Sleeping Dragon but stars burn out, my dear, and everything golden dies

This all felt a lot like that day at Qeya River. Wildfire had been lulled into a false sense of security over the past several days, blind to the raw, authentic and eminent threat of actual warfare. Now that invisible undercurrent rose up to sweep her feet out from beneath her, plunging her head under cold water. She didn't know what to think or how to feel. She didn't know what to do with herself, either, despite the Heda's clear instructions. Under the cover of night, she found herself wandering her new and still foreign home aimlessly, heart pounding.

She hated how life had become such a roller coaster lately. All she wanted was peace. Wildfire stopped suddenly in her tracks, peering northward into the bracken woods yonder. She could run after all, leave the Teekon Wilds and all of this melodrama in her rear view mirror. For a moment, she was sorely tempted to do just that: run toward the horizon. But then she thought of Thuringwethil and her red toes rooted into the soil. Licking dry lips, the Theta turned her back on the distant call of the wild and instead began striding in the direction of the Alpha's den.

When she arrived there, she found she was not alone. "Thur?" she called softly, glancing at the shallow hole she had previously dug near the threshold. Quickly and quietly, Wildfire unearthed the kills stashed there. Without another word, she clasped them in her jaws and slunk into the den's dark interior, setting the small body of a rabbit at the Heda's feet even as she slung her belly to the cave's cool stone floor.