Moonspear Rush in, we have to rally and win boys

Hydra's tail lashed as she tried to process how he felt. She could not understand this, his insecurity, having never felt it herself a day in her life. Hydra had always felt wanted, had always felt a purpose. She grew angry with the fact that she might not have been as perceptive as she ought to have been to things such as his feeling unwelcome—his conversation with her father might have only added fuel to this, after all.

My father, she began, is more wary now than he has ever been of those he permits himself to grow close to. I think since Rannoch brought so many away with him, a lot of us are; but I knew you long before all of that. Others had not, her head dipped low. They want you—they are afraid to admit it, show it, she knew it because she had this same fear with others she perceived as outsiders. Hydra would not allow it even for herself, but Gannet she had known before this all transpired, too; he was one of the few that would ever know her this way, for her mistrust was deep in others since she had been jaded. You chip away at that wall each day you are here. Each day you are with the cubs. Each day you mark the border. I know you cannot see it, and you cannot feel it, she continued, but I do. And I know someday it will be better, she breathed.

She did not want to present him with the choice to leave now; she did not want him to go. But all of this might be too much work, more than it was worth for him. The idea wounded her, but if this was the case she would rather know it now than to know later, when the wound would be more than simply deep but be a mortal wound to her desire to be familiar with anyone who did not wear the name Ostrega. Perhaps her father did not consider Gannet family, but Hydra did—but one woman could hardly be enough, could they? I do not want you to be unhappy, he was important to her, as it stood. I do not want you to leave, but I do not want you to be unhappy, she elaborated again, her voice strained. It was difficult to look at him and say this, but Hydra must know, must hear it.