He was starting to think this was a bad idea.

It was midday, and Diego knew he couldn't go any farther.

His shoulder felt like it was reinjuring itself with every step, and the deep cold that had moved into this thick forest over the last few days was cutting through his fur. He felt it in a way he hadn't up north, probably because he wasn't on the edge of delirium anymore and his injury had healed enough for him to assess just how bad it really was.

And it was. Bad.

Soto's claws had barely made it through his fur during their fight, and he was used to stray scratches from mock fighting that took a too-violent turn. It had happened so often, he'd stopped noticing it at all. But that bite was something else. It was, unmistakably, a kill move. And even if it wouldn't have taken Manfred down immediately, it would have effectively ended the fight.

That moment had played in his mind more and more over the last couple of days. Annoyingly, Diego still didn't regret it. And he glared ahead of him as a now-familiar wave of emotions hit him.

He was quickly learning that the bone-deep pain in his shoulder was the least of his worries. The constant tracking made him feel good, in a desperate sort of way, but it also gave him too much time to think. And he'd passed denial more miles back than he could count.

He'd reassured himself in the aftermath of the snowstorm that he wasn't lost. And again the day he'd left Nate's back behind. He'd left that morning feeling confident, foolishly, and now, a week and a half on, he knew that he was lost. There was no other way to describe the miserable feeling that shadowed his peripheral vision and lurked between the trees and behind rocks and ghosted over the snow. And it had only gotten worse in the last few days. Before, he was still figuring everything out and trying to plot out a strategy. Now the migration was close, he'd been smelling it and readjusting his course in answer for the last couple of days. And now that he'd found it, his thoughts kept turning to the topics he didn't want to think about.

Soto had wanted to kill an innocent baby. And Diego had almost helped him.

Diego had chased the child's mother over that waterfall.

He'd involved Manfred in the Half Peak plan instead of just finding a way to get the baby away from him and disappearing.

That was wrong. Wasn't it? The human leader had killed half their pack and, worse, there was the horror of them using his packmates' own fur and wearing it, and…the baby hadn't been involved, though. And wasn't it, in the end, the same thing as what their own pack did to herbivores?

They were no better than the humans. In fact, there was something about it that felt worse to him. And he suspected that the twin ideas of revenge and honor weren't really twins after all. And maybe his whole life and been a li…

He stopped that thought every time it came up.

Because he already knew the answer. He felt it. And he didn't want to listen to himself think it because it meant that he really was lost. And his instincts, the ones that just kind of knew things, had been right, again. And just because he didn't like the path he was following didn't mean that it was objectively wrong.

For as much as he wanted to get back to his old self, and had tried these last few blurry days of tracking, he knew it wasn't the same. Every thought, every decision, felt strange. And his usual composed attitude felt fragile.

There was a very distinct possibility that getting out of his pack had been the real rescue in all of this. If he'd stayed through the planned bloodbath at Half Peak, and if Soto had been allowed to go through with killing the baby and herbivores, then Diego would have stayed there permanently. He would have spent his life in that pack. And that just felt so…unnerving. So much so that he often found himself letting it burn out in the background while he ignored it and waited for it to break down to embers again. Without those two getting involved, there wasn't anywhere else from him to go. If it wasn't for them, he'd be actually, truly alone. Except, he wouldn't be, because he never would have left in the first place and realized that was the case.

Diego had never realized he was so unhappy before. It was a bottomless feeling, much like the snowstorm's whiteout panic. The feeling of aloneness that seemed to whisper that even when he'd picked up their trail, he still wasn't going to feel better. Why would Manfred and Sid understand any of this? That was the thought that, even more, he tried desperately to keep himself from thinking.

Because if it was true, then he was truly out of options.

Most of his waking hours were wrapped up in fighting with himself, back and forth, about who he was and where he was going from here. And somehow, "finding 'his' herd" didn't make his conscience shut up.

He honestly had no idea what was going on inside of his mind, and it scared him.

While he wasn't one of those sabers that believed that sabers didn't feel fear (although he'd probably say it as a front if anyone asked), he did know that he absolutely could not let it rule him. And it was getting close. He could feel it. And the harder he fought to push it aside and focus on anything else – like the relentless pain in his shoulder, the more he wondered if it was somehow winning for just that reason.

Diego collapsed into the snow and growled to himself. He'd been so caught up in thinking, in negating, again, that he'd forgotten about the fact that his body had been telling him for the last two hours that he needed to stop and rest.

Sid was right, he was a tiger. But laying there in the snow, he had to admit to himself that he honestly didn't know if he could lick this.

000

For a day they could totally sleep in – and definitely should – Peaches was annoyed when she woke up to see early morning light streaming weakly through the thin tops of the evergreens. And she was even more annoyed that she was unmistakably, unfortunately, wide awake.

Trying not to shift too much, while knowing it was useless because she wasn't going back to sleep anyway, Peaches stretched her trunk out and rolled her shoulders to start easing out some of the stiffness.

Stargazing was fun and romantic and all that, but it usually ended with her falling asleep on her back and at some point toppling to her side in her sleep, and she could always tell the next morning.

Sure enough, she could definitely feel it this morning. And just as she was contemplating whether or not to stretch further or assert her dominance over her lack of sleepiness and curl up again and lay there feeling angry, she felt Julian shift slightly next to her.

He tended to move more in his sleep, and she froze, waiting. If he was still out and just shifting position, she didn't want to disturb him. But then he moved some more and lifted his head and stared at her with a foggy expression. She grinned at her husband. "Hey."

"Hey," he whispered back, the end of the word trailing out into a huge yawn. He blinked sleepily for a couple of seconds before smiling. "How'd you sleep?"

"Great." She answered, pausing for a moment – because they both knew what was coming – and then added, "Just wish I could have gotten more of it."

Julian snickered and blinked some more. Oh no, it didn't look like he'd slept all that well. But his motto had always been socialize first and sleep…well, last. So she wasn't surprised when he did a big stretch of his own and shifted away enough that they could face each other without straining their necks.

"So what do you want to do today?" He rubbed at his eyes with his trunk, yawning again.

"To be honest, I think I need to keep looking," Peaches breathed, and at his questioning, concerned look, added, "I'm not going to let Shira scare me away from this. If she has a problem with it, she can come right out and say it."

"What if she tells Diego?"

"Fine by me." Peaches retorted, even if she knew it was mostly a lie. She wasn't the only one who would suffer the consequences from this.

But, as always, Julian was ready to go trunk to trunk with her. "Tell me how to help then."

Peaches couldn't help herself; she broke into a smile at his earnest expression. In a quiet, blink-and-you'd-miss-it way, Julian really wasn't afraid of anything. She gave him a seductive smile. "Smart, handsome, and down for sneaking? I really did get the whole package."

"Oh, you definitely did." He nodded back, a gloating glint replacing the earnestness, and she laughed as he reached up to try and grab at her hair with his trunk. She dodged, bringing her own trunk up to guard, and they resumed their ongoing game of play fighting and trying to pull the other's hair.

After a few minutes it all dissolved down into giggling, and they cuddled together, laughing breathlessly and lazily twining trunks.

"So…truce?" Julian finally whispered. Because he knew Peaches wasn't going to.

She pretended to think for a fraction of a second and then tightened her grip on his trunk and pulled him closer suddenly so that they were physically face-to-face. "Sure."

"This really is your favorite way of talking to guys, isn't it?" Julian's brown eyes crinkled a little.

"What?"

"Well, first it was Ethan. Although, you did kind of land on top of him that time, so I suppose I should feel lucky you aren't crushing me right now…"

"Shut up!" She let go of him, shoving his trunk away with an embarrassed, angry smile. A blurry image of the air rushing past her fur a moment before she collided with her first crush. The mortifying realization that she'd just body checked the most attractive mammoth she'd never seen. Well, the most attractive one at the time. Peaches focused back on her husband. "I never should have told you that."

"Probably not." He grinned back, mouth curving up in an evil smile. It somehow looked harmless on him, but Peaches still narrowed her eyes so that he wouldn't know how absolutely adorable he looked at the moment. "Just promise I'm the only one you'll be pummeling from now on, okay?"

"Oh, you can count on it." She answered in a too-sweet voice, and, seeing an opportunity, swiped her trunk up and yanked on a tuft of his fur. She laughed at his surprised and increasingly annoyed expression. "But just for the record, I can pummel whoever I want."

Their trash talking technically never really stopped, and within a few minutes it escalated until Peaches was screaming with laughter and Julian was huffing the word "no" over and over again in answer to Peaches' question of whether or not he would have dated one of the other mammoths if they'd been around, when there was slight movement in the trees to their left and Mayim stepped from the trees. She paused as their conversation quickly died. "Good morning."

"Good morning!" Julian cried immediately, and a moment later, rolled away from Peaches a little so that they were no longer sitting so closely.

Mayim looked between them. "We thought we'd stop by. Unless this is a bad time?"

"Uh, no, of course not." Peaches was suddenly very, very conscious of the way she was laying. How her voice sounded. The fact that she existed at all.

Mayim nodded and padded a few steps farther into the clearing as there was more movement and voices behind her. A second later, Cooper bounded into the clearing, lithely passing his sister to take a seat on her left. He smirked at them. "Oh, good. We were hoping you'd be awake."

A moment later, Sidney tumbled from the trees, landing with an "oof" and a puff into a shallow bank of snow. She laid there for a second before standing up enough to throw herself back down into it and proceeded to kick up a bunch of clumps.

"Sid!" Cooper yelled, holding one paw up to shield himself from the flying snow.

Her head appeared above the drift a moment later, and she winced when she saw him shake the snow off. "Sorry."

"Aren't you hanging out with your parents today?" Peaches asked, looking between the three of them.

"Dad and Brian are having a meeting." Mayim answered first, shooting Cooper a glare a split second later. He burst into laughter.

"You can always just…you know…show up," he offered in between breaths.

"Mayim wants to be there." Sidney stood up, swaying dizzily. "Since she's one of the leaders."

"You're a pack leader?" Julian yelped and then squinted at her. "That is. So. Cool."

At that, Mayim looked honestly, genuinely flattered, and the contrast between that and her usual serious expression was surprising, and for a moment, Peaches wondered if maybe Mayim didn't really understand how intimidating she was.

"Yeah, but this is our pack." Cooper added. "It's just the three of us."

"I'm second in command." Sidney added.

"We get a lot of flak for it. Well, she gets a lot of flak for it." Cooper waved his paw at his sister. "Sid and I don't really care."

"Neither do I." Mayim had straightened up again, any vulnerability gone.

"True." Cooper drug out the word, and a look passed between all three of the siblings. He turned back to Peaches and Julian. "Anyway, that's why Mayim is upset today."

"I'm not upset." Mayim retorted.

"My family is a herd. Well, our family." Peaches gave Julian a quick smile, "And we're all related. You know, more or less."

"Exactly." Sidney grinned.

"Are you sure that it's okay you're here?" Peaches tried again. "I don't want to take you away from Shira."

Cooper waved a paw. "No, it's fine. Mom's babysitting the pack right now, and we talked for a really long time last night."

"And we wanted to come and see you!" Sidney added.

"We did." Mayim agreed. "Mom and Dad told us a little bit about how you got here, but we mostly talked about our time away. How are you liking the area?"

"It's great. It's just…everything about it is great." It was getting a little bit easier to meet Mayim's eyes. Even if Peaches' ability to form words was still clawing its way back to coherent.

"Good." If Mayim noticed, or cared, the detached expression never slipped. She even filled in the following awkward silence without so much as a difference in tone. "And you stopped because of Half Peak right? That's what Mom and Dad made it sound like. We didn't talk too much about that part."

Well that wasn't surprising. Peaches had no trouble imagining Diego skimming over their first night in the area with Shira rolling her eyes in the background. "Yeah, he was telling his story and we stopped to listen."

"Because you recognized it."

"Um, no." Peaches shifted uncomfortably, "I actually didn't know."

Mayim's eyebrow quirked and Cooper blinked in confusion. But Sidney trotted over and placed herself between the two of them and rolled onto her back so that she was looking upwards.

"So that's why you guys stayed, right?" Her head cocked to one side.

"Definitely. Plus, I've never been here before, and this is a super cool area." Julian answered excitedly, then sobered a moment later. Peaches could tell he was trying really hard not to glance at her. They both knew that telling Shira and Diego's kids that they were going to settle down here before they actually told Shira and Diego was probably not a good idea.

"When you say 'you didn't know'…" Cooper trailed off, returning to the original topic.

"About any of it." Peaches shook her head at him.

"I…" He blinked a few times. "Why…?"

"I don't know." Peaches said before his question could go any farther. They didn't need to waste time talking about this because there was nothing to talk about. At least, nothing useful that she could tell them. Her father had made sure of that.

"At least you're here now." Sidney's green eyes flitted between her and Julian.

"Yeah." Peaches said carefully as all three sabers looked to her for confirmation. There was a second of awkward silence that felt like it stretched on forever before she finally added, "It's fine, really. Your dad told me the whole story."

Sidney's immediate acceptance of this answer seemed to have the same force as Cooper's dubious eyebrow raise. Against her better judgement, Peaches glanced over at Mayim to check for her reaction. When their eyes met, the saber just nodded. Her expression didn't change, but Peaches knew Mayim understood, at least on some level, that there was so much more to this. And that Peaches didn't want to talk about it.

"Well, then it's a good thing you're here." Cooper, for all his emotional abandon, seemed to have also arrived at the conclusion that this was a sorer subject than Peaches wanted to let on, and his haughty smirk returned. "It's nice to not be the only weirdoes around."

Sidney giggled and Mayim's immediate scoff only made him smile wider as she added, "We tend to be the odd ones out around here. Our family in general, but also the three of us as a pack. Apparently, a small pack like ours is a little too strange." She finished this with a shrug and a glance at the two of them.

"Like our family." Peaches echoed with an unwilling smile.

"A sloth and…two mammoths, right?" Cooper asked.

"And possums." Julian nodded, and, upon the sudden blank confusion, added, "You know, Peaches' uncles. On her mom's side."

"My mother got lost in a snowstorm when she was really little," Peaches added because, based on their reactions, she could tell they still didn't know what was going on. She hadn't said much to Diego or Shira about them – other than the fact that they drove Dad absolutely nuts. In fact, after that first story about Half Peak, the four of them hadn't been able to talk about their lives much further. That information, of course, included the existence of the triplets. Now, Peaches added. "Mom was too young to really understand what was going on, and she was found and raised by a possum mother. She spent most of her life thinking she was a possum until she met my dad."

Cooper winced. "Dang, I was just going to accept the possums no questions asked. I'm sorry about your mom though."

"Thanks, but it's okay. She always says she's had a great life. Guess you can't miss what you never really knew." Which was not at all true. The last month had been a testament to that.

"So this must feel like home for you." Sidney rolled over and got her paws under her before taking a few steps and flopping back into the snow.

Mayim and Cooper didn't react to this, so Peaches just added, "It does. Uh, I've actually been doing a lot of exploring in the area."

"That's right," Cooper said suddenly. "You guys were roaming. You should come with us to check out the cliffs!"

"What are those?" Julian asked excitedly.

"It's this big mountain thing we found, just east of here. You'd probably run into it if you kept going. We're going back in a few days to explore it more.

"They're cliffs Coop." Sidney's muffled voice said from where she was face-down in the snow.

"Yes we want to come." Julian blurted, "Yes with, like, a million S's."

"Great!" Sidney rolled over, wiggling her back into the ground.

"Uh, sure." Peaches nodded, acutely aware that her brain hadn't quite caught up with the conversation. "It…sounds fun. Thanks."

"We should probably go find Aunt Claire before she comes looking for us," Mayim said after a moment of silence, glancing at the sun's position in the sky with what was probably her version of nervousness. It still sounded more confident than Peaches usually felt, though, so what did she know?

Cooper and Sidney were immediately on their feet.

"Yeah, this was fun guys, but, uh, I don't want to die today. So…" Cooper waved at her and Julian as the three of them made for the tree line in the direction of the main clearing.

"We'll see you in a few days." Mayim said as her siblings stepped into the trees ahead of her, "Let us know if you need anything."

"Great! We will." Julian assured her. As soon as they were gone, he turned to Peaches. "I think they like us."