Blacktail Deer Plateau Strong enough to hold you through the winter

The movement of gold danced in Malachi's peripheral and he flashed his gaze in time to catch her passing her father. Eilidh. The trace of a smile touched his lips without the effort most commanded. With the meeting not yet underway, Malachi turned to greet the child in full. He returned her greeting with an innocent nudge to her neck, oblivious to the chemistry at work in the girl.

While he stayed on the fringe of the Plateau's social life, he hadn't missed the fading scents of both Eilidh and Constantine. The sight of her burned relief in him, but his inquiries into her absence did not surface before Dante commanded attention once more. He turned himself from his friend and locked his focus on his leader,  ears cupped to listen.

The news quilted the whispers he'd heard to completion, and a shiver clawed through his chest at the unfolding plan. A prospect of relocation was enough to bring a weight to his shoulders, but if Dante deemed it necessary to move for the good of the pack, he held no qualm to follow. It was the mention of the coast that made him shift his weight and flash his tongue across his nose. The western coast, the sea and the sirens. Caiaphas.

The chocolate girl's excitement grated with his fear, a cacophony against the resistance that warred within. Though he'd damned himself once by concealing the siren, his words caught again, and he hesitated. Was it worth dredging up a memory he'd rather keep pushing back? But he felt the presence of Eilidh beside him, and remembered Casmir not far off. They were far from what the Sveijarns had been when the sirens had stolen Larus as their own, but he still felt the weight to protect them, and to stay silent now would be another betrayal he did not wish to add to his list. So then he had to step carefully and not incite fear. With the severed head branded in his memory, he strained to keep a steady voice. "The coast isn't safe," he paused with a hesitant breath, "A woman there, she dealt cruelly with the wolves I ran with before coming here, her and her pack." He did not wish to go further, so he stopped. The siren dredged up grizzly tales he'd rather keep for the ears of Dante alone.