Lost Creek Hollow As we roll down this unfamiliar road

It didn't occur to her that by saying what she did, she might be hurting him. Not until he spoke that confession--that it wasn't just that he was doing his Gannet thing and helping out because someone had asked him to, but that he actually wanted to be a father. Her heart ached for him then, but she couldn't find it in herself to relent and be okay with this arrangement he'd made. She could relent and let him go without continuing the argument, but she simply could not be okay with him trying to be a father to a child that wasn't his for a woman that didn't love him.

Liffey looked at her paws as he said good bye. She let him go without saying a word, feeling terribly upset herself. There were tears in her eyes when she turned to her den again and went back to work. She would try to distract herself with preparations, but she would play the conversation in her head over and over and over again, agonizing over what she should've said that would've made him understand that he deserved better than to go be a stand-in in someone else's life. He deserved one of his own, a mate of his own and children he had created himself. Children with his eyes and his black stockings. Children that could never be taken away because they were his just as much as hers.

All kinds of things that she would likely never say, but would always feel she should have.