Redtail Rise Starting right now, I'll be strong

The exchange between Arion and Reek was as foreign to Saena as the idea of drug abuse, but she listened anyway, noting the tension between them. Reek was Arion's superior, so what he said was basically law as far as the gamma was concerned. Saena herself didn't feel qualified to make any decisions, even when Reek explained what was actually going on.

She committed the term "junky" to memory, having never encountered it before, but she understood what poppy was. Its use as a painkiller wasn't unknown to the Naturalist, but its other uses were definitely new to her. "I didn't know you could die from that stuff," she said, looking back at the disoriented and possibly delirious wreck that was Arion. Anything that could kill one of her wolves, one of her family, was bad news in her books, so when Reek pleaded with her to help him keep an eye on Arion, she nodded.

"I'll do whatever's needed to keep him from dying," she told Reek, as if Arion wasn't even there (he wasn't really, was he?). Her eyes went to her chocolate-furred friend and she said, with much more concern and less chill than Reek, "how could we allow you to continue like this, Arion?"