Hideaway Strath reebok

[makes wild assumptions and throws timelines to the winds]

Having left the children under Hemlock’s watchful eye, Lotte took it upon herself to approach the territory borders for the first time since they’d laid claim to the strath. The cry that struck the silence of Teaghlaigh’s sanctuary was feminine and pointedly intent, and Lotte had to assume that the first cry was perhaps for the little white foundling with the sweet temperament and the slippery memory. It made her sympathetic, especially given the upsurge of hormones that influenced her solitude these days, but the fact didn’t change that there were strangers at her borders and one of them was female.

Despite the vestiges of her pregnancy that yet swelled her middle and caused her midsection to sway a bit pendulously, Lotte drew herself up to her full height and fixed each stranger with a calm, imperious stare. “Rakeet, comrades,” she said unsmilingly. She had the unfair advantage of knowing who they were before actually hearing an introduction from them. Dagfinn had been ebullient in his praise of Reek and Jhala, and Lotte evaluated them with an inwardly analytical eye, though her black-masked visage was carefully devoid of emotion. Dagfinn, she thought, had done well in his descriptions this time. She missed him.

Oh, how she missed him!

“You must be Reek and Jhala,” she said, cutting past the awkward introductions. “My kaksonen has spoken of you — and you must be Astik.” She turned her attention to the dark young wolf, recalling that Hemlock had mentioned Tapat babbling about an Astik. “Your brother has been missing you.” Recalling Dagfinn’s stories of the Golden Glade wolves, Lotte allowed herself to relax a fraction, and a brilliant smile finally broke through, her high arched tail beginning to wave. “Dagfinn has gone home to the Enok Tundra — ” without me! “ — to tell them of my children,” she said somewhat apologetically. Jhala and Reek had lost a good wolf — the best wolf, in Lotte’s opinion. “Yet Tapat is here. We could spare no wolf to escort him home and he did not seem…well enough to travel alone.” She danced around the whole Ten Second Tom thing. “It is good that you have come,” she said, her velvety alto brimming with warmth. “We will see you fed and rested before your journey home.” She assumed quite naturally that they were only here to collect their son and return to the glade.