Jade Fern Grove just a young gun with a quick fuse

“Arielle and Lilitu,” he murmured, considering them a moment, finding his eyes unable to seek her own soft features now. They were his best accomplishment and his worst failure—not by fault of their own. “I had a chance to reconnect with Lilitu recently, purely by chance…”

He paused, considering—would she think less of him? It was easy to determine the lissome woman beside him as just a she-wolf from another clan, but he did find himself enjoying her company—more than he cared to admit. “Life has a funny way of never turning out how you’d expect. I guess… she married some prince in some grand palace pack for political reasoning.” The storm that pressed on his features likely revealed exactly how he felt about that.

He hated it. Loathed it. “Which sounds exactly like the kind of thing that would happen at their birth pack, and what I had tried so hard to bring them away from… “ He snorted, finally looking to her—eyes beseeching as he wondered, just then—what she thought, as a woman—perhaps one he assumed was estranged from her own family. “She’s a grown woman, but I’m having a hard time not going to our old pack and asking them just what the hell kind of political gain they felt was important to trade my daughter for… and then I’m tempted to seek out this Akashingo and this so-called prince.” He paused—“but maybe that’s overreaching my importance, given we haven’t seen one another in over a year.”