Hollow steps matched haunted eyes as the tawny wolf scaled her way up the heights in the midday heat, hardly seeing as the rugged terrain disappeared beneath her paws. Autumn was now upon them but the warmth of summer lingered and the cool promise of pristine waters could be scented on the breeze. Some far off part of her shattered soul rejoiced and sang for home. That was, until the darkness within her pushed it down and drowned it out. This was no longer her home. She had no home. She had forsaken her pack on an empty promise of safety.

The life of a loner was no life for one with cubs.

She could have gone back to the lands of her birth, leaned into her brothers strong dark side and sighed her worries away. She could have basked with her mother in the sun and the snow and let all of her worries slip away. She could have cared for her cousins and the cubs of her birth pack, she could have healed, and been healed... but it was more than she deserved. 


She didn’t deserve a family.

The bitterness rose like bile in her chest and her lips pulled tight as they often did these days. Adonis was still at her side, but Lilly... Bella... Datura... She had hated herself from the moment she took her first step from the den, but they stood the best chance with their pack, and the new mother had to protect her son.

They had travelled far that night, and every night after... Until...

If she dwelled on it much longer, she would lose the will to live. It was a fight to put one paw in front of the other when the sudden realisation dawned. Her movements had ceased, for how long she did not know. So wrapped in her own thoughts at some point her legs had stopped carrying her forward, and she growled at herself in frustration, forcing her aching body onward, and upward.

She had come this far. She wouldn’t turn away now. She had to know if they had survived.

She had to know if they were ok.

Finally she passed Ava’s sunning rock. The scent of her friend...? was still strong on the breeze, along with two scents she would never forget. Her heart was caught between rejoicing and breaking. Athena’s scent was ever present on the border, along with others she did not recognise. But this land was no longer her concern.

A small voice whispered They will never know you...

Perhaps subconsciously, she passed close enough for her scent to be detected easily by a patrolling wolf, but she quickly turned from the lands she once had called her own. Stopping only long enough to drink from the deep clear waters of the lake before turning back down towards the wooded lands below. She would sleep on the heights for tonight and tomorrow she would vanish from these lands forever like the waif she now was.

Or at least, that was the plan...