Redhawk Caldera beneath with me

Her greeting was relatively cheerful, but she then focused on something else entirely. The smell of blood still hung heavily in the air around the den; it was enough to make Elwood feel sick to his stomach, but Finley hadn't let him clean it. She continued to punish herself, even though he tried to convince her otherwise.

But now, looking her sister in the face, Elwood's tongue felt heavy. He couldn't tell her what had happened, as much as he wanted to. Tiger would be nothing but helpful, he knew -- but Finley had made him swear. They had both promised to each other that this was a secret to keep to themselves, and he wouldn't let her down.

So he shook his head, trying to appear nonchalant as he stepped away from the burrow, gesturing to Tiger as though he wanted to take a walk. He had to get her away from there. "Oh, no, yeah -- we're both fine," he said, carefully trying to evaluate his speech. He didn't want to seem too careless. "Finley ended up with a couple of good scratches after the...the fight. But we took care of it; cleaned her up and sent her on her way. She wanted to go do some scouting to stretch out her sore muscles." Was his fib believable? Lying was certainly not one of Elwood's strong suits, but maybe Tiger didn't know him well enough to see through his thin veil.