There's some violence and a bit of gore in this chapter. Just a heads up.

It was the lowest light of early morning.

A quiet walk through the still trees had led him here. The shadows and the sliver of sun cresting the farthest horizon were normal sights, and soon enough there would be shifting pinks and blues and yellows across the leafless sapling trees as the sun traveled skyward.

A snap out of the ordinary, and he whirled as something too heavy hit him from behind, sending his twisting body painfully into the ground. His bones seemed to crunch under the weight of this something, and in the darkness, his night vision kept mistaking the sky overhead for the mass on top of him.

It bit down, and once it found a vulnerable place to sink its teeth, the sharpness tightened until he couldn't have shoved the thing off even if he'd had the strength of a mammoth.

But the creature made the mistake of exposing its face, and in a swift raking motion, claws swept across the nose and the hold released.

He was on his feet in a moment, more out of habit than a readiness to retaliate, and he could feel all the parts of himself that had been split open as he sunk into a fighting stance. He wasn't as low to the ground as he wanted to be, and his body was pulsing in runaway distraction.

That first hit had compromised any advantages he may have had, and he was barely in position when the thing lunged again. But he didn't wait for it to close the distance, and half a second later they met halfway. He aimed low in the darkness, searching and grabbing for anything soft that would inflict enough damage to give him the upper hand.

Before he could find a good place to really sink in, he felt something rip across his shoulders, the force pulling him down to the ground under the other body's weight.

Flat on his back, he knew before it happened that the next target was his throat, and he risked letting one of his paws leave its hold on the creature's side and come up to protect his neck just in time. The impact of what must have been monstrous jaws snapped his wrist with little trouble, and he knew that if he hadn't blocked it, that would have been an almost instantaneous kill.

He punched up with his other paw, pushing the invisible face away yet again, and getting one hind leg under his opponent. The claws had unhinged enough for him to throw it a good few feet away from him, and it was still on its side as he rolled over and slid to his feet.

Not bothering to get into stance this time, he swiftly loped the few steps it took to get close enough before throwing himself on top of it, using both front paws to claw repeatedly at whatever they made contact with.

For a few moments, he wasn't sure who was getting more damage, but the whimpering that began after a good five swipes made him focus harder, jealously holding the upper hand until the creature finally managed to attach itself to his injured front paw.

The next few seconds seemed to happen more quickly than he'd known time could go as he was thrown over top of it and down to his side. There was no rising fast enough this time. It was coming at him again and finding purchase in the top of his neck, tightening and making to wring it as if it hadn't been a few feet away a second ago.

Desperately, he dug into the ground, refusing to give it the momentum to shake him, and once the thing believed it had an unbreakable hold on him, he flipped, coming down hard on both of their backs with the creature underneath him.

This was the last chance to end this before that thing did, and he knew what he needed to do. As soon as it broke its hold, he rolled off to stand just to the side of it, swerving immediately to bring the front of his body up and then down as hard as he could.

Thankfully, his paws met softness, and he heard bones cracking in exaggerated degrees as his weight pushed them down.

A moment of silence as the fight abruptly ended, and the thing heaved air under his blow.

Then it lashed upward, grabbing him bodily again and throwing him a few feet away, hard, onto his stomach.

He heard it leave just as his eyes fell closed.

000

The lake was huge, and the change in the atmosphere around it spoke of large weather forces constantly clashing there.

There weren't many animals around, but still more than what Peaches had been expecting. The lush trees that rimmed the shoreline did indeed provide more than enough foliage for breakfast, and Shira and Diego were currently standing in water halfway up their legs, searching for fish in the shallows.

Peaches tried not to be obvious as she glanced at them every now and then.

The two sabers weren't talking to one another, but just the way they were standing indicated that they were a couple: the unconscious pull toward each other in their posture, the comfortable synchronization of swiping claws into the water, the brief glances when the other wasn't looking.

Meanwhile, the other animals in the background went about their business as if they were used to eating alongside carnivores.

Peaches shoved a trunkful of leaves into her mouth, her gaze going to Julian who was chewing around a huge clump and eyeing her from a few feet away. Just a couple more minutes.

The storm Shira had warned about left many of the trees dusted with snow and weighed down with little icicles. Her and Diego's cozy clearing was underbrush-thick and shielded them from most of the snow, but there were plenty of drifts around the edges of the lake.

When the sabers were downing the last of their catch, Julian turned to her, shoulders hunched against the lake behind them. Now?

Peaches took a deep breath and nodded. Now.

They pattered their way over to the edge of the frosty water, trying not to look too obvious. Diego and Shira saw them coming and trotted over.

"Hey guys, how was your breakfast?" Peaches tried to ignore the little waver in her voice. There was a small nagging fear in her mind that insisted they weren't going to pull this off, but she kept going. "I can't believe this place. It's amazing."

"It is!" Julian chirped from behind her shoulder, and she could see him adjust his position out of the corner of her eye. Then he rubbed at his head a little, grimacing as if it was hurting him.

"So you wanted to be shown around?" Shira asked, seemingly anxious to be good to her promise of a tour.

"Yes!" Peaches forced an excited smile, counting down for what she knew was about to happen.

"We do, we really d…d…do…achoo!" Julian's fake sneeze sounded impressively real, and on the out-breath he stumbled a little as if dizzy. Unfortunately, he'd thrown his head too far down, and his trunk got too close to a nearby drift. A huge explosion of snow flew up and out around them until they were all shielding their faces from the little ice particles.

He took a huge breath in, accidently sucking up some of the ice particles, and then sneezed again.

"Are you okay?" Peaches asked as sincerely as she could.

"Yeah, just a little…uh…" Julian tugged a little on his trunk, but after a few seconds, they could all see that it was stuck to a lump of ice beneath the snow. The second sneeze must have been real, and whatever snot had come with it had frozen to the ice. That hadn't been the plan. "Just a second."

He closed his eyes and tugged a little, groaning some more as his trunk stayed stuck.

"Maybe you shouldn't do that…" Peaches started to reach for him.

"Yeah, you're probably right." Julian stumbled a little but stopped. The look he turned on her was obvious. I'm fine here. Just go. And then he jumped back into their pre-determined story. "I must be getting sick."

Peaches immediately swung back to Diego and Shira. "He should probably rest for a while."

Julian nodded helplessly. "She's right."

Peaches made sure to look directly at Diego as he frowned between them. "Would you still give me a tour?"

"But somebody should still probably stay with me!" Julian added quickly.

By this point, one of Shira's eyebrows was cocked, and she was watching the proceedings with an amused smile. "I'll stay. You're going to need help getting yourself out of that."

Julian laughed nervously and gave one more futile tug on his trunk.

"Great!" Peaches turned to Diego, holding her breath.

He met her eyes directly, staring back with a stony glint to his features. "Let's go."

000

It wasn't much of a tour. All told, she did feel a little bad about this – this being Operation Insta-Sickness – but she'd always been one to fight fire with fire.

Peaches kept pace as Diego led them in a random direction away from the lake, and after a few tense minutes it became apparent that he was more interested in addressing the mammoth in the clearing than actually showing her around.

That was fine. This was what she really wanted out of him anyway. Their plan had worked.

"So…I wanted to ask you…"

"Enough," Diego cut her off. "You two are ridiculous, and you're not fooling either of us."

"We don't need to," Peaches snapped. "I just needed to get you alone to talk. And by the way, we already did fool you because look what we're doing. And Julian didn't even have to fake faint."

"What can you possibly want to know?" Diego growled back. He was cracking a little at the edges, like ice at the first stages of a brief thaw.

She just needed to find the biggest fault line and stomp all over it until it became a chasm.

"I already told you the whole story last night…well, almost everything. But I'm assuming you already know whatever horrible thing happened to your father before he met me."

She did. His first family had been killed by humans, and yet he'd willingly followed after them to return something he himself would never truly get back. And he'd dragged Uncle Sid into it with him.

"I just want to know about my dad. Really know about him. Honestly, this whole thing makes me question who he is," she finally sighed when the silence had stretched far longer than she'd intended.

"You do know we were only together for three days, right? And I was only actively helping them for about an hour." He was hesitating, and he didn't want her to pick up on it. He'd been hesitating since she'd approached him the night before. When Julian had first whispered in her ear late last night, and they'd begun discussing how best to do this, Peaches had worried that there would be too many ways it could go wrong.

Diego seemed determined to try as many of them as possible.

"It bothers you, doesn't it? That they didn't tell me about you because they're upset."

Diego had been steadily inching in front of her as they walked, but he slowed at the words. His posture sagged a little, and she heard him sigh. Peaches imagined him closing his eyes for a moment, and she could practically feel them open again as he squared up and said, "I don't like the fact that they're angry, but no, it actually doesn't bother me."

He turned so that he was staring back to her. "Your dad is who he is, and at the end of the day, Manfred knows, just as well as I do, that us siding with each other one time doesn't change the fact that carnivores and herbivores don't generally get along. Aside from any residual anger at me, he probably didn't want you getting dangerous ideas. I promise that he didn't keep this from you to hurt you."

"But-"

"Please just trust me?"

"Fine." She grumbled.

"I know that you're upset, but Manfred was just looking out for you. I'm sure he hasn't actually changed that much."

"He saved a human baby. He was reckless and adventurous…and fun…and cool…" Peaches faltered. She hadn't known that was where she was going with that, and the sudden reality of it hit her hard. It wasn't like she had ever considered that she didn't know her father. Finding out that he had whole sides to his personality and a past that contradicted everything that she had thought, not only scared her, it made her wish that he'd let her see all of it. She wished that she'd gotten to know the same mammoth that Diego had.

Did that make her selfish? She knew deep down that Julian's silence about his past bothered her an unnecessary amount, and now her dad's was beginning to drag her into a possessive anger that felt ugly. She was forcing an unwilling stranger to give her information about that past after all.

"I wouldn't necessarily say Manfred was "cool." That was all me." Diego's voice was soft, a quiet nudge to say he was still there and the conversation was still going.

"I…I want to understand him better-" Peaches paused, still trying to pull her thoughts into a coherent gut feeling. They refused, and after another moment of thought she gave up. Instead, she looked back up at Diego. "I'm sorry. I have a lot of feelings about all of this, and…it's hard to imagine him like that. I don't…like it."

She made a face.

To her surprise, Diego nodded a little. "It's hard to let go sometimes."

It was.

After another second of heavy silence, Diego sighed dramatically and rolled his eyes. "I can't help much more with Manfred himself, but I'm sure you've got more questions about our time together. I wouldn't want to cut this too short and risk your husband's fake cold getting worse. So what else?"

"Really?" Peaches perked up at the unexpected offer.

"Yeah, fine. Just tell me what you want to know."

She squealed. "Everything. About them and you and what happened. Oh, and you and Shira, and why you guys live here, and how you got here…"

"I thought this was mostly about your dad?"

Peaches shrugged, smiling a little at his confusion. "I want to know you too. You know, if you'd be willing to tell me."

She'd found it. The gaping hole he'd been circling around. The open shock on Diego's face confirmed it.

"I…" He struggled a little bit to pull himself back together, and Peaches tried not to look like she was holding her breath. Finally, still clearly at a loss, Diego nodded. "Um, okay. Sure. Uh, what first?"

Peaches grinned, unable to stop herself and crossed the distance between them so that they were face to face and had to start talking immediately. "Will you start from the beginning of the story again?" She asked excitedly. "We came in just before the ice slides, so I don't know what happened before that. Please, just…tell me everything."

000

"So you've really been to the ocean?"

"Yeah, I spent a lot of time on it."

"On it?"

"I used to be a pirate."

"You were a pirate?"

Shira had gotten Julian's trunk unstuck within a matter of seconds after Peaches and Diego disappeared for their one-on-one time. But she'd given no indication that she wanted to go after them.

In fact, Julian hadn't had a chance to do much more than take a few deep, careful breaths through his newly-released trunk when she'd turned to him with a satisfied smile. "So, now that they're out of the way, tell me more about roaming."

With that unspoken agreement reached, they settled a little farther away from the shore of the lake to talk.

Just as he was trying to wrap his mind around the fact that Shira had been a pirate, a lone saber materialized out of the tree line. They looked up as he came toward them. His eyes were shadowy and tense, a harbinger. "Shira."

000

No one really knew what had happened.

Merle had been alone, walking through one area of his territory, and a couple of his pack members found him on their rounds what must have been hours after it happened.

He'd still been bleeding, cut up in so many places that they weren't even sure how best to move him at first.

The fight had obviously been violent. Whatever had attacked their pack leader had been attacked right back in his characteristically ferocious style. But it hadn't been enough to allow him to walk away from the confrontation.

Of course, the first thought on all of their minds was Gutt, but he hadn't been seen in years. And they were too far away from the lake for him to have sailed in and snuck all the way up into the hilly western forest.

And even if he had, why Merle?

As the leader to a pack of twenty-five sabers – a large number that had repeatedly drawn criticism over the years – he was close to impenetrable. Even for an older pack leader, he could easily take out anyone who stood in his way.

The walk back to the pack's main sleeping area was too long and too slow. By the time they were entering the far edges of the clearing's smoothed dirt ground, the saber carrying his leader could feel the blood dripping through his thick fur.

They were noticed seconds later, and a moment after that, the pack's second in command came bounding over to them in a panic. "What the…" He caught sight of Merle. "What happened to him?"

"We don't know." The second saber that had been following sighed as the other murmured something about them helping get Merle to the ground.

"Should we send out some scouts, Jackson?" the first saber suggested once Merle had been carefully rolled off of his back to a rather uncomfortable-looking position on the ground.

"Right." The second in command nodded, squeezing his eyes a moment later in not-so-subtle frustration with himself before adding, "But not scouts." He thought for a moment and then spun to address the fifteen or so sabers that were already in the clearing talking, napping, or lazily sparring with one another. They'd quickly caught on that something was wrong, though, and by the time Jackson was addressing them, most were at attention and slowly acquiring looks of horror at what they saw behind him. "Something has happened. Two runners to Brian, everyone else, groups of three or four and canvas the area. I want everyone made aware of this, and I want the attackers found."

"I'll show you where Oliver and I found him." The second saber, Lyle, offered quickly once the rest of them had begun organizing themselves to set out.

"Right- oh, wait. No. Take Cam and show him." Jackson spun to Oliver. "You and I will stay here with him."

Lyle nodded, calling to the third in command before he could leave with one of the groups. As soon as Cam was at his side and briefly filled in, they took off back into the forest.

Jackson turned to where Merle was folded into himself on the ground, Oliver standing behind him looking taxed and afraid. Their leader hadn't moved since they'd gotten back, probably hadn't moved in hours, and he was sunk down into stillness so deep, it pulled everything in the clearing down with it.

It felt strange to nudge at him, searching out all the worst gashes and still-seeping cuts. Most were deep and all were ugly. And whatever, or whoever, had done this channeled their attacks where it counted. It was almost like…

"He was the prey." Jackson stepped back suddenly as Oliver nosed at Merle's side, trying to get a better view of the sharp claw marks that cut across his belly. For all of his injuries, he had, in fact, won the fight.

He would be dead if he hadn't. Those hits were meant to kill; all of them. And they were meant to be efficient take-downs. This hadn't been a fight; it had been a struggle for survival. What Jackson had been half-assuming was the result of some monstrous, faceless carnivore, was really a failed pursuit of food.

It stilled him, just as Oliver raised his head to stare at him in surprise. "What attacked him then?"

There was an empty silence before Jackson had to shake his head.

000

"Of course, you'll have to retell all of this to Julian." Peaches felt like her face was frozen in its smile.

"What?" Diego whined, but she could tell it was more out of pretend crankiness than anything. She knew the retelling would tire them both out. But she was so glad she'd asked. "You two couldn't have factored that into your stupid little divide and conquer plan? I don't want to have to tell it over again!"

"You do it all the time!"

"Yeah, but not the full, full version that you got!"

And she had gotten the full version. Diego had acquiesced with everything she'd wanted to know and more.

She was floating.

Before Peaches could tease him more, which seemed to be the dynamic they'd settled into over the last few hours, there was shouting. They were just stepping into the main clearing on their way back to Julian and Shira, and Diego stopped them short of a somewhat large group of animals gathered a few feet away. No one noticed them, and they watched in alarmed silence for a few moments as the small group of sabers and half dozen other animals talked over each other in unbridled panic.

At least until a new voice began insisting on attention, and the small crowd parted just enough for a skinny little animal to make his way out of their throng to face them. He gestured emphatically with his paws, "…and that's how I know the attacker was a homicidal dino bird!"

"Yeah, I bet it flew straight out of your brain dingbat!" A male deer was sneering, and voices began climbing over each other once more.

"Diego, what's going on?"

"Ugh. Buck."