the story of my life

I have other threads to reply to but I wanted to throw Akh in here. :D Going to do a bit of time warping here to make this prior to Pied joining HR.

Akhlut had waited too long to seek out Jinx, the pale female he'd seen only from a distance and whose voice he'd heard only in howls. Now, he made finding her a priority, for curiosity had gotten the better of him: why had Pied, the female Delta of Blacktail Deer Plateau, asked him about her? Was she causing problems so soon after finding a place for herself in Horizon Ridge? Akhlut would harbor no idle troublemakers. Yet something in the Kesuk-Nereides made him give pause to accuse her immediately. Fundamentally he felt that Jinx was not out to harm his pack's reputation. She seemed quite at home, from what he coul ascertain, in their seaside home, and she had come to him with no complaints and no petitions, so he supposed she was all right.

As fortune would have it, Akhlut's search for Jinx on one late afternoon was a short one indeed. Her pale form stood out against the dark rock of Horizon Ridge's namesake landmark, where the trees fell away and only the large jagged scar of earth remained. Akhlut himself remained hidden amongst a cluster of ferns, damped down though they were with a light cover of snow, and watched her for a moment. Something in her appearance seemed maddeningly familiar and yet he could not pinpoint it. She looked, too, to be in something of a foul mood, if he was reading her stiff posture and grim facial expression correctly. Though the Alpha's Light leanings told him he should just approach the woman frankly and ask what Pied had been on about, then get on with their lives, Akhlut hesitated. He wasn't sure that the more-reclusive wolf would take kindly to that sort of treatment. They were, after all, near strangers, and some wolves were quiet and reclusive without being secretive or plotting mayhem.

In the end, Akhlut settled for a midway approach. His poise when he ventured out onto the bald rock was that of confident Alpha, casual enough on his own lands, but with an air of light dominance. His tail arched halfway over his back, and his head was held high. His body, though not tense with the potential for conflict, moved easily and gracefully, and his ice-blue eyes stared straight at Jinx. Akhlut would test her mettle, but he suspected that this female would bend easily beneath his calm assertiveness, and then they might progress to a real encounter that was not abetted by each of them being uncertain of the role and trustworthiness of the other.