Blackfeather Woods Back then, when I stupidly took pride

Set close to the borders, but not quite on them. @Nemesis

The day had been more than eventful. In such a short time, so much had taken place, making the boy happy to have chosen his father over his mother. Not to say he didn’t miss the others, because he often did, it was more that he didn’t regret his decision. It felt as if he truly belonged in Blackfeather, making any other place pale in comparison. Even the Northern regions that his father had told him about, the same area Kove had been born into, didn’t seem nearly as interesting anymore. Stories of the frozen land had made it seem like the best place ever when they were still in Bearclaw, but since entering the woods, he found himself barely even thinking about the Inuit pack. Instead, his focus was on the shadows, and the shadows only. The cool air and silence they carried… even the swamps, however smelly they may be, appealed to him to some extent.
 
As Xan was walking along through the territory he’d quickly started to favour, a foreign, yet somehow still familiar, scent drifted past his nose. He knew he’d smelled it somewhere before, and the boy’s face scrunched up lightly as he tried to recall the owner of the scent. Then, it hit him. He didn’t know the owner by appearance, but he had definitely smelled it before. It was the same strong fragrance that had lingered in the little den he’d found back in the maple woods of the valley. Since he’d never seen the previous occupant of the space, as it’d been abandoned long before his finding of it, he wanted to find out what it was. Without giving it a second thought, he took off in the direction it had come from. As he entered a space where the trees had seemingly parted, he was practically smacked by the odor, informing him that it was far fresher than what he'd been following. That also meant whatever it belonged to was close by, so he slowed down and started nosing around. He was about to start looking elsewhere after having not spotted the creature immediately, but the rustling of a bush made him stop dead in his tracks.
 
The small Inuit whipped his body around just in time to see the red fox emerge from its hiding spot. His queer eyes locked onto the vulpine’s form, hackles rising unknowingly and a small growl vibrating from his throat. The two continued to stare one another down, before Xan lurched forwards, wanting to get a closer look. Of course, the fox did not take lightly to that, backing uo a few paces before proceeding to circle the whelp. Alexander watched the red fox closely, growling whenever it tried to get close. After his last wordless threat, the fox had continued to linger a bit too close, and so the child reacted in the same way anyone would—he jumped forward and wrapped his little jaws right around the fox’s bushy tail. That didn’t sit well with it, and it moved away, jumping into the air from the sheer shock of what had happened. That was all the vulpine needed, too, before it’d started stalking the child, circling him with revenge as its only intentions.