Kintla Flatlands DISCOVER · live fast, die young

She had expected a much harsher reaction, to be sure—something along the lines of accusatory hatred, as had been thrown at her by the other former Bon Dye wolves—but Jinx held her ground nonetheless as Zombie instead bristled and moved back in a much milder fashion that she'd imagined. There was no telling what the thin female would do if passion heated her enough, what spleen she might have developed in their time apart. Irrationality fit Jinx like a glove now, and part of her suspected Zombie was susceptible to that same disease of recklessness... But that part of her was wrong, at least for now.

What she got instead was perhaps the most honestly and simply spoken of accusations thus far. While Jinx was unaware that Zombie mentally considered the blood oath of great import, she was glad it was not brought up verbally, since neither Pied nor Hawkeye had understood the point of it when they'd spoken of it. She suspected all of them were the same, and didn't miss her mark by much... But Zombie was quieter about it, and that made it all the more powerful.

Still, Jinx was capricious if nothing else, as inconsistent as the weather, and not terribly prone to bouts of guilt. She made no move toward her former pack mate, anticipating that it would do little more than agitate her; instead, she took her own step backward, placing more space between them in the event Zombie was more volatile than she made out to be. "My god required my presence elsewhere," she stated, as simple and vague an explanation as she had offered Pied the first time she'd been confronted. "I returned to find all my wolves gone. Whose idea was it to elect Hawkeye?" she wondered suddenly. Or maybe the brutish woman had simply seized power from them. "I would not have expected Leto nor you to leave the forest. A wolf is sworn to defend their territory, is that not right?"

All this was said in a somewhat airy voice, as if Jinx sought to turn any guilt back on the other party. After all, she had gone for noble purposes. Her pack was not supposed to have left without her. In Jinx's mind, it was their fault for being so hasty as to think she had abandoned them; so she had maintained with all of her other opposers, and so she would with Zombie, though there was a secret pang in her gut of some other sort of remorse for the rust-brushed female.