For a long while after loosing his call, Riuk sat morosely atop his rock in the stony silence imposed by the conifers. Perhaps for minutes, perhaps for hours, perhaps for days the titan sat as the light filtering down from above danced through his mixed brown and black coat. He knew not how much time truly passed, nor did he care, for where else did he have to go? Everything he had known had been destroyed. Everyone he had loved seemed to have disappeared without a trace. And so he sat, massive chocolate head hung low, level with his heavy heart.

He heard, as though from a great distance, the passive sounds of the forest around him. Here, a bird twittered. There, something small and inoffensive scrambled through the underbrush. None of it was sufficient to rouse the brute from his melancholy contemplation. He was ages away, in another time when the forest had made sense. In that other place he had ruled unopposed, leader of his own pack, lone master of his own lands. But now…now he was as lost and alone as a pup, staggering blindly from its birth-den for the first time. He was no one. He was nothing.

With this realization, a small spark of anger flashed deep within his chest, cutting briefly through the fog of his grief. He had fought long and hard to attain the rank he had held in Spring Grounds. Moreover, he had grown accustomed to the respect from other wolves it demanded. The spark flashed again, and this time caught, starting a slow, steady burn of fury within him. Slowly he raised his mighty head and looked around him with eyes lit by that burning, seeing the scene as though for the first time. How far he had fallen, to be cowering at the borders of some unknown king! Not so much time had passed since he himself had been king, and now he was stopped mid-stride by a faint scent marking in the leaves? He gained his feet with a savage sound which was half bark, half laugh, and made for the invisible border once more. He was not some beggar, some vagrant to be left lingering at the border. He was not one to sit and await judgement from some stranger. He was Riuk, King (former notwithstanding) of Spring Grounds, and he was going to…….stop, again, apparently. Even in all his self-righteous fury, the beast was bound by the laws of the forest, and those laws dictated that he must not step foot over that invisible line on the ground until invited to do so. With a frustrated snarl he sprang back from the border once more and took up an agitated pacing just beyond it.

The knowledge that he would again have to live as an outcast, as a rank-less nobody under the rule of some stranger stoked in him an ire as black as the moonless night. He was an alpha at heart, and the thought of having to surrender to someone else’s will set him snapping and snarling to himself as he paced. It was in such a state that the stranger’s footfalls came to him from within the pack territory. He suppressed a growl at their approach and made every attempt to conceal his wrath. He seated himself once more upon the forest floor, but found that he could not force his lips to close over his glistening fangs nor the hairs on his back to lie flat.

He saw the stranger from some distance and had ample time to perceive his ill-temper and arrogance well before the two were within speaking distance. A stiffened gait and raised hackles spoke of the stranger’s agitation. For the briefest of moments concern reared in the back of Riuk’s mind. Here, clearly, was a wolf on edge. But as the stranger drew nearer, his concern was erased by the boy’s youth. Though he was no pup, perhaps being only a season away from full adulthood, Riuk knew that he had the advantage of many years and the experience they brought over this stranger. As he reached the border, Riuk deliberately took his feet once more, pulling himself up to his full mighty stature.

“I’m Vladimir, the next ruler of this pack. Who the hell are you and what do you want?”

Riuk was not intimidated by Vladimir’s harsh tone, nor by the bristling of his coat, nor by the flash of his fangs as he spoke. This he made readily apparent by laughing outright at the boy’s demand in the same barking fashion as before.

“I,” he began, in a low and menacing voice, barely above a growl. “am Riuk, a returning alpha of these lands.”

If this petulant child was the one they had sent to collect his submission, Riuk would be sending him back empty handed and robbed of some of his pride. He knew well enough that he would have to submit somewhere, sometime in order to begin his life anew, but he would be damned if it was to this overconfident youth. He turned his head to the right to allow the other wolf a full view of the terrible scars that ran down the left side of his face and neck, for they spoke more of his prowess and experience than he cared to put into words with this wolf-child.

“Vladimir,” he said, turning his head back after a sufficient pause. ”I have no interest in speaking to the next ruler of this pack. Bring me your king, boy . I have little time and less patience for the games of pups grown too big for their dens.”

He let his words hang in the air between them, never once moving his amber gaze from the blue eyes of his would-be opponent. He stood stock-still, every tempered muscle locked into position and ready to spring. As the rumble of his voice faded away, he let the edges of his snarl curl up into a taunting smile. Let the boy make of that what he would. Riuk was ready for whatever response would come.

. | . | . | .