As soon as they reached the den, Lilly rolled herself up in as little of a ball as she could manage and let her sorrows guide her off to sleep. She did not bother to see what Conn was doing; it really did not matter. If she could not hope for anything better in waking life, she figured, at least she could hope for a dream.

Lilly was used to having dreams of her old life, of happy times with Garth or of the things that could have been had they been allowed to build a life together. She knew that they were the closest thing to any of that which she could now experience and they gave her the only happiness she still knew in this life. She looked forward to them each night as her only way of seeing Garth again and getting to have the family she always wanted with him.

If you told Lilly that none of it mattered because they were just illusions, just fragments of past memories, she would not have believed you. For, in her mind, as long as she was in the dream, it was real and all the misery of the Cascades was an illusion. Though it was back to hardship and suffering upon awakening, Lilly knew she could not survive without believing in her dreams.

But today's dream would be of no comfort. For there was no Garth to hold her to him and no happy images of playful red-and-white pups cavorting around the happy couple. Rather, what Lilly saw horrified her. Standing before her was Tony, looking as grim and gruesome as the last time Lilly had seen him, or a part of him, at least. He had his head attached to his body once more – barely – but it could hardly be called an improvement, in that he still looked like a corpse and nothing more. He looked so otherworldly, so supernaturally fiendish that Lilly's instinct was to turn and run away. But she found that she could not.

"You did this to me, Lilly," he said, "and now you're paying the price. You had to make my son look at flowers when he should have been protecting me, and now you have to suffer just as I did. Except peace will never come to you like it did to me. The peace of death is not something you'll get to know for a long, long time. If even death can bring peace to one such as you."

"B-b-but Mr. Tony, I'm sorry!" Lilly screamed. "I didn't mean for this to happen! I never wanted you to get hurt!"

"Selfish, simpering girl," Tony remarked. "Never capable of doing the right thing. Garth is better off without you. Jasper is better off without you. Everyone is better off without you."

"They were right, when she was born," came another voice. Lilly was surprised to see Eve, looking as thin and tired and gaunt as in the dark days of war – if not more so – materialize in front of her. "They said she would prove a curse on our pack, and look at what's happened! She deserted us, she abandoned us, like we meant nothing to her! She was happy to leave us to die for her sins."

"Mom, no!" Lilly cried. "I… I… I left to try and make peace! I really… I didn't want to leave you! I didn't want to leave you or dad or Kate or Humphrey or Garth, but I had to! It was the only way to save your lives! You have to believe me!"

Eve looked at her daughter, or through her, without any sort of feeling whatsoever. "Arrogant girl, always thinking she knows better than us what the right thing is. It never occurred that she might have been wrong, that she might have been doing more harm than good."

Lilly felt tears run down her cheeks. "No, mom, I just wanted to save you! I just wanted to save all of you!"

"Save us? Save us how?" came a third voice, her father's. Now Winston was standing before her as well, looking even more like a broken and defeated wolf than what she had known in the last days of the war. "Save yourself more like it. Save yourself from the terrible things that were to come after. You didn't really care about any of us. You abandoned us, you abandoned me, your mother, your sister, your mate, to our fates, all because you were too selfish and too cowardly to do what needed to be done. The same as always. Your sister at least had the pride and responsibility to stand up for something, but you were too frightened to be like her."

"All I wanted was peace!" Lilly shouted as loud as she could. "I didn't want anybody to die anymore! I wanted peace! Peace!"

"What do you know of peace?" Winston scolded. "Nothing you did ever could bring peace, and nothing you do ever will! You heartless little girl, you just plunge the world deeper into darkness! For once, it seems, the color of the dark is not black, but white."

Lilly felt herself falling apart under these words from her parents and father-in-law. This is no clever exaggeration. She literally felt her body grow weightier with each word and slowly become impossible to hold up. Now, lacking the strength to maintain herself, she crumbled to the ground as the three closed in around her. They shared a single chant of "Selfish girl, arrogant girl, a curse on the pack, a curse on the world."

"Nothing you did ever made a difference," Tony observed.

"You only ever made things worse," Winston added.

"It would have been best if you had never been born," Eve said.

Lilly tried to cover her eyes and ears with her paws but could not lift them. She found herself forced to endure this experience as the three hovered above her, growing more and more fearsome with every sentence they uttered. And Lilly could do nothing but watch as they came closer, closer, threatening to smother her in darkness.

"That's enough of that," came a voice from afar.

And suddenly, the darkness was pierced by a great light. Before Lilly's very eyes, the three shadows looked from one to the other in terror. They were driven back away from her by the light. As it engulfed their bodies, they tried to let out screams but could say nothing. Soon the shadows had melted away.

Lilly felt strength and hope returning to her body. Slowly, she picked herself up and was surprised to find that all her pain was gone, as though it had never been. She turned her head to see who – or what – had thus delivered her from the darkness.

And she immediately had to turn away again, for the light was too bright. But in it, for the brief second she had been able to see, she thought she had caught the form of another wolf. Lilly had no time to ponder this amazing fact, for the light seemed to be coming closer and closer. She sensed that this being was approaching her, though she still could not look at it. But as the light surrounded her, she felt it lay a paw comfortingly upon her head and play with the four white tresses there that formed the shape of a lily.

"Don't worry, Lilly," the being said in a strong, masculine voice. "Life may seem difficult for you now, but things will get better for you in the end. Always believe that, no matter what. You must believe that things shall get better."

And then, Lilly awoke to find herself in her den. The first thing she noticed was that she was shivering and covered in sweat, though she could not say that she felt either particularly hot or cold or even particularly terrified right now. Rather, she felt, for the first time since the war in the north began, a true and real sense of peace.

The second thing she noticed was that it was twilight in her new home as the orange skies made their distinct impression on the walls of her den.

The third thing she noticed was that Conn was talking to someone, someone whose voice sounded eerily familiar though it was difficult for Lilly to hear. She tried to listen, more as a reflex than out genuine interest, but still had trouble making anything out. All she could hear for certain was Conn saying, "What do you mean Lilly could be the solution to everything?"

Who was Conn talking to?

And what did they know about Lilly?

Read on.