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[Skoll]

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There we go! "Of course," he said, laughing. "Me, getting myself into trouble? Come on, let's be serious." Of course he was being sarcastic. It took no imagination at all to understand what she had meant. No one had asked him to wage war on the lunatic Shadow cultists, no one had asked him to step in and save the child on the Inferni border. It hadn't been his responsibility to chase the fleeing missionaries to save the children of a women he didn't know. He could have stayed out of it when those two wolves accosted the coyote Luka, or let the belligerent wolf Bron lurk outside the Storm border rather than going out to meet him. He did have a serious penchant for getting himself into situations that could be easily avoided. It was a mix of things that had created the wolf he was today, a cocktail of experiences and morals--taught both by his parents and by life--that meant he always felt inclined to interpose himself into a situation where he felt wrong was occurring. Those days were likely at an end, though, he had decided. A string of ingrates and traitors had made him see that setting an example didn't mean that people were going to flock to his banner. Storm's alpha had been quick enough to stab him in the back to stay in good graces with the puppy-killers, and though the faceless Jaded Shadows wolf had also aligned herself with the murderers, it hadn't stung as much because she had owed him no loyalty beyond having the common sense to discriminate between true murderers and people like himself. The peace-loving fools he had encountered in his latest excursion outside of Bleeding Souls had sealed the deal, he felt. If people wanted to be sheep in the places south of his ancestral home, it was no business of his. If people wanted to be slaughtered by the ambitions of little coyotes, or for the gods of insane cultists, then that was their decision to make. He couldn't understand how they could be okay with that, but he couldn't defend them from themselves. "So, you found a heat-source, did you? Maybe I could help you get it in place. What's the problem?" He had no idea what he was getting himself into, though he wouldn't let the realization of the full degree of the labor prevent him from helping her. ~The lyrics are from the best song ever written.

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