I chuckled to myself watching Shemira's foiled attempts to sow discord among the pack. She noticed me and began walking towards me. Took noticed where she was going, and, with a shrug, let her approach me.

"Hello Lord Alpha Ashlani. You look positively regal today. I'm sure your hunt went amazingly. Would you like to talk about it? I'm told that my presence is particularly soothing, and I do know how best to relax. I could teach you, if you'd like." She shot me a wink with that last sentence while sidling up close to me. Against my better judgement, I leaned into her presence... and noticed a flashing [System] notification: [Allure skill is being exerted on you. Due to your evolutionary advantages, you resist. However, it is advised that you leave the influence of the Allure skill as soon as safely possible.]

Realizing what was happening, I quickly whirled, shouldered Shemira roughly and drove her into the ground. Then I hissed into her ear, "Use your skill on me again and I'll make you pay in blood."

After the briefest of moments spent in surprise, Shemira composed herself and whispered back in my ear, "I don't mind it rough, darling. Not into the public shaming thing though." She ran her tail up mine, nearly reaching the point it joined with my body. I recoiled, and turned to Took. "Keep her away from ALL males. She's got something that's nearly impossible to resist." I grimaced back at Shemira. "Well, now that you're here, I do have a couple of questions for you."

She cocked her head. "And what would they be, Lord?"

"You know where the nest is for the next spawnling clutch. Where is it?"

"I'm sorry, but you're wrong about that." Shemira gave no tells of lying, but Sybil jumped in.

"Well, Bella's group seems convinced Greel had told you something. If he knows, I'm sure we can either bully him into confessing, or we can give him..." She leered at the still prone Shemira, "a treat, all to himself. I can't imagine that you'd be able to do much if we crippled your voice before we gave you over." Shemira shuddered and looked over to me in a panic.

I shuddered. Sybil didn't come to the table without being willing to completely bury the opposition. Again, I wondered if maybe she was a bit more than I wanted to chew, but I had made my choice, and she hadn't shown me any reason not to trust her so... if you are going to use a person, trust them, and if you trust a person, use them, I suppose.

Having made my decision, I turned to Sybil and Took. "You two stay here and get all the information you need, however you need. If you need a private area, take her to my room." I wasn't particularly comfortable with the idea of torture, but I didn't much mind it if I wasn't actively watching. I wasn't sure why the idea of torture made my stomach churn, but I didn't blink at the idea of ripping forcefully into the skull of my still living prey.

Regardless, it was time for me to make my rounds, and see if there was going to need to be two full hunting packs sent out this afternoon.

...

It didn't take long for me to find that yes, we would need the two full packs to be sent out this afternoon to ensure that the swarm as a whole could still keep running as smoothly as it was currently. I sighed, thinking about how I'd hoped to be able to take it easy today, but, simply said, I wasn't about to have that option open to me. A keelish's life is busy from birth to death, it would appear (except I hadn't really seen any adult keelish around these parts as of yet... They must conduct their hunts from a different one of the exits from the den.).

Shortly after I had come to the conclusion that another hunt would be necessary and apprising my pack of that, a smiling Sybil and Took approached me with a cowed looking Shemira.

"We know where the nest is." Sybil was brief in her explanation, and gave us maybe 3 days until we could expect to present ourselves to our new (hopefully) additions.

I nodded and turned to Took. "We're back onto the hunt. How long will you and yours need?"

She shrugged. "Soon."

Right, she doesn't like talking. "Now, Took, keep your eyes out for where the wolfstag den is. We may need to know that in the near future. If you find it, see if you can note their general comings and goings." Took nodded and I nodded back to the three females and went to round up my pack for the hunt.

...

When we left the den, I noticed it seemed to be an hour or two after midday. We quickly left Silf to his own devices, and, again, I was surprised by Silf's abilities. Following his lead, we made quick work of two more mating pairs of frogs in about an hour. I was surprised by how much more I could eat as I grew, as, while I was about twice the size I had been when born, I ate probably about 8 times as much as the me from back then. The bigger the swarm gets, the more we would be forced to devour to keep up our hunting strength.

I was pleasantly surprised by Cazala's presence in the hunt, though. He paired particularly well with Treel, and they alone could take care of probably 70% of the total effort needed for a safe hunt. He was methodical in his hunt, different from me or Took. Those of the original pack had a brutal approach--rush the prey and rip them apart without ceremony or too much thought. Cazala, however, focused on disabling his prey as efficiently as possible. I was surprised how easily his teeth shredded tendons, and how accurately he found said tendons. If he were left alone with a Toothy Bullfrog, he would leave it completely crippled and unable to strike back before he went for any kind of killing strike.

The pack was cleaning up the scene, and I was considering leading us all back to the den, when something caught my attention from the corner of my eye. I quickly whirled and looked, realizing that there were nearly a dozen little furry heads poking out of the surrounding foliage. We had been ambushed, and it was about to get ugly.