He could not help but smile a lopsided, amused thing as she took on such intensity - would she really? He dared not question her any further, her energy suddenly eclipsing his own enough to make his skin crawl ever so slightly. He wondered, briefly, what she might look like rising that anything - what would she look like painted in violence and savagery? Was there a fighter within her with teeth bared, ready to risk it all? He'd never envisioned her that type, never pictured her with any darkness inside. Suddenly, he felt it though. Everybody had a shadow, it seemed.
Perhaps it had always been there. Perhaps he had been drawn to it, hopeful to coax it out. Whatever it was, at least they could be mutually uncomfortable.
He was glad for the subject change, glad to see her recede back into herself. She posed him an interesting question but one he dismissed with a flicker of his ear. "Judgement is natural," he stated flatly with a shrug of his shoulders, "just as you judge these defectors to be trustworthy, to be your friends and allies, they may judge you in turn." There was a reason Elohim had difficulty making friends. He had been raised beneath the shadow of judgement, constantly aware that weakness was judged, ranked and purged when needed, and never just the physical kind. He had been judged worthy to live but it did not mean that judgement ever stopped. Even now, he pondered as his eyes roamed to the south - towards his home - what judgement he might face when he returned reeking of Asteraia, her and all the other packs and places. Trustworthy? One day, maybe not. Judgements did not always align and where one saw trust, another may see distrust.
But then she lifts those lips up to bare her teeth and he cannot help but stir with excitement, his own chest lurching with sudden breath. There is a flicker of danger in her eyes and, for a moment, he is reminded of the chase, the hunt and the kill all at once, a heat in his blood that he subdues the best he can. Instead, his face is deadpan suddenly, eyes fixated on her own as he almost dares her to follow through...yet, they play games with their words, never more.
Her words sit with him for some time it seems as he merely ponders them, his eyes narrowed now as he breathes in once more, his lip having flexed up instinctively to bare the tip of his teeth. Yet, he keeps to himself, retreats ever so slightly as he reminds himself just where he is, just who he is. "I worry not for my own position," he finally hissed, his voice quieter but harsher, "but for yours. I have seen you so weak you could not think of the moors without quivering but now you stand atop a kingdom with defectors and nameless wolves alike at your paws. I am a friend from another home and you ask me these things and so, what prevents another from doing the same of any wolf here?" It is, perhaps, the most he has ever said, his voice a hoarse thing, something callous when he does not inject the jest that Aster inspires. Yet, he is honest in those moments, sprawled out for her to do as she pleases - he has gone too far, perhaps, yet he feels nothing but an ember of excitement as he allows the words to settle.
He speaks in Latin once more, readjusting so as to compose himself, though he braces beneath it, ready to feel her teeth or her banishment. "You might fight," his voice is thick with his accent now, truer to himself than any other moment perhaps, "but I would kill." He knows she will not understand and yet, the words are smooth, almost a poem as his eyes lock back onto hers.