These past months I had been striving to keep myself busy, to keep my mind and body occupied as frequently as possible. Just because I was approaching nine years of age didn't mean I was going to lose my edge. Still the best hunter around by leaps and bounds, there wasn't a type of prey in Glorall that I hadn't mastered how to hunt. The near constant work of my duty to keep the pack fed meant that my bodice was hard with well toned muscle. My athletic frame was truly built for this job. The adrenaline of the hunt kept me invigorated, and it made me happy. Or happy enough.

I'd always felt a dedication to my role as the Trapper of Glorall. It was a rank I'd held since I was a mere two years old. Six years had come and gone since that first intrepid seal hunt. But I'd thrown myself even more whole-heartedly into my job (if that was even possible) in the last few months. The distraction was good, it kept me busy to constantly be on the hunt to feed myself or other wolves in the pack. And it held my mind off from straying to thoughts of Haziel. My heart ached when I thought of him, and I couldn't bear that weakness. I missed him, missed leaving him prizes from my hunts and just talking to him. Sometimes I wondered what had changed, why he had withdrawn from me, from the pack. Of course it didn't help matters that at some point along the way I had stopped trying to wiggle my way back into his days, turning my attention to the hunt entirely. Now it was all that kept me from breaking when I came across his scent trails throughout the pack lands.

At least I always knew he was safe, that he was okay and relatively close. The bond graced me with that, and maybe cursed me, too. Every once in a while I would have a phantom pain in a limb or shoulder, and I would be left to wonder if Haziel had blindly bumped into something and hurt himself. I had always been impressed with his ability to navigate the territory with only his senses of touch, smell, and hearing to guide him. But a blind wolf was still blind. Those hazed over, handsome dark blue eyes accented with yellow staring unseeingly from his dastardly good looking face. I shook my head, dark ears rattling as I tried to push the recollection of his face aside. Not for the first time I thought that maybe he just didn't think of me that way, the way I had about him. After all, he couldn't see the beautiful gray tones of my fur or the cute white speckles on my paw. Maybe he couldn't feel that kind of attraction towards me.

Eager for a distraction, I grabbed the thing closest to my paws - a mostly consumed Capybara haunch. Really it was largely just bone with a few scraps of meat left on it, but my jaws took to it eagerly. I laid down in the small coastal clearing, not far from my den, and chewed at the bone vigorously, keen to get the marrow at its center. Allowing myself to focus all of my attention on the task at hand, doing everything I could to ignore thoughts of my imprint, I didn't realize he was approaching me until my name was called out. I froze, the sound of his voice sending a shiver down my spine. His presence had been the last thing I had expected today.

Releasing the bone from my grasp, I looked up at him. He stood a short distance away, looking in my direction, over the top of my head. For a second all I could do was take him in - that chiseled jaw and broad chest, the darkness of his fur and the cape of cinnamon that ran down his back. I felt a pang of guilt when I noticed that he'd lost weight - not dangerously thin, but still leaner than he'd been the last time I'd seen him. His question hung in the air unanswered, and I realized that I was staring. Quickly I shifted in the sandy soil and rose to my paws. "Always, Haziel," I answered, hesitating as I moved to step closer to him, unsure of myself in a way that was so very foreign to me.