Ankyra Sound Any rain softly kisses us on the face

Huh. All right, that made sense. Were you able to trick anyone into thinking you were someone else? he wondered, interested now in what Mallaidh had done while she was gone rather than why she'd been gone at all. He was still young and naive in the face of deception. If she said she'd been out practicing then that was surely true. A pack mate wouldn't lie to his face, he reasoned, not yet understanding the value of a little white lie.

So you're the Steltrona? he assumed, having already accepted this as fact. He didn't know a lot about the upper ranks but he knew that one; it had belonged to Etoille before, if he wasn't mistaken. Is it hard to be ranked that high? If Mallaidh looked closely at the pale yellow eyes fixed on her, then she might see a brief flash of hunger there that would fit better in the acid yellow gaze of his ambitious dam, a brief suggestion that below the surface, Ephraim had inherited some avarice after all.