Swiftcurrent Creek Bumblebees

A lone wolf joining a family pack was a complex collection of interactions that even wise old dogs could not easily explain. In Farstep's case, this was no family pack, but he mistakenly believed it was. He could establish himself all he wanted, as he was doing now, but there would come a time when the distrustful followers of Fox would challenge his right to be there. The dog seemed at ease now as he padded along the borders, replacing scents with his own... But underneath that calm exterior was the nervous instinct to defend his social status, or at least the one he falsely believed he had.

Hence, when a wolf curiously resembling Fox but quite a bit larger approached him in a manner that was far from deferential, the misled dog responded unfavourably. He danced on a precipice between submission and dominance, toeing the line drawn between his need to be accepted by those he would lead and his need to exert authority over those who would challenge him. He settled for something less ambivalent, but the raising of his head, the forward tilt of his ears, and the wide, unblinking stare were all enough to say he did not concede, though at any moment he might be inclined to submit merely to gain her acceptance of his new place here.

Poor Farstep could not have known that Fox's coy tactic to bring him into the folds of her society was not the same primal coming together of male and female wolf in the wilds of his homeland. There, dispersal wolves met other dispersal wolves and, if accepting of one another, were bound to one another, and shared one another's status. This was imprinted into his genetic code as an instinct that he fervently responded to. Here things were much less clear-cut, as he was no doubt about to find out.