Lost Creek Hollow don't you weep and don't you worry

Harlyn considered his proposal silently. She had never known Charon, but new enough of him through Mordecai. For a moment, she found the idea strange that they would seek an existence beneath her mate's nephew, but the thought passed almost as soon as it came. They were not in the position to be choosey for themselves.

His second point was equally valid, and something that Harlyn had not at all considered. As much as she professed for the entire pack to be her family, when it came down to it, Mordecai, Silas, Lark and Pippin were her priority. In easy times, she considered them all to be of equal import, but that was apparently one of her idealistic notions. She cared very much for all of her pack, truly. But when it came down to it, it was her mate and children that consumed her heart and were most important.

"You're right," Harlyn replied, knowing it to be true, "And there's Ishi also. He may still be alive, and I hate the thought of him escaping somehow and coming home to find us gone." She bit her lip thinking about it. He was a sweet boy, and to go through so much be abandoned? She couldn't bear it even knowing how slim the odds were that he yet lived. "We cannot abandon our own. If we leave, we go with our whole family," she said with a tone of admittedly unsteady finality because truth be told, when push came to shove as it once had when she had walked away from one of her closest companions, leaving her to die in the field that day, Harlyn would always put her children before all else. Even her gods.