Sleepy Fox Hollow Where I thought I knew it all before I knew what love was

—BITCH, Wylla hollered into the cool mountain air, because the last thing she'd expected was to run into him again.

(Nyx's scent went unnoticed, possibly because Wylla hadn't spent much time with the woman or possibly because she'd simply dashed her from her memory. The only thing Nyx had ever done wrong was bang her brother, which was kind of low on the offence scale in the grand scheme of things. Mahler had borne the brunt of Wylla's unwarranted ire about what happened at Grimnismal, so he remained fresh at the front of her mind, second only to Caiaphas).

She remembered just how she'd treated him the last time she'd seen him. She'd felt so justified in the moment, but with time and maturity came clarity. Wylla knew she'd been unfair. She knew she'd been a jerk. She could blame her hormones or new mother crankiness for that, but in reality she'd simply needed somewhere to stick her knife and Mahler had presented his breast for the task. She couldn't lash out at Caiaphas without her life being forfeit; Mahler had been the next best thing, and even now she couldn't admit that it had been hurt that drove her actions.

No more than she could swallow her pride enough to apologize for it.

Her heart thumped unsteadily in her breast as she made to move on, not wanting to have to face him after how they'd parted and all that time in between, but—shit, she'd waited too long. She should've known. His scent was too heavily entwined for him to just be a fringe-dwelling wolf, he was someone important to this pack, though Wylla couldn't guess the extent of it. Seeing his face was strange after all this time. She was struck at once by how haggard he looked, how different from the man who once haunted Grimnismal's shore and swam with her in the icy sea. Different, even, from the man she'd scorned in the thick of a childish tantrum.

Those eyes remained the same, however, the frosted lilac that obscured every innermost thought. She wondered, absurdly, if she had changed or if she remained the same in his eyes. Wylla doubted he viewed her with much warmth these days; she doubted the intervening months had changed much between them on his end.

She realized that her dark ears were back against her crown and she looked away, deferring to Mahler according to the station he surely held. It wasn't like she was trying to find him; she would have thought him gone with the wind, just like Grimnismal. Just like Swiftcurrent Creek. Yet here he was, enduring as he had back then, and another thought struck her, but was gone just as quickly. She could not apologize for mistreating him, for her stubborn vanity choked the words from her breath, so she went with an even worse alternative: a weakly delivered, all this time and the first thing you notice is my butt, nice.