left more for the mind to wonder than from the eyes to see.
She met his gaze with determination, her stare fluctuating into one with greater intensity until he finally diverted his gaze back to the horizon.
Staring contests were not appreciated.
Not now or ever; not with him or with anyone.

After his head swung back, her focus remained on him. The reason or explanation that might lie beneath his obvious lack of interest in socializing with the rest of the Spine wolves, tingled in the tip of her tongue, making the female twist her ears to him with interest. He was a dark one, and not only in his coloring.

"It is the death of the sun" she barked, not really knowing the meaning of her words as they slipped through her mouth. While the glorious scene of the drowning sun and the fiery horizon was one that was also appealing to Cara's eyes, she thought that there were perhaps more pressing matters to attend. "How have you been, Sinaaq" she barked abruptly, the name feeling foreign to her tongue.
They had only met once after all.


[/size]

Sinaaq held no regard for caring what anyone appreciated, having never been a selfless creature, and it was not because of the intensity in her eyes that made him break the contact. It had been because he had grown bored of it. Her eyes were boring to him, having seen nothing within their irises that even remotely fascinated him. Srinaaq was hardly lack witted and understood that she could have easily seen the contact of their eyes to be a challenge — perhaps if she had she wouldn't have been wrong. Sinaaq didn't care much for authority, having only listened to Frigga because he had loved her. The leaders of Wintersun had only been obeyed because the wretched darkling hadn't wanted to leave Solia because...he had loved her, too. Love was a foolish thing, he scoffed now, it did not exist. It was child's play and he no longer believed in such things. It was only another easily bought lie to destroy your heart. Sinaaq had learned this the hard way, many, many times over.

Sinaaq's ears swiveled back to catch her words, the soft barking that the sunset was the death of the sun. Perhaps, for the stretch of night, it was but it was not ever truly death. Death was everlasting and each morn the sun rose to a fiery glory again and again, as it had from the beginning of time to the end of time. "It is not truly death," Sinaaq murmured, scowling into the horizon. "Death is everlasting and those that it steals do not come back. Not even the sun would be beyond that." He knew Death well. Perhaps a little bit more well than he would have liked.

Her question caused a soft snort to come from Sinaaq, barely audible. Whether Cara caught it or not the darkling didn't truly care, either way. Her sudden interest in his welfare felt faked to him, like she was trying too hard to appear that she cared about her pack members but didn't. At the very least, if she did care about her subordinates, she couldn't care about him. You didn't usually care about someone you didn't even know, after all. "Do you really care?" The darkling inquired, giving her a look over his shoulder, brow rising into a wicked arch over his eye. "You do not have to feign such things in my presence, I won't be upset."

im the worst ;__; forgive mee for delay

[size=medium]"in the land of gods and monsters,
I was an angel"[/size]

[size=small]With her slim ears barely awknowledging his crude recital of what death truly the Queen of the Spine allowed her focus to fall away from the male. She held no interest in his monologue that was true, but he was greatly mistaken if he thought that he knew what she invested her concern in. It was with a brusque movement of her head and an exaggerate lash of her tail that Cara dug her eyes back onto him.
While he had initially presented himself as a conflictive individual that could've swung to become either an aid or a burden in that exceptional time of instability the Spine had gone through, he now began to really show the cracks and bruises of his faccade.
Was he destined to be as flaky as his friend, or did he really hold something better, deep inside?
Through the kaleidoscope that was his indifferent sarcasm, it was almost impossible to tell.

And honestly at this point of the game, trying to decipher the legitimacy of his words, of him, was not her priority. "I do care, believe it or not" she answered slowly, her viperine tongue making a brief appereance to moisten her lips as she held down his stare. Even if she had no personal, intimate, ties with him in any level, the sole fact that he was one of her subordinates, one of her wolves', made it a moral obligation for her to care.
She had not spent her energy obsessively selecting the wolves in her ranks to later neglect them --a Queen needed of her followers as much as they needed of her.
She had learnt that aready after having been dethroned silently by a more popular candidate among the wolves of the lower ranks.
But this was no political campaign, and she did not need his 'vote'.

She was Queen, she cared and that was it.
The way in which she cared was not specified, but to be honest, it did not matter anyways. She was not his shrink, nor she intended to be. She cared because he was a Spine wolf -- and if he allowed her, or anyone really, to know him for more than that, she'd probably care for him in other ways too.
For now really, there would be no arguing on the subject --at least not on her part.

"But do you care to be even be here in the Spine?" she barked then, deciding to adress his evident lack of participation and desire to even meet others in the pack, with the same edgy tone as him.
Now, this was an question he could have no doubt she wanted to know the answer to.

[/size]

It's okay! I've been a bit slow with Sin lately!

Perhaps if Sinaaq would have been observing this interaction from a third person point of view, disconnected, he would have found it to be nothing short of quizzical. The dark fallen speaking of setting fire to the horizon and his contrasting Queen speaking of the death of the sun, only for the topic to move to a stranger place yet. Caring. The subordinate deciding that the Queen's caring was false in his well being without even bothering to give her the benefit of the doubt. ...But Sinaaq did not need to see things from a disconnected, non participant point of view to understand that many would see his words as challenging. And they were challenging. Sinaaq had always held his own agenda, moved to his own flow as opposed to following another's. Caring. How he completely and utterly hated the notion, and slowly that hatred manifested into a hate of even the word itself and any associated synonyms for it. Caring was useless, and he would be hard pressed to believe that she cared, despite that her lips had parted to tell him that she did, indeed care, even going so far as to put enunciation upon it. A way to drive home her point, would he have not already dismissed it with a soft scoff to the burning horizon.

And if she truly did care about him in any semblance than she was a fool. He was poison, after all. A nightmare. The jeer lingered upon his muzzle, wordless. Perhaps caring for others was not such a damaging thing but every-time he dared to care about anything other than himself everything went horrendously wrong and he ended up with another crack in his spider-webbed heart. Each new crack begged the question of how much more he could take before it shattered all together. The darkling was in no hurry to find out, and thus determined to focus on the only thing that truly mattered: himself. Even Quicksilver had served to be more proof to his already fairly concrete theory. He had known the other male to be flighty, especially with his women if his boasts held any truth to them but to be so flighty as to leave, especially after he'd showed such brazen interest in the woman whom Sinaaq assessed once more as he glimpsed back over his shoulder at her, had not been expected. Regardless, Quicksilver was gone and Sinaaq was left to this place, alone. As he always was.

Her question brought with it a wicked quirk of his brow, and he tilted his head slightly so fiery light of the ardent horizon, the last fight of the sun before it sunk entirely beneath the rise of the earth in the vast distance played with the shadows that moved across his face. I am long beyond caring for anything besides myself, He informed her in a contemplative murmur. That door had slammed closed and was welded shut tightly with the intention of the contents of the room never seeing the light of day again for so long as Sinaaq could help it. Perhaps this would be the moment in which Cara would tell him to get lost and he would go without an argument. He had no ties here, nothing truly binding him with Quicksilver lost to the wind. If she chose to make the move, Sinaaq was not sure where he would go or what he would do but he had been living as a vagabond long enough by now to not feel bothered by the solitary life. Instinct would show him the way.

[size=medium]"in the land of gods and monsters,
I was an angel"[/size]

[size=small]The silence that followed her question should've been enough for the Queen to realize that this wolf that stood before her would never be more than a shadow, a body that filled a rank. Not a comrade, and certaintly not one she saw future for in the Spine. But without even squirming under the scruntinizing light of the dying sun did she make a move to express her innermost thoughts of him. If he wanted or did not want to be in the Spine, she would like to hear it from him -- even if in the end, his opinion would do little to tip the scale it was something Cara just wanted to have the pleasure of hearing from his own lips.

Speak now or forever hold your peace, she mused silently as he again allowed his face to be shaped by the wicked nature of his egoism, only to later murmur the answer she was wanting to hear. Even if it had not phrased with exact clarity, the message was very well clear to her. In the core of the tight pack she was hoping to build there was no room for Sinaaq and for Sinaaq there was no room in his heart to let in the Spine. It was truly, out of mutual benefit that they would now say goodbye, she knew it, yet she could not help but feel the dissapointment throb inside her veins as she saw his sickening indifference. A perfectly capable wolf that would say goodbye.
A perfectly capable wolf, who was just uncapable of getting over himself.
How hypocritical for her to say, but how real for this particular case.

"Then, go" she barked, her tone neutral, yet the bridge of her muzzle wrinkling in slight warning. She had no desires to fight him or chase him out -- he seemed smart enough to at least know when to walk away. "We have no time for you, and you have no time for us" she concluded, her tail swishing over her back as she simply waited for him to say his last words --if he had time for any.
[/size]

I pretty much assumed he'd leave but then he surprised me with this...lol. :o

Disappointment was left to fester like a sickness within him as Cara did not even attempt to try to salvage it, did not attempt to change his mind. Predictably, she had failed him in that instant, too. In some small semblance, the darkling could not help but admire her for it: for her resolute readiness to cut from the Spine what could not care for anything beyond himself. He had tried, and every time he had gotten hurt. Even Quicksilver had cut his own mark on Sinaaq despite that they had not known each other for long. Leaving him without so much as a word had hurt, though Sinaaq acted as if it did not matter. His indifference was a coping mechanism he had developed a long, long time ago and at this point he failed to see a way to even turn it off. It was so resolutely a part of him that without it he feared he would not know who he was. Losing himself was a large unknown and typical to most cognitive beings, he subconsciously feared what he did not know. Thus, it remained his safety line and he clung to it like a parasite.

Even Cara had left a small slice of pain upon him, her own wound despite that Sinaaq had tried to avoid feeling anything towards her besides contempt. He still questioned her ability to rule as he first had upon their initial meeting but warred with the slight swell of pride that she didn't bother to grovel to him. He hadn't been looking for her to grovel, but to see if she truly did care as she had spoken. Someone who cared would have fought a little harder as opposed to accepting a truth and taking the only plausible course of action. She had failed. Still, Sinaaq was not sure how to handle or deal with the disappointment he felt, irrational to him as it was.

“That's it?” Sinaaq inquired ardently, raising to all fours, turning to face her in full, ignoring the wrinkle of her muzzle in warning. “You're not even going to try to convince me?” He was even more skeptical of her so called words of “caring”, disbelieving her now more so than he had before. “Would you have tried to convince Quicksilver would he be here in my place instead?” Sinaaq demanded to know, his once companion's name leaving his lips acidic, tasting like ashes in his mouth. He missed Quicksilver; and hated every second of it — fearing that he would, too, miss her and her wretched Spine.

He hated it and feared it. He did not know how to communicate such a thing to her and even if he could find the right way to put it, he did not want her to know, at the same time. He had to protect himself, keep others out so they could not do what Adlartok, his precious and most hated had done to him. So they could no longer destroy him. It had become the basis of his survival instincts but it made him what he was: Wretched. Dark. Poison. One could even go as far as to say that he was feeling, perhaps, a spark of jealousy assuming that: yes, she would have put more effort into convincing Quicksilver because it was the other male that had been more approachable. Not tormented as his darker counterpart. They had balanced one another out in a unorthodox way, like a yin and yang effect. “I chased her out, you know. The wench with the ugly scar down her face,” Sinaaq was more than vain enough to let such a thing become a massive turn off for him. “I chased her out for you,” The darkling hissed at his (ex?) Queen unsure why he was even bothering informing her of it. It had happened some time ago now and hardly mattered anymore.

eep such a plot twist! tbh i didn't want him to go ;__; but cara and him insist on being buttholes -.-
also omg teach me how to edit my profile and add pwetty gifs and stuffz

When what could only be Sinaaq's departure words came out of the Queen's mouth, a sudden spurge or regret flushed through her body. Yes she was firm in what she had told him --if he had no desire to be there then she would too have no desire to have him-- but yes, she was also expecting a bit more from him. A bit more from it all.
After having almost gauged Mara's eyes out after her lame farwell and her shitty attempt to swing Kaname against her, Cara would have thought at least a chase was due for Sinaaq. 
But as she simply stared him down with her tail lashing irritably as she waited for him to go she understood that despite the mediocre attitude he had displayed during his stay at the Spine, he was not a wolf Cara wanted as an enemy.
She had too many of those.

So with her eyes still throwing daggers at him but her muscles refusing to budge at the desire to chase his ass of her turf she remained there; her ears only pricking as he once again opened his mouth. This time to play victim. 
Try to convince him? 
A fleeting scowl shaped Cara's face from its previous indifference, "I will not beg for you" she barked dully, only her eyes betraying the outrage she felt to this questioning.

But then, lilke the forever changing shape of the clouds, all signs of outrage or contempt were gone.

Vanished with the explanation he presented to her next.
He had chasen Mara out.
He had actually been helpful to the pack -- not a deadweight after all.
With the last declaration of it all being for her and her only, Cara felt a sudden guilt climb up her toes. Had she once again judged him to fast, and underestimated him too soon?

"..Do you, Sinaaq, have any true desires to stay in the Spine?" she asked, her tone noticeably nicer than before and her ears momentarily splayed back in an unspoken sign of apology.
For his action, given they were legitimate, she was grateful.
But for his attitude she was resentful.


Now, it would be his answer, his choice of words, what would seal his stay -- or departure-- from the pack. She, being biased to either choice, throw him or leave him, could not and would not decide for him.
It was time for him to participate, if it was not in the pack's activities, in his own trial.

hehe. plot twists are the best. and sinaaq's always been a butthole, even on wws. ;P Also, to add a gif with our current code system just put [*img]image link here[/*img] (taking out the asterisks of course!) and that should do it! It's been a long time since I used this coding (i'm so used to html, lol) but I remember some little stuff. :P

Disgust for one another seemed to be one of the few things that the darkling and the spine queen had in common with one another; though Sinaaq could not openly claim that this situation surprised him with any sort of measure. He had expected that his behavior would come up into question – particularly his tendency to challenge and his lack of socialization with those whom called themselves his pack mates. Both traits were too much integrated into Sinaaq to be able to change without entirely re-writing his DNA, it felt. His superiority complex was usually either rubbing another the wrong way, or butting heads with someone else's superiority complex and, typically, such things ended rather ugly. Sinaaq felt that he had suffered so much, too much already in his short life span and that he would rather die than left any one walk on him ever again. If that meant challenging when he was expected to meekly obey, and to push away anyone who tried to get in too close, whom tried to steal under his guard by being nothing short of cruel and indifferent then he would make the sacrifice. The backlash he could deal with. It was the pain of losing those that he cared about, the things that he came to care for that utterly destroyed him. He did not know how to deal, how to handle such things other than acting worse than he had previously. It was his only self defense and he used it without mercy, admittedly locking out those that could, perhaps, come to love him in a way that he darkly and covertly desired. And perhaps, he would come to feel the same.

“Obviously not,” Sinaaq returned curtly to her dull bark, drawn in by the outrage burning in her eyes. He enjoyed the knowledge that he had angered her so, though he had not failed to notice that she had not responded to his question in regards to Quicksilver. Her silence on the matter, whether it was true or not, allowed Sinaaq to make his assumption that her response would be yes. Without a confirmation or denial from her he had every intention of going with his assumptions. 

Interestingly enough, it was not until Sinaaq admitted to chasing Mara out that Cara's demeanor seemed to make an abrupt three-sixty. It was amusing to watch and a soft, dark snicker left the darkling as he watched the transformation take place before his very eyes, which had never wavered off of the spine woman. Sinaaq had, had no original intentions of telling anyone for the simple fact that he did not think it was anything he would ever had to have used. Whatever deity reigned – if there truly was such a thing – it seemed hellbent on making Sinaaq admit things he did not wish too as of late. However, it had worked. Or rather, seemed to. He had gotten her attention and distracted her from her mutual contempt for him. Against all his efforts to avoid it, Cara intrigued him, presented an enigma that despite his subjective opinions of her ability to effectively lead the Spine, he wished to pry and delve into and explore. He doubted she would let him, but whether that would stop him was the only presented question.

Likely, it wouldn't.

The spine queen's tone was notably different than it had been mere moments before, her question the same simply different words were used. Still, it did not fail to slip past Sinaaq's notice that the underlining attempt to understand remained. He did not know how to make her understand that he was scared to feel anything other than anger and contempt for anything, because feeling anything else opened up the possibility of getting attached. She did not know that any time he had allowed attachments to form that he had been left to pick up the pieces and bandage up the wounds they had left upon his soul and heart. Possessions were just as bad and even this he internally cringed and shied away from these days. It was better not to feel anything, he had learned. Then again, perhaps she was more intelligent that he had initially decided to give her credit for – in which case, had she been paying enough attention to Quicksilver and him, and his behavioral changes when the other male had decidedly not returned then perhaps she did understand, or at the very least was clued in. He doubted that much attention was paid to him, however, and did not truly consider it beyond the brief lingering of it.

“I hold no intentions of leaving,” Sinaaq responded simply, allowing her to take it how she pleased. However, it's meaning was hard to miss. If she wished for him to depart then she would have to take the effort to force him too. Otherwise, he was not leaving. “Not even Quicksilver's abandonment could change it.” The urge to track him down had been present at first, but that had faded as Sinaaq had hardened himself to a feeling of contempt for his once companion, not wanting to face the fact that he missed the Roux-Abrhen.

As the mood of the conversation shifted from mutual displeasure with one another to an ever growing curiosity for the underlying intentions beneath each's eyes, the Queen could not help but let the emotions and thoughts surfacing in her mind to shape her own face into what could only be described as a chameleonic display of aversion, pride and waryness -- all at once. 
And, while it had been with tedious haste that the man, accompanied by Quicksilver at the time, had agreed upon joining the Spine's ranks, it had also been with needy willingness that Cara had accepted them.
In the middle of Winter, when their caches were at the cusp of being empty and their borders reeked of negligence Cara had accpeted the pair; and while she had seen little of them after their initial conversation (Quicksilver and Sinaaq had become equally absent after that) now that the Spine had risen from its crisis, she held really no moral obligation to keep him.
The aid he brought to the pack by hunting, that if he even contibuted at all, could be easily replaced by the work of newcomers.
Cara did not owe him anything.

Yet as he claimed to have chased out Mara, the pack's greatest enemy, after her command had been issued made the Queen do a double-take. Sinaaq, who did not avert his gaze or even care to show up to the past pack hunt summoned, was after all, not such a deadweight. 
With the paleness of her eyes mixing with his own, Cara waited for the man's answer.
Of course she would not beg. It was below her, below an individual of her caliber, a Queen to do such things.
And of course he would present a contradictory affirmation -- or denegation in this case-- when confronted with a simple yes-no question. 

He didn't want to leave, yet he didn't specify if it was truly within his desires to stay -- and if he were to stay, given that by default his refusal to leave meant he would stay, he didn't clarify why it was he would stay. His desire to stay in the Spine, within the confines of the Ouroboros did not necessarily mean that he held the desire of staying in the pack of the Ouroboros Spine -- yet that was a decision that was not his to make.
While he 'chose' not to leave, he also 'chose' to be part of the Spine -- in all and every way. 
This, was non negotiable, immutable and final.
If he; who didn't want to go but didn't comfirm his desire to stay either, who demanded respect but failed to give it back, wanted to stay he could do so. 
But under her rules, and her authority.

"Very well" she barked, her tail curling over her back as she simply allowed her gaze to slide down her subordinate's face. Knowing how things were, and how they had been when her throne had to be shared with another, Cara could foresee that this wouldn't be the first nor the last time their heads butted, or their values were questioned, yet she could also be sure that as long as during those future times her authority was not questioned his membership would not be at risk.
Life was conflictive, so were her subordinates and so was she.

"Then make your presence significant" she barked at last, the tip of her tail twitching dismissively as she slowly, leaving room for him to give another response, began to shift the focus of her ears elsewhere. 
He could stay, as an active member of the pack, or he could go --there was no inbetween.
Because for Cara, there was no room for mediocrity.

Sinaaq felt her eyes slide down his face, contemplating, Sinaaq assumed, if he was worth the effort, if the risk was one she was willing to make. So easily, she could deny him a place within the Spine further, which might, admittedly, make her life measurably easier. She was delusional if she did not think that this would remain the first and last time that Sinaaq questioned her, nor that they ended up clashing together like two forces of nature. The darkling had allowed himself to be tamed: by love, by obedience once before and losing Solia in the manner that he had, had nearly destroyed him. Each claim that the Arrluk brazenly made that he was over it was simply another lie. A spiderweb of lies he told to himself so that he could ignore the truth. It was easy to turn a blind eye to it and better, he believed. This was not something that he intended to allow to happen to himself again and if not for the fact that he as plagued by loneliness and that a pack structure was actually something that was beneficial to him he would have elected to remain a loner for, perhaps, the rest of his life.

Sinaaq was by no means an easy creature to deal with, though this he thought, Cara knew now; and without something (or someone) to temper him he very rarely felt the need to hold back upon his opinions (as wrong as they sometimes tended to be). Vanity incarnate offered the Spine Queen a dark grin — a slight raise of his lips upwards as she spoke and raised her tail over her back, asserting her dominance over him. “I always do,” Sinaaq purled at her when she told him to make his presence significant. Even if his renewed presence within the confines of the Spine pack was short lived at her decree, Sinaaq did not doubt that he had made some sort of lasting impression. Not a good one, certainly never, but his name, he hoped, would not be so easily forgotten. Thus, insignificant was not something that he considered himself to be in the slightest.