Neverwinter Forest pulse

In the moments between the end of the struggle and Mal's arrival, she finds herself lost in her own mind. Something has shattered within her; that precarious sense of safety she'd clung to, the peace she'd had in feeling that no evil could touch her and her children. She'd been wrong. And while the stinging ache all over her body is thankfully the extent of the physical damage she'd received, her mind is still fractured by the encounter — by the intentions of the men she'd killed, and by the fact that she'd killed them at all. The shadow of the dread she'd felt during those brief moments when the latter of the two had been atop her still lingers, too. He hadn't gotten his way, in the end — but he'd still left his scars.
Mal receives no more acknowledgement than a flick of her ears at first, a subtle shift of her gaze to watch him as he approaches. For several seconds, she only stares, not quite understanding his words. I — don't know... She trails off, eyes distant and glazed and wandering away from the alpha, fixing somewhere in the distance.
Then, like the breaking of a spell, the expression disappears.
She swallows, shuddering slightly, and looks back to Mal. Her voice is sharp and clear when she speaks again, a stark contrast from the small broken words she'd started with, though each word is strained with pain and weariness. The children are deeper within the territory. They'd just left the den for the morning, and a pair of intruders followed them. They seemed... She shakes her head slightly, writing the thought off as irrational panic. They're dead now. No need to mention what had almost happened, how it cut into the core of her and now she feels as if she's drowning. Mal has plenty of burdens to bear — and she can't stand the thought of him looking at her and seeing that. She takes a deep breath, and tries to address all of his worries instead. The bleeding must be stopped. There is moss in my herb cache, east of my den. Send someone to check on the children — or do it yourself, and send another to help me tend my wounds, it doesn't matter. She doesn't matter — only their children are truly of importance right now.