Steel had traveled the borders, securing and marking them in his potent scent. The sun was going down and he had had enough of 'duty' for one day. He needed to escape the borders that bound him. Athena would have to understand that if he didn't venture out from time to time, he would lose it. The boundaries chaffed at him and he was honestly doing his best, but this evening he needed to roam. The jagged mountains called to him. Their rugged appeal was only foreshadowed here in the foothills and around the lake. He remembered the thrill that coursed through his veins when he first came upon the rugged terrain, rather that the soft comfort of the grassy plains and forests.

Tonight, he would explore the mountains that begged him to come. With a small growl, Steel crossed the invisible barrier that bound him and set himself free, at least for a short while. Tonight was his and his alone. As he looked at the slowly darkening sky, thunderclouds gathered, but they concerned him not at all. The dark blue-grey of the sky was mirrored in his own stormy blue eyes and her reveled in the uncontrolled wildness of the coming storm. It pulled him as if he was on a string, a puppet to it's master. He didn't fight it, instead, he reveled in the wildness brewing in the skies and within himself.

About half way up the nearest side of the mountain he picked up a scent. Only a week ago, he would have ignored it and gone out of his way to avoid the wolf that had passed by here before him. But it was not a week ago, it was now and the scent was familiar. Athena. With a growl, his first thought was that he was not alone on his mountain. Somehow it had morphed into his mountain. Then he wondered at her being out here alone, with the coming storm. Most normal wolves would have avoided being caught in it, unlike him. Then, he was most certainly not most wolves.

His newborn sense of duty kicked in and he knew that he needed to find her and make sure that she was safe. He was unsure what he would have done had it been any wolf but Athena. His loyalty to her had come fast and hard and it was unbreakable. He didn't understand the why of it, but it just was. For her, he would move mountains. With that thought, he looked ahead of him when a huge deluge of rain came down in a great sudden torrent. Movement caught his eye and he saw a small part of the mountain rearranging it's shape.

With horror, he saw a flash of pure white fur tumbling down with it. Before had even fully processed the thought, he was off like a shot in her direction, uncaring of the rough rocks that tore at his pads, making them bleed. His feet were toughened from constant travel, but the mountainside was a new kind of vicious and sought to keep him from his leader.

Ava's intention of laying out on her sun rock had turned out not in her favor. Early morning was often a bad indicator of the weather further in the day. Just because it was grey and nippy didn't mean that the sun wouldn't come out eventually. Of course, that day it did not, and instead the dark female was pelted with droplets of rain. It was far from what she had wanted, and with a frustrated snort she disengaged from her previous activity and began to stalk down the landscape toward her home. In passing she could see further down the valley, picking out all sorts of minute details. The trail they four had taken originally to claim the land. The protrusion where her swan dive had caught Kade's eye. The makeshift cave where they had spent one beautiful night.

His scent no longer existed anywhere on the mountainside. Instead it was saturated with her packmates, to no surprise. They did love their mountain, even if it wasn't technically their's, though it was awfully strange to find a loner up here. These rocks were never kind.

And speak of the devil. A large clusterfuck of smells were brought to her by the breeze of rainfall, all particularly fresh. Strange, why were there so many of them up here? Were they running a special border patrol sans invitation to Ava? Curiously the female started toward it, droplets of water leaving her coat as her speed increased. The further her paws took her, the more she got a strange feeling of dread. There was a commotion going on that she could hear, and it wasn't just the rain or the howling wind. Was that... was that her packmates yells she heard? The female wasted no more time and bounded toward the noise, only to be stopped by a large rock as it flew just past her nose. Able to focus now on her surroundings, she saw mud slipping away a few feet in front of her, and above were several shapes coming fleetly down with it.

At the forefront was Athena, flying down the mountainside accompanied by the slick of mud and rocks. Steel's burly figure chased after her with Tlarx in hot pursuit of them flanked by Treena. Her heartbeat tripled; despite the comic nature of their literal downfall, the mountain was not kind. Their slip-and-slide did not end in a joyous splash of harmless water, that much she was sure of.

Ava's brow furrowed and her figure tensed, brilliant eyes no longer locked on to the four wolves as they tumbled down but at the falling ground to see where it lead. It was all well and good if one of them managed to catch her, but they would not be able to stand back up on their own in that mess. All four of them would crash into the rocks at the bottom and injure themselves. So instead of joining the parade, Ava turned and ran downward, following the fall of the terrain until it began to even out and slow down. This would be their only chance to get out before the trail grew worse. At the bottom of the slide she stood, tail lashing while an anticipatory growl thundered in her throat. And when Athena came close enough, Ava would leap forward from her perch and try to tackle the smaller woman out of the slipping terrain, all while the other three came tumbling not too far behind.

Steel felt as if he was moving in slow motion in his attempt to get to Athena. He wasn't sure what he would do when he reached her, but he couldn't just watch his new leader careen helplessly to her death amidst the debri of the mountain. He leaped in her direction, rocks and dirt doing their best to hinder his efforts. Eventually, he managed to close the distance, but she was still in the center of the chaos and he was on the perimeter with no real idea of how to get he out of the mess.

In the peripherals of his mind, he realized that other wolves had also shown up to help, he was merely the closest at the moment. Ahead and on the other side of the landslide, he spied a black form that had to be Ava, Athena's loyal second. He was about to try and jump further into the fray of tumbling earth to somehow get Athena closer to the side when the white fae turned and yelled for them to get out before she used Ava's sturdy body to stop her own forward motion. Seeing that she was out of immediate danger, he gave a curt nod in her general direction before making his way in awkward leaps and bounds back towards the outer edge of the fall and getting himself free of the deathtrap.

It was not until he stumbled to a stop on shredded paws that he finally saw the other two wolves that had been close behind him. Rain dripped down his dark countenance as he took in another large white male and a slightly smaller female, neither of which he had met yet. It was obvious that they were pack mates in the way that they had valiantly tried to reach Athena, despite the danger to their own lives. It didn't even occur to him that he, the silent and solitary man, had done the very same thing.

A newfound respect for these unknown pack mates awoke in Steel and he found himself running after the other pair. He was now on safer ground, but they hadn't quite made it out of the slide yet. Again, he ignored his ragged and bloody paws to be ready in case one of these wolves needed aid from him. Athena would not be happy if he let something happen to one of her pack mates.