looks like rain (aw)

Akhlut is grumpier than I'd intended him to be in this thread, but it's fun to play him that way for once. :D

Kennedy could perhaps have chosen a better time to approach the Alpha. Despite the rain, Akhlut turned a keen blue eye on the dark male and recognized his presence with a jerk of the head that meant something like follow at your own risk. The black-and-white male was not typically in a bad mood, but the hormones of the oncoming breeding season had heightened his most feral instincts of territoriality against other males, and Jinx's cutting criticisms had made him more authoritarian than he had been before, and damnit it was raining and cold and he was sore and tired. Akhlut kept striding along his course, long legs and strong muscles carrying him quickly, silently, and effectively forward in search of a damp meal that was surely buried in one of their nearby caches.

Gruffly, and with the presumption that the Theta would keep pace with him (if he didn't depart entirely), Akhlut asked, "Doing alright at the Ridge?" It was his grumpy form of small talk, for he didn't know enough about the subordinate to ask anything else, and he irritably had to admit to himself that in this, at least, Jinx was right. His subordinates were strangers he'd met once or twice only, and he ought to be grateful they'd stuck around this long. Stifling a sigh, he slowed his pace to a more conversational stroll, supposing he couldn't possibly get any stiffer, sorer, or more uncomfortable in the freezing rain at this speed than he would at any other.