Try to stop time in the aftermath.

Malachi had remained neutral as Danica spoke, and if she had felt any judgement from him based on her words she ignored it. She wasn't going to lie and say that she would put the well-being of these other pack wolves above her own, a requirement when one became Alpha. She did not know many of them, and if she had had her way at least two of them would never have been allowed in. She'd have turned them away at the borders. She didn't have the empathy in her to deal with things that Tuwawi had needed to handle. It was better for everyone that she knew this.

Luckily for all of them, Malachi's was not so flawed a creature. She watched gladly as he shifted himself, no longer in submission but much more respectable in bearing. He would have a lot of work ahead of him, and she did wish him the best. She was sure the pack would take him, what other choice did they have?

"Hopefully they will return soon," she simply added, though she dipped her head gratefully in acknowledgement of his acquiescence.