Neverwinter Forest I guess I'll just go home.

Her stepping between them and speaking over him brought an instant reaction from Mal.  His lips pulled back slightly and he squared his shoulders.  As she continued speaking, he continued to morph towards a more dominant pose, eventually his tail arced up over his back.  While Ibis might have been putting her foot down, Mal had already done so.  This whole pack was Mal putting his foot down and damned if he was going to let some witch take it from him.   He didn't get any closer to someone he was beginning to seriously not trust, but he would stand his ground.

His voice roughened, This is my pack.  You suddenly gonna fight for it? he snarked sharply.  Yeah right.  He'd freaking pwn her just on strength of his spirit alone. Maybe you don't get it, but I left Elysium because I wasn't going to tolerate people treating me like trash and if you're gonna pull some kind of elitist garbage here too -- well, I didn't beg you to stay in the first place. You can always go back there if they're more your people.  He'd rather have nobody here than people who were trying to undermine him at every turn.  Elysium was just a bad place, and those who accepted it seemed far to willing to be brainwashed by whatever cult they had there.

But of course, right now he wasn't exactly operating with a cool head so when his attention snapped back to Ereshkigal it wasn't like he was being the kindest creature around.  Before he might have been abrupt, but now he was definitely pointed, Does it look like we've got kids around here?  Nah right now we gotta have people that hunt, maybe defend the pack, maybe help Okeanos learn more healing stuff or whatever.  What did Ibis do again?  Wander around? His gaze kept flicking back to her, now more suspicious of Ibis than the strange woman.  Get pissed at him for what he saw as no reason that made sense?  Seemed he wasn't going to mention her.  At least he'd actually been genuinely a jerk this time instead of just obtuse.