Otatso Wetlands When I had laid it on the floor

Saena's ears pricked out of interest and a hopeful desire to hear further ill of her ex-mate, but Stark wasn't very forthcoming with information. Not right away. She was almost ready to beg for more when Stark supplied it on his own, but at first, she didn't understand his reasons. Whoever that is, she thought helplessly. Octavia wasn't a name she'd ever heard before. She'd have remembered it if she had. That Stark's woman and the woman who played a part in Reek's adultery were one and the same went right over Saena's head. She'd only ever known her as Tavi, and she wasn't perceptive enough nor attentive enough to realize what that was a nickname for.

"I'm not sure who that is," she told him, "but I can't blame you for your feelings toward Reek if your partner is involved. I hope he didn't cause the end of your relationship." She sucked in a breath, then shook her head. "We had everything once, he and I," she muttered, deciding to share her own issues with the man she'd once called husband while she wracked her brain for any speck of understanding of what Stark had told her. "Led a tight-knit pack in a gorgeous territory not far from here. We were to start a family." The happiest days of Saena's life, she reflected, and then shoved it away with a spark of anger that played across her face. "I got pregnant, just like we planned. I don't know what you'd heard beyond us being mates once, but I found him with his dick in our Beta female. Our fledgling family and I were not good enough for him, so I made them leave and ended things.

He claimed the grotto, very close to my maple wood, and threatened me and mine, so we fled. Went as far as possible, to keep my kids safe from him and his selfishness." She chewed her lip as she thought about keeping the rest to herself, but Saena was terrible at keeping things private. She'd never kept her thoughts to herself before, and that hadn't changed. As she turned her flinty gaze up past Stark's shoulder, in the direction of the Grotto, she couldn't suppress a low growl.

"Somehow he found them, and then he kidnapped them."

Stark could likely guess exactly what she was in the taiga for now, and Saena could only hope that whoever Octavia was, and whatever she meant to Reek or whatever that connection was, it would not make an enemy of Stark for her.