Swiftcurrent Creek dogs howling at the moon

Labels had always seemed important to those he’d come across in his life. If you didn’t fit into a nice, neat little box, you were essentially a conundrum to be cracked, and once you were cracked, you were no longer interesting at all. He didn’t care for riffling through the files of his history, and feeling honour-bound (or as close as he might ever get to it) he wouldn’t divulge Serengeti’s side of the story by extension. But Fox was asking, which inherently meant she was interested in some way, and that was surely something to say for a leader who he was in the presence of for the only the second time. It might also have been simple routine in checking up on the new recruits and deciding whether or not they were worth investing in and keeping around, but either way, he was expected to offer an answer that carried a bit of truth and perhaps a bit of weight.

Partners of convenience by circumstance, I suppose, is the easiest way to put it, he said. I also suppose that somewhere along the way I became a surrogate for something she lost. That was, her brother, or brothers plural, come to that, but of course he left it there. His tail swished side to side once in a wolfish form of assuring her that he was tolerant of her company, despite all other indications he put out. If you ask her very nicely for the story while you’re asking her how she’s finding the Creek, she just might tell you, he drawled knavishly, as a brilliantly eloquent way of dumping off all responsibility.