The Empress wolf had once more greedily latched onto the opportunity to “scout” for lost members. If the children kept wandering away at this rate he would always have an excuse to laze around outside of the territory. Nobody would ever say anything if he could claim that he had been searching tirelessly for precious poor little blind @Kalysta who was out there all alone. The leaders seemed even more worried about this one than any of the others who had came and went and then came back.

A nicer wolf would have worried, but he felt joyful. Today he had hunkered down in the abandoned den of a long disbanded pack amongst the cedarwood trees. It had been a pleasant nap all morning, and now he stretched and lounged in the entrance, no plans on moving much today. That is until he heard a screech and looked up in time to see a flash of talons and duck back into the den behind him. The falcon missed by only inches, causing the teen’s heart to pound as he peered out, would it come back for him? It landed on a branch nearby, watching the wolf as closely as Khalon was watching the bird.

The teen had been so focused on locking eyes with the falcon in the tree, gold eyes locked on gold eyes in a battle of wills. He of course lost the blinking content, though was almost immediately vindicated when it cranked its head to the side to view someone else with its hateful gaze. Khalon himself also looked, and rolled his eyes when he realized that his sister had followed him here. Could she never just leave him alone!?

He opened his mouth to say something - accuse her of being a rat or a better insult if he could think of it. Then he saw the bird begin to swoop down towards her, screeching, talons outstretched and ready to claw at her eyes or snatch chunks or her fur out. Khalon backed up further within the den so as to not attract any wrath on himself, but couldn’t stop himself from cackling gleefully. It was about time that Torianna got her shit rocked, it would be better if he were the one doing it, but this was still pretty good. Silver medal at least.

There was not a lot of love lost between the siblings, this much was obvious.

What should have been a gleeful moment for the tawny yearling was quickly brought back down to annoyance. The laughter died on his lips when Torianna was successful in wrestling the hawk to the ground with what appeared like minimal to no injury from where he was standing. She almost made it look easy and here he was hiding in the den from the bird. Tail stiffened behind him in anger as he watched his sister not get torn up, or even a poke in the eye. Another wolf might have been impressed that she looked graceful in her take down, instead it just festered his jealousy.

But, he wouldn’t let her know how much she got to him. Once he was sure the bird had been wrangled and wasn’t going to turn its talons on him - nothing would be worse for him than being beat up by a falcon that Torianna had conquered with ease - he stepped out of the darkness of the den. Passive aggressively he plastered a bright smile on his face and called, ”Great catch!” His voice dripped with exaggerated enthusiasm until he dropped the act and followed it up with, ”Really impressive that you caught a glorified dove, I’m sure you would have made Dad really proud with that one.” He knew that would hurt her and that’s why he said it.

It hurt all of them that Vayko had left, but he knew it hurt Torianna most of all. Gold eyes glinted as he watched her for the reaction he was sure he was going to get out of her.