Dawnlark Plains then they called me, too

He shook his head. "It was my fault," Shale murmured, the words digging into his heart like four tiny thorns. "I should have brought Lucy home, raised the kids in Sameth. We wouldn't have run into the famine; everyone would have stayed fed and healthy. . . But I was stubborn. I thought I could do it all on my own, and I failed."

Shale cast his eyes over the horizon, unable to meet his brother's gaze. His throat moved in a long swallow, and he swept his tongue over his lips, a nervous gesture he'd carried with him for seasons and had never been able to give up. It was his tell, his show of weakness, and while he tried to curb it around strangers as best he could, he felt no such inclination around Grayday. The wolf he'd known longest.

"It's not just about my own happiness," he continued, watching the midday sun, hidden behind clouds. "It's about hers. And as much as she thinks she'd be happy. . .Grayday, she doesn't know me. Not really. And I don't want her to wake up one morning next to a stranger she can't stand."

But wasn't that a possibility in every relationship? If Lucy had lived on, would she have tired of him, one day? Would Dawn walk out on Aditya, or vice versa? Two women, evidently, had left his brother; he desperately hoped Catori wouldn't make it a trio. He didn't think she would, but. . . Doubt, the ever-familiar doubt, rose in his mouth like bile, and his mouth tightened in a hollow frown.