Redhawk Caldera In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree

Fennec saw the opportunity to double down but didn't even feel any temptation to take it. Harping on it and pulling more guilt trips than she already had wouldn't make anything better and... she knew better. Because while a good solid portion of her anger was still settled on him, there was another part focused silently inward.

Talking about Killdeer had been for her benefit as well because there were very few things in the Caldera, right now, that could make her genuinely smile. He might have been the only one after the shit that went down with her mom.

He's pretty great. Her expression softened with a mixture of pride and something deeper before curling into a smirk. A pain in the ass sometimes, but he never gives up. Even when he really should. Luckily his mom was hard headed too. He... cares a lot, though. I think he picked that up from you.

She wasn't comfortable with admissions like that and it itched, even afterwards, like she was trying to win points or something. But she wasn't. She just... maybe didn't want him to think he'd been forgotten completely, even if only a seemingly short time ago she'd been insistent on it.

While she had tried to shield him from most of it, Killdeer had been her rock through all of this. Without him, Bronco would have returned to find her gone. She knew there was hypocrisy there... and she'd hated it from the moment she'd realized it. She'd tried so hard to prove that she wasn't that wolf anymore, but first real test and she'd botched that. Maybe that was who she always would be.