Duskfire Glacier Who does your honor sleep with at night

Lane needed help, but her pride wouldn't permit her to outright ask for it. Instead, she ended up fixing the stranger with a desperate look, hoping that he would magically just know what to do. 

Unfortunately for her, the man seemed to battling with his own demons. He was arguing with himself, and had it been any other time Lane might have been disconcerted by his behavior. But right now, with the rain driving and the sky booming overhead, and her own tumultuous emotions threatening to smother her, Lane might as well have been a million miles away. His struggle barely even registered with her. On the outside she was frozen, but on the inside, she felt like she was spinning, and falling...

He apologized, snapping Lane back to the present. Confusion clouded her features. Why was he reassuring her that he wasn't upset at her? Since her mistake was constantly at the forefront of her mind, that was where Lane landed. Had Wintersbane already told people, then? Were there Duskfire wolves who were mad that an outsider had.. had mated here, in a pack where she didn't belong? 

Oh, fuck. Lane winced. Did everyone know? Did everyone hate her? Silence stretched out between them for a long moment as Lane wrestled with the idea that maybe everyone already knew what had happened and she was going to have to start owning up, even though she was still struggling wrap her mind around everything herself. When the man sat, Lane's own rump lowered reflexively. Consequently, it took the edge off of her maddening scent. 

"I'm s--" she murmured, but then the man piped up once more, cutting her apology off with another one of his own. And then he kept going, and going. She met his citrine gaze, and her own amber eyes were welling. She wasn't a crier normally, but his empathy for her was quite unanticipated and frankly, undeserved. She was so overwhelmed. 

"Yes!" she choked out. "That's exactly it. That's exactly how I feel!" He had somehow managed to hit it all exactly right-- the crazy, and the don't-know-what-the-hell-I'm-doing, and the bad timing, and.. and just all of it! 

Relief flooded through Lane's body, and her frozen stance thawed. She slumped forward and pressed her cheek into the agouti man's shoulder, body trembling. Had they both not already been drenched, the man would have felt her tears against his scarred, exposed skin, dampening his old wound.