it is the scent of raw flesh that wakes him. raw flesh that is not wolf but bear. he opens pink eyes to see fenrir stripping the raw hide from the bear’s back, from just behind the head and to the base of its tail, the flesh is stripped. it was not perfect, but somehow the remaining flesh with strange hairy arms and head and belly make him sigh out in morbid humor. he does not speak, nor stir, feeling too good in his stillness to aggravate whatever injuries that had been inflicted. he had seen ifrit and neirin’s last moments. he knows that the young red son of ifrit would soon grow to be even better than his father, if even more violent and chilling to watch.

and he knows that neirin does not die as the last of his line.

he can see the golden child as he stares into the den from behind the red giant and his now painted-red mate, vladimir and semele and camilla mourning in their own ways. he does not look for the white son. he imagines he is with fenrir’s youngest as he always seemed prone to do.

what intrigues him is greer dodging from neirin’s den, still seeming to limp despite treatments (it had not been overly long since her joining to the brothers’ family) coming to meet him. he looks at her, feeling odd, dreading movements that he knows she has come to help him through… and so with a string of whimpers and an immense struggle to stand, he leans into her side, looking to delya with an intense sharpness to his gaze. “please, will you see to the bear? alice will want it deconstructed… or, on second thought… could you fetch Prince Viserys… Haziel will be needed for dear Everlyse...” he asks, strangling as his hind droops to a sit involuntarily and he is made to right it on his way to his proper den.