The first born of three, the inheritor of his father's kingdom. The creeds of his lineage were drilled into him from a young age—duty and family before all else. But his sister fell for a man not of her blood or pack (far too young, far too naïve, far too weak), his brother wandered to his heart's content (never tethered, never burdened with inheritance, never taking anything seriously), and Aleksei himself became hardened in the face of his family's most tumultuous years.
And then the River King passed, succumbing to a reopened wound that never quite healed right. Everything crumbled before Aleksei like rocks to ash. He was but a yearling, not yet mature enough to inherit that which his father had left behind, and so the pack's trusted second-in-command took rank. In an instant, all the respect Aleksei had for the male vanished and was instead replaced with childish anger. He fled with imagined scorn hanging over him.
He left home, to find and be himself. ("Kill the boy and let the man be born.") Yet for all his determination to live, there is an internal conflict that exists. He contradicts himself—one's duty is important, yet he abandoned his; place your blood above all else, yet he left his behind. He was a failure, a deserter, no longer deserving of the name Baranski.
And in Canis, he woke and lives as just Aleksei, carrying the consequential guilt of his sin without remembering the crime.