Silver Creek And caught a little silver trout

Spring's reluctance was plain to see, and nearly spurred Saena to argue before anything else was even said, but the Alpha conceded with several conditions. The first was easy. "The only one in danger of dying is him." And she meant it. Saena was a strong fighter. She'd been in enough of them in her life to be good at it. She would take Reek's pitiful life from him if he tried to deny her her children. She would take the lives of any who got in her way, she vowed, whether or not the very notion was foolhardy.

The second condition was harder. Saena had no qualms with returning if she found Casmir and Laika with her daughters, but if she didn't... "What if they were not successful?" she wondered with narrowed eyes. "Would you deny me the opportunity to try if I find them, only to learn that they failed?" Spring couldn't. Saena would defy her, though she would never say it. She wouldn't leave her children in the jaws of her self-serving ex-mate. She wouldn't abandon them to be hurt and betrayed the way she had been by a man who didn't give two shits about the things he already had. To be replaced and cast aside, as she fancied she was.

Laurel and Indra deserved much better. Before Saena could take what freedom she'd been given and depart, Rowan spoke up, and Saena's narrowed eyes snapped to the pregnant wolf with a sudden surge of suspicion. She didn't know Rowan or what she'd been through, and she didn't know where the woman had come from. All she knew was she was pregnant, she had come upon Reek, and Reek had stolen her children. Saena's mind went to dark places as she irrationally wondered what Rowan and Reek had been doing together, whether Rowan was Reek's latest conquest, whether her children would share blood with Saena's own through that selfish bastard, and whether she should feel sympathy or disgust for Rowan if her worst fear was really true.

But the words that came coldly to her lips, built on assumptions rather than facts and spawned in the emotional, spinning mind of a mother whose children were lost, were, "are you the one who told him where to find my little girls?" Because if so, you'll know what it's like to lose children of your own, she silently promised, but dared not voice in front of the Alpha. She'd missed the part where Rowan hadn't been part of the pack at the time, and didn't realize she'd just made an ass of herself. Her gaze was unapologetic. She had truly heard only the first part, and in response, her volatile temper blocked out the rest.