Dragoncrest Cliffs the girl has always been half goddess, half hell

Oops.

The pups were nearly a week old now and Wildfire still felt an inexplicable inability to bond with them. She was, at least, tending to them quite diligently, along with her mate. Sometimes when she was having a particularly rough time of it, she wished she could talk to Fox, obtain some advice and comfort. But her mother was dead and gone and the Bandrona was on her own, unable even to tell Thuringwethil about the depth of her misgivings out of fear of what the commander might do, not to mention how ashamed she was about feeling this way after everything they had been through to get here.

She was drowsing when Eske dropped by, the sound of a whispering voice not so much waking her as becoming part of her dream. When the young Cheka inquired about saying hello to the pups, Wildfire jerked awake so suddenly and violently that both hind legs kicked against the nearby wall. The right made a hollow thump! but there was a sickening crunch where the left one impacted. And the mother's paw did not connect with wood but rather something small and soft.

An immediate sense of dread poured over Wildfire. "Oh, no, no, no," she began muttering before she even turned around to survey the damage. One of the pups—robust little Phoenix—must have crawled behind her as she slept. And now he lay against the wooden den wall, gasping for breath. "No, no, oh, no." Gently, the she-wolf nosed him and the puppy began to make awful mewling noises. She couldn't tell what was broken—a leg? a rib? his neck?—so she withdrew and just stared at him in horror as he twitched several times and fell still.

She was too terrified to touch him. Wildfire just stood there, staring down at the poor thing, ignoring Eske in the doorway. She expected a crushing sense of devastation and loss to descend any minute, yet as the seconds ticked by, the Bandrona only felt a peculiar numbness creeping over her.