A single blackened ear flicked towards his mother as she spoke, hearing her praise and merely shrugging in response. His attention was more readily focused upon the beast whose hackles rose at the site of him and the sound of his voice. This was the only response his father gave, and Ripper’s hazel eyes watched him warily. Though the beast had not been a presence in their rearing, his sister’s tendencies suddenly began to make all the more sense. Apparently such things could be inherited by blood alone, not all mannerisms learned in puphood but perhaps inborn. How…strange.

Looking away from his parents, his gaze settled on the approaching form of Sekhmet. Now it was really a family affair. His black tipped tail thumped against the ground, pleased to see her. She was always roaming these days, her returns to the valley few and far between. Though he often wondered where she went to, and why she smelled of foreign grasses and salty water when she did return, he didn’t care enough to follow her and figure it out. And his sister was short-winded, to say the lease. Even that was generous. When she sidled up to him, snapping at his face, he automatically returned the gesture, nipping at her ear. It was less of a lighthearted gesture and more of a conditioned response. They had never been what most would call a playful pair, their puphood jousts more rough than what was typically seen between littermates. But it was all they had ever known, and the familiarity of it was comforting to the large boy. When she chided him for offering his name, he rolled his eyes. ”Whatever,” he said, tempted to speak her name aloud but refraining. Why she kept her name so secret and hidden he would never understand, but he’d not yet grown short-tempered enough with her to test her response if he were to speak it in front of others.

It was only the sound of rapid and heavy paw steps that made him snap back towards his parents, only to find his father’s immense form rapidly closing in on them. On his feet the wolf became even more of a mammoth, the length of his leg and breadth of his chest larger than any other wolf Ripper had ever laid eyes on. And yet it was not fear that flooded the boy’s mind, but more of a daunting awe as all he could do was look on in the moments before the monster of a wolf struck out at his sister and then turned his black and white head to bowl him over. Air rushed from his lungs on impact, but he did not fight it, his body rolling over as he hit the ground. Hazel eyes stared up in bafflement, his overlarge puppy form simply laying in the dry grass and dirt where his father had put him, impressed by the force he possessed even in just the swing of a head. Blinking, he swallowed and his nostrils flared as he drew air into his deflated lungs. Once more he blinked, shaking his head and pushing himself halfway into a sitting position, so fixated upon the snarling brute who hovered over him and his sister that he did not even hear the protective warning his mother gave. All he could do was wonder if someday he too would become such a force to be reckoned with.