Whitefish River hit the sunroof

"You're welcome," she offered, smiling at his exuberant response. "I understand. Teekon is beautiful," she spoke from experience - having travelled through the wilds twice in her short life. It had taken her whole life - or most of it - to find Kavik, the plateau, and happiness.

As Slavik gazed with awe on the plateau, she followed his gaze, feeling a fierce stab of pride that she could call it home. "Both. Neither," she grinned wryly as she turned back to him. How could she begin to explain her story in Teekon, that she had done both once upon a time? How to explain the many packs she had been and the means of joining them: by being forced into marriage, being held captive, arriving nearly dead on the borders.

"Come back someday and I may tell you the whole story." Omitting the grief, her rape, her times being held and tortured, and the loss of her children obviously. 

"This pack though, I founded with my mate and our friend," she explained with a fond grin as she thought of Kavik and Grezig. 

"There are a number of things to see in Teekon, other packs you'll probably meet. If you should head south, avoid the other pack in the Flatlands," she warned him suddenly.

Liri had no way of knowing the wolves who had tortured her no longer resided within Blackfeather Woods. Nor did she have any way of knowing that their numbers were so low, unlikely to threaten anyone. She just knew that she didn't want Slavik to end up in the caves that haunted her dreams.