Redtail Rise All the way up

Reek stood his ground, refusing to acquiesce. Wildfire's eyes narrowed at his retort of, "No." When he elaborated, she stared at him uncomprehendingly. "What're you—" she began to say, then it clicked in her head. She remembered Thuringwethil announcing their victory over the abandoned maple wood. Whether Reek had overheard the howl or obtained the information some other way, he must have interpreted it to mean that the dragons had slaughtered the phoenixes.

Had it been someone else, Wildfire might have corrected the misapprehension. Instead, her jaw clenched. "How can you call them that? 'Family'? When you abandoned them the way you did?" she asked slowly, keeping her voice quiet and measured. It was an honest question, though there were certainly threads of disdain in her tone. "If anyone wronged Saena and the pups, it was you," she concluded in an uncharacteristically icy voice, neither confirming nor denying their deaths at the hands of Drageda.

Gavriel told Reek to go back to his grotto and she bobbed her snout infinitesimally as if to concur. The tension was thick, yet no one had made a move to attack. If Reek retreated, then so would they. Everyone could go back to their respective homes. What had (or hadn't) happened in the past didn't even matter, now with the scale of the problem they were currently facing.