Now you're just a page torn from the story I'm living

She’d finally found it, the lands her father had spoken of in great detail when she was a child… she was still a child, but it was different now – she wasn’t just some young cub anymore. What he’d neglected to tell her was how beautiful the snow-covered lands were, and how the sun gleamed against the undisturbed snow of terrain that hadn’t been trekked since the last snowfall. Natalia, are you listening..? She remembered the stories just fine. Where was I at? Wasn’t I at when the pack moved? Yes Papa. She let that smile cross her maw – she did miss them, but she needed this journey. She needed to truly follow her parent’s advice.

She needed to forge her own path, and what better place than the lands that had supposedly cursed her family for years? There was a man who left the River wolves, and he settled in the same forest as we did. His name was Rook Lyall… Kisla and Maksim made the decision to move us north to the Kingsfall, a forest of ginormous sequoia trees that towered far over any one wolf. She had to be nearby… but this was not the place. This was a crevice, a small strip of land, tucked between towering hills that stood firm despite the weather and undoubtedly led to the mountains of myth.

It was there that we established Hearthwood River… Maksim, Kisla, their children, Uncle Lach, Aunt Naia, a few others, and I… She needed to find it, and she needed to understand these wolves who had shaped her father’s life, leading him to meet her mother and eventually have her and her siblings. She needed to understand who they were and what they were made of.