Grouse Thicket And winter came...

Wraen had not met or spoken to her brother for a year now, though for wolves life flows quicker and it felt like a lifetime ago. He crossed her mind now and then, but she did not miss him, nor did she feel a need to travel all the way to Lost Creek Hollow and see, how he was doing. They had grown apart and aside from parents and siblings, did not really have anything in common. Not anymore. 

With this in the background, she had no reason to doubt that Liffey's words were true and that there might be an important bit that her former packmate had intentionally left out. Would her opinion of Liffnoch change than and she would take Terance's side right away, her narrator cannot tell. Perhaps, she would simply take a neutral position, reasoning that this was not her conflict to take part in. 

"How old are your kids now?" she asked, recalling that Rannoch had had "business" in spring, when she had last met him, and understanding that Liffey was referring to her youngest family members not the ones, that had grown up already and fled the nest.