The Heartwood Show me who we are today

A lot of what Ira said fell on deaf ears. The Ouroboros Spine queen had already decided his fate. It was truly a shame, for if she had looked beyond her own need to cut the disloyal from her ranks, she would have seen the sincerity in him. She would have recognized that he'd made a bad choice, something she had done easily dozens of times before. Unfortunately, Jinx was unforgiving in this case, primarily because he had gone off in search of a woman that was not herself.

He proclaimed that Bones was dead to him, and this caused the Kesuk to bear her fangs at him. She could never be dead to him. He could think it, and Jinx knew he would try to, but the wound he sported would forever be a reminder that he had gone to save her. That he had failed to do so. Bones wouldn't exist the way she had to him, but she would never be dead to him. It was as good as saying Kaskae, Arktos, and Vex were dead to her, which was nothing but a facade.

“You are just like them,” she said coldly, turning her back on her adoptive son. “Your motivations were different but they had the same outcome. You left for something other than your pack, and so your pack will no longer welcome you.” Having made her decision, the Alpha female gave him one last chance to say anything he wished before she disappeared back into the trees, retracing her previous steps. There was an undeniable pain in her breast as she left Ira behind, but Jinx forced herself not to look back.

If she had looked back, she might have noticed a small dead bat huddled at the base of a tree near where she'd slept for the night, its lips limned with bloody spittle and foam and its sightless eyes staring unblinkingly into the sky.