Stavanger Bay But we're prepared and the mood is set

Nearly two weeks had passed since Osprey's unceremonious arrival on this end of the map. She had adapted to her new living situation with the resilience of the very young. Ragnar, Thistle and their pups had kept her busy when she wasn't running along her beloved beach or pretending to be the fiercest Warrior in the wilds. As with all children, she never really stopped to think about her situation. She simply lived it.

But as she traipsed back from the beach, her dark coat damp, spiky and crusted with salt, a sudden pang in her chest caused her to stop abruptly. Her huge ears pressed slightly backward and her tail drooped. Dad! she thought suddenly and fiercely. Peregrine's face swam in her mind's eye. Behind him came the faces of the rest of her family.

If not for the stranger who suddenly materialized in her line of vision, Junior may have reached a critical point and run directly back to Ragnar and Thistle to ask them how to find her family, who she suddenly missed very badly. Yet here she came, a sleek, black, unfamiliar she-wolf. The pup immediately stiffened, thoughts of the plateau's members drifting away into the bracing sea breeze even as it carried the female's strange scent straight into her nostrils, filling them.

"Hey!" the child called, loping purposefully toward the other wolf. Her ears resumed their upright position, as did her tail. "You're a stranger," Osprey Jr. pointed out sagely. Thinking back on the altercation between Thistle and Claire, the youth loudly and decisively declared, "You're my prisoner now!"