Heron Lake Plateau [m] Got death on his breath, halitosis

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I got carried away and decided to just make a new thread LOL. Dated roughly for May 6th!

The first time Tybault had killed another wolf, he'd been six months old. A skinny, terrified boy under his father's sharp gaze. He hadn't cried then — never in front of his father after that final time only weeks prior, when he'd beat him nearly unconscious for the show of weakness — but later in the safety of his bed, when all the blood had been washed away and the scent of it lingered still.

The last time Tybault had killed another wolf, he'd been little more than a yearling. He hadn't cried then. He'd spit on the man's still-twitching body and walked away, leaving him alone in his final moments of agony.

Sometimes he could still smell the blood.

Yet the blood in the air now was all too real. Reina's scent trail, reclaimed somewhere past the marsh he'd trekked through, was rife with it. Her blood. His teeth clenched painfully each time he caught the tang of it on the breeze.

He wouldn't give her captor the courtesy of a warning. In the early hours of the morning he tracked the pair, careful to keep his distance even when he caught sight of them. For a time he only watched. Followed. It was afternoon by the time he parted to scope the area, laying his scent along the outskirts as a warning to anyone who might interrupt his plans for the night.

And as the sun began to fall, he returned to them. Tybault kept to the deep shadows of the foliage, hidden from the dim dusklight as it fully faded from the sky, and silently recited a prayer to Mother Rain. He'd stopped believing long ago. It just seemed fitting.

He hoped Reverie wouldn't hate him too much for failing to return to her.

It was only when the pair had settled in to sleep for the night that Tybault would emerge from the shadows, silent save the rush of his paws across the ground. There was no thought. Nothing but the wind in his ears and the scent of blood, the painful tension in his jaws as he lunged to maim the captor's hind legs.

The world narrowed to a pinprick, just the two of them suspended in some stark red reality of their own. Tybault would see and hear nothing else.