Moonspear there's no one to bother me, except

Katmai almost wanted to roll his eyes — of course Kindle would speak so highly of someone who seemed to think so highly of him. He loved his uncle cousin, but sometimes Kindle could be a bit overbearing.

Which made the question the dog asked feel a little complex.

"That's alright, Cosmo," he assured the dog, still faintly baffled by the creature. "I don't mind loud if we aren't hunting. Perhaps we will sing together sometime, since we can do more than howl, now."

His tail spun at the thought. In stories, dogs had special skills. Kindle had already claimed that Cosmo's was "pulling things", but Katmai suspected this was some sort of joke. Surely there must be something more clever to the dog. Perhaps it was a magical voice.

"I suppose there isn't a team quite yet," he said to the little animal, moving along from the river to continue on his border-marking with a new friend in town. "Wolves usually live just in families — we call them villages or packs. I hope that we will call ourselves a village, soon. And if we do, I will be the village leader."

But he was uncertain about this, in truth. Kindle and Treepie were older than him, and obviously, so was Alaric. It was one of the things that had made him so hesitant to try and claim Moonspear.

"But that's really up to the rest of the villagers, don't you think?" he said frankly, looking back to Cosmo. "I have to be someone worth following."

Cosmo had come here with Kindle, after all. Perhaps he would rather follow him.