Lily looked down at the muddled gashes and dents in the paw-deep snow drift. She couldn't interpret them at all, but Beryl could, and they apparently told of his family departing on paw and Ember arriving later.

These were the marks of their plan flying away and trusting them to fend for themselves. Help wasn't coming back for them unless they were captured by Grimmel, and even then there was only a slim chance Ember would find out in time to save them.

She looked up at her only lifeline, the only way she was going to survive this indefinite journey into the wilderness. Beryl didn't look all that concerned, truth be told. His tail swayed in the way she knew meant he was thinking, but his ears were up and his eyes light.

"Is there anything more to learn from this place?" she asked.

"Probably not, no," Beryl hummed. "I am wondering whether it would be worth the risk to follow the trail. They have almost certainly met up, and from there would fly, so it will likely end somewhere, but there is a small chance they are still on the ground. On the other paw, it's a big, obvious trail to follow for anyone who comes across it, not just us. We might be served better by leaving it behind and hoping anyone following us will follow it instead, either by mistake or because there were obviously more than two dragons going this way, and thus more targets."

Lily considered that for a moment, weighing the options in her mind. "Do you think we will actually find them at the end of the trail?" she asked.

"No, almost certainly not," Beryl huffed.

"Then let's…" She paused to yawn, her eyes closing for a long moment as she struggled to remain awake, upright, and coherent. When it passed, she shook her head and continued. "Let's go another way. No point in chasing the trail if there's nothing at the end."

"Right." Beryl veered off the path, headed deeper into the forest, and Lily followed. She was still dead tired, had been all night, but they needed to keep moving…

O-O-O-O-O

Lily's sense of time was warped by her exhaustion, but she was sure they hadn't been walking for very long when Beryl stopped and looked around. It was still early in the morning, as far as she could tell. The sun wasn't cooperating, hiding behind one of the few clouds in the sky.

"This seems like a good spot," Beryl hummed, pawing at a dry, grassy knoll between the trees. He looked back at her expectantly.

"We need to keep moving," she objected, seeing his intention. She was far more tempted than she wanted to admit, but another nap was not getting them further away from Grimmel's forces.

"You need to rest, or you'll just collapse again." He kneaded his paws in the grass, as if demonstrating how nice the spot he had picked was. "Better here than randomly in the middle of some muddy patch or pile of slush."

She couldn't argue with that logic, partly because it was sound and partly because she wasn't alert enough to. "Only for a little while," she huffed, gingerly laying down. "Keep an ear out…" It was chilly, so she left a space open at her side for him. Awkwardness came second to pure survival, he could sleep at her side if he wanted...

Sleep came over her like a surprise attack, knocking her out the moment she stopped moving and let her body relax.

O-O-O-O-O

For a few blissful moments immediately after waking, Lily felt like she was in her cave, ready to begin another normal day. Small details contradicted this, such as the wind in her frills and the soft ground under her, but she ignored them for a short while.

It was not danger or pain or worry that drew her from her pleasant half-dozing state, but the smell of raw fish. Her stomach rumbled oddly, hungry but unsettled by something, and she wondered what she could have eaten to cause it…

And that line of thought led her back to where she really was, why she was out in the open. She groaned and opened her eyes, expecting to see an overcast forest.

Instead, she saw an orange glow in the sky above, where the trees didn't block, and she flinched. "No," she growled, ignoring the trio of fish on the ground nearby. "I slept too long!" Far too long, if it was sunset. She had wasted an entire day!

"You needed it," Beryl said from somewhere close by. She looked around, but she didn't see him, until he leaped down from a nearby tree. "Hungry?"

"Annoyed and worried," she shot back, unwilling to be so easily appeased. "We are being hunted, I could have gone on after a short rest, not an entire day!"

"No, you really could not," Beryl retorted. "I don't know how you made it as far as we did. Besides, this is going to be hard enough with us both in peak condition, let alone with me dragging you along while you struggle to stay awake. We'll make up the lost time by moving faster." He pawed at the closest of the three fish, flicking it toward her. "Do you feel better now?"

"Yes," she conceded. They were alone, it wasn't like she needed to look infallible. He was probably right, she just didn't like sacrificing their head start for her own benefit. Her thoughts were clear and fast now, and her body, though sore in every possible place, was a far cry from the shambling wreck she remembered. The rest had done her a world of good.

That said, she stood and winced, having put weight on her left front paw without thinking about it. "Not so good there, though," she muttered, gingerly testing the limb. It wasn't broken, though she had thought so before. Just sprained, maybe cracked somewhere. The pain came from around her ankle, so if there was a serious injury, it would be there, but she could move her paw without much discomfort. It just wouldn't bear her weight.

"I think it's sprained," she said, shaking the injured limb and confirming that small, sudden movements didn't hurt. "Or something is cracked."

"What about the rest of you?" Beryl asked. "I didn't want to overstep by licking your wounds while you slept, so… you might want to do that."

Lily rolled her neck and set about testing her wings. As she timidly shifted each one and endured the normal discomfort that always came from doing so, she pondered the difference between him and Pearl. Faced with an injury and an unconscious light wing, Pearl had leaped right into treating her. Beryl, on the other paw, had held back. Maybe it was partially because it wasn't serious, and part of it was definitely because he didn't want to be seen as crossing any lines, but she couldn't see how that was helpful behaviour.

"You have my permission to treat my wounds whether or not I am awake to say so," she said absently, smacking her tail against the ground to test for bruises. "I have a feeling this won't be the last time one of us is hurt on the run."

"Well… In that case, you have wounds on your sides that could use cleaning," Beryl said, gesturing at his own side.

Lily turned to the side and eyed the puncture wound he spoke of. It was shallow, more of a scrape with a deeper point near the end where the Deathgripper had pulled at her to arrest her fall. "I can handle these," she hummed, quickly covering it in a coat of spit. It had already scabbed over, thanks to her spending an entire night and day before paying it any mind, and she got the unpleasant taste of her own blood in her mouth.

"Thank you for the fish," she hummed before swallowing one, simultaneously replacing the bad taste in her mouth, sating her hunger, and thanking him as she had resolved to do more often. A lot of the night before was a muddled mess in her mind, but her own thoughts were clear, as simple and slow as they had been. It was the times in between talking and fleeing and hiding that blurred together now.

"It was a risk to get them, but I was quick," Beryl huffed. "There are Deathgrippers about, I cannot take that risk again if there is any alternative. I think the ships will be heading up the coast sooner or later, too, which will make it even more dangerous."

"They will be following us." Him specifically, because he was a dark wing and Grimmel was set on killing more of them. She and he had been trailed fleeing on paw and inland, so the smart move would be to sail up the shore they were closest to and hope to drive them back into the land-based pursuers.

She purred, pleased with herself, and snapped up the other two fish. It was good to have her mind back up to full speed, sharp and dangerous once more. "Let's talk on the move," she suggested. It was time to put her mind back to use.

They set off, side by side, and she took a few moments to get used to the feeling of walking on bruised, beaten paws. "Do you know anything about walking on bruises?" she asked, not really expecting an answer.

"Not specifically, but I know that you're going to be sore everywhere until you adapt to the pace we'll be setting from now on," Beryl hummed, speeding up. "If we are still being pursued, we must move faster than the No-scaled-not-prey can, and for longer than they can." He settled into a pace that was closer to running than walking, and Lily found herself straining to keep up.

"Always assume they still have our trail," Lily huffed. She would not feel safe until…

Until she was home, but there was no going home. Grimmel knew where it was, and if she were him, she would have set traps and spies, people just waiting for an unsuspecting pack to return. Her one safe place was no such thing.

But she felt more or less safe now, though she didn't know why. She was on the run, hunted, fleeing an unstoppable enemy with only Beryl to aid her. Maybe it was because she had nobody to protect except him and herself, or maybe it was just that she trusted him, and this was his element.

"A smart assumption, until it drives us to do things we would not risk if we thought we were not going to die the moment we stopped moving for too long." He shook his head. "Assume that if we have seen any trace of them in the last… say, ten days… then assume they are still following."

Lily hopped over a raised root system and eyed him skeptically. "That seems arbitrary."

"It is, but my point is that we might be out here for a long time," Beryl rumbled. "And this time around, the enemy is not capable of easily following or hunting us down. They have to work for it, and at some point we won't be worth the effort."

"Grimmel is in charge, so that point may be much further out than you think," Lily cautioned.

"Maybe…" Beryl hummed thoughtfully. "But for now, it seems like we have some breathing room. Can you go until dawn?"

"Can you?" Lily asked. "You stayed up all night back in the valley, then all night last night. Now you're talking about doing it again. When was the last time you slept?" She could hardly believe he was able to stand three days and three nights without sleep.

"The secret to my boundless endurance is sleeping whenever I can," Beryl chuffed. "I knew I would be up all night on the night of the escape, so I snuck away and slept from noon to near nightfall, with Spark ready to come get me if anyone needed me urgently enough. Today, I slept for a little bit right after you went to sleep, lightly so I would hear any dogs coming close."

Lily considered pointing out that he was doing exactly what he claimed wouldn't have worked for her, staving off exhaustion with smaller doses of much-needed rest instead of just sleeping a whole day away. She might have, had she not felt so amazingly normal now, while he sounded more than a little weary underneath his good humor.

"You can sleep and listen?" she asked instead.

"It's a habit you pick up after being hunted for long enough," he huffed. "More of a state of mind than a skill. It's not as restful, but you take what you can get. I'm glad I can still do it after so long not needing it."

"I suppose you have spent a lot of time avoiding the No-scaled-not-prey hunters," Lily murmured. It made sense that he would have that experience, though she didn't know the specifics.

"Them, and something worse. I spent a few moon-cycles in a forest somewhat similar to this, being hunted by a clever creature who wanted me dead, though for most of that I thought we were alone." He chuffed and rolled his shoulders uncomfortably. "Come to think of it, I was with only one other person, and we were sticking to the ground, and the one hunting us wanted us dead with an unhealthy amount of motivation… A lot like this, all in all."

"How did that end?" Lily asked.

"We turned it around and hunted her down instead," Beryl hummed. "Do you hear that?"

"The wind?" Lily asked, listening closely. He hadn't sounded too concerned, so she didn't think they were in any danger.

"No, that rushing sound… This way, I think." He led her off to the side, further from the shore. As they went, she began to hear the curiously constant sound, one that held steady even when the wind died. It was like the ocean but not, more direct and less rhythmic, a constant tone instead of a back and forth of waves.

"It's water," she said, electing to be vague and only speak of what she was reasonably sure about. Beryl would probably provide the rest.

"A brook or stream or even a river," Beryl said happily. "Fresh water. This is convenient. I did not think there were any in this forest."

"None that are visible from above, not this close to the valley," Lily said, confident in her memory of the endless canopy from when she had been able to fly over it. They couldn't be even a day's flight from the valley yet, and she had flown those skies often enough before being grounded. "Also…" She trailed off, confused.

"Yes?" Beryl asked.

"A brook, a stream, or a river," she repeated, trying to remember exactly what she had been taught. "But a stream is a small, narrow river. And a brook is a small stream. So you just said 'a very small river, a small river, or a river,' but with different words."

Beryl let out an amused bark. "I suppose I did," he chuckled. "We can conclude that I think it is definitely some size of river."

The rushing noise was getting louder, and Lily found the energy to push ahead, taking the lead. "Let's find out," she purred.

"Careful, this is just the sort of place a Deathgripper might go if it landed nearby," Beryl cautioned, taking some of the wind out of her wings. She slowed down, and they advanced together.

Lily shoved a sapling aside, Beryl pushed through a bush, and just like that they were on the edge of a river.

Turbulent water rushed by, streaming across a bed of pebbles and sand. The water was murky, but shallow enough that she could see the bottom, maybe deep enough to come halfway up her legs. It was cut into the ground, following a straight channel off at an angle. The water was flowing in the direction of the sea, coming from some unknown source further upstream.

Lily had never seen a river of any sort before. All her knowledge on the subject was from Pyre, facts and descriptions passed on with a skill with words that could never totally capture the experience of standing in front of what was described, watching the snow on the banks drip into it, wondering why it had not frozen over yet when the air in front of her face periodically whitened with her breath.

"Definitely a brook," Beryl said, easily leaping over to the other side. It was the width of two light wings standing side by side, maybe less in certain places where the dense foliage on the banks grew out into the open air above the water. "Can't be too cold, it's not frozen yet."

"Want to test that?" Lily proposed. She certainly didn't want to go and check the water's temperature, but he could if he felt like it.

He leaned out over the water, staring down at it. "Well, can't hurt," he grumbled, before dropping down into the water. She shivered convulsively, glad it was him and not her, though he didn't seem bothered by it.

"Not that cold," he confirmed. "Brisk. Chilly. Want to clean your paws?"

"No, thank you," she said primly.

"How about throwing the dogs for a loop?" he offered with a knowing purr. "I don't know how effective it will be, but it's water and doesn't hold a scent. Our trail might end here if we walk upstream, and they won't know where we've gone."

"Even if it does work like that, they could split up and check both sides of the brook, in both directions…" Thus cutting their effective forces into fourths for a time, and slowing them down immensely, if they even picked up the trail again at all.

"At best it throws them off completely, and at worst we are still going away from them, and in roughly the right direction." Beryl stamped his paws, splashing himself. "It really is not that bad. Chilly, nothing more."

"I can't argue with that," she chuffed. She would be enduring mild discomfort for a potentially huge advantage, and since when was she not willing to make that sort of exchange?

Lily dropped down, hopping as smoothly as possible to avoid jarring her back, and was immediately beset by the deceptively strong flow around her paws. She was in no danger of falling over, but the short half-dozen strides she needed to get to Beryl were much more strenuous than normal.

"This might not be a good idea if it tires me twice as fast," she warned, once again thankful she could just speak her mind without worrying about how she would look in front of her fledglings. Admitting that she was the weak link so bluntly would not normally be an option.

"You have to step high," he said, turning around to demonstrate. "Paws up, only in the water when going down and going up. It will still be tiring, but not nearly so much."

"Got it. Let's get going." She tossed her head and stepped forward as he had demonstrated, glad to confirm it was much less strenuous. It was still annoying, but she would get used to it.

"Off we go," Beryl hummed, turning his tail on her to go upstream. He made quite the sight, stepping high like he had showed her, somehow at once humorously delicate while also rugged, forging a path through rushing water with his head held high and his paws placed firmly against the current…

Lily caught herself staring, and wondered at her wandering thoughts. Where had all of that come from? There was looking at a person to know who they were or what they thought, she did that all the time, but what she had just done was different. It had no purpose, not really, and no obvious prompt.

"Spark told me a story, once," Beryl said, breaking into her confused self-examination. "He was going around from island to island, and he happened across a mixed pack that had a rock-eating alpha."

"How does one eat rocks?" Lily asked, instantly intrigued.

"By being the sort of dragon that can, it is not something you learn," Beryl rumbled. His tail drifted low, skimming the water for a moment before jerking up away from it. "Anyway, this alpha had everyone else in the pack bringing them rocks every day. He wasn't a lazy alpha, Spark said there was something about narrow caves and him being extraordinarily fat… It wasn't some sort of abuse of power, is what I'm saying. I think."

"This was not the point of your story," Lily guessed.

"No, I'm just getting bogged down in the details," Beryl agreed. "They would all go into the cave, one at a time, and pass the rocks out to the people behind them. Spark participated once, out of respect or something, I don't remember what reason he gave."

"I am going to have to ask Spark about this someday, just so that I can get all the details you do not remember," Lily teased.

"Should I stop telling the story?" Beryl asked.

"No, don't." She liked listening to him, and she assumed he had some sort of larger point he was trying to make. It was not as if walking upriver in total silence was better than listening to him ramble on, either.

"So he gets into the line," Beryl continued, "which is stretching ridiculously far from the cave entrance, and it's all nice and orderly, which he thinks is weird. He asks the dragon in front of him why there is a line at all, and the dragon says they get it done faster that way."

"Sounds reasonable," Lily said. She was still wondering where he could possibly be going with this, and half expecting some dark turn out of nowhere.

"So he waits, and it goes forward really slowly, but apparently that's faster," Beryl said. "Finally, he gets into the cave and the dragon in charge breaks a chunk of the wall off for him, right at the very end."

"Wait…" Lily was starting to get an idea of what the twist of this little story was going to be. "Is this cave set into the side of a mountain or something?"

Beryl glanced back at her, an amused expression on his face. "You already know what happens next, don't you?" he asked.

"Does Spark ask why they don't just start breaking rocks from the easily accessible spot that doesn't need a line?" Lily asked. "Or several of those spots? Or just bringing the alpha rocks from wherever?"

"Pretty much," Beryl snorted. "As it turns out, the previous alpha always said the better rock was deep in the mountainside, and tunneled in herself. When she gave up the position, the next alpha, the fat one, couldn't get into the cave, and wasn't motivated enough to fix that directly. People volunteered to go in, and they made lines and figured out how to do it… without ever considering that the rock might be just as good closer to the surface. Which it was, of course, it was just that one past alpha who put importance on that cave's rock supply for no real reason. Spark was celebrated by the whole pack when his question got around."

"Does this tale of painfully stupid decisions have a moral?" Lily asked with a snort. It reminded her a little of how her pack had ended up with Claw, but in a much more benign way. She would have to remember to have it told to Root. Such a simple, clean story might do for teaching younger fledglings where their actual history would be too graphic.

"No, it was just a funny story that came to mind because I was thinking of ways to take our minds off the cold water we are wading through," Beryl admitted. "Got a better one?"

"A better moral than nothing?" She splashed some water at his tail, and was rewarded with a surprised yelp. "How about 'think about what you take for granted?'"

"See, that works," Beryl rumbled. His back paw kicked out, spraying water a short distance behind him. He looked back, purring smugly-

And saw that she had wisely stopped walking after splashing him, and thus had avoided the predictable - to her, anyway - retaliation in kind.

She tilted her head and rumbled innocently at him. "Yes? You were praising my assessment?"

"Two can play that game," he rumbled. "This is not the end."

"No, but it is the end until we get further upstream," Lily offered, cloaking her new defence in reasonable logic. "We cannot slow ourselves down too much."

"That is not the end either," Beryl snorted. "However clever it is."

"I suppose not," she said agreeably, well aware that she had won this little exchange. It was a pleasant feeling, and unlike so many of her recent challenges, one with no bitter undertone. She had not lost anything in matching wits with Beryl, there was nothing at stake, just ways to pass the time.

"It's my turn to tell a story," she offered as they continued forward. She didn't have many that would keep their light mood, but if she danced around the circumstances, there were a few tales of Burble - Thunder, now, though that still didn't really connect in her head - that would do good to take their minds off the cold water.

O-O-O-O-O

They walked for the majority of the night, leaping out onto the bank only whenever their paws went numb from the cold. The time passed quickly with stories, and if it weren't for what they were doing, and why, Lily might have even forgotten they were being pursued.

Part of that was because she had neither seen nor heard any trace of the hunters. No Deathgrippers had roared in the distance at all, though they had heard plenty all throughout the pursuit the night before.

She knew better than to think the hunt had ended; in all likelihood, someone on the other side had wised up to how obvious the hunters making noise was, and how much it helped in getting away and staying away. But the utter lack of further proof did deprive her of anything more than an uneasy certainty that they were not safe.

Nobody was safe, her and Beryl least of all.

Beryl suddenly leaped out of the water and onto the shore, and Lily flinched. "What is it?" she hissed.

"A smell…" Beryl trailed off, looking around warily.

Seeing as their lack of scent had already been spoiled for this part of the shore, Lily wasted no time in leaping out of the water after him. She landed on a lump of thick grass, one paw in a small bush with annoyingly ticklish leaves.

The bush distracted her, and she spent a few moments pulling her paw out of it without uprooting the whole thing and taking it with her. Then she took a step back-

A disgusting smell assaulted her nose, and Beryl snorted in restrained laughter. "That would be it," he chuckled. "Maybe wipe your paw off."

Lily looked down and saw that she had stepped on a little pile of mud balls with a very strange, mostly unpleasant odor to them. She growled and dragged her paw along the grass, reluctant to dip it in the river she had just leaped out of before she absolutely had to. "What is this?"

"Waste," Beryl said bluntly. "Prey waste, I think. It seems we have gone far enough from your valley that there are prey around." He set off into the forest, and Lily followed, doing her best to memorize the pungent odor since it apparently led to food.

"Does the prey taste better than it smells?" she asked hopefully.

"Definitely," he said. "Which is good, because I'm starving."

"Same here." She had pointedly ignored the building growling in her belly up until now, knowing full well the reality of their situation. The talking and stories had helped her ignore everything except the present moment.

"Well, then…" He looked around, as if judging the situation. "I could hunt this one down much quicker if I was alone, since you don't know how yet."

"But you could hunt it quicker still if I was participating and already knew what to do?" Lily asked.

"Yes. That doesn't mean bringing you along now is the best choice." He looked over at her. "We need to balance speed and safety. I will hunt this one alone and return to here, and when we have more of a definite lead, I can teach you. Is that okay?"

Lily considered it for a moment. She didn't like being left alone, but practically speaking, it would save time to have her wait, rest, and let him do the hunting. She could even watch the river, just in case the No-scaled-not-prey were following close behind somehow and they just didn't know it yet. If she was found while he was gone, unlikely though that was after a whole night of not a single sign of the enemy, she could flee down the river again and use it to evade pursuit.

"Go," she said with a sigh. "I'll wait here."

"I will be back shortly," he promised. "Or not so shortly. If I find nothing and no trail to follow, I will be back quickest, if I do find it I might take a while longer, if it is big and heavy longer still, and if something else happens even longer."

"So I should hope you take long, but not too long," she summarized with a wry purr. "Now I will be worried for you and confused over whether it is good or bad that you are not back yet. Thank you for that."

"Anything to keep you occupied," he rumbled, giving her an odd look before disappearing into the shadows of the forest. She watched him go, her eyes on his dark scales until they were indistinguishable from the rest of the view.

She was alone in a dark, unknown part of the forest, far from home and away from everyone she had ever known. She didn't run after Beryl, but the urge was there.

Instead, she turned to the side and sprawled out on her stomach, taking her weight off her paws. One eye was on the river, looking downstream, and the other on the dark forest on her side of the river. So long as she could assume that the No-scaled-not-prey and their animal minions were still on her trail, she could be sure she wouldn't be snuck up on from behind.

But it still felt as if there were little bugs marching down her spine, from behind her ears all the way to the tip of her tail, crawling and making her uneasy. She didn't like being alone, not like this.

It struck her that while this was not the furthest she had ever been from anyone else, Beryl being not all that far away even now, it was certainly the furthest she had ever been from her pack since she had sworn to protect them. They were all adrift on the wind, following individual paths that might never connect again. She had done everything in her power to protect them, but the optimal solution in the short term, the only solution, was terrible now.

"It was necessary," she whispered to herself. The words were no comfort at all, and the more she thought about it, the more it bothered her. She was not even with Root and the dark wings, watching over her pack's most vulnerable member as he traveled with friends. She was alone, with Beryl, contributing nothing and unaware of what might be going on elsewhere.

For all she knew, there had been no further signs of pursuit because she and Beryl had gotten away. It was possible that one of the groups she had sent out had been caught instead, by the same hunters who would have come after her if they hadn't been distracted. It was possible they were dead now, and she would never know for sure what had happened. They would just never reconnect with the other groups.

It was eating away at her inside, and she knew she needed to stop dwelling on it. She was going to be away from her people for days, potentially moon-cycles or even longer. Letting guilt devour her from the inside would be bad enough if she was okay aside from that, which she wasn't. She was already burdened with too much guilt, and this was not her fault.

That was what made this different. For once, she didn't feel she had made a mistake. Not one that led directly to this moment. The world had given her a challenge, one with steep stakes, and she had declined it for her peoples' sake. There was nothing she would do differently, and feeling guilty about that was wrong.

She needed a distraction… and the first thing that came to mind was to use whatever had kept her from thinking about any of that until now. That, in turn, was fairly obvious. It was either Beryl, or the consistent threat possibly still following behind them.

She turned her head and looked directly at the river. Nothing moved within, not fish. There were a few water bugs in the shallows, near a stand of reeds, but that was it. Nothing was coming upstream like she and Beryl had. Nothing, as far as she could tell, was coming from the woods on the other side of the water. The skies were quiet, if not necessarily empty.

The danger she was in definitely wasn't a distraction; worrying about whether she was safe or not just led her back to wondering about everyone else. That left Beryl…

And, now that she thought about it, she definitely had some other things to figure out about him, too. Such as what she had been thinking back before he began his first story, looking at him like she had.

"Not just that," she muttered, remembering other, similar moments from the night before. Pressing her forehead against his without prompting right before he left to go kill off the dogs hounding them, for one thing, and keeping herself awake by ogling his backside. Being so unusually excited to see him upon returning from captivity with Pearl, too, and a dozen other moments she was only now connecting. All driven by something she hadn't noticed. Some were addled by lack of sleep, others explained away by circumstances, more still by the ease she felt with him, the safety of knowing his desires and trusting his restraint, not needing to put up an image and remain at paw's length.

It could all just be coincidence, individual moments not connected in any larger way. That was the easy thing to assume.

But easy did not mean right, and the little moral she had given Beryl's story rung in her ears. She wasn't going to let this go, not now. Not when she needed to distract herself for the time being anyway.

"Let's put it all together," she said aloud, finding that it was comforting to speak to herself on occasion; her voice was not loud enough to go beyond where she lay, but it was a familiar sound in unfamiliar territory.

Beryl was a male dark wing, her friend and trusted advisor. He had seen her at her worst and not turned away, he was helpful and had at one point harbored some sort of attraction to her that was not based on the power she had over her pack.

She had, quite recently though it didn't feel like it, told him to stop feeling attracted to her, because she didn't feel the same way. Since then, he had acted entirely honorably, not once overstepping.

"If anyone oversteps, it's me," she mused, thinking of how she had on multiple occasions admired his body with less than innocent thoughts on her mind. He was fit, toned, and muscular in all the right places, and unlike most males, didn't have any obvious personality flaws that dissuaded her from thinking about him that way.

It was not really a surprise to admit that she was physically attracted to him; she had known, it just wasn't important. It was proof she did know what her own preferences were, that she had a liking for males who were strong and well-built. Males like, say, Blur, just didn't appeal-

She groaned, recalling that Blur was dead. Her fault, under her rule. But the point remained. Physically, Beryl was as close to perfect as any real male could get. And in addition to that, he wasn't an idiot or easily manipulated or already mated to someone, and she knew him.

"Strong, smart, kind, cunning," she said. "No wonder…"

A branch cracked somewhere nearby, and she froze. She still couldn't see anything either on the river or in the woods around, but that-

Another branch cracked, and Beryl growled in annoyance as he dragged a lanky, four-legged carcass across a bed of nettles and dead thorns. "It was resting close by," he said proudly, tossing the carcass free of the thorns with a twist of his neck. "Never even noticed me."

Lily put aside what she had been thinking about, aided by her growling stomach, and examined the body. It was large, too large to choke down like she had with the dog, and covered in the same sort of furry outer layer that she hadn't liked before. "How do we eat this?"

"Strip off the hide, save the bones for last, go for the fatty parts," Beryl advised, dragging his claws through one of the haunches. There was a grisly tearing sound, and he dug deeper, separating the leg from the body in a display that was downright tempting, and in more ways than one.

She shook her head, blaming that thought on the things she had been pondering when he interrupted her, and tentatively tore a strip of the flesh off the chest.

"Bones there," Beryl said, pushing the haunch he had claimed over to her. "Let me take the annoying parts."

"Thanks," she purred, setting about the task of eating something other than fish. She kept her thoughts from before to herself, unsure of where they were going to lead.

O-O-O-O-O

Lily returned from relieving herself to find Beryl slumbering on his side, his belly exposed to the world. At first glance, sleeping like that seemed unusually careless of him, but then she remembered that he knew she would be keeping watch, and that the enemy was fully capable of slitting his throat no matter how he slept if they caught him unaware.

She settled a short distance away, one eye on him and one eye on the forest nearby. The river was somewhat close, she could still hear it, but they had moved far enough away that they couldn't be seen from its banks, just in case.

The sun was rising… somewhere. She looked up, but she couldn't see it thanks to the dense tree cover. If it wasn't so pointless and risky, she would have considered firing a shot just to clear a nice view of the sky.

As it was, she had a long, boring morning to sit through, and though she was fatigued she was not tired enough to sleep. Plenty of time to revisit the subject of Beryl in the privacy of her own head. She wasn't about to mutter to herself when he might be awake and listening; that had disturbing similarities to a time she had spent asleep and being admired…

She shuddered, thoroughly bothered by that comparison, and pointedly looked away. She was nothing like Claw where it counted. She wasn't going to lay a paw on Beryl without his consent, and furthermore he wasn't related to her. He wasn't even uninterested; she had needed to tell him not to pursue her.

But none of that helped her figure out what she was going to do now. She didn't know what she wanted or why it mattered, and all she had to work with was an attraction to Beryl and an indefinite hiatus from being alpha of her pack.

One of those things was under her control, so she needed to decide what she was going to do about it.

She huffed in annoyance and looked back at him. He was still sleeping peacefully, paws twitching on occasion. His chest rose and fell, black scales moving over powerful muscle.

This wasn't going to be something she could just ignore. It would need to be addressed in some way. She had options, but doing nothing wasn't one of them.

She growled quietly and went over her options in her head. On the one end of the spectrum, she could try to make herself not like him. On the other, she could make him her mate, assuming he was up for that. Neither of those was even remotely feasible, and she didn't want to do either, but in between there were compromises.

She wanted…

Lily huffed again, realizing that she didn't know what she wanted out of this. Her attraction was an opportunity, but she didn't know for what, or whether it was worth seizing.

Her thoughts were flying in circles, and she was only growing more frustrated with herself. She stood and walked a short distance from Beryl's sleeping form, making space and giving herself the option of talking aloud once more.

"I want… What do I want?" she rumbled to herself.

The first thing that came to mind was obvious. She wanted Beryl. Physically, for sure. Mentally, he was also an attractive prospect, but she didn't have time for a mate in the normal course of her life as alpha, not to mention that taking a mate would create problems.

She growled at herself, not liking where that thought led. Her pack was used to taking orders from males, historically speaking, and she had just recently seen how little they trusted her implicitly. Beryl was fine now because he was obviously subordinate to her, but if she took him, or anyone for that matter, as her mate?

"Can't let that happen," she growled. That would trap her in a vicious circle, half of which was of her own making. She had made clear that she believed mates were equals, so Beryl would be her equal. But Claw had made sure everyone was very, very used to obeying a strong, somewhat charismatic male in power, and if Beryl was her equal, then he would wield power that did not come from her.

Her fledglings, so relatively new to following her, would tend toward him instead of her when they had problems. He already had a rapport with many of them, and the older light wings were all too used to following a male.

It would begin slowly, and would be ameliorated by Beryl's lack of desire to rule, but that wouldn't last. Every time he helped someone, or gave an order, or disagreed with her publicly, just like he did now, his power would grow and hers would wane. The first time they had a real argument over pack policy, she would come out looking power-hungry, or she would lose. There was no winning that, and she was not about to abdicate to Beryl, no matter how much she liked him.

Taking him as her mate wasn't a choice she could make in good conscience, if he would even agree to it. He had not professed his undying love, he had only said he might be interested if she sorted out some of her more egregious issues. It was a potential and probably surface attraction, not a deep thing. Not yet, and not ever if she chose not to let it progress.

Thinking about what it would be like to let their relationship progress made her feel odd, in the same way that watching him move sometimes did. That was new, and she didn't quite know what to do with it; she had a long, mostly suppressed history of her body objecting as she was abused, but absolutely no experience with the opposite, the way things were supposed to be. She couldn't think about it without pushing down bad memories, so she didn't want to examine it too closely, but she knew what the outward signs of attraction looked like… If not, until now, how they felt.

"I do want him," she admitted to herself. Physically, maybe even as a mate, though that couldn't happen. Practicality aside, that felt like an impossibly far away concept, and she doubted she was ready for such commitment. She had never even considered anyone else as a prospect, it was far too early to be ready to take him as a mate.

She wasn't okay with that, and it couldn't happen anyway. But the physical attraction was there, and she wanted to explore that. She hadn't felt this way… ever. It was pleasant, it took her mind off of other things, and she was facing an uncertain future in which she would have precious few pleasant distractions. This was a chance, devoid of the laborious task of protecting her image in front of her fledglings.

"I want to do something," she muttered, realizing that she really did want it. Whatever it would be. If she was alpha, she would never have the time and it would all be much more complicated, but she was not alpha at the moment. All of the usual complications had fallen away, leaving only a desire she would usually have ignored for the sake of others.

It was a low priority, a personal urge that would not benefit her people, but for once she had nothing more important to sacrifice her personal desires for. She had no people to lead, no enemy she was capable of facing, nobody to preserve her image for. No reason to avoid relaxing with friends, or chasing a male.

For once, the most optimal choice she could make would be to do what made her happiest, so long as it did not hinder her survival or hurt Beryl.

She knew the shape of what she was contemplating; it was obvious now that she was thinking about it. Her body, for perhaps the first time ever, was pushing her toward doing things with this interesting male. Said male was also interested in her. They were alone together. That story told itself, and the usual consequences were… not a problem.

She looked around, almost immediately spotting one of the same sort of blue-green bush that had rendered her barren, though this one only had a third of its leaves still attached, and another dropped even as she watched. It was no use to her, not now, but it was the reason this was without risk. Of that sort, anyway.

She looked down at the ground, doubting herself. This was sudden and unexpected and stupid. It would slow them down a little, and it would complicate things between herself and Beryl where she had only just managed to keep them on good terms thus far. All for a primal urge she could easily ignore, to follow a whim she would have buried without a second thought back in the valley.

It was an uncertain risk for an even more uncertain reward. At worst, she would ruin the relationship she had with him now, and at best… At best, they would enjoy being together for a time, and then they would go back to normal once she was back with her pack. He would never want that, he was…

Understanding. Clever. Flexible in his ways of thinking. Maybe he would be okay with such an arrangement? Someone like Gold would have leaped on it for all the most base reasons, someone like Clay might have refused it since it was not normal to mate without being mated, but Beryl was not like either of them. The closest example she had for how he might react was herself, and her thinking was without a doubt affected by her attraction to him. Though he had professed a similar feeling, so that might make the similarities in their reasoning stronger, not weaker…

She snarled at herself, frustrated again. She had stalked a circle around Beryl's sleeping form a dozen times over in her deliberations, spoken to herself until an observer might think her insane, and still come to no real conclusion. It might be too much of a risk to propose anything to him, it might ruin their friendship over something trivial she had already avoided once, or it might be a pleasant, mutually enjoyable adventure that would cause no problems at all. She could be leaping into a pit filled with spikes, or she could be blindly leaping over a hole with something she wanted inside, only to never get the chance again.

Even in simple, trivial matters of fulfilling her own desires, she couldn't avoid these terrible lose-lose scenarios. Either she risked ruining what she had, or she sacrificed a chance at something new and good in her life, something physical where she couldn't do so many physical things already…

"Oh, no," she murmured, struck by a terrible thought. She was so crippled, so hindered by pain. It stood to reason, in the worst possible way, that being with Beryl wouldn't work out physically. She couldn't even lay on her back, and the very little she knew of mating required that…

That wasn't an end-all reason not to, though. She almost wished it was, if only to put a stop to her deliberations. It was a guess, a problem she could probably get around, or maybe not. It was another uncertainty stacked atop the already large pile.

"Take a leap, stay on the ground," she growled. "Take a leap, stay on the ground. Take a leap…"

A distant roar echoed, and she spun around. Beryl was still sleeping soundly, unharmed, and it had been far away. But it was proof the enemy was still around, maybe still hunting. They could be found at any time.

"Stay on the ground?" she murmured, coming around to stand in front of Beryl. Was that what she had decided? She didn't feel like she had made a choice at all. But one of her choices was a distraction, and the other was not. She could at least wait until they were definitely safe before forcing herself to decide.

"Neither, for now," she concluded, sitting down across from him. She wouldn't act, or decide not to act, until it was clear she wouldn't be diverting their energies at a dangerous moment. Or until something in the balance of uncertainty and desire swung so heavily she couldn't remain undecided. Whichever came first.