He had been good. He had stayed away. Like a child, he had listened to her and kept quiet in the background of her life. But he had grown bitter too, or perhaps he had simply grown bored with the unease. The tension that lay across Moladion was thick and alive with electricity and some part of him sought to poke at it; like a canker sore, he wished to relieve it the only way he knew how. He'd have to be the one to scratch the itch. Aster just happened to be that itch.
Besides, he had grown curious: how serious were the threats? Part of him was enticed by the prospect of being chased down, the exhileration of the hunt enough to make his paws itchy. Yet, mostly he hated to admit the true reason he sought to break the rules: he hadn't seen her for some time. It had been seasons, no? Her mark on him had healed into the white flesh of a scar and he had sought to find her answers in Diveen (though he knew his work was unfinished still) already so...it must have been seasons. Restless, in any case.
And so he crept in the shadows of the night, seamless in the darkness of the eve as the sun sought to trace him in faint silver light. Silver caressed the curve of his jaw and back as he slid through the snow of the badlands, the inbetween of territory and free land; he moved slowly, deliberately, the red of his eyes catching in the light from time to time as he stalked towards where her scent clustered the most.
But her scent was wrong. It made his nose wrinkle and his body stiffen; it was wrong. Her scent no longer belonged to just her and some part of him recoiled with a hiss despite the nothingness that rested upon his features. His sister had mentioned gods and now they had found him to play their games with. They were laughing. He swore he could hear it on the wind.
The call for her was long, tainted with the call for anybody. He could not help that lick of challenge in his tone as he waited in the moonlight, half lit and sneering with displeasure at his own foolery.