Swiftcurrent Creek Hey December, guess I'm feeling unmoored.

Viinturuth. He seemed too pale, too vastly different from Mae and all the wolves she knew to be family, for his words to be true. But why would he lie? So she only nodded at first, still studying him in the same way he was studying her.

He was her uncle, like Arric, but that didn't feel quite right. She knew Arric; she loved him. And this man? He was nothing but a stranger to her, a stranger who knew her name and knew her father better than she ever would.

He told you about me? Did he tell you about how he's never here, too? Or how when he is here, he only ever talks to the boys? Mae was surprised by the venom in her own voice, surprised that she'd said these things at all. She sucked in a sharp breath as tears began to well in her eyes, and looked away. Akavir hadn't spoken to her in so long; he hadn't even checked on her after everything with Moss. But he'd been with Eshe, she knew, having come across their twined scents more than once.

Maybe he just didn't want a daughter anymore.