Swiftcurrent Creek Bumblebees

Having followed his chosen bitch home, Farstep began preparations for the takeover of the pack.

It wasn't hostile, not really. Instinct told him that, having secured the attention of the Alpha female and believing her possessed her, he was to be the Alpha male, and her wolves would gather beneath him as well. It was an incorrect assumption, by all means, but one that nevertheless he wholly believed because nature told him that was how things worked.

So deep in that belief was he that the ginger male picked his way along the territory's outskirts, seeking every spot that any wolf but Fox had marked and overlaying his own urine over it. He soon would come to understand that this land was completely unlike his own homeland and every other wolf pack in the world, but it wouldn't be through explanations and arguments, not of the non-physical sort.

The borders were normally a place of evasion for Tuwawi, who sought to stay nearer the heart of the territory due to the sensitive condition of being with child. Though she was a warden, and a fierce protector of their claim, the time had come to let the other take this charge and allow the impending mother to seek seclusion within Swiftcurrent's depths. However, multiple events had left the pack shaken and down three core members including Jace and Ferdie — two young, imposing males. Njal and Bazi's plate were already full with organizing the pack which was, at best, a hodgepodge of new and apathetic recruits who were mostly young and unskilled. Feeling the pressure to step up and maintain her usual responsibilities, the wildling she-wolf flirted along the borders... not strutting so bold out in the open, but keeping a sharp eye out for anything sinister behind the treeline.

Tuwawi grumbled as she moved along the fringe at an easy swagger, still ruminating over the expulsion of two wolves she had begun to think of as family. Her conscious was split over the decision, and other troubles about their leadership and the state of Swiftcurrent rippled within psyche. All of a sudden, the pungent scent of a strange ammonia broke her train of thought. It was the mark of a wolf she did not recognize, and her split lip curled at the alien scent as her snout inspected the plant he had showered. Vermilion hair spiked from her crown to the base of her tail, and the instinct to expunge overrode the wisdom to seek safety. Her fiery nature took over, and thus Swiftcurrent's Delta broke into a lofty trot, hair bristling as she ate up the ground, to seek and destroy this bold degenerate.

Eventually she came upon the vagrant a few lengths away, as he was not difficult to find thanks to the trail he had left. Tuwawi made no secret of her presence as a low, rumbling growl thundered from her throat, muscles taught and stormy gaze completely fixated in a predatory way. Her ears cupped forward, sooty tail rigidly waving in short undulations as she took the briefest of moments to scrutinize the stranger who so heedlessly piddeled along their borders. He was too distant to scent, to realize Fox had brought him here, and his appearance was unknown to the Sveijarn. Her tattered maw wrinkled and curled to reveal the pointed ends of her enamel. as she took a fearless step forward, neck arching and paws spreading to find their footing, prepared to give chase. Explain yourself or be prepared to be scruffed right here in the dirt, was what her body screamed, momentarily forgetting her fragile state.

A lone wolf joining a family pack was a complex collection of interactions that even wise old dogs could not easily explain. In Farstep's case, this was no family pack, but he mistakenly believed it was. He could establish himself all he wanted, as he was doing now, but there would come a time when the distrustful followers of Fox would challenge his right to be there. The dog seemed at ease now as he padded along the borders, replacing scents with his own... But underneath that calm exterior was the nervous instinct to defend his social status, or at least the one he falsely believed he had.

Hence, when a wolf curiously resembling Fox but quite a bit larger approached him in a manner that was far from deferential, the misled dog responded unfavourably. He danced on a precipice between submission and dominance, toeing the line drawn between his need to be accepted by those he would lead and his need to exert authority over those who would challenge him. He settled for something less ambivalent, but the raising of his head, the forward tilt of his ears, and the wide, unblinking stare were all enough to say he did not concede, though at any moment he might be inclined to submit merely to gain her acceptance of his new place here.

Poor Farstep could not have known that Fox's coy tactic to bring him into the folds of her society was not the same primal coming together of male and female wolf in the wilds of his homeland. There, dispersal wolves met other dispersal wolves and, if accepting of one another, were bound to one another, and shared one another's status. This was imprinted into his genetic code as an instinct that he fervently responded to. Here things were much less clear-cut, as he was no doubt about to find out.