Though she had noticed the soft touch to her forehead, it was swiftly incorporated into a pleasant dream. It was a welcome change to the nightmares that had been plaguing her ever since they had left Hollowheart Keep. But as the ground beside her cooled, she curled into a smaller and smaller ball, finally shivering awake as a gust of cold air blew into the drafty cave. She jolted up, immediately noticing her mate's absence and unable to stop the torrent of worry that swiftly followed. It seemed like everyone she had ever known had vanished from her life, and Nova still feared that Camio might get swept away just as easily. As her frantic eyes scanned the dark confines of the Keep, her frantic heart only calmed when she noticed Camio just outside, framed by the entrance. Nova stood, shaking out her pelt before walking to join him.

"Camio, what are you doing out here?" Nova asked as she slipped out from under the stone archway of the Keep, treading quietly to his side. She seated herself at his side and rested her broad jaw over the bony shelf of his shoulder blades. "Couldn't sleep?" She asked, tilting her head from its perch on his shoulders to nip at the back of his head. Nova really couldn't keep her paws off of him.

All the feelings and sensations Camio brought forth in her were so new and captivating. She could hardly imagine spending even a day apart from him, and their travels together had cemented her dependence on him. She had tried to imagine just where she would be, if she hadn't run into Camio that fateful day. What if he had left the territory just a day before she had gotten there, or what if Aponi had just brought Nova back to Magnolia Glen without making Nova return to tell her parents first? Nova's winced, thinking about if things had happened differently and she had ended up living with her sister instead of meeting Camio. Nova would trade a thousand Aponi's for just a hair on Camio's tail.

Camio's soft voice, one that she had come to learn he used only with her, and only when they were alone, sent tingles up and down Nova's spine. She nestled down closer to him, and her ears perked up as he said "We have to talk". She was a little worried at first and scooted closer to him, but he was quick to reassure her that it was nothing bad. Which then fed into her curiosity. Did that mean it was something good? Or maybe he just wanted to talk about their plans of where they were going next. But instead, of all things, Camio mentioned that that spring was up ahead. He trailed off, leaving Nova with little to go off of. If the girl's education had been more rounded, she might have caught on to the unspoken implication. Yet, Nova was completely clueless.

She lifted her head up off of him, peering into his dreamy brown eyes with her own dandelion pair. Her head tilted to the side slightly as she tried to guess what he meant. "Last winter was pretty harsh, we shouldn't let it surprise us this year." Nova said, then hesitated, her pink tongue reaching out to lap at her nose. She was still trying to work out what he meant by "after this winter it's spring".

She had to admit, she was utterly baffled. He couldn't have just been mentioning it matter-of-factly, after all, he had made a point of saying that they had something to talk about. She didn't think he'd be using language like that just to talk about the weather. "Why do you mention spring, though?"

Nova's eyes slowly widened, growing to the size of saucers in a look of bewilderment at her beloved. More wolves, he must mean puppies. Nova had wondered where her mom had gotten those cubs, and her Ma and Appa had been awfully touchy feely last spring. Nova wasn't exactly sure which of the things was the breeding thing specifically, and she had her suspicious now, but she would be damned if she was going to make Camio any more awkward trying to explain it to her. She'd just have to fill in the blanks on her own.

Nova stayed silent after he finished talking, fidgeting her paws around and drawing patterns in the dirt in front of her. She was trying to think her way through it since it had never been something she had even considered as a possibility. It didn't take much introspection for Nova to discover a gut feeling, the same type of feeling that had her stuck like glue to Camio's side. Maybe that was the instict? Or something like it, she could only imagine.

Her little siblings had been obnoxious, but the thought of cubs that were her and Camio's, however... "Oh, they would look like us? Wouldn't they? Like you, but with tiny little paws, itsy bitsy ears, teensy tiny tails..." She started talking, her mouth getting well ahead of her brain. Her tail had started to wag, but she reined in her burgeoning excitement when she realized that she was putting the feast way before the hunt.

"But, I mean, only the leaders can have cubs, right? We couldn't just have pups, even if we wanted to..." Already Nova was trying to reason around it. Where then had Mercy come from? He didn't belong to her mom, like her and Aponi did, and he wasn't strictly Sagacity's either. Didn't they find him somewhere? And if so, why did they take him in? "Maybe, if we could pretend we found them..." Nova said quietly, scheming more to herself.

Nova felt her face warm as Camio called her beautiful, she still couldn't get used to the compliments. It would be odd to be a mother, but the thought of seeing her little cubs wriggling all over Camio and them calling him Papa seemed like it would be more than worth it.

Nova's nose wrinkled slightly at mention of the Keep. "I don't know about the Keep, these woods are so creepy and smelly, and when it starts raining it's so damp and musty I feel like mushrooms might even start growing in my lungs." Nova spoke in half jest, but she couldn't imagine making the little Zamora's grow up in such a gloomy place. It was really only her family that tied her to this place, and if they were going to start anew, the world was their oyster. Nova rolled onto her side with her back facing Camio, arching her spine so that her head pressed against his elbow. She looked up at Camio's face out of the corner of her eye. "Wouldn't you rather find somewhere all of our own? I mean, the mountains are beautiful, too," Nova said, letting her eyes drift over his shoulder and past the top of the stony den, spying the peak of the mountain lit pink by the morning sun.

Nova's attention returned to Camio, and she reached up with her snout to press her nose against his chin. "We could truly start brand new. I'm sure, together, we can find somewhere even better than this dusty ol' keep." She murmured into the creamy fur of his throat. Lowering her head, she let it rest on Camio's forelegs as she looked up at him, really unable to keep her eyes off of him for long.

Camio's worry about the mountains would have been funny if he weren't so obviously distraught by the idea. "Well, Aponi and I seemed to make it out okay. Our pups will have mountain blood," She said with a small smile, trying to be reassuring. "But you're right, it would be safer somewhere else. At least we have plenty of time now to find somewhere."

Nova met Camio's gaze as he looked at her, her ears catching his soft words asking if she was sure about all this. Already Nova knew what her answer would be. "I do, I really do. I want to start a life with you, it sounds wonderful," Nova said, smiling up at him. Her hope backed by a dash of naivety. Lovestruck, anything seemed possible for them. But spring seemed so far away now, especially when they had the present to get through.

"But what do we do now? We can't make it through the winter on our own. And the one plan I had- well... You saw how that went." Nova remarked sourly, withdrawing from Camio and pressing the side of her face into the dirt sullenly. She still thought about how poorly things had gone with her sister, and she still replayed the encounter in her head. She would try to think of what she could have said and done differently, and how it was all her fault that they were still without a place to truly call home. Nova forcefully sighed, sending up a poof of dust in front of her. "I'm sorry, Camio, it's all my fault we don't have anywhere to go," She mumbled.