Noctisardor Bypass I can't turn back around and doubt my destination

safety for the children.
mahler thought upon the four born to rivenwood, and kept by sequoia. they were safe enough from whatever farce this man, merrick, might force upon them. and he felt frustration rising within him, for laurel's continued allusion and insistence for war to come to them. there had far too much conflict in these past years, and he was weary of it. yet the guilt he had felt around their parting still existed in the gargoyle.
it was replaced with a burning scythe of sudden awareness, that perhaps it was not the already born pups, it was — mahler gazed at laurel, saw the thorns of her gaze and heard the harshness of her voice, seeing in it the protectiveness of a bitter woman meant to become mother again.
words faltered, for mahler did not think he could truly ask if laurel had succeeded in the end of her own humiliation, spurned by him and gone from rivenwood for so long. "any children born here are safe, laurel," he said with a soft insistence. and yet his voice was heavy with an unnamed emotion, a sensation of anger and guardianship toward them all, toward laurel, toward whatever small lives she perhaps carried now.
"you have slain his daughter. he vill come to us for vengeance. and then he vill be crushed."