Noctisardor Bypass bedauert

The journey from the mountains to the secluded bypass Mahler called Rivenwood took its toll on Wylla. She arrived possibly worse off than she departed. While the wound on her shoulder was caked over with a mixture of berry juice and cobweb and all manner of green things, there must be just as much purulent blood and the flesh was beginning to stink again. The heat returned to it as they crossed the flatlands, making Wylla feverish once again, though she was not lost in it the way she was before.

Phaedra and Mahler kept her lucid with tireless work and company until at last, they arrived. Wylla let herself be led into the territory, trying not to notice the mingled scents of multiple females and the the milkscent of young on the air, the acrid stench of a bitch in heat, trying not to let green-eyed jealousy rear in her and demand to know how many of them belonged to Mahler. How many Nyxes were there here? How many Ciris and Elkes?

He had said none, and Wylla wanted so badly to believe it was true that she swallowed her envy, packed it away in a corner of her mind for later contemplation. When she was free of this place, no doubt she would search the vale for the cubs, and no doubt she would ensure that not a single one shared the violet eyes of their leader or the gunsmoke grey of his pelt.

Wylla rested in a wide, cool cave surrounded by soft things and with the scent of half-shredded foliage thick in the air. She spent a lot of time sleeping with her injured shoulder pressed down upon the cold stone. But by the second day she was already growing restless; lucky for her that Mahler arrived just then, softly uttering her name. She lifted her head to find him in the greenshroud gloom and forced herself to lift the corners of her lift in a small smile, despite the jade serpent coiling in her belly at the offensive smell of Laurel drifting through the open doorway.

Not on him, she reminded himself. Not on him. Just on the breeze, coming from elsewhere. I haven't moved an inch, she promised, wincing as she veritably peeled her scabbing shoulder off the ground.