The forest was relatively quiet, and the silver-furred Centurion slipped quickly past the borders of Inferni, more confident in herself now that the weeks had passed. She had circled about Inferni more times than she could count, and there were no signs of Haku Soul anywhere around their territory. A false sense of security settled over the coyote woman, and she felt quite safe with Haku keeping to Dahlia and Samael ringing the perimeter of Inferni, "shoot-to-kill" orders on anything that so much as set foot over their territory. The silver-furred hybrid wondered just how smart it was, imparting instructions to take care of trespassers he happened to come across, knowing that he'd probably take that as a Legatus-sanctioned directive to slaughter anything that so much as sniffed at their perimeter wrong.
The silver-furred coyote could not allow that to concern her. Keeping Inferni was the most important point, and if trespassers rolled into the coyote territory willfully or accidentally, they deserved whatever fate that befell them. If Kaena had access to such things, she might have begun constructing a barbed wire fence, she would have placed camoflauged soldiers in the trees to pick at approaching outsiders with high-powered, super-scoped sniper riles, she would have placed a field of mines along the outside of the coyote border, anything to keep her coyotes safe and keep Haku Soul at bay.
As the coyote continued through the woods, the afternoon sun began to dim, evidence of a storm moving on in. The hybrid tilted her head back to the sky, peering at the expanse of blue overhead, dotted with dark, heavy clouds, ready to spill rain or snow over their heads. The ashen-hued coyote estimated she had some time before the storm actually hit, and with nowhere in particular dragging her anywhere, the silver-hued coyote was free to explore the forest for the rest of the dry weather as she pleased. Vieira's presence in the Centurion's cave had multiple effects for her. On one hand, it was excellent that Kaena now had someone to pay attention to and care for again, and someone who was duty-bound to care for her. On the other, the hybrid was not used to living in such tight quarters with another coyote, especially not a virtual stranger like Vieira.
It was that which pushed her to explore beyond the boundaries of her cave, beyond the borders of Inferni, as if she was learning to walk again, as if she'd forgotten there existed a world beyond her own pain and struggle. A strange scent wafted over the russet-furred muzzle of Kaena, a faintly familiar scent causing her head to snap up, her entire body flung into a state of absolute alertness, fear, and anger all at once. Haku. She could smell him here, faintly drifting over the afternoon's stirring breeze to taunt her. The hybrid knew it was not him; there were other scents, more powerful, interlaced with the smell of the chocolatey Dahlian subleader. This was not Haku himself, but a creature that had been near him very recently. The hybrid's estimate of the storm had been wrong, however, as at that very moment a fat droplet of rain careened down onto her head, soaking a patch of the fur there. She shivered, and peered into the forest, low to the ground and waiting for whatever minion of Haku Soul that might emerge from the undergrowth, a snarl already half-plastered onto her scarred face.
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