Kintla Flatlands This woman is my destiny

Saena couldn't stop a well-meaning laugh, both at Luke's surname and the proposed name of her birthplace. "No, but I so wish," she told him, flicking her stub back and forth in good humour. "The place is named for the deer that live there. I don't think there are any red-tailed deer." She didn't need to guess to know that was true, at least on the plateau. Whether they existed anywhere else was a mystery to her. She tried to imagine what their tails might look like, but found herself drawing a blank.

"They're good wolves," Saena told him when he mentioned Mordecai and Osprey. She had no complaints about the former, and though her relationship with the latter was far from healthy, she found merit in Osprey's ways. True, she would've killed the other bitch before allowing her to breed within the pack's ranks and would've usurped her position if given half the chance, but her aunt had found a way around that, and her cleverness was too hard not to respect in a begrudging way.

"Although I'm thinking I won't be there much longer," Saena mused aloud then. It wasn't the first time she'd spoken about the possibility of her departure, but it still felt like a brand new idea. "It's a good pack and they're good wolves," she repeated, as if to convince herself, "yet I don't think I want to stay."