Sawtooth Spire You took my hand and we pretended like I was your guy

Hrmmm, Wylla murmured, as much because she was mulling over Mahler's words as because he'd found the particularly sensitive spot on her neck that made her feel like her bones were melting. His life was an idyllic one. She thought there would be a lot more trouble to come in all of it, between those children living, the mountain changing, the wilds and their misfortune, and those god-forsaken foothills...

And your politics? she wondered, for that was really the question here. He'd made it clear before that he wanted to father every pup in Diaspora because other fathers had failed in the past. She didn't imagine that had changed with Sagtannet. If anything, she wondered if tasting fatherhood would make him pine to warm every woman's bed, father every litter ever conceived upon the mountain, claim them all as his own. It was unfair of her to think it of him after all he'd said and done, but ever did that shard of insecurity find its way to her heart and dig painfully in. She had to know.