Sleepy Fox Hollow when you wake, you're bargaining

Mahler's admission sent a choking miasma through Wylla. If she had been on the fence about her dislike for Laurel before, it was solidified now. It shouldn't have surprised her that the same wolf who expected everyone to drop everything and fight in her family feud had also expected Mahler to do as she wished, but it made Wylla feel sick to think all along another woman had designs on him.

There was always another woman. There would always be another woman. She made herself swallow the acid rising in her throat. He had not chosen Laurel. Not then and not now. That was what mattered.

Wylla wrenched her thoughts away from the tan she-wolf and fixed them on Druid and Witch. I feel bad for them, she said. That's their home but we couldn't defend it. It's not safe for them there, yet they had chosen to stay. They and Sequoia, who now suddenly wanted to help when she had hid like a coward before. Back when her strength might have made a difference.

There was nothing she or Mahler could do about that now. If they stayed... If Mahler went to that valley, perhaps he and Laurel would have saved Indra and Abel or perhaps they simply would have died. There was no way to know, and as callous as the thought was, neither of those children was worth his life to Wylla. Both of them together were not worth his life to her. She could not bear it if they returned and he did not.

Why didn't you say something sooner? Wylla wondered, but she knew it was because he felt it was his burden to bear. Surely Sequoia or even Laurel would have taken over. It would have sat poorly with her either way, but as long as they left her the hell alone, she would have lived with it. She was never there for them anyway.

She could not comment on his indecision. She was too glad that this time she was on the receiving end of one of his choices rather than the victim of it. It was something she would be silently grateful about.