Blackfeather Woods over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—

The ghost was well within the depths of the woods when a howl rang out, a low pitch summoning him to the borders. He held still for a moment, his mind working the voice over within it, but he could not place a name to it. It was vaguely familiar, but not enough to draw forth any sort of paternal yearnings that should have been there; if any could inspire such a feeling, it was the children born from his union with Scarlett alone. With a grunt—a rare case of irritation from the aging Inuk, perhaps, over his inability to place the voice—he started towards the borders.

His arrival was neither quick nor slow, head and tail raising upon spotting the child—that is all he would ever be to Kove—at his borders. There was a newly formed intensity burning within his gaze, directed towards the boy. He looked different now, finely aged with his growth completed at last, yet the northerner could not forget who he was; a son that he’d never been able to connect with. With his maw drawn into a tight-lipped frown, he asked, “Why are you back?” He had not missed the child, not like he knew, deep down, that he should have.

He was met with silence, something that did not surprise him in even the slightest. Like Atshen, Abraxas had made it clear long ago that it was not his father’s ruling that he abided by—in fact, it often seemed as if he answered to no one, which was a truly troubling state of mind. Kove did not wait around for very long, his son soon chased away following the continuation of silence. And, in doing so, he felt the last sliver of a familial bond between them snap, the silvery creature disowned just the same as his dark-coated brother had been so long ago.