Rosalea ran until that initial burst of energy from panic wore down. She slowed to a walk. I just fled my family.

She felt that panic threatening to come over her again. This is so wrong. She could not even fathom the full depths of it all. Why did Lindir lie to me? As she walked, the memory came easily to her. It had been seared into her brain with every ounce of magic Lindir had left.

As she traced her way through the memory, she realized it was about Lindir. It was Lindir showing that she had escaped. It was Lindir showing the life she had with Gaiden. It felt like to Rosalea, Lindir could have once said she wasn’t really Rosalea’s mother.

But she hadn’t. Ulric had done what he had done with the same belief Rosalea had. That Lindir truly was her mother. And now Ulric was dead.

She wandered deeper into the forest, drifting toward Miron, step by step, but without any intentional purpose at this moment.

She thought about Genya. She never called Genya her mother, and Genya had never once called her daughter. But, Genya gave her an heirloom ring that was supposed to be for her daughter; one she had never had.

If Genya called me her child… Rosalea struggled through the notion, then… Rosalea supposed she would have felt nice. She would never have refuted it. And, Lindir didn’t call Rosalea anything except her name. She had not called her a darling, a little one, her sweetheart… none of the things Rosalea said to Lio.

It was not so much that Lindir had lied but that she had not thought to say Rosalea was adopted, and while that mattered a lot in terms of the Ieshan or Uryan prophecy, in the end, it did not matter at all to Lindir just trying to be a mother to a child she adopted.

Rosalea was tired, but this anxious emotional energy was too much for her to manage standing still, so she kept moving, drifting still back toward Miron.

She thought Ulric, of how he had come to her knowing it would be the end but wanting to redeem himself of what he had been complicit in. How he still loved his people, even erased from history, named Baktya, he had loved the Ieshans, and he wanted to do the best he could. He did what anyone would have done when presented with the facts that he had.

She still felt guilt. He had died trying to do something important, the last of the real line of Iesha. And she … was this wolf. In the end, he may not have been a good father figure, but he was the father figure I had. And, maybe Lindir didn’t tell me I wasn’t her daughter because to her, adopted or not… I was. Genya is my mother more than Lindir… more… than the mother I just ran away from.

Guilt gripped her. I told myself in that cell I was not going to keep doing this. I was not just going to solve my problems by running away from them. It is not really… she did not know what she wanted to call it. It was once what she thought was best because she couldn’t fight back without making everything worse for herself. Then, it became a principle she had because seeing the raiders die made her sick. Then… it just felt like the high road. She had all this power; she wasn’t a bully.

But it was cowardice. It was being afraid of hurting someone and regretting it. Running had fixed some of the biggest problems of her life, but she had just run from her family.

If I was a wolf all along, why was Fen… even… she felt sick. Why all this pretend that I was what I appeared to be? What was any of it accomplishing?

She didn’t understand why, if she was never The One the gods had been driving her along. They had attacked Kaylar.

And Rhainnon.

And… what… even… was Lio, actually?

“I know you talk to mystics,” she tried to call into the trees. “So, Gods, come and talk to me. Come and explain to me the life you have let me lead. Tell me why you could not find it in your wisdom in all the times we have talked, in all the liana that interacted with me, to just once tell me I was never human?” Words came easily, like she had always been able to speak in this form, even though it was the first time she had ever tried.

But Gods, as usual, did not answer her.

And she felt the first pangs of true resentment took root inside of her. They must need me for something though. Just… what.

She felt foggy, tired, and overwhelmed. She should probably go back to her family. She should go back to Nauru at least.

But… she wasn’t ready to be a real wolf yet. She went through the motions of reaching for magic, but she didn’t feel as connected to the dark magic she had just been using before, and she had never used magic in this shape otherwise.

Still, the shape might be enough to do something more meaningful. We chased a dragon off, and I need… She didn’t know what she needed. Maybe, she just wanted to feel that she could control some part of, any part of, her life. When she fought back, it often got worse. When she ran, it seemed like calamity followed her. She was in the sights of Gods, and she didn’t know why. She wasn’t the One. They had to have known all along that she was not.

Stolen novel; please report.

She realized she could smell Miron now. We chased the dragon off. We need to get rid of the rest of the leadership. This felt proactive, and it felt like what she was trying to make herself become. Someone who defended and confronted.

She got close enough to the town on the hill opposite her pack’s home, and hopefully far enough from Connall’s pack to avoid a conflict … but then again, maybe the world could use a few less of his pack.

She was exhausted though, and she did not have a plan for how to get at the people in the town. Running in with her magic would not protect her from a shower of arrows. As she found a spot to lay down and watch everything, the weariness she felt caught up with her, and she fell asleep.

***

Taigan breathed out. So that was a lot to take in when Bazil explained that Rosalea was a wolf and that wolf was his sister. That wolf was a Moryshin heir that could actually fix practically everything going wrong right now. And her name was really meant to have been Nadia.

He had been growing attached to Rosalea over the last weeks that was hard for him to set aside now. He felt physically drawn to her every time he got an opportunity to just sit down near her. She had been in his head, somehow, for years now. It felt like Fate brought them together.

The family of wolves was still pretty battered. He and Honor were still in pretty good shape. “I will go and get her. Where do you want to meet?”

“Let us start with this border area, and then we can take her to meet the Moryshin,” Amalia answered.

Nekana pressed near him as he got up on Honor, “Please, I… need to talk to her. Are you sure you can bring her back?”

Taigan wasn’t completely sure, but… he believed she felt a little bit toward him like he felt toward her. “I will guilt trip her about Nauru, if I have to.”

Nauru huffed near Nekana’s feet, “Will that even work?” he asked crossly.

That got him all the attention from Bazil. “I think you and I shall be honorary brothers, so we can complain about having the most difficult women in our lives.”

That seemed to perk the puppy up a little.

Taigan decided it was time for him to go. Nekana called after him that if he could not find her within a few hours, they would all separate to go look as well. Taigan waved his acceptance of this and sent Honor into a quick trot back into the woods of Miron.

He was an experienced tracker, so he was able to find her footprints after a little searching. From there, she had gone in a more or less straight line toward Miron. That made him anxious, “Taj, has she done anything yet? Are you able to tell?”

“The voices from the Gods are not clear right now. I think something is happening in the forest.”

Taigan felt more worried as he followed the trail as quickly as he could. Once he had a clear idea where she was going, he took on hawk shape, leaving Honor behind for now.

***

A little after dawn, Rosalea heard the town coming to life. She sat up. They were moving in and out through the gate. She stood up, creeping a little closer to them. The smoke in the air had not quite cleared from the fires. She could not tell what they were doing at first, and then she realized that they were setting up to move another cage out of the town and back into the forest. I wonder if they are still under orders to hunt mystics? They were able to move without mystics bothering them, which surprised Rosalea. She seemed to be the only one here, and she had slept without sensing any. I suppose the fire had a toll on more than just Nekana’s… on… my family. Her identity felt wrong. Was she really a wolf?

Lady Beryn was easy to pick out with a big flowing cloak with a flower sewn to the back that was similar to the one she had seen on the woman before. Well, they all seem confident. I suppose, I could… run through and just grab her? She wasn’t sure how it would go after that, but she was determined in her heart that if the dragon was to be kept out, then the leader of her town had to go. The pressure to show she could stand her ground and accomplish something stayed with her.

She was dark-colored, she matched the darkness of the slag that the refinery dumped, so she started to make her way toward it, planning to use it to get close enough to make a dash for Beryn.

She was focused, Beryn was coming around one of the walls, pointing out something along the base of it. Rosalea tensed her body, readying herself. She heard a swishing sound, and as she was getting ready to just go for it anyway, to try and kill this woman and put a stop to the fighting, at least temporarily, she was startled by pressure around her neck and a voice, “Gotcha!”

She squeaked. It was an embarrassing sharp little dog noise that went with the sharp stab of adrenaline that went through her. She spun to try and grab what had her about the neck and recognized Taigan.

I do not know how I feel about this. Did he know yet?

“I got you,” he repeated once she stopped moving and his feet touched the ground again.

He must have been in his hawk shape and dropped down on me. Which means… he knows, he was looking for me. She closed her eyes. “Taigan… let go.”

“No.”

She did not know how to face him. She wasn’t… she wasn’t really what either of them knew her to be. “Taigan, let me go,” she said, turning her body about and trying to shake him off, but he had a good grip on her.

“I am not letting you go down there and do a dumb heroic thing in that town again. It will work out as bad or worse than the last time.” He started to wrestle with her as she tried to get him off, and she was a little tiny bit impressed by how strong he was as he climbed up and onto her back. She was also a little embarrassed, she could not imagine their interactions involving any kind of wrestling or climbing on each other.

She was also frustrated by his words. She knew he had to rescue her last time, but… “I have to do something, and I can definitely do this,” she said, trying to flop over onto him to dislodge him. He just pulled her head down close, pressing their faces together with her body over his.

“I know. I know you have to do something,” he said. She felt him tense up, squeeze closer, his nose pressing to her cheek. “All of this, is the most tragic and horrible thing I could have ever thought about. But, Rosalea, Nadia, this is not what you need to do. You know it in your heart. Running yourself into a hail of deadly arrows to grab a loathsome elven woman… it isn’t going to help.”

She felt the empathy in his tone of voice. She felt how he was working so hard to keep his emotions inside of him, that he trembled as he held their faces together.

Slowly the feeling that she must do something right now slowly faded. Taigan held her, and she just lay against him. It felt somehow more sad now that she was a wolf because the closeness with Taigan soothed her in a way she had longed for before. But now she was someone a little different than she had been, so she wondered if it was even all right. And yet, right now, she needed him most. She needed most for someone to sit with her until the wamrth thawed some of the misery, so she just gave in and focused on the way his breath felt against cheek.