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The female’s fear of the luperci seemed to surpass her fear of him. The pied brute wanted to sneer, but he was unmoving and lithic, the stillness broken only by the sinuous movement of that raised tail. How easily she would form against his words. How easily she could be torn apart. Her words caused a dark flicker to cross over his black eyes. “They are human,” the quiet tenor practically spat. They were disgusting. Like this place, they were slowly in decay, and the stink of their worthless flesh permeated the air of the lands. “They forget that they were ever wolves or coyotes. They are weak.” Those words dripped like a black venom from his words, hot and acidic with the power to cleanse the place of their wretched existence.
“Why she didn’t save him?” the hollow tenor completed for the female, a quiet laughter echoing within the black corridors of his mind. “Why she didn’t pursue the killer?” Perhaps this female could be made to turn against his daughter. He sneered inwardly. How blind she had become. How secure she believed herself to be. She had grown too comfortable with the quiet of pack life. She had paid for it with blood, and soon she would pay for it with her own. There was no safety for her there. Even that lighter male, the first that had come to him upon his arrival upon these lands, did not defend her for long. He was a leader here, evidently, and yet he had not continued in that brief, testing spar. In essence, that leader had relinquished the woad warrior to him. And now this female, so afraid, would be made to forsake the trust that may have existed. Already doubt should be spreading within the pack. Had their warrior not failed to save them upon every attack that he made? It would not be long before trust would no longer exist. She was a fool to have given trust. Had his daughter learned nothing? Trust no one. For the crow wolf, only his own might existed against the sickening world.
A sneer flickered across his maw, breaking the emotionless stone expression, but soon that was gone and once more there was nothing. “I can,” the tenor voice replied, those tones dangerously soothing. Offering protection was not something unfamiliar to the pied Korean. When he had lead the gang in those lands, protection was something that was offered. And in return for such protection, he required loyalty, respect, and goods. Should the second party fail on that part, the protection given was forsaken, and punishment was executed. Some were killed. Others were spared. The black orbs held the smaller female for a moment longer. What would the price to pay? Then he turned, the movement unnaturally and eerily graceful but slow and nonthreatening. The crow wolf could be merciful, he could be gentle. And he allowed her to follow as he turned to face the way in which the pack lay. “You don’t have to be afraid,” the black voice soothed, those black orbs flat like the gaze of a snake. “You don’t have to be afraid of the luperci.”