wrath of the northmen

So I got carried away with this. No need to match the length!

Thistle, Ragnar had come to learn in the month or so he had come to know her, was nothing if not persistent and, equally stubborn. It was endearing, infuriating and admirable all in one awkward package until Ragnar was left grasping at which one he thought it was the most only to come up with no real answer. She was young - having just reached her sexual maturity something she had told him previously allowing him to conclude that she was only just two years of age at most - younger than him, an in this still in certain ways innocent and perhaps even naïve. She was intelligent of that he wasn’t going to dispute but he felt the urge to shield her and protect her from the world …and himself. It was as he locked gazes with her, icy oceanic meeting the azure blue of her irises that he wondered if he had done the right thing by their coupling, by their mateship, by allowing his affection for her to grow until he had begun to fall in love with her. Love. Something he had thought he was incapable of but the deep rooted knowledge that for whatever it was worth he was falling in love with her contradicted that once belief starkly. Ragnar did not hold a belief that things were about to all magically work out unless Odinn willed it so. Perhaps Ragnar had mistook Pump’s words to the stranger to be betrayal, had too immediately been hurt by the appeared evidence that Pump would overlook an actual, driven and contributing member of her pack in favor of some smart mouthed, disrespectful, stranger of a little girl full of contradictions. Perhaps, he allowed, that was the case - that he had merely misunderstood. Odinn did not will things to be easy for his favorite.

Likely, if Odinn did not take pity upon him, Ragnar would find himself in the midst of a storm of trouble. If this was so, as Ragnar had a horrible suspicion of, Thistle and their unborn babes would be drug into the middle of it, likely by association alone, but of course knowing how Thistle was - it was infuriating he decided in the instance of the scenario in his head - she would not stay if Pump decided to throw him out, even though she had too. Ragnar could not fathom that any other pack would accept a pregnant female, nor her pups. If…it came to that. The Viking did not even crack a smile at her stubbornness as he might have otherwise. He was in no gaming mood. “Things transpired this morning along the borders,” He began to tell her, his voice soft and calm - a sharp contradiction to the fury that pulsed off of him - the lack of fury in his voice working to make his words carry more weight and power. “I was a fool. She is not a Viking, she does not have to live up to her word or honor,” Scarred face twisted into an ugly scowl as if the words left a bad taste in his mouth.

“I accosted a stranger at the borders who offered me nothing but disrespect, arrogance and sarcasm, who threw you in my face saying that if she wasn’t accepted there would be one less wolf between teeth and your throat - of which I took to be an indirect threat to you. Pump witnessed how she spoke to me, disrespectful as if she had any right when I would be superior to her in rank if she was allowed in the pack. Admittedly, I was not very generous in my own respect towards her but she did not and does not deserve it. Pump said nothing to her about how she spoke to me at first, seeming to turn a deaf ear to it, even seeming to encourage her behavior for a moment,” Black, leathery nostrils flared as his chest rose and fell in a rapid breath - the only indication that he was still, very much, livid with rage though his voice gave no indication. “It felt like Pump stabbed me in the back, favoring the disrespectful mær,” He spat the word like it was venom, “over me even though she asked her to stop insulting me.”

“I have done everything she has asked of me. I trusted her. It shouldn't have been let go so long.” But that was a broken thing now, and Ragnar was not sure it could be repaired. "She did call me her friend but...I cannot overlook that and the fact that the girl is probably one of ours now. I do not trust her, neither do I like her. I am her superior and she will do well to remember that." Of course if things went as bad as he feared he might not have to worry about it.