Heron Lake Plateau A beating heart of stone.

If Caiaphas found her reaction anticlimactic, she didn't show it. She accepted the Beta's niceties, responding with a small shrug. She then offered her services to leadership. Towhee fought the urge to shrug too, as well as an impulse to tell the she-wolf she (and her pups, eventually) simply needed earn their keep; that's all that was expected of them.

But then she glanced in the whelps' direction, then back to Caiaphas, and said, "Just the usual: contribute and whatnot. There's one specific thing you and your kids can do to help you integrate: learn ptero." She paused, then signed the words even as she said them, "Learn to speak our language." She dropped her forelegs and resumed regular speech as she elaborated, "It'll help you communicate with me specifically, but it's used by the entire pack, like our own secret code."