Packs were a thing sullied in his mind, often calling up broken memories that set his teeth on edge. From the fragmented reality of his childhood in the red pack - never entirely pieced back together - to the only true defeat he had ever known in the plains, coming across pack borders could set the beast to savagery. And so he refused to linger close them. He had tracked down Enya, within the confines of a pack, but he could not stay there with her. The time he had spent with her was different to that which he had spent with the white temptress, Jaidah. How and why was beyond him - such notions were not within his capacity. He was a wolf who lived by instinct.

It was almost as if his encounter with crossing into a pack's territory repulsed him from their borders. He had trekked north ever since, following prey of both the lupine and cervine varieties. But he was no longer the only beast who haunted the darkness of night. On more than one night he had seen the beasts from afar, simply watching them rather than engaging. Fear was not a thing he knew, but these creatures were not prey, and so he avoided them. Eventually it became easier to travel during the day than the night, which is what found him pacing through the forest that morning.

Reaver had finally begun to move south once more, passing back through the shadowed forests with the intention of returning to the wolf he had claimed as his mate. She had come to him that winter, and once more their copulation had led to pups. This time, he would not be kept from testing them until they had time to grow. And so he moved south, to battle the demons that clashed in his mind whenever a pack's borders reared up in front of him.

As he passed through the forest, the crack of a twig under another's paw had his head lifting, dark teal eyes striated through with emerald flashing to the side. He stopped, lips peeling back in a silent grimace as she moved through a beam of light that cascaded from the canopy. Her track of movement would bring her to cross his path, and he was warning her to stay out of his way.