Wheeling Gull Isle if you look away, the stars will know, and they will not be able to help you.

Another tragedy to add to her laundry list of failures, and this was perhaps the most heartwrenching of them all.  She should have noticed!  It was the wounded raven who sat watch at Poppy's den; loyal to Undersea as she was, it had been her job to keep her charge safe.

She blamed herself, and surely that must mean that the others blamed her, too.  That is how it would have gone in Bearclaw — if Laurel had died in the whelping den they had so briefly shared, it would have been her fault.  Her fault.  Everything was her fault.  "No!  Bad dog!"  Coelacanth's intense Neptune gaze did not go without notice, and as her ghostgirl tore from the den a whine caught in her throat and died before it could be released into the air.

A queer combination of fear and guilt caused her breath to quicken, and tears pooled down her finely angled cheeks and fell onto the blessedly silent infants below.  Now was not the time to cry — it was Coelacanth's turn.

Later, when she was left with the pups, she would allow her sobs to escape.  But to cry so openly was an admission of guilt, and with so many of the seawolves here she did not dare.

She curled in on herself the best she could, paying attention now to the lives that depended on her, stimulating them with her tongue.  They were not replacements for her first litter, but they were her children just the same.  For the second time this year, Reigi was a mama.

And when it was all said and done, Reigi would seek out each of those who had arrived at the den in an attempt to make things right.  As of this moment she had newborns that needed her — again.