Qeya River my head says i never should've left

Gjalla stopped mid-step, her sharp ears twitching at the growl that erupted from him. Her expression hardened immediately as she turned to face him again—only to find him already moving, his bulk cutting her off. She squared her shoulders instinctively, her jaw tightening as he loomed close. The heat in his voice wasn’t anger—not entirely—but it grated against her all the same. His words bit into the cold space between them, and she couldn’t stop the flicker of incredulity that passed over her features.

“Then what the do you want, Blackfell?” she demanded, daring him to push further, to give her a reason to dismiss him entirely. But as he spoke, shaking his head and dropping his posture in a way that seemed almost... vulnerable, she hesitated. He wasn’t trying to impose himself over her—not like before. And there, in the frantic flick of his eyes, the furrow of his brow. 

“I don’t care what you think you’ve said,” she snapped, though her voice had lost some of its venom, “or what truths you think you’ve told. If you can’t even take responsibility for the way you’ve treated me—”

She stopped, her words catching as she saw the way his jaw tightened, his gaze pleading with her in a way she wasn’t sure she’d ever seen before. "I’m—" The word hung in the air, unfinished, and her lips pressed into a thin line. Then came another.

The voice cut through the tension like a blade, sharp and commanding. Gjalla’s head turned sharply, her gaze narrowing as her packmate strode into view. She straightened, her periwinkle gaze flicking from Blackfell’s imposing form to the smaller but no less formidable she-wolf, Ice-Diver. 

“An excellent question.” Gjalla began coolly, her voice slicing through the crackling silence. “Claims he’s not here to waste my time— and yet...”  Her silence was deliberate, her piercing gaze waiting, demanding. If he thought she was going to make it easy for him, he didn’t know her at all. 

Her stare said it all. Go on.