Spring. What a season. It was a challenge to keep his black lips from curling just at the thought of it. The air warmed and filled with the calls of pups whose conception had been little more than an onslaught of hormones to keep the chill at bay during winter. He snorted to himself. A family is something he had never wanted, never thought himself capable of having, and yet a small flea had attached itself to him by little more than chance alone. A flew whom, if rumor was to be believed, had found herself on a dark path that the battered warrior both understood and yet hated for his free-spirit of an adoptive daughter. And then there was her… mate, the red males shoulders itched at the very thought of him. He doubted anyone could be good enough for the daughter he had raised, the daughter he had made strong. Then they went and made more weak little pups and who do you think was going to get tasked with making sure they didn’t die by the natural causes that were in abundance in the marshes?

Grumbling he had set off trudging through the moors, their waters higher now with the consistent spring rains making the threat of the sharp-toothed amphibians they cohabitated with ever more real. It was better than the crimson male run into them than those in the pack that were less prepared to deal with such dangers, which is why he had made it his personal guard duty as of late. As he plodded along sounds up ahead caught his attention, ears perked forward his acid-green and yellow eyes peered through the maze of high marsh grasses to see two pups playing at the waters edge.

A long drawn out sigh left his white muzzle, there was something about the swamps that had him constantly finding pups on their own. He hoped these two weren’t orphans that would latch onto him like the last, in fact he was already considering backing away before they had a chance to notice him and letting the alligators and nature sort out the rest but there was a strange something that niggled at the back of his mind which would not let his large paws turn around. The image of a tiny pup mottled in all colors and covered in dirt hiding in the crook of a pine tree. With another grumbling sigh he knew he could not leave them alone, but perhaps instead he could teach them a lesson about respecting the dangerous world in which they lived.

Lowering his large body he slunk toward them, staying largely out of sight so that if they saw him there would be nothing recognizable but a large foreign figure moving amongst the reeds. He drug his legs through the water slowly, sloshing murky liquid as he went and holding a low, rumbling growl deep in his chest. He watched them as carefully as he could through the brush, eager to see their reaction to what he hoped would be seen as imminent danger if his portrayal of an alligator was convincing enough. Better they learn now, better they learn form him the harsh realities of this world.