Kintla Flatlands Sound the bugle

Without preamble, she invited him to join her ranks, offering him protection and, more tantalizingly, a meal. Peregrine looked at her shrewdly, mistrustful of this offer. Why would she want him in her pack? She knew nothing about him, his strengths and weaknesses or his character. All Hawkeye knew about him was that he was down on his luck and savagely angry because of it. The more he thought about it, the more nonplussed his expression became.

"Why...?" he asked lowly after yet another long stretch of silence. "You don't know me. You don't know the first thing about me." He paused, frowning severely. "Maybe I already belong to a pack," he said, the words causing furious turmoil on the inside.

Since the day he was born, he'd been a part of Flightless Falcons and now, after three years, he was alone for the first time in his life. He'd spent so much time stewing over the events of his exile, he hadn't yet given any consideration to what came next... up until his paralysis a few moments ago. It dawned on him that he had two choices: live on his own or take up with another pack. The first choice made him feel empty and even frightened and the latter choice, quite frankly, scared the shit out of him.

"What is your pack, Hawkeye?" Peregrine asked, his words sounding awkward to his own ears. He wanted to know the name of the pack, its values, its location and every other detail before he could even begin to contemplate the possibility of joining.