Hushed Willows we'll create an empire for you.

She couldn't hear anything properly at this point. Her emotions had clouded her mind, but something else seemed to block her ears. It was like being under water—there were things spoken, warning given, even a flash of teeth that made Tavi's body instinctively react with bristling, but aside from that she was cut off from the rest of them. The golden boy fled after some words, but that didn't matter. Harlyn sniped something at her, and while Tavi lifted her head and caught her slumped figure in her periphery, she did not turn her attention away from her son.

She was waiting. Mourning, maybe, but she resisted, because losing the only light in her life would surely spell her own doom, and the woman could not fathom it. Even with his limp body laying here, throat torn, breathing minimal—

Breathing. He was breathing.

Octavia nosed at him carefully, tender for the most part but rough once she realized that yes, Tambourine was breathing. Breathing meant not dead. And then as he roused himself, looking sleepily up at her, then frowning, Tavi gasped back a sob and buried her face against him, cupping him close with her forelimbs and covering Tambourine in a mess of tears and snot. Thank the powers, you're alive, you're... You're OK. And he was babbling back at her, although Tam's words were muffled a bit based on Octavia's positioning; but just hearing any sound coming out of him was enough. My boy, my little—you're OK.

Whatever had happened, whatever Harlyn thought of her now, Tavi did not care at all. She only knew that her son had been in danger and that someone needed to protect him — and if doing so had irreparably damaged her relationship with her co-alpha, so be it. This place was a death trap. She knew it now. All that mattered was the safety of her son, and this place—the Keep and all of its people—were no friends to them.