Twisted Slough how neatly spreads his claws

The stranger seemed to take the hint, sauntering around them and beyond until he was out of sight. Svalinn didn't see fit to relax until the brawler was gone, and even then his hackles were hard pressed to lie completely flat. He was aware of something innate in him that wanted to turn tail and run back to the plateau - back to his den - where everything was familiar and safe and warm. Grief pierced him as he swallowed this fearful desire and experienced, for the first time with understanding, the fetid taste of packlessness.

It was only this - just the three of them.

It would be harder than he had ever known, and also the most rewarding. He would learn his limits, and increase them; he would go hungrier than he ever had, and find no greater victory than catching prey on a desperate stomach. Svalinn would be weakened by this journey, and then irrevocably steeled by it: the long, arduous re-forging of the Eyjolfur kingdom. A daunting, though necessary build that would take up as much of his life as it had his mother's.