Phoenix Maplewood they've got the kingdom locked up

Ashka seems to relax easily—perhaps not completely—enough to trust him a little.  She even offers from a free tour, flaunting herself up and Ukko can’t hide the grin that appears on his face.  Her laughter rings out and his tail wags, glad the awkwardness has past by and they were able to get on as pack mates and, perhaps, friends.  Her melodic laugh brought his own thunderous chuckle rumble in his chest.  She looks back, beckons him, and Ukko gallops the few yards between them while he tries to soothe the laughter and lighthearted feeling that had been previously tucked away.

“Of course.  Wouldn’t want to lose the chance to follow a pretty lady around now, would I?”

Ukko steps up beside her, keeping relaxed and his tail waving back and forth.  He keeps his eyes out from where they are going as the sun disappears beneath the earth and his vision adjusts to the change.  He occasionally glances back to the female, listening as she speaks about wolves that threatened the borders of his home.  All of it, of course, before he joined, but he can’t help the scoff that comes out of his muzzle.

“Idiots,” he tells her with an exaggerated role of his eyes.  “Was the challenger known to the pack?”

It isn’t unheard of for wolves to challenge others, even for the Alpha position, but by the sounds of it, the wolf she spoke about might be insane for just dropping in and picking the Alpha out to take down.  As for the rest, it had been dealt with and Ukko felt a wave of relief that things would return to normal just in time for him to settle.  He kept in the back of his mind, however, to be on an extra lookout when it came to the borders.  While he’d kept his attention on his walking and the female, his ears were still cupped forward and his nose anxiously waiting for some idiot to trip up at the borders for him to show his worth.

“I left my birth pack over disagreements on how things should be run.  I wasn’t the only one either.  It was kind of like… a mass exodus though most of them went out and sought a land of their own.  I didn’t want to follow.  I thought I’d see what the world had to offer, y’know?” The past is the past and Ukko would rather leave it there and digging into someone else’s history isn’t all that appealing.  “And for this pack, I felt some kind of pull to the land.  Something I didn’t feel in my old pack.”