The sun seemed to disappear early.

His work did not cease when the sunlight did. Especially not when he had noticed someone had stirred to life not far from him. Understandably they seemed just as perturbed as he did. Disgruntled even, maybe. He had not figured that one out just yet.

A grunt, simple and neutral.

Their greeting seemed less simplistic.

"Who are you?"

He could hear it in the tones that had spoke. He did not feel welcomed. Not that he had intended to become family or make any kind of warmth upon his first night. Yet he supposed he thought others might not be so rankled by his arrival. Were more bodies here not good? Perhaps they liked being small, only few functioning bodies meant the hunting did not need to be so great.

"Magnús."

He understood he was being tested. He had not yet figured out the grading rubric.

Her life.

She had built everything up, she had made sure there was a future here. Her paws had become hard things from months and months of labor. Her figure had softened due to her willingness to forge the future from her own flesh and bone.

She had been there upon the pinnacle. She had suddenly come crashing back down.

Finley died, Flair died, Chan departed.

Bad things came in three and yet she had feared it would not stop there. She wondered if winter would crush them all beneath her cold teeth. What would be left of them when spring rolled back around? Would she be a glimmering thing beneath its warmth again? Would she be allowed a future crafted from her womb once more? She held her reservations, but she held back even more the thoughts of who else possibly could.

This man.

Large and distinctly a stranger.

She had questioned his identity and was met with a simple answer. Bland, left her with a hunger for more. Perhaps also feeling that something akin to a new punching bag had come into her life. Maybe it would have been better for her future if she had tried kindness instead. Now she wondered if kindness was why she suddenly felt in a spiral!

What had kindness ever done for anyone she knew? Got them killed or sent them away.

"Are we just letting in any stray now then?" She sneered before a scoff. Chin raised now as she peered down her own features, taunted and dared for him to say anything back.

Stray!

His own face contorted with annoyance. He had no clue why she thought any words she uttered about his presence mattered. It was not her that had answered his call. It was not her that he needed to appease.

She was as good of a stray as he was. Perhaps worse of one! He examined her softened sides, the bedraggled appearance of her coat, and how she clearly had no understanding of when to seal her lips. A gentle curling of his lips now. His stance had become something guarded, puffed. This was not a challenge of ranks.

It was simply the roots of something old and primordial twisting between them.

"Well, they let you in, no?"

For a moment, he felt proud enough to offer a toothy grin.

There was a grand pleasure in watching his features contort.

She was distinctly reminded of why it had taken so long to shed careless cruelty. The rewards of wrecking another seemed so kind an intoxicating brew. It soothed her aching soul in a way that no other thing could lately. She understood that these actions might have ramifications, but he was so fresh here.

Surely no one would side with him...

Now her own face twisted with a look of hatred so ripe and pungent. The audacity of not only a man, but a man of no status. No words would correct a behemoth of such embarrassing presence.

It was her right, it was her role.

She did not think in the moments that follow. Only sought to strike him with a swiftness and hoped he was as fat as he looked so that she might not be caught in return.

Good, he thought. She has been stunned into silence!

All the while that proud grin settled onto his face like it might be there forever. Maybe that would be his biggest flaw, when he looked back on this moment. The fact that he had been proud of stooping to low levels like her own. The fact that he had spent more time enjoying that feeling than he had being prepared for further retaliation.

She struck hard and fast.

He had swung his head in return, wholly uncertain whether he meant to block it or perhaps offer his own hit in return.

Her teeth had snagged his ear. The motion he had created most certainly released her grip on it by violent means. A bloody notch would be what remained of her presence. As if he had only been some rowdy cub who had earned a harsh correction. It should have halted him, it should have shown him that she would not tolerate his belligerence.

Instead it has only deepened roots of quick blooming hatred.

His teeth reached for her face, where they would meet together on air. Pinched the tip of his tongue in between and tasted the own welling of his blood in his mouth. She had been out of his reach before he could dole out her own deserved punishment.