So much for loyalty to each other above all else.

How could she have ever been so blind to the true nature of those she had once considered family? So content to simply brush off the absence of one of their own when the mountain was such a treacherous place to call home? It was then she decided the wolf before her was warped. If he had truly loved the girl, nothing would have stopped him from finding her, just as nothing would stop her from finding her Rhysis.

Was this how easily they had all given up on her?

Her heart became just a little harder then, there was no point to letting go of her hurt. They had so easily brushed her off before, what was to say they wouldn't again? The once loving leader was turning into a cynic, the deeper she delved, the harder she tried to reintegrate, the more she realised... perhaps she didn't want to.

This was not the family she had left behind that fateful night. This was twisted, and weak. If they only thought of themselves, and the ones who managed to avoid calamity, how on earth would they make it through the winter?

"It was a landslide that prevented me from returning. I sat there for days calling... maybe even weeks." The only time she had given up her vigil was to scavenging what meager offerings there were to be found, to continue producing enough milk to keep her son alive. "Adonis was too small to travel, so I couldn't go far." Although she had never been far from them to start with. Perhaps the wind had been against her.

Perhaps they never really looked at all, just as Ash clearly hadn't looked for one who he held apparently so close to his heart.

She could no longer stand being in the man's presence. It sickened her to think on what may have truly happened once she was gone, now that she had heard how lightly they were taking the disappearance of who she had seen to be a very promising young woman.

Her broken soul couldn't handle thinking on it now. But the seed of doubt had been planted. Without a word she broke away from the large wolf and made for the den, the wind swirling about her with the promise of heavy rain. If that was how they reacted to a missing adult, she shuddered to think on the implications were one of her children to go missing in a storm. She had to get the tykes to bed.