Iktome Plains And cut and peeled a hazel wand

The girl's reaction brought both surges of both pride and relief into Saena's breast. Pride, for she was used to being the dominant creature in any group setting and desired to regain that position and that respect. Relief, because it meant that Emaleth's intentions were not ill ones, a fact she stated herself. Saena's red-backed ears flicked forward to acknowledge their established hierarchy, but she otherwise did not move for several moments, not until Emaleth asked whether she was all right.

"Fine," she answered succinctly, but she squinted in the bear's direction and her shoulders tensed. The animal was still lumbering along quite heedless of the two wolves, yet it was in line with her tentative destination. Drawing closer to it was both necessary and unwise. "I was going to visit an old friend in the woods that way," she explained, flicking her muzzle toward the bear and the towering sequoias beyond it, "but I'm afraid there's a sentinel."

The bear, of course, was very likely not in the employment of the Donnelaith pack, given biological and ecological norms between bears and wolves... and yet she knew from Lasher that that forest held a deep, old, natural magic. She didn't believe in crap like that, of course, having seen nothing of magic in her lifetime and knowing that fairy tales were nothing but, but when a forest was that old, there was a power nonetheless that even a non-believing wolf could poignantly feel. Believing that a bear was guarding it was easier when you felt that power.