Ankyra Sound Any rain softly kisses us on the face

Mallaidh was an unfamiliar name, but so were many names in Drageda's hierarchy. He chocked their meeting up to simply being confined to Hougeda, where some of the adults had never gone while he was there. Sha, he answered succinctly, but quickly followed with, but not officially. I wasn't allowed to fight. At the time he'd been put out by the restriction, but in hindsight, it was a good thing. Ephraim was smaller than most pureblooded wolves, and on top of that, he'd been an uninitiated child. He likely would have died in combat had he been permitted to go. I was trained to fight and taught about our way of life instead.

Maybe because she spoke the common tongue more readily, or because she struck him as someone who wouldn't mock him for it, Ephraim assumed she was kind of like him. So at length he admitted, I wasn't born in Drageda, so I'm kind of a newbie still. I'm loyal! he insisted, turning his head to look at her in case she thought he had doubts, but I have lots to learn still. How long have you been here? Perhaps he was wrong in his assumption. Maybe she'd always been in Drageda as well and just preferred to speak a common language with the rest of the world. It was possible Ephraim just so desperately hoped to learn that he wasn't the only "outsider" in the pack that he was reading too far into things again.