Sawtooth Spire i love only that which they defend

;;;

it mattered not what she said, for she was too young to care beyond herself. mahler too had been such at this age; his present state of impassivity as she passed not one, but three challenges before him had been cultivated. he began to understand the nature of blodreina now, and the place she had once come from. and yet it did not matter to mahler.
she was a child, and he nigh upon his fifth year. and she was not within her natal realm, and blood, and kith; but upon his stone and earth, in his forest, in the rakish open air of sagtannet, demanding from him that which she had no right to ask.
in his heart, he did not trust her to keep this land protected, for he did not believe in her mission. that was the end of it for mahler, and yet praimfaya brought her selfishness to bear all the same. it was not for sagtannet she acted. it was the intention of a youngster not yet tried in ways he had been. though he did not suspect malice existed in her heart, he was intolerable, at once, of her statement that she was commander while standing before her leader.
in a fluid motion, he lunged for her scruff, intending to yank her down onto the hard-packed loam. rangy and honed though she might be, scarred from her own battles, he had a great and terrible presence only carved from his time in these now-cursed mountains.
mahler was not unaware that part of his ire was misplaced. praimfaya had served sagtannet well, and for that he had considered a multitude of ways in which her future might be enhanced in the feral woodlands. blodreina had too been a fierce warrior, and ingram a man faithful to diaspora.
but thade's loss studded the back of his mind, always, and now it swept to bloodstained screaming, wailing of lamblike babes as unknown wolves clawed up the mountain to eradicate the closest threat to their dominance. diaspora was over; mahler no longer wished to hold all the sunspire, desired only for the safety of all the cubs upon the sawtooth face. 
they were too close to risk such, and praimfaya insisted she would do it all the same. he knew the nature of cruel wolves; he knew the evil in their kind, and trusted no word but his own on that matter.
the time for words was over. the time for submission had arrived, and if praimfaya wished a devil's hope in heaven to return, she would honor the command he flew now with a coldwrought snarl and the upflung banner of his crest, muscles bunching and hackles flaring toward the skies as he sought to cast her down.