Swiftcurrent Creek copper thunder

muskrat's brow shot high, and she let out her breath in a low laugh that was almost a scoff. did he mean to carry her off? remembering what she had told him of war brides, the warrior gentled her expression with a true glitter of interest.

swiftcurrent creek did not please muskrat. arric and arlette were kind. akavir's rejection, which he had not known it to be, stuck in her craw. the subsequent pursual by both brothers, one of whom had not even been bothered to note her before, inflamed muskrat's wrath.

her thoughts circled back to akavir, to the night cries and what she had done with others on the mountain. it would only be a matter of days before her scent shifted, weeks before she knew if conception would keep. and then what sort of scorn might she invite? 

there were many reasons to leave. muskrat told herself she owed no wolf anything; she had filled the caches and kept the borders. she could depart, now, with him.

"i go as wife?" she asked the stranger whose name she did not know, her tones grating over wife as if she were primed to discard offal from a window. "or warrior?"

muskrat allowed herself to imagine a glimmer of that wild image beyond the borders.