Blackfoot Forest like a record baby

Not long after the terrifying run in with Merrick and his daughter, when Riley had popped up, Laurel returned west. She avoided the meadow on the valley's doorstep; oh, the sad irony that the home she had one been Queen of was now ruled by her rotten to the core nephew. How her blood boiled thinking about him. Yet she came here because she wanted to figure out if she could follow Riley's trail. He'd run west, she had seen, and so she went west, until she reached the forest at the edge of the mountain ridge.

She'd picked up traces of his scent here and there, but nothing to indicate where he'd gone. Here, at the mountains, she caught scents of other wolves nearby -- a pack? -- and a shiver ran down her spine. She didn't want to risk coming too close. With a frown she looked up at the steep mountain ridge to her west and she hung her shoulders, dejected.

Oh, how she wanted to hold her son in her arms again, and yet she knew she would not find him this easily. And she didn't have the strength for yet another wild hunt across the world for her missing children. The truth was that she didn't care for them like she had for Lucas and Piper, and that she had grown afraid.

So she stood there for a moment, dejected, until eventually Laurel turned around and started to make her way back to Easthollow; to home.