Blacktail Deer Plateau woke up on the wrong side

So he didn’t deny that the lineup thus far was… less than formidable, and seemed to take casual amusement in her questioning. Finley kept quiet as Donovan continued his story; remarkable, she thought, just how much one could learn by saying absolutely nothing.

The pieces fell together: Nemesis was not partner-as-in-mate (or if she was, then it was less important to the purpose of the pack’s founding), but a partner-in-founding. In “crime,” if one would. But as Donovan explained the noble means of his own old pack, Finley’s eyes widened and her ears pricked with interest. Of course he would take in a weakling like Derg if the pack—the Saints, she noted, not the Abbey; a noble name indeed—was something of a mercenary group. And of particular interest to Finley was the unspoken vow that even those fallen, helpless and cast out seemingly beyond repair, had a second chance with the Saints. No, more than a passive “chance”—a future.

She hadn’t told Donovan anything of her own past, right? His eyes gleamed as he smirked a toothy smirk; the slightest jerk of her head gave away her surprise. But it was instinctual, nothing more, and if anything her conscious mind was screaming in the opposite direction. If Donovan was trying to recruit her, his words snaked around her mind like a charm. There was raw ambition to his statements, a promise: this was, if not now then in the future, so much more than a brute, a wild card, and a pitiable sod. These were the Saints. And they would be, in his own words, “positively deadly.”

He hadn’t said a thing about Finley herself, yet her tail lowered and her wordless nod dipped into an almost-bow. She still didn’t look away, wouldn’t roll over for an unproven king. But, clear and shining as the sap down the sequoias, Finley was entranced. If nothing else, Donovan had a way with words.