The Heartwood my irregular heartbeat is starting to correct itself

When Mouse started dropping names she recognized, she felt a little flutter of excitement. "Liffey is my alphas' daughter -- my cousin," she answered, a grin playing over her face. "She and I were close when she was little. I haven't seen her in a long time though." Sometimes she still felt a little bitterness that Liffey had chosen to run away from the Caldera and leave her family behind, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't be mad at the girl. She loved her too much. "And Andalusia is my friend. I taught her a lot about medicine." That reminded her that she needed to drop by and see Andalusia sometime. With the Firebirds nearing adulthood, the arrival of Finley's litter, and the famine, she'd been too busy to pay much attention to her withering social life.

Raven followed her new friend as he tracked the raccoon's scent, and it didn't take him long to identify its hiding place. She nodded to his directions and readied herself at one end of the old log, her heart doing a little nervous flutter in her chest. She'd never come face-to-face with the sharp teeth of a raccoon before. But as hungry as she was, she was willing to give it a shot.