Nova Peak If you must mourn, don't do it alone

Rain beat steadily against the rocky ground and damp tree trunks, matching the tempo of Wylla's paws as she stamped a track around the pack's perimeter. She was loathe to be away from the cavern in the foothills where Mahler lay recovering, but she also couldn't leave Sagtannet leaderless. The borders required reinforcing and it simply wouldn't do to let them fade.

When she hunted, at dawn and dusk, she portioned out her successful kills. A majority share went to Mahler; while a portion went to either the pack's caches or Phaedra directly. She kept only a pittance for herself and had visibly lost a little weight already as a result, but it didn't matter to Wylla. While part of her rebelled against sharing in this fashion, she imagined it was what Mahler would want her to do. Or, at least, the image of him she kept in her head.

She'd done the same this morning with a modestly sized duck, and now her stomach rumbled while she patrolled. With a grimace, Wylla ducked under an overhanging branch and gave her soggy shoulders a shake. She didn't need the food as much as Mahler and Phaedra did, and anyway, winter was coming. Small game was much harder to come by, but winter was the wolf's season. The hunger she felt now would be sated with pronghorn flesh when the pack could hunt them in the snow, where their hooved feet were bound to stumble.

Until then, she had to make do with mouthfuls, redirecting the resources she gathered to where they were needed and eating more generously only when weakness set in, and she found solace in the distraction that patrolling offered. She patrolled a lot these days. Mostly around Mahler's sick bed, but today she meant to re-mark half their claim. Tomorrow, maybe the other half.