Otter Creek of an austere ebon tide

I hated I needed to go to bed instead of posting more (alertness should not be a requirement at work) lmao, but I absolutely love that Rayder's a butt 90% of the time towards everything.

While he had been hoping the loose statements made were nothing more than a faux pas, they weren't. The honesty that followed his queries surprised him, jarring his moral compass a little bit like an anomaly. He had seen this behavior before by the ones in charge, but never in a subordinate. But Mordecai supposed everyone had an agenda at one point or another, and shook his head dismissively. The arrogance displayed aside, the tawny Ostrega already knew that they would agree to disagree in this case.

“Then why not stay in the wilds? You seem like you'd be better suited to being on your own than trying to find opportunities in a pack.” And truthfully there were more opportunities outside of a pack than in, at least in his eyes. Not that there weren't any in them either, they were just a different set of options. Perhaps he knew the answer as to why this fellow had gone to a pack too, knowing that there were advantages to belonging to somewhere versus nowhere at all. Maybe the opportunity he was willing to seize was within that pack too.