Blacktail Deer Plateau i would beg to disagree, but begging disagrees with me

Sheepish under the praise of a mother.

Sakhmet did not know what to say and it would stay that way as her mother plunged into deeper, darker words. She wondered what it was that her mother would tell her.

Did she see the future? Would the land collapse again? Would the forest become unsafe?

Except — somehow, someway — the news was worse than reliving her childhood.

Her dark pelted siblings were not Maegi and Mou's. Only they...were. Technically. Saved from the mother's belly as she passed. Which was a thought that caused her gut to twist sharp. Briefly she thought of Lane from Duskfire and the disgust she had felt had the swollen sides of a soon-to-be mother.

Then — then! — came with it more news. The true father an enemy of her mother and her mother's mate. That he might seek to exact revenge for a crime not committed!

Goodness, She finally laughed out. Nervous and soft. I. . . such news! She fumbled for words. Unsure what her course of action was here but entirely certain of what she would say.

You're my mother — they're my siblings! — This she refused to ignore. Hungry for the relation and eager to see it in the way they had clung to the couple, saved by them! We'll protect you here. If. . .if you don't want him here, just in case, I'll forbid him. How childish it felt to declare and yet she believed it wholeheartedly.