The internal affairs of the pack were still very much separated from Max. He did not poke his nose in business that was not his own—even when he had helped begin preparations for Halo he had been chased out and left in the dark to the true extend of her injuries. Much in this way he was unaware of the hostility between the two Lykoi brothers, having only seen them separate and oblivious to the hostility brought up by the feminine male and his young bride.
Everything, however, closed into one sudden focus. The bigger man, in his larger Secui form, stiffened. Max froze and dropped low, obscuring himself in the tall grass and the snow-brushed land. He moved low to the ground and with the same tension as he might have encountered during a hunt. Unspoken tactics were clear enough—Columbine’s bellowing voice carried over the land, pinpointing the location of the pair.
A gray wolf, hunched over a carcass, was the cause of the trouble. Max’s fur bristled. A day before he had seen the aftermath of two trespassers, and now a third wished to try them? Anger rose in him, savage, terrible. A monster awoke, brightening his eyes to a terrible burning gold. Without a sound, as he had been taught, the pale hybrid circled. When he was at the side of the male, he waited just long enough to see Columbine’s stance shift…and then there was only the adrenaline pounding in his ears and the silent rush.
Max struck low, slashing at the wolf’s shoulder with his uncut fangs and leapt away as the snarling gray male whipped his head around. He avoided the blow, as he had been trained to do, and tasted blood on his tongue. A peculiar and alien excitement filled him; this was like hunting but somehow different, somehow better.
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