"Come on, Fury! You want to learn how to fight like a real warrior or not?" Darren, the Get Ahroun know to his pack as Tears-at-the-Wyrm, taunted harshly, an insolent grin perennially on his heavily Nordic features. The Black Fury snorted in contempt at him. "What I want," Liza replied coldly, "is to be left alone. Especially by an asshole like you." The stunning, young brunette rose and stalked off to head inside, yet halted just paces later when he called out, "Maybe you liked gettin' a dose of what power really is from that guy who raped you. Get a rise out of it? I bet you really wanted it." Liza turned, eyes narrowed, bitter and frost-cold. "Fine. You want some of what he got? Come and get it."

    Darren smiled ferociously and stalked over, circling her, forcing her to turn constantly to keep track of him. With a sudden surge of speed, he burst forward, driving a meaty right fist towards Liza's face. However, her face, surprisingly, was somehow just not there when the fist reached its target point; even more surprising was the booted steel toe that insinuated itself smartly into his groin instead. With a hoarse yowl, Darren doubled over, the pain blinding him, but not deafening him to Liza's dark, derisive rebuke. "Can't say I didn't warn you, asshole. You had that comin'. At least I didn't cut off that stub you call a dick, like he got. Now leave me the fuck alone before I do."

    Liza turned her back on him and started to walk away; a costly mistake. Darren bellowed in his pain and intolerable shame and humiliation, consumed instantly by his Rage, the unbridled frenzy that was both his heritage and undoing overtaking him. He shifted forms as he hurled himself onto her back, a gray-furred maelstrom of brutal fangs and rending talons. The woman managed a startled, frightened squawk, then no more. Tears-at-the-Wyrm raised a guttural victory howl as the heavy jaws closed around her throat and ripped, sundering the very life from her in one jolting neck-turn, her blood streaming from his cruel jaws.

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    The Bone Gnawer known as Billy to men, but as Stands-His-Ground to his pack, arrived, and climbed off his motorbike. He look to where the others were standing and saw the corpse they were looking down at. "Fuck, who the 'ell did this?"

    Edgerider turned a deceptively mild gaze upon the so-called victor, as the pack gathered around he and Liza's body. "I think you have some serious explaining to do, Darren," rasped the Alpha's ruined voice. "I'm sure there's an astoundingly good reason why you felt the need to chew a new, but no less loyal packmate, into bloody strips. Something worth her life."

    Billy then noticed the look in Darren's face. "Shit, Darren....have ya’ completely fuckin' lost it?"

    Before the Get could answer, Steel, who had been watching from a treetop, leaps forward just as Edge started to speak. He had been back with his pack less then a week, and Darren had already been steadily picking on him, too. Steel felt little pity for him, and he had genuinely liked Liza, even though she shunned men, mostly … He throws back his head, and emits a somber, low-pitched howl. It echoes through the woods; the profound feeling of grief and lose is evident.

    Darren narrows his eyes at Billy, then Steel, after which he snarled his response in turn; "Bitch had it coming. Nailed me in the balls. Besides, she should have known better then to mess with an Ahroun under a full moon." The rest of the pack growled and muttered disapprovingly amongst themselves, as they looked down upon the rent carcass that once was their packmate, Liza. Clearly the tone said he'd gone too far, but they held their peace, leaving actual judgment to Edgerider, but the condemnation was clear in their eyes. All save one, who could not bear the sight in silence.

    A sharp voice rang out, from a small-boned, somewhat Native American featured young woman with long dark hair. "Well, are you happy now, you murdering bastard? Couldn't even fight her face to face, jumped on her back like the bullying coward I've always known you really are." Isabeau Navarre glared up at Tears-At-The-Wyrm, him easily twice her size, seemingly without the good sense to be fearful of him.

    Darren growled at her, temper flaring sullenly but easily back to life. "Fuck you, Isabeau. Didn't you hear me? The bitch kicked me right in the balls with a steel-toed boot! And then laughed at me, on top of it. She should've known better, damn it! Besides, this is pack business, you are not even Garou. Or kinfolk or mate to one." His gaze upon Isabeau was more bitter than any other of his other detractors and judges; she never stopped reminding him of the mate who betrayed him... her sister. It showed in the hate in his eyes. "You are just like Alex," he tersely snarled at her, goading her. "And probably as much of a dyke as Liza was. You think your money can buy all your worth to a pack."

    "Always the woman's fault, isn't it. Why don't you just say she was asking to get raped while you're at it, you abusive pig?" Isabeau spat the words at him, staring defiantly up into his face, her lip curling in a twisted sneer of disgust and hatred. "Maybe that's why Alex dumped your sorry ass. She was afraid she'd be next one day! Just like Liza! Nothing, no one, is sacred to you! Why don't you hit Rae next, get two for one!" Raisa shoots Isabeau a withering, betrayed look, her ruddy face going ashen in shock.

    Another, calmer, grizzled baritone voice raised quietly above her vicious din, "Isa, I would really shut up right now, if I were you. For your own good, not because you are necessarily all wrong." The Pack Beta, Olaf, cast her a stern but well-meant warning glance from beneath heavy blonde brows, and shifted slightly, watching Darren warily, shoulders tensed as if still expecting some more drama.

    "Shut up? Why the hell should I? Because someone's a fucking bully? The question is why aren't more of you speaking out against it? You guys can't turn your back on your own pack! I've spent three-quarters of my life in silence while people did wrong! I've shut up for too damn long to keep doing it just because someone with a little dick and a big ego might throw his toys and have a temper tantrum!"

    At that moment, words would not truly capture the primal vision that flashed through Darren's mind, but a good approximation of the spirit of it might have been, "Enough is enough." With a bull-throated roar of raw fury, he launched himself at the frail, birdlike woman, even as Change overtook him, his body morphing into a living extension of his anger, claws extended to rend, jaws slicked with slaver. No doubt, much like the last sight Liza saw before she was delivered before her time unto Gaia.

    Billy sprung into action, shifting immediately in hopes of coming between Darren and Isabeau. However, a fraction of a second before Darren could lay his strike upon the now-cowering Kinfolk, an impact in his side hammered him suddenly off-course, leaving Billy bounding to the side and past the group. Edgerider, his towering form a rugged road-map of scars from a hundred battles far more brutal than this one, glared mercilessly as Darren tumbles a half-dozen yards sideways under his own momentum, from the unexpected body-slam he delivered against Darren’s flank.

    The Get scrambled to his feet, and with a howl of frustrated rage, launched himself at the elder Garou, defiant of his Alpha, teeth snapping like steel traps as he lunged, aiming for Edgerider's throat. But, instead, they closed around Edgerider's meaty left forearm, which he rammed forcefully down Darren's open jaws with all the force he could muster, wedging the bite before it could fully close.

    In the same movement, he stepped inside the reach of the ripping talons. Darren tried to clamp his jaws down, and drew a grimace of pain from Edge as he did so, digging three-inch fangs into muscle and thick-furred hide. Nonetheless, he managed to accomplish little more than leaving angry, oozing gouges in his Alpha's muscular arm, as the man's massive clawed right hand closed below the base of Darren's skull

    A sharp, wet snap, like the whip-crack noise of a green branch bent past its tolerance, rang out, as Edge gripped the younger Garou's throat, using the leverage that Darren's own clamped jaws gave his forearm, to break the Ahroun's massive neck. The younger Garou dropped instantly, his body reverting to homid before hitting the ground with a meaty, collapsing thud. Edgerider straightened, subsiding to his less-massive Glabro form as a pungent reek quickly filled the air; the sharp, cupric tang of fresh blood, the musky smell of fresh sweat, and the meaty foulness and acrid ammoniac stench of a spent body voiding itself.

    In a voice freighted with command, Edgerider spoke to his pack, his words guttural from the coarse shape of the throat of his bestial form, and tight with controlled pain. He turns his savage visage upon Isabeau, still shaking a few feet away. "You. Get out before your mouth gets you killed, too. Don't come back until you've learned to control it." He raised his right hand to gesture at her, making his lack of blame upon her clear while keeping his urgency intact. "Hear me now. I am thankful, as are we all, for how you have helped us when you did not have to. And that is why I do this: so that you don't end up dead, like you almost did just now. It is too dangerous for you to live among us like this. Now go!"

    Steel bows his head in shame. He had thought his Rage would have been a lesson for Darren. But this was far more then he had even done. He shudders… he could almost feel the Wyrm turn his gaze to focus on these events. He knew now that he was right to return, and to try to learn to master his Rage, rather than let it master him as it now controlled and damned Darren.

    Edgerider then glanced down with a look, equal parts sadness and contempt, at Darren's crumpled, soiled naked form, twitching and bleeding at his feet. He raised his gaze to Olaf, second in authority over the pack. "And when he's able to walk, throw him out on the street and let him start walking it. Warrior or not he may be, I cannot depend on someone who cannot control his temper enough to more easily avoid harming innocents. If he holds no value or love for his pack... then it holds none for him until he learns respect. I will not put our lives in the hands of someone like that."

    The elder Garou then lumbers off into the woods, to heal, and to privately ponder the dark cloud that has fallen upon his charges, leaving them in stunned silence to mourn, their howls of despair buoying him on his way.

    After the edict was passed, Billy shifted back to homid, and watched the unmoving form of his now former packmate. Frenzy could overtake any of them, but as it seemed, Darren's control over his instincts was slipping away from him more and more.... he believed that throwing him out would only do things worse, but he knew no one in this pack could look him in the face without remembering what he'd just done and tried to do. He knelt for a long while beside Liza, deep in reflection of how his own pride had pushed him from the pack before… and the lives he had also cost for it.

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    "You threw him out?!" Vhorn, the pack's third Get of Fenris, asked sharply, his query weighted with disbelief. The long-haired young man stalked back and forth, rock-star ringlets whipping about his visage at each turn of his pacing. "I mean, all right, he over-reacted. But the Fury should've known better, I mean, everyone knows he's on a short fuse."

    Edgerider, his forearm wrapped in a crimson-spotted length of white cloth, looked up at him frostily, night-black eyes cold as space. "If he'd been sorry, I could've forgiven. He wasn't. He defended his actions, and then he repeated them. There can be no forgiving without repentance, and without change."

    Vhorn shook his head, china-blue eyes saddened. "I don't know... I just don't think I can handle that, knowing I'm part of something that threw out part of my family, my tribe, for something that wasn't even really his fault." Edgerider looked upon him with something close to pity as he spoke.

    "If that's the way you feel, I won't make you stay here, Vhorn. I think it's foolish. I think it's misguided, but it's your choice to make.. and learn from." The grizzled elder watched in silence as the young Galliard packed his things and called for a cab.