When a counselor needs council

Burke hadn't realized that Ayana had followed him. To him it was almost as if she had found him like this. Burke's head was laying on the ground and he let out a soft grunt when he heard Ayana's voice. Her scent came later on because with the slight rain. Burke pushed himself up in a sitting position, his head lifting. He wasn't keen on showing his pack member how much he was feeling down. They didn't need to know that. He needed to be a strong leader for them. He nodded courtly when she spoke all these nice things to him. "Hey Ayana," he spoke calmly, as calm as ever. He managed to hide it a bit but he couldn't stop his troubled thought from racing. "Those are kind words that mean a lot to me," he spoke with a hint of a grateful smile.

It wasn't necessarily about the woods that were being damaged. It was the fact that he didn't have his dark queen with him. That he was clueless what happened to the three spiderlings. Burke let out a sigh. "I don't know if you can help me," he returned, sounding surprisingly honest. "It isn't that I blame myself for this storm actually," he wanted her to know that. He just wished that he would have seen his mate more. He didn't want to give up on her so soon but he had to be reasonable... right? His pale eyes fell on the lighter female. "Do you think a wolf, all alone, would have survived this storm," he asked, trying to see what she would think about it.