March 11th; Evening, after sunset; Partly Cloudy; 26 ° F, -3 ° C.
It was actually a shame. After his little romp with Enoki, he actually possessed the lack of tact to approach his beloved, just to see if she would rise to his taunt and succumb to jealousy or insecurity. When it came to the bottom of it all, Skoll had actually reasoned with himself that it was better this way: Hecate should trust him, just as he trusted her. That was how a relationship worked, right? This was how Elettra kept Angier under her paw for so many years, right?
His muzzle wrinkled as if he had been perplexed by the idea. Maybe he had been going about the 'love' thing the wrong way. He thought he could have controlled Piety; obviously, that was not the case. She had run away anyway. At the very least, he still had his son when she could have taken the cub with her without even a whisper of additional defiance to him. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that Morganna was right and that he ought to have heeded his decisions from before.
What was gone was gone. After all, it wasn't like the bodies of the men he had killed could rise up from the dead or, at least at this point, Piety was going to come running back to change her mind about him. He had already moved on and, when he fully opened up to the idea, he was smitten with someone else.
Thinking of which, his nose twitched as he stretched out his neck and stared at the nearby trees. In twilight they were already turning blue with the sun's descent; with the snow beginning to melt, their leaves were beginning to sprout and in the air was the potpourri of fresh foliage and the feelings of being able to start anew... along with other curious scents, like those entering the rites of passage as adults and soon-to-be mothers.
If Skoll was going to be honest, he had been on edge since he had left his thicket. Morganna's stink lingered here and there, littering the Ridge in criss-crossing paths that intersected with those of his family. Being related to her, it made his hackles bristle and he wanted nothing to do with any of it. If Renier or any other chap was going to make their advances on his sister, tonight, Skoll was pretty willing to let them. He had other things on his mind.
The further he went into the forest in the west, sauntering through the trees that separated Whisper Marsh from Hush Meadow. His heart was caught in his throat. He was almost certain that she had gone this way.
As much as he wanted to call out for her by name, he figured he would wait for a bit. He assumed that she had been leading him on, playing something like a wolf-and-deer sort of chase as to draw him well away from the grasp of his relatives and the choking shadows that consumed him in the depths of his hideaway on pack territory. Instead, with his inability to deal with the anticipation of meeting her, he stopped at the mouth of the abandoned caverns that had once belonged to Princes Yuka and Titan and let loose a warbled howl.