Moonspear The truth is, walls guarantee no one's safety.

Wylla probably did have him by the balls; he couldn’t help but share the chuckle. But he didn’t know much of Mahler either, only what Hydra had shared with him. Little snippets and bits of pieces of what she had ascertained of him through her own meetings, though he couldn’t quite remember if he had actually met the fellow outside of that day along the borders. They certainly hadn’t had a conversation he could recall, though he could have been mistaken. Plenty had happened—too much for him to keep track of.

Still, he hadn’t forgotten about the arrangement that Hydra had shared with him, that little talk about if it would have actually benefited them to arrange such a thing. It hadn’t sat right with Dirge, who was a bit more free spirited than his politically leaning wife. It felt no different than the arrangement that had brought Kukutux to them, though she had seemed to make herself content with her lot and place within their pack.

“More than likely,” he chimed in. “Hydra and I discussed it at one point, but nothing ever came of it. The distance now seems too great to consider if it did tickle our fancy… but personally I don’t think I could convince any of them to something arranged. Doesn’t sit right with me even if it would give us an ally,” though he considered Sagtannet an ally of sorts still. They had shared information with one another after all, and they had housed Nyx for quite a length. He could not begrudge them of that, though now he wondered if such a tie still mattered.

He shook his head.

“I don’t particularly care for the politics of things, truth be told. Our children are too headstrong and individual to be cowed into something like that. We can hold our territory, we can keep ourselves fed and safe. If we decide to branch out and take something else because we desire to and it can be done, we will.” He could jest about kings and queens and the like all he wanted, but Dirge was a knave at his core; the diadem he wore was considerably crooked and worn and had not belonged to him to begin with.

The original owner hadn’t needed it any more and Hydra didn’t need to wear two.

“If anything I would rather my sons or daughters take a neighboring territory for themselves than be carted off halfway across the world because that’s what keeps us from having a rivalry with another pack,” he went on. Hydra had no doubt heard this before and now he abused Nyx’s ears the same on a tangent. “We don’t even have to go looking for trouble for it to find us. It turns up along our borders every few weeks in the form of a brazen or crazed drifter that can’t take no for an answer.” It was a wonder why they didn’t have a pile of bones somewhere—wait, they probably did. He was certain of it.