Firestone Hot Springs With this knowledge he will fall

A claim was made, but he found it hard to believe. In his mind, it was best to assume that she feared the dark, for why else would she have kept from visiting him? From returning to him and attempting to piece their family back together? He still didn't like the fact that she'd left him in the first place, nor that she'd urged their other sisters to follow her and their mother. It had bothered him—hurt him—for a long while, and still continued to do so deep down. Despite his growth and the continuation of his life, the past did not fade from his mind, and it was the continued lives of those memories that made him think the way that he did. To assume things, and to then speak or act based upon said assumptions. At times, what he made himself to believe was better than reality, and so to let go of such thoughts was a difficult, unthinkable task.

Rather than answering his question right away, she'd inserted one of her own into their conversation. Xan frowned, brows pinching together as he looked at her as if she'd just kicked a puppy. "I'm not interested in what spies do," he began, shaking his head as if that might assist in wiping his features clean—it didn't. "And I've never killed anyone. There aren't any murderers in the woods." In a way, that was true, but it also wasn't. "I've never seen anyone being murdered, and anyone that has been killed in the past was guilty of something. Innocent lives aren't taken." Again, it wasn't anything more than an assumption. If someone were to request that the Brotherhood take the life of another, then it had to be for a good reason. Thieves, liars, and cheats; these were the types of wolves that he believed to be killed by the wolves of Blackfeather, not beings that had never done anything wrong. There had to be a reason to everything, after all.

Xan fell silent after his answer had been delivered, ears back. Did she really think so lowly of him as to suggest that he'd do something without a purpose behind it? It bothered the boy, as did the response that he'd eventually received to his earlier inquiry. "You were alone?" he'd repeated back, ears perking up for a moment, only to return to their previous position no more than a second later. "Why didn't you come to dad and me? We could've helped you out, given you a place to sleep..." Words trailed off, a frown pulling down the corners of his lips. "Do you hate us that much, Desna? That you couldn't even come to us for help?" A step back was taken, disbelief present in his tone. All that had happened aside, they were still brother and sister, so why hadn't she come to him?