Totoka River baby, when I whisper, can you hear?

The inkdark ingénue was keenly aware of the beat of her heart. In the wake of its hummingbird rush, she marveled at its heft, swollen with the bitters of regret and a sweet undercurrent of spice. She had been savaged and abandoned, scarred and bruised, but this was the first time she had ever been guilty as charged. A wild, cowardly desire to leave the island and strike out for some otherworldly shore filled her — she couldn’t return to Vargas Island and she certainly didn’t deserve to stay here; Moorhen, she was certain, would be better off with a less flighty guardian; and if Stockholm existed still in the Teekons and hadn’t been snatched up by a human helicopter, he would do well to find a more perfect mate. The sheepdog had found her flock and the wolf had found her pack but still, still, she had been capricious enough to leave it all behind, and by so doing, had proven herself unworthy! Even worse, beneath the raw wounds of her fierce self-flagellation lurked a dark certainty: she could not give Moorhen or Stockholm up. She was too needy to be noble.

She did not move when the distant storm of drumming paws reached her ears, nor when a pale figure in the distance kicked up whitewater in billowing sheets, nor when the blur of distance cleared and she saw it was Stockholm — Stockholm! — running toward her. She was affixed to the spot, her catlike paws rooted to the earth, and the nearer he drew the lower she got — her spine curved into an arched gravestone of shame as her tail trailed limply in the shallows; her Neptune eyes could not bear to see the desperate hope and fear in his golden gaze; her tufted ears folded in defeat against the gentle slope of her skull. She had failed him, and she did not deserve his love —

— or Aditya’s, or Komodo’s, or Moorhen’s, or even Amoxtli’s —

— and even when he careened into her, sending them both tumbling into the sand, she lay for a long moment without moving. The push of his muzzle against her neck and his deep and shaking breath as it stirred the feathering against her throat pulsed outward in emanating waves of heat and still she tried to deny him with her stillness. He deserved better. He could easily find better.

A good dog. A good wife.

She tried not to feel happy when the soft caress of his tongue swept tantalizingly across the hollow of her throat and smoothed the taut line of her slim jaw; she tried not to feel elated at the sound of her name ringing like a litany from his lips. Stubbornly, she wanted to feel miserable — as miserable as she believed she should feel after being so impulsive — but with equal fervor she wanted to be forgiven. She did not deserve it, and she knew he would give it to her, so she bore down hard and locked the apology inside herself where it beat against the bars of her bones like an unspent cry or a caged animal, venting itself in a violent trembling as she curled in on herself.