Witch's Marsh going on tilt

I will help you raise them, promised Luke, and she wanted desperately to believe that. Saena did believe it, in fact, but that wasn't what kept her paws rooted to the marshy ground. It was the other half of the equation: Reek, her mate, or ex-mate, depending what one thought of the pledge she'd just made to Luke. No, mate. They were still mates, and the pups were as much Reek's as they were hers. Though every piece of her was screaming for an escape from the stressful life she'd made for herself by laying with a taken man and making him her own when she truly wasn't ready (but still believed she was) and settling a pack when she herself couldn't even settle, she simply could not take them with her. She did care deeply for Reek and would not inflict the pain of stealing his children from him. Besides, they would be better in his hands than hers.

"Stay with me," she pleaded quietly, her eyes wide and imploring him to consider her proposal. Her compromise. "For just a little while. I can't... I can't take them from him, they're his too, but... I could leave him, maybe, and come away with you, when it's possible." Abandon her mate and her babes and her pack and run away into the sunset with another wolf? That sounded a whole lot like what she hated so much in Peregrine, yet faced with the possibility and panic of losing Luke forever over children and a title and responsibility as parent she was just realizing she might not even be able to handle, she became just like the father she despised, and didn't even blink.