Great Bear Wilderness The sentinels

He followed her as she continued along the downward path, smiling. "I can't really think of anything better to do," he told her, "exploration has always been my forte." After all, it was what had brought him to her originally. Perhaps if not for her offer, Mordecai had no real idea where he would have been. Perhaps well out of the Wilds altogether by now, though he had lost any concept of how much time had exactly passed. It was well into summer now, he figured, and behind it would come the chilly autumn and frigid winter that he was beginning to get accustomed to. It made sense to him now to establish himself within a pack, if only because the grand scale of exploration for him had been satisfied.

But within the boundaries that he established, he did not linger for too long away from the mountain. Not because he feared stopping the sense of adventure, but because he wished not to collect ire by being absent. "To be honest with you, I did come because I saw you heading this way. You seemed troubled, or at least angry with things. The wolves who have abandoned us... did you know them well?" There was always a particular sting in the unforseen betrayal, or at least the unknown reasons why there were some who simply disappeared off the face of the earth. A certain anguish that he had little experience with, but was keen enough to pick up on for all the times he had seen long term pack mates steal away into the night.

And briefly, he wondered, did his family feel that way when he had left?