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

Her mind was empty as she passed along Stavanger Bay's outskirts, coming dangerously close to the pack's territory and even wandering into it at times. To say that Ptarmigan didn't care was understating it. She welcomed their antagonism. She was asking for it, and was confident that they would do no more than Quail would have done—sneer and tell her to bugger off, maybe, but not actually come after her.

Her nonchalance about what should have been a predicament became even less than that when the only wolf who came to defend the borders was a pup. Ptarmigan was small, having come from a line of relatively small females, but Junior was even smaller and it gave her away instantly as a young thing. When the child declared that she was her prisoner, an overly confident Ptarmigan responded with a loud, “Hah, as if, pipsqueak.”