Sunbeam Lair It feels good today

As they walked among subterranean trees whose beauty seemed to both ignore and beckon them, Asterr and Noctura were as atune with nature as they were with each other. And perhaps that was nature too.

For never had a friendship felt so natural to Noctura as what he had with the raven girl. In some ways it was almost peculiar to feel so guided by one so young, but she had wisdom far beyond her single year, and spoke to his heart in a manner no other wolf had — only the phenomenon of magic had ever communed with him like this before. Still his shame from the battle on the borders persevered, and he'd long considered the dark act of banishing himself from the pack, but his lure to Asterr felt even stronger than the very concept of home. So he hadn't managed to bring about the punishment he thought he'd deserved.

She was oh-so-right in her words — utterly true. She was beginning to know him as well as he knew himself — perhaps even more so if there really was potential in him that she could see and he could not. But... Your words mean so much to me, Asterr. But those echoes... are dangerous. The moment I saw that dark wolf threatening you, I didn't even stop to think — my instinct drove me, the sad instinct of a natural killer. If that same instinct one day drives me to hurt one of our packmates... or, dare I think it, hurt you in any way... I couldn't live with myself. Isn't there a part of you that thinks it dangerous to keep me?