I know, I know! It's been five months. I totally did the thing again. But this time it (mostly) wasn't my fault! Work's been crazy busy. But I'm sorry for the wait all the same.

Enjoy!

Nate had moved his whole pack south, which was why he'd been in the area and why Diego was almost tackled when they reached their small campsite and one of the two boneheads caught wind of him.

"You again?" Ames, or possibly Cole – Diego still didn't know which one of them was actually which – growled in a disgusted tone, stepping back. And then stopped and looked hard at Nate. Then to Diego. Then back to Nate.

Diego was just getting ready to block another possible attack when the other saber tilted his head toward the cleared patch of ground a few feet away. "Get some rest." And as Nate started to choke out a protest, he fixed his pack leader with a stony glare. "We've got it under control."

That was…odd. Sabers didn't generally speak to their leaders that way, much less expecting them to listen. And Diego was more than a little surprised that Nate immediately obeyed and slowly padded over to an area cleared of snow and slumped down.

His packmate eyed him tightly before turning back to Diego and nodding impatiently after Nate. Diego raised an eyebrow but ultimately decided to forgo a comment. As soon as he'd picked a spot, the other saber immediately leapt into the trees.

"Sorry," Nate murmured into his paws half a minute later. "Cole's not mad at you."

Okay, so that was Cole. Not that it mattered; he didn't actually care and it wasn't like he'd needed to know which was which to think they were both dumb. "I'm sure he'll come up with a reason to be eventually." But Diego was also eyeing Nate rather closely. The other saber was obviously exhausted, his small huff of a laugh almost getting lost in the silence, but it seemed like more than that. There was a weird sort of tension that Diego was only just now starting to connect to Nate's behavior back at the cliff's edge and as he was silently, stiffly leading Diego here. It wasn't an angry tension per se, just…nervous.

So Diego let Nate rest and took stock of his ornery shoulder. Once he'd just about investigated every last ache and pull in the muscles, he glanced briefly to his right, toward the north. Where he was supposed to be going right now.

Despite the appearance of Cole and scents of the others all around them, Nate still hadn't actually told Diego what they were doing here or why he'd all-out demanded Diego follow him back here. It made the same sense of impatience as their first meeting come back in full force, and Diego would have liked nothing more than to just get up while Nate was still out and disappear into the woods. He could be back on his way now before Cole or Ames, or heaven forbid both of them, returned and started trying to pick a fight.

But Cole wasn't there now, and he'd knowingly left Diego alone with his pack leader in a semi-vulnerable state. That counted for something, even if Diego wasn't sure what or how much. Or if he even wanted it to.

Diego let his own head fall to his paws and watched the trees sway slightly in the weak wind. Ears and nose still on full alert, he closed his eyes against the bright sunlight, uncomfortably aware that he was, once again, allowing himself to go soft for other animals he halfway, stupidly, liked. He'd wondered after he'd finally realized he wasn't going to find Manfred and Sid if he'd come to regret Half Peak. All was well enough when he had a goal and the misplaced hope of tracking them down. Moving on with his life with nothing was entirely different. But that half-feared day still hadn't come and more than likely wasn't going to.

Diego was more relieved by that than he thought he'd be. It meant that, with or without Manfred and Sid, he'd still done the right thing. He hadn't entirely trusted himself not to slip back into the carnivore's kill-or-be-killed mindset and bitterly regret it all.

The rustle in the trees right in front of him accompanied by a high-pitched, brief mewl brought Diego's head up again, eyes steadily watching the spot in silent anticipation. He was half a second from getting to his paws when Nate's mate – Rowan, he remembered her easy smile – leapt lithely from the trees. When their eyes met, the same smile came back, brighter than most sabers ever did.

Only this time, the middle of it was obscured by a small ball of striking orange fur. A moment later, it let out another pitiful cry that Diego recognized as a saber cub's way of communicating that it was hungry.

"Well," Rowan said around the cub's scruff and set them down with a satisfied gleam in her eye. "This is a surprise." Any other saber would have made that sound threatening, sarcastic, or both. He still wasn't quite sure what to do with her open sincerity.

"Rowan." Diego dipped his head once and glanced down at the small fluffball near her paws. It was currently craning its neck and trying to find its footing again in the thin layer of snow. It couldn't have been more than a week or two old.

"Amy! Say hello!" Rowan nosed her daughter a little until the cub swiveled around to look at Diego. Her tiny amber eyes blinked at him and she let out another little chirp.

He smiled despite himself. Yeah, she was definitely hungry and trying to convince her parents it was mealtime again.

"Do I want to know where he's been the last few hours?" Rowan glanced at her sleeping mate. Nate hadn't so much as moved his head at her entrance, still dead to the world.

"Uh." Clearly, he'd been out hunting to feed his newborn cub, which he'd completely failed to even hint at on their walk back. And Diego should have lied now and said he didn't know. Or deflected until Nate was awake again so that they could sort it out. But Rowan was already looking at him like she was aware Diego had the answer. Crap. "Well, I don't know what he was doing the whole time, but when I found him, he was dangling over a ravine. So…"

She didn't blanche but clearly wanted to. It was the first time Diego had seen her try to mask an emotion. And he pretended like she'd succeeded as Rowan sighed and grabbed Amy up in her jaws again. "We'll be right back. Do you mind keeping an eye on him?"

It was the first real choice Diego had been given during this weird morning, and he was more than a little annoyed at himself for immediately saying yes. But Rowan was already padding off, maybe to feed Amy or find Ames and Cole, and Diego tried not to think any harder about this situation than he had to. What originally made no sense and was a slight inconvenience now made even less sense and left him feeling more than a little confused.

After months of working through even larger, harder problems, wandering, sometimes seemingly aimlessly, through the fog in his head, Diego had learned to hate this feeling. He never wanted to feel it again, hadn't for a few months now, which only made it more debilitating now that it felt like he'd been lured into some kind of emotional trap. Again.

Nate had tricked him somehow. Diego hated not knowing exactly what he was up to yet, but obviously there was an element of deceit to this, or he would have been honest with Diego from the beginning. Or, he would have said thank you and walked off with Diego none the wiser.

You don't have to stay, his crowding, tumbling thoughts whispered. Technically, the two of them were even now – a life for a life. Diego hadn't really owed Nate for not outright killing him the last time they crossed paths, but it certainly didn't hurt to have this extra assurance. It also meant that Diego was justified in taking his leave as soon as Rowan or one of the others came back or Nate woke up. Whatever happened first.

000

After reaching the empty clearing that morning and Bodhi's declaration that they were switching to plan B – Brian and the even less help the leader of a mammoth herd yet more miles away could give them – the rest of the day had been silent. They'd walked for miles and miles, and as the trees slowly, painstakingly thinned around them, Manny was actually relieved when Bodhi stopped them for the night in a sparse, snowed-over patch of forest. The wind was colder here, blowing in from the east over them like it was coming straight off a glacier. They were all shivery by the time Sid got the fire started.

The sun had already dipped below the horizon a while ago, usually the authority on when the herd stopped and made camp, but there was no question in Manny's mind that Bodhi was once again back in semi-familiar territory. No doubt, he was trying to take advantage of that and push farther so they could reach Brian faster.

It had been a good long while since Manny had been this sick of silence, but as they all bedded down, too exhausted to even forage for some late dinner, he hated it. He caught himself wishing they were still back in the campsite from last night, a morning's walk ahead of them before they got their hearts broken. The thoughts stung like a hive of bees in his skull.

He was momentarily distracted as Bodhi eased himself down next to Sid, still wary but clearly not being quite as careful about hiding his lingering pain as before. And as he landed the rest of the way with a heavy thud on the ground, Sid already snoring away deeply next to him, Manny made a mental note to insist that he ride all day the next day. Clearly, Bodhi knew where they were now, so it should be even less of a problem for him to navigate from one of their backs.

Manny smiled to himself reflexively at how angry he knew Bodhi was going to be about this; he could almost imagine the look on the saber's face when Manny presented his reasoning.

Ellie was settling down next to him after herding the possums to bed – they seemed to have gotten a second wind and had been standing just outside of the camp area whispering softly and swiftly to each other. Which meant they were scheming.

Now, Ellie snuggled next to him with a huff, gaze also drawn to where Manny was watching Bodhi's closed eyes. He felt her nudge him with her shoulder, leaning over to speak into his ear. "I like him too."

Manny might have passed the comment off as missing Peaches if he was so inclined. But he wasn't, and he let the silence convey his agreement. He'd known, in the back of his mind, that Ellie had been at this point for some time and was simply waiting for him to catch up.

Manny couldn't tell her that he hadn't wanted to, had resisted as much as he could. If the circumstances were different, being fond of Bodhi, actively wanting him around, would have been strange and probably a logistical nightmare but otherwise something that could be worked out. But they weren't different, and every time the thought even barely entered his mind, Manny pushed it back out again. Each time, it felt like he betrayed Sid a little more.

000

It was nice to wake up surrounded by other animals again, Diego would grudgingly admit. Even if he still wanted to leave and regretted not taking his chance last night before they all settled down to sleep.

Even in the dim twilight of very early morning, the sense of other bodies around him was reassuring if now quite foreign. Rowan was gone again with Amy, apparently still an early riser, and Ames and Cole were up not long after, forgoing the complaining this time. Diego raised his head as they exchanged a few words, and their eyes turned toward him.

They hadn't been too bad so far, had mostly kept to themselves and weren't very threat-happy. "If you want some help, I can…"

"We're good." Ames's voice was brusque, much more businesslike than Diego remembered it from last time, and as Cole nodded beyond the other saber's shoulder, Diego let it go and made a show of putting his head back down with a yawn.

It made sense that they were being more serious. They had a cub in the pack now, and even though most of the work would fall to Rowan and Nate until she got a little older, everyone was expected to pitch in and help where they could. That meant more frequent hunting and preferably bigger prey to get them through this stressful, busy time. This was especially true in their case since saber litters usually contained upwards of two or three cubs, and having only one was a rarity. It made the pack's protection even more imperative.

Diego was just arriving at an unwelcome thought as to what was going on here – as nobody had bothered to fill him in last night when Rowan and Nate were explaining that they'd thought it better to come south for a little while until Rowan gave birth and whatever cubs they had were old enough to go back to their regular territory in the north – when Nate gave a tired sigh and blinked his eyes open.

He must have been at least semi-awake for the last few minutes because he was smiling slightly as he turned to look at Diego as if unsurprised by his packmates' refusal of help. "So. Breakfast?" There was a new, desperate denial there that Diego remembered too well from the lava field. Yesterday had been too close of a call; Nate didn't want to think about it.

That was more than understandable. Diego just nodded once like he didn't notice and couldn't relate – the saber equivalent of I understand. "If you're up for it."

They both rose, and Diego let him take the lead since he was undoubtedly more familiar with this temporary territory than Diego was.

And to his surprise, Nate was more than up for a hunt. It didn't take long for Diego to worry that maybe he was the one who wasn't quite ready for this. Tracking side by side, silently, one of them pushing forward when they found a promising glyptodon trail. The other swinging around, assessing the herd's position in a field west of the ravine. Then the chase and the kill. It was easy to slip back into partnered hunting, and as Diego stood back and watched Nate make the actual kill, a small part of him debated whether or not to admit to himself that this had felt good. A little like re-entering familiar territory after a long absence.

For a moment, he wondered if he shouldn't have been seeking this out again after all. After getting rejected by Nate up north, it hadn't even occurred to him that maybe he should have been trying harder to join one of the intermittent saber packs he'd happened across over the past year and a half. Not until that moment, anyway, still high off the adrenaline rush of the hunt and looking forward to assuaging the hunger that had been swelling for the last day.

But then they started eating. And talking. And Diego was reminded very quickly why he hadn't bothered to go back to this life. Because sabers didn't talk to each other like this. In fact, Nate was the only one he'd ever met that seemed to have a sense of humor that didn't include lots of blood and gore. It made him too easy to talk to, to get comfortable around.

Despite himself, Diego recounted a hunt gone awry from a few months ago that had, admittedly, wounded his pride more than anything else. He knew it would make Nate laugh, and he was right. Unwillingly pleased with his story's reception, Diego went back to the carcass, cursing himself for not hardening his heart and leaving yet.

He regretted it even more a moment later when, out of the corner of his eye, he watched Nate's amused expression slowly turning thoughtful. Diego pretended like he didn't notice for the minute it took Nate to finally say, "I meant what I said yesterday."

"Okay." Diego wanted to point out that Nate had said a lot of things yesterday while at the same time conspicuously not saying a lot more, but he stopped himself. He wasn't good with emotions, and Nate was clearly in the middle of having some. No need to get this far and piss off a pack leader now. And not when Diego suspected he knew what was going on.

Nate waited another few minutes to speak again, eating some more and generally infusing the silence with anxious anticipation. Finally, he dropped the act and looked up. "I hate revenge, and…"

"-Look, we really don't need to keep going back to this-"

"…and I'm sorry."

"Because you're about to kill me?" Diego didn't know what to do with most of this, let alone an apology. And when Nate just frowned at his obvious deflection, Diego only felt a little bad ignoring it – ignoring Nate's eerily familiar attempt to communicate his feelings with him, as if Diego was back on the trail north, the shadow of Half Peak growing larger moment by moment on the horizon – and just shook his head. "Consider it over and done with."

"Hmm." Nate didn't push, and even more surprisingly, he didn't snap something back at him to let Diego know he didn't appreciate the response.

Diego wished Nate would. He hadn't realized how not ready for this he was. While he knew, deep down, that this solo lifestyle wasn't his favorite situation he'd found himself in, it certainly wasn't the worst. And going back into a pack…it made that same core of loneliness alight with panic. So, time to cheat and end this. "You need more help right now until Amy gets a little older. That's why you brought me back here, isn't it?"

For a moment, he thought of her fussy little chirps last night as Nate and Rowan tried to get her settled down for bed. She was quite cute and seemed very sweet when not ornery with tiredness, and he hated himself for thinking it. Diego had already given up his life once for a helpless child. He didn't want to do it again. He couldn't.

If Nate was annoyed by the blatant topic change, he didn't show it in the slightest. Instead, he met Diego's eyes, perfectly calm, "No, we're doing fine actually. But I'd still like you to stay anyway."

No, he was lying. This was a ploy to feel out whether he could convince Diego to stick around for a little bit and help with the hunting. Diego knew what Nate was doing. Which made the lie that much more frustrating. "I don't believe you."

"Yeah, I knew you wouldn't." Nate went back to eating a little too nonchalantly, the stormier surface underneath exposed for a moment. It went away just as quickly. "Which is why I wanted to explain myself. It sounds like Soto didn't run his pack the way I run mine."

"I don't think Soto's the odd one out here." Diego absently wondered at what point he'd push too far and regret it. If Nate didn't get fed up and make him regret it before that. But sabers didn't apologize, much less admit they'd been wrong.

Instead of lunging at him to take revenge for the comment, Nate just shrugged, a small quirk to his mouth that felt sad, almost patronizing. "We want you here." A pause, and then, "Just think about it."

000

"Mo-om! Granny's talking about her dead pet again!"

Buck didn't bother to sneak any closer than his spot behind a snow-laden bush as the old sloth's self-directed mutterings transitioned smoothly into complaints addressed to her family. (Who had gotten much farther than Buck would have thought them capable, which probably meant he'd been out for way longer than he'd thought. Not good. Not good.) If the other sloths even noticed that she'd been gone for hours, they didn't react. Just kept arguing amongst themselves, folding her in among them as if she'd merely been straggling a bit behind, and Buck ultimately breathed a sigh of relief.

His head was pounding, an irregular heartbeat that made him wince if he turned his it too quickly or in the wrong direction. But, in the end, the elderly sloth had probably saved him from making yet another dumb decision and wasting time traveling with them.

And, satisfied that the aged mammal was back among her family, Buck sped off through the snow. If he could keep his head in check, a few more days would bring him back to the mammoth and saber's territory. Then they'd get this sorted out before things got any worse.

000

"Do you think it could be something?" Julian's trunk absently brushed at the edges of the small hole, cocking his head as if measuring with his eyes and trying to decide if it was weasel-sized.

Peaches knew it was. And she knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this both solved their problem and doomed them at the same time. How were they supposed to find Buck if they couldn't even get down to him?

What she said instead was, "Yeah, I do think this is it. Sweetie, you're amazing!"

Because he was. Nobody, not even Sidney, had been able to find this, and Peaches knew for a fact her prodigy of a cousin had been through this area at least once if not twice. But in the end, it had been Julian who'd spotted this small, frozen-over creek and the strange funnel of ice sticking out of the middle of it, as if water had been draining somewhere below the creek bed. She wasn't sure she'd have recognized it for what it was, but Julian had. He deserved the credit even if this also set up their next problem to solve. And when he turned toward her with his brow furrowed, tentatively starting to take the praise, Peaches grinned at him and nodded.

His answering smile was swift and bright and seemed to chase away the last few days' worth of weight that had settled on his face. Peaches hadn't even realized how much he'd been down until that moment, and her awe was swiftly replaced by guilt.

"Okay, great! We did it!" Julian shifted a little on his feet, looking around, oblivious to her realization, "Uh, so what now?"

Now, they had to figure out how to get down there. If that was even possible. But first: "Really, babe, I'm so proud of you! You did it! You're the best."

Peaches offered him another grin when Julian turned to look at her again, but rather than smiling wider in response, his face fell a little. The sudden short silence was ended when he shook his head. "No, we all did. This wasn't just me."

"O-okay." In that moment, it felt vital to recover as quickly as possible; it always did when Julian did a total 180 like this. It felt like she took too long to find her voice again. "I guess we should try to clear if off a little, see what we're working with."

Julian nodded, as if unaffected by his uncharacteristic behavior and started brushing at the snow more with his trunk, shoving the drifted-over powder aside. After a moment, Peaches joined him.

They worked in silence for a good five minutes. Much to Peaches's dismay, getting the snow out of the way didn't do much more than widen the hole by another half-trunk width, and even as they tried to dig into the frozen ground a little bit, the tunnel stayed dark on the other end.

No one was getting through that.

Peaches finally couldn't take it anymore and stepped back, shaking out her numb trunk. She'd been so excited and nervous and off-kilter from Julian's mood shift, she hadn't really been paying attention to how hard she'd been hacking at the frozen dirt. Now, the slight throbbing was the leaf on top of the mud pile. She frowned at the muddy mess they'd made.

Julian's shoulders were slumped down, his own face slack with disappointment as he stepped back too. They'd gotten all the way out here, had found where Buck was going, even. A miracle, a win. And they still weren't able to do anything about this.

Peaches was hit with the overwhelming, stomach-roiling feeling that this was it then. Buck was gone, and they didn't know when he'd be back. This was up to them.

"Come on," Julian said quietly after another heavy minute. When he looked up at her, a small spark of his usual self was back in his eyes. "There's a frozen-over pond on the way back. You keep saying I need to brush up on my game."

"But what about-"

"This will still be here tomorrow." He motioned back toward the hole once, now a gaping, black circle that only her twin uncles would have been able to traverse. Maybe Uncle Sid could squeeze through, but that was about it. Julian offered her a small smile, almost conciliatory for all the things he hadn't been smiling over in the last few days. "We can't do anything more right now. And I promise I'll let you win."

Peaches sighed internally but smiled at him nonetheless. He was trying to reach out, even if it wasn't in the way she wanted him to. "Fine. But it's not 'letting me win' if you suck too much to win."

Julian's mock-offended scoff sounded loud and clear, a genuine smile sweeping back over his face as they slowly started heading back toward home, away from the still-dark, taunting passageway.

000

Diego was taking a moment to himself when Shira found him, and for a brief second, she considered walking away and letting him have some privacy before making his afternoon rounds. He wouldn't have come to one of the last empty areas of Brian's territory if he hadn't been seeking out somewhere quiet.

But she'd already waited two days longer than she wanted to, and it was time for them to have a conversation he wasn't going to like. Even if it did make her feel guilty and like she wasn't keeping up her end of their deal. He'd take care of the pack; she'd take care of Peaches and Julian. She knew that for as much as he wanted to spend time with them, get to know them, Peaches still made him jittery. It was obvious to her how much he was struggling to reconcile their blossoming bond (uncle and niece, family, whether he liked it or not, as Shira had pointed out to him) with the fact that this couldn't last. At least, not in his mind. Shira wasn't sure how to tell him that maybe he needed to rethink what he'd spent the last few years assuming about his herd's feelings regarding him. She'd occasionally wondered whether the hard edges that Diego had spent so much time sharpening to fine points weren't quite so sharp after all.

"Hey." She kept her voice soft even though she was sure he'd smelled and heard her presence by now.

Diego tilted his head back partway, probably just enough so he could see her in his peripheral. He smiled and sighed. "Hey."

When she reached him and he nuzzled her neck, rubbing his nose along the grain of her fur, she tilted her head away in invitation. He rubbed his nose down the side of her neck before leaning his head on her shoulder. She put hers on top, and they sat in comfortable, if exhausted, silence for a few minutes.

"You doing okay?" Diego asked suddenly, and Shira struggled to understand what he was asking for a moment before he added, "You're more comfortable in the pack now than you were at first. At least, you seem to be."

"Oh, I…um…" She hadn't been thinking about it lately. It just…was. And Shira was actually okay with that. She just hadn't realized it until that moment.

But Diego mistook her surprised silence for protest. "Or not. I should have checked in before this. I'm sorry."

"It's not that." Shira lifted her head, aware that it was time to bring up why she'd actually come before they fell into a conversation about her feelings. Gross. "It seems you have some dissent brewing in the pack."

"About?" he asked, exasperated. He knew it wasn't that serious; she wouldn't be playing this cryptically if it was. Shira knew the amused edge to his voice would disappear as soon as Peaches's name entered the conversation, though.

So she took a deep breath. And told him. And he eventually lifted his head off her shoulder to side-eye her in annoyance as she filled him in on everything that she knew up to this point. Well, almost everything. The disconcerting conversation she'd had with Julian probably wasn't relevant. So she talked around it and focused on the extent to which Jackson, Cam, and their own children were involved. What they believed, all the things they were trying in order to find Buck, how they were sneaking around because they knew Diego wouldn't approve.

"I'm not going to do anything to stop them." Shira finished. And before she could think better of it, glanced sideways at him. "And I don't think you should either."

Diego's face was indecipherable at first, which was pretty rare. Shira usually saw right through whatever front he had up from one moment to the next. But as they looked at each other in silence for a moment, she wondered for a second if she'd finally managed to break her husband.

Finally, his eyebrow quirked and he looked away, voice a lazy drawl. "Well, if I was Soto, I'd fly into a rage that the two pack members directly below me in the chain of command are going behind my back, explicitly against my orders, and conspiring with non-pack members."

"But you're not Soto." Shira couldn't keep the answer smile off her face. If she'd been unsure of his feelings a moment before, she wasn't anymore.

Diego just snorted and rolled his head to meet her eyes again. "I suppose I should say thank you that you even told me at all."

"It wouldn't be a bad idea," Shira acknowledged. They both knew keeping this from him had been an option she'd considered.

"I have too much to do right now," Diego sighed after a moment of amused silence between them. He glanced at her once before looking back out to the snowy forest, but the faint smile was still at the edges of his mouth. "So, I suppose, if they really want to do this, they might as well keep trying to find him."

"They would have anyway, but I'm sure they'll be glad to know you're doing the bare minimum of being supportive." Shira nudged the side of his face with her nose as he laughed, a silent request, and he dropped his head back onto her shoulder. She laid hers on top of his again. "Besides, you keep saying we need all the help we can get. It's not like finding Buck could hurt."

Thank you for the reviews! I'm so pleased to know that Sid is coming across how I'm attempting to write him. He's surprisingly hard to pin down because he sits in a gray area for me between Diego and the possums, and it's so good to know that he's been in-character to other readers so far.

I hate to say it, but there will almost definitely be a wait on the next chapter too. I'm here, though; I promise! As always, thanks so much for reading!