Phoenix Maplewood butterfly in the storm

If not for having an excellent reason for doing it, Saena would've regretted throwing Reek and Tavi out of the pack. After all, they had been alpha male and beta female and had taken care of many things that Saena took for granted on a daily basis. Now a sole leader, she was regaining her footing as a Phoenix wolf, and finding it exhausting. Patrolling the borders with half a month left in her pregnancy probably wasn't the brightest idea, but she wasn't in the brightest of moods, and was at least momentarily contemplating whether dying would be easier than living and whether she would even fight back if some crazed trespasser attacked her.

As she rounded a bend, it was not a crazed trespasser she found, but a poised if travel-worn female wolf. The scent of her met Saena at about the same time sight did, and she lifted her downcast eyes a little higher to glance over the girl. Slender, perhaps, with a gilded coat of silver and gold that practically glimmered in the cool sunlight. Saena was on the rougher side of things these days: rounded, with smudges of dirt in places she couldn't reach and eyes sunken with lack of sleep and crying alike. Still, she managed to prick up her ears, lift her head, and close the distance with the tiny bit of dignity she could muster.

"Can I help you?" she asked, and was disappointed but not surprised to hear her own voice come out quieter and less confident than it had ever been.