Phoenix Maplewood darling, a bad romance

She was about to ask why he was glad to have found her, assuming he was carrying a message from someone currently undisclosed, but then he introduced himself and she was struck speechless momentarily. Lasher. That was a name she hadn't heard in a while and after belittling him at her borders, she never expected to hear it again. So much had happened since then that Saena didn't remember why she had been angry with the druid. Unlike Peregrine, Lasher was a wolf she seldom associated with heartache and trouble, so the grudge she'd held against him was temporary and easily forgotten.

Her heart thumped in her chest as she caught the remainder of his words, even noting a strange sadness trilling at the end. "You're joking," she breathed, looking him over in a new light. "You've been Casmir this whole time? How did I not recognize you?" Perhaps because he did not recognize her. He'd been just a babe when she last lived at the plateau, though, and Constantine had been the pup she saw the most back then. "God, you were so little when I left home," she breathed, marvelling at how like Lasher and how unlike him at the same time Casmir had turned out. She wanted to ask about his siblings, but their names were no longer part of her memory and she fell short.

"Why did you leave the plateau? Has something happened to your family?" My family, but she didn't say it. They weren't family any longer; she'd forsaken them in pursuit of her own ambitions. While she was struck by a sudden desire to go home, make amends, admit she had done poorly and let someone else take the reins for a while, it wasn't something that was possible. She was a leader now, whether a good or bad one, and that was her fate forevermore.