Sleepy Fox Hollow To the house in the pines where the road ends

Something about the changes in his features made themselves known, then, and Wylla was once again reminded that his love was not a trick, and she felt again the strange desire to run away. She curbed it, knowing now that it wasn't a sensation worth heeding. It was self destruction and nothing more, an automatic response to things that were too heavy for her immediate attention. He returned to normal just as quickly and so did she.

Wylla blinked when Mahler revealed he had never envisioned himself as the pack's leader, and that begged the question of how he got there to begin with. She didn't know Diaspora's story, only that the wolf before him was ambitious beyond compare. It was a trait Wylla could admire, obviously, and she wondered what had driven Mahler into the seat of a man like that.

Then why are you? she asked, with only the slightest hint of humorous challenge in her tone. She imagined he was decent at his job or someone would have taken it from him; now he merely had to prove it.