Stone Circle the devil in hell’s kitchen

Wardruna cannot help but feel that part of the blame for this lays at Noma’s own paws. If she would just eat when he gives her food …but she is unbearably stubborn and chooses to waste away and steal food when he’s not present when there’s no need for it. He offers her food frequently: the freshest kills in the cache, taking the oldest for himself because getting her health back was his singular focus but it only worked if she played her part and thus far she hasn’t. His ears pivot back as he feels the male judging him with his eyes. Wardruna has been good to Noma. He has brought her here when he found her, insisted she get checked over and has tried to make her eat. Wardruna very much desires to snap that he does not starve her …that she starves herself but he holds his tongue. He is crafty but not sure if he’s crafty enough to cover the hole that admitting that would rip in his weaved story…but surely this male didn’t really believe that Wardruna would starve Noma? She was not useful to him ( or Easthollow ) in the state she’s in now. The stranger’s words sounded like an assumption: but without knowing the full story or that Wardruna has worked tirelessly to provide for Noma, trying to hunt fresh food for her even ( and having her witness almost all of his failures ). Sure, it’s for selfish gain but the point was: he wanted her to regain her health.

Perhaps, Wardruna thinks, he should have saved himself the trouble and left her to die — but admitting that feels like failure and he’s already had one failure today. He will not make a second one. Wardruna almost declines the strangers abrupt …request to hunt and resists the urge to tell him to leave them alone. That his presence was unwanted. He is stuck and he wonders that if he and the interrupting stranger are successful if she will eat it or if she will stick her nose up at it. If he was without the hyphema that had caused blood to pull in his left eye — which at first had caused severe pain but gradually as the pain faded so too did his eye sight — he would have refused but it has been so long since he’s had anything fresh and he suspects it has, perhaps, been longer than for Noma and he has appearances to keep up: because he needed Easthollow and he needed Noma and he was in no position to deny a helping paw with a hunt, for either of their sakes.

“We hunt.” The Northerner agrees curtly but hesitates after he takes a few steps towards the stranger and turns his head to look back at Noma. Wardruna is hesitant to leave her a second time. “Go back to the den, Noma. It is warm there. I will come back with fresh meat and try not to be long.” If it means Wardruna'll go hungry today to prove that he’s not trying to starve his woman as he’s now called her then that is what he will do. So long as it gets rid of his nuisance of a man and Wardruna and Noma can be left to their own devices.