Ravensblood Forest the bigger they are, the harder they fall

"I do not need perspective," Jinx pointed out, her temper flaring briefly. If anybody needed perspective, she thought, it was Pied. It was Hawkeye, and Zombie. In Jinx's mind, she had messed up once. She had messed up bad but nevertheless, it was once. In all her time leading Shearwater Bay, Jinx prided herself in making few mistakes, and repairing what damage Nanuq had wrought with her senseless campaign against Siku. Oh, what her wrath might've done to these Teekon Wilds wolves had she known they judged her for Shearwater Bay, as well, they who knew nothing of her... Who knew nothing of the pain she felt every day knowing she could not return there.

"It seems to me that claiming you were all going to starve because of me, and claiming that the wolf who maintained order had left you, are very different claims," she said quietly, but somberly, with the corner of her lip pulled up briefly in an unclear expression. "But, if you wish to make it seem like the things I've heard others say of me are less... Poisonousss, well, the better for your conscience. I do not have a bad reputation amongst those who have not heard of Bon Dye." Jinx didn't know whether it was Pied or Hawkeye that spread rumours of her, but she had been approached about them before. Zombie had said it, and Akhlut had once asked her about it. No doubt he had heard of it from the giant mouths of her former subordinates; all wolves who knew of Bon Dye were apt to claim her inept, and all who did not treated her well as any other, or at least that was the exaggerated claim Jinx would make.

There were others—Chakra, Peregrine, some others who had heard of the infamous Jinx who, she thought, had truly done little to earn her infamy—but she hadn't heard of them. "In any case," she said, mimicking Pied's own words, and for once dropping the subject, "if what I did is no different than what you did, then Akhlut is no different than I for being away, and if I am a hypocrite to leave, then you are a hypocrite to stay." Not that she thought Pied would ever leave based on that, but she thought it was clever nonetheless (even if it wasn't).

"As for my shaman," she said, "yes, it is Lecter. He was summoned by Sos as well, at the same time. So was Clarice, his daughter." While this was a coincidence borne mostly of each wolf's deluded views, to Jinx, it was twisted confirmation that she had done the right thing, and that the remains of Bon Dye had not.