Sleeping Dragon her eyes hold thunder and her blood is magma

She does not expect Dio to agree right away—it would be foolish—but he does respond in a way she appreciates. He doesn’t decline the offer and instead, reaches out for more. A small smile hints at the corners of her muzzle and she dips her head in a nod, before settling it squarely above her shoulders once more. The wolves she grew up around, learned from, led with, didn’t really have to go through this process. New wolves begging for refuge did, but they didn’t easily acclimate where the wolves surrounding them grew up with it in their bones.

“You don’t have to give me an answer now, even after I tell you, and nor do I expect you to learn everything in one sitting,” she assures him. It’s not likely a decision he could easily make in one sitting.

He’d come to learn what little Drageda has exposed him to since the beginning and the obvious, she sets aside. Their survival and growth is their primary goal—removing all threats that would hinder such things—and chasing off the wolves at the bolder and the phoenixes had merely been a stepping stone. Eventually, the wolves in their far reaches would know of them, of Heda.

“My wolves, for generations, have followed the wolf that housed Heda,” she begins, though it is not necessarily news. Perhaps the concept, but there has always been a difference between herself and the entity she carries. “Not any wolf can be a vessel. It is a Fos Goufa that can receive: the only child born of a litter has a soul intact enough to hold. It is the one that keeps their wolves alive, and prosperous. It is a rare occasion that a wolf selected for Heda to live in—with—that is rejected and often it is because they were never a true vessel. Stillborns will disrupt the connection because the soul is split between them.”

The young leader falls silent then, searching the male's face for clues, to let things absorb, for questions, anything that might direct where she goes next.