looking for trouble

She hasn’t, he affirmed, and only for the moment his voice was without an edge. He found himself vaguely curious for a fleeting moment as to whether the stoic northerner would actually care to see such a selfish creature back within the borders. It was possible he believed she would stroll in with a few hastily improvised words to explain away her severe missteps, a thought which occurred to him because—by all appearances—it was evident Njal didn’t care who led him. He hadn’t stood up for the very vacant role of Alpha that Fox had instead been allowed, for whatever reason, to step into at the time of Lethe’s apparent suicide, and he’d certainly wasted little time in shrugging the responsibility and role of Beta from his square shoulders after he’d initially accepted the bestowal. Njal struck him plainly as a wolf with approximately zero leadership qualities about him, whose only measures of superiority were demonstrated in the form of his age and longevity with the pack.

Neither of these stood out overly, and as it happened, Razo didn’t have a problem with anyone who was content to follow. What he had a problem with, in fact, was that a middle-aged wolf would exude the attitude of a teenager at a very inappropriate time, and with a pack mate he had never before deigned to acknowledge. They were all a bit ragged at the nerves, and surely he might bother to recognize that if he’d also bothered to think. Njal was not alone in his agitation. The Redefin male glanced at the shredded earth when he paused in step, then fixed his burning yellow eyes on the Sveijarn as he stood at his shoulder.

Anything else you’re very aware of? he asked with a mild dose of emphasis to get his point across. Such as why her den is filled in and bouldered shut while the stench of death hangs in the air? It might have been masked, but it was most definitely discernible, and if Njal could fill in this blank cleanly he might receive a nod of respect from the tawny male. As it was, he only saw a mostly empty shell of a wolf standing there with him, and he contemplated turning tail and looking for someone who had an idea of what had happened while he’d gone to track down other answers that Fox had outright denied him.