He would spend a lot of time traveling, it would seem, the dragon struck by an insatiable itch in his paws. While he’d already tried to convince @Karina once to leave her birth pack and failed, the feeling of discomfort had not left the man entirely. Where the dragon no longer screamed and roared, it still clawed angrily at the barricade set between its prison and what remained of Kjors’ lingering sanity. He had no reason to believe the other males were out to get him, and besides some well-earned hostility from @Karpos, had no evidence other than Maksim’s general distaste for the serpent. As much as it pained him to admit it, the fallen alpha could understand where the father was coming from in his concern for his mawkish daughter, especially that he and Kjors were not well acquainted.
This did nothing to warm him to Maksim, of course, and instead left the dragon traveling, scouting, moving as far as he dared in a day before returning to his private nest along Zephyr Rill.
It did occur to the swarthy man that he might leave without Karina, should he truly feel in danger, but… The notion of abandoning the princess left a bitter taste in his mouth. It felt the same as leaving Søren’s corpse for the crows, and while she was not dead, to leave a wolf so connected to the Mother would inevitably rip out a piece of his soul. He would be left with ragged edges that could not be stitched together, not with love, not with kindness, not with violence nor war. There was no treasure as great as the princess and her pure devotion to the world, to the Mother’s will, and it was the duty of Her Right Paw to see her will through, no matter how uncomfortable it made him.
This was his sacrifice, Kjors knew, even if he was unwilling to admit it to himself, much less out loud. His entire life, from his father’s death, to the poisoning, even to Urotho’s disappearance, it all lead to this, to Karina, to fulfilling his duty laid out before him by the Mother’s will. It took a bit of getting used to, perhaps, but he would succeed ultimately.
Shoulders slung low, the wolf continued his ascent of the rocky ravine, almost cresting the peak as he moved from east to west. His recent travels had led to the discovery of an old game trail, washed out by summers of heavy rain and the spring thaw as winter’s grasp melted and flowed down into the fjord. The trail was rocky, but it was almost as if a giant wolf and created a walkway, or steps – towards what, Kjors had little idea. The sun? The moon? Perhaps a wolf would want to climb to the moon, he fancied – perhaps a giant wolf could climb to the moon. As he finally summited the hill, the asocial animal paused there, resting his haunches upon the ground as the cool night air surrounding him, breath forming a halo in the pale moonlight as he studied the sky. “Ah wonder wha’ it’s like. My castle on a cloud,” he hummed to himself, a frown forming a moment later, followed shortly by a snort. “Yer bein’ ridiculous, Kjors. Ain’t nothin’ bu’ bullshit an’ fairy stories.”