Sex: MaleIt meant something to the wolf—that much was obvious, even to Ice. The Aniwayans had left their mark on all of Relic Lore, changed every life they had touched, and most of them for the worse. The influx of newcomers, the shift of generations, diluted the stories into something akin to what every traveler told. He was hard-pressed to find faces who had fought against them alongside him. Things changed, but some things didn't, and some stories lived on. Bane's life had been touched by them, in some way, and for that, Ice pitied him.
But the tale he told made Ice's blood run cold.
It sounded wrong from the beginning. By the time Serach and Sceral had been born, the Aniwayans were dead, and the reasons the pack moved painful, private things. It had come up in conversations, it had hung thick in the air at times, so in and of itself, it wasn't strange that Bane had been told about these things when he was born. It had been a tough winter, and a tough spring, after all.
But between the reaction and the gaze searching his face, he knew there was more to come. For better or for worse, Bane was tied to them, and when the words finally fell from his maw Ice didn't even know what to do. He just felt cold, frozen, shocked, hit—Slyscar was Bane's father, through vile methods. For a long time, Ice simply stared at him, the chocolate fur, the orange eyes.. the spitting image of the hated wolf, come back to haunt them.
"No," he finally said. "He might have created you, but he is not what shaped you." He sounded weary, defeated almost; what else could he say? What else could he do, but believe that this wolf was more than his sire had been..?
Anything else would've been too painful.