Big Salmon Lake Wishes come true, not free

Peregrine felt as if he'd swallowed a block of ice as Dante fully disclosed Junior's situation. The silver Alpha didn't seem overly perturbed but the same could not be said for the girl's father. His face slowly drew into an expression of mild distress. She had evidently disappeared before fully recovering and the timing really couldn't have been worse, what with it being winter. Peregrine looked at Dante's face searchingly. He knew much more about the situation, yet truly seemed hopeful that Junior was okay, wherever she was. A war waged inside his head and heart; should he follow Dante's lead or did his fatherly instincts make him more sensitive to the reality of it?

Then he realized: none of it mattered. There was nothing he could do for Junior and she wouldn't have let him anyway. Peregrine seemed to sag a little as the realization came over him. He let out a long breath. He looked at his forepaws for a moment, then lifted his jade gaze to Dante's again. He managed a weak smile, though this conversation had definitely not gone in the direction he'd hoped. He hadn't realized it consciously but he had benched on hearing that Junior had healed, then resumed chasing her typical wanderlust... not that she'd been sick and disappeared into the ether.

"Junior's survived so much. And she's impulsive and flighty too. I bet she decided there wasn't a future here, or that she was angry enough to lose her head about it. I mean, she..." She did try to kill herself, after all, he added silently. She probably wasn't entirely stable, though it wasn't her fault alone. Peregrine's ear twisted backward and one side of his mouth drooped. "I bet she took off and found better fortune somewhere else. I hope so, anyway. And I'll never stop hoping when it comes to my kids. She died on me once already, so I'll also bet on the odds of that happening again being very small," he quipped dryly.

"Thank you for telling me this," he added after a pause. He took a breath, pondering where to turn the conversation next, and words came springing off his tongue before he could think too much on it. "On the subject of my girls... Saena mentioned that there was a hunt and she was injured. Has Willow been looking after her? I didn't want to get too nosy. And did you do anything about the piece of shit that yelled at her?" he wondered, bristling as he thought of Koda belittling the young Gamekeeper, fruit of his heart if not his loins.