It had taken a while, but now the Cascade range was once again in view, no longer steeped in trees and hidden in sight. Lilly looked at it with mixed emotions. While she was glad to have made it back in a reasonable amount of time and thus to have escaped whatever punishment a late return might be worth to the Oregon wolves, she dreaded having to face whatever new cruelties they had thought up for her while she was away.

"Home, sweet home," Cyril said as he came up beside her and stared at the towering mountains. "You know, they would be quite breathtaking if those savages hadn't occupied them. Then again, sometimes beauty desecrated is even more beautiful."

Lilly suddenly felt his eyes fall upon her. She looked up to meet them.

"You going to be okay?" he asked.

Lilly nodded slightly. "I'll be fine. I'm more worried about you. You sure they won't hurt you or anything for talking to me?"

Cyril smiled. "What's it matter? With the way they treat me already, physical harm might be a step up."

Lilly looked down at her paws, worried that she would be the cause of Cyril getting hurt by the others. Seeing this, Cyril put his foreleg around her to comfort her.

"Don't worry, flower," he said as they began to walk again, "whatever happens, we'll face it together. Deal?"

"Deal," Lilly answered quietly without looking up.

However, as soon as she had spoken, they heard voices from not far off, not far off at all.

"Who's that?" Lilly asked in confusion, as the voices where a little too far and a little too unfamiliar for her to make out clearly.

Cyril held his paw to his snout to signal her to remain silent for a moment. Together, the two of them headed toward these other voices. But they were not prepared for what happened next.

Suddenly, there was a loud, terrifying shriek. And from behind one of the trees, Sybil lunged for them, specifically for Lilly. Our white heroine braced for impact, but it turned out to be unnecessary. Sybil came short and fell to the ground. But then she looked up, and her evil eyes once more locked with Lilly's.

"Ah, so the traitor comes even here, is it?" she said, her voice hoarse and frightening. "How funny and how wicked, how glorious and how terrible, that the doom of this pack should be right in their own heart and they don't even know it! Bloodshed begets bloodshed, mark my words! From the white wolf's actions, many have died and many shall die!"

Lilly began taking steps back as Sybil's voice rose with each word. She felt herself tremble more and more as Sybil crawled closer toward her, her brown eyes filled with maddening delight.

But then Cyril jumped in front of Lilly. "Get out of here, you old bat!" he yelled as he knocked Sybil backwards.

Sybil sneered as she tried to steady herself. "That's right, that's right! Mock my words, for it proves them right! Only liars mock truth!"

Suddenly, from out of the woods, another wolf appeared. This was a tan wolf with eyes somewhere between green and yellow in color. He was somewhat tall and lean, and Lilly thought him rather handsome despite the fact that he was not at all muscular like Garth. His face was young, certainly younger than Cyril's and perhaps even younger than Lilly's. Of course, Lilly doubted she had very young of a face anymore.

This new wolf lowered himself to help Sybil up. As she regained her footing, he glared at Cyril. Then his gaze shifted to Lilly.

"Leave her alone!" he barked. "Both of you, leave her alone. I know you type of people, you always mock her like you think she's a clown, here for your amusement. You all make me sick."

"It's not like that, really," Lilly began to say. "We don't think there's anything–"

"Shut up, you!" the tan wolf said. "Little Miss Northern Princess, thinking you can just look down your nose at the rest of us. What gives you the right to judge us?"

"Nothing!" Lilly said. "I don't judge you, I really don't!"

Cyril, meanwhile, was watching all this unfold with a haughty smile. "Felix, what gives you the right to judge us for judging you, I wonder? Especially because you can't blame us! After all, however we treat dearest Sybil, you'd be the first to say it wasn't our choice!"

Felix had been preparing his retort but now fell silent. By this time, he had finished getting Sybil to her paws. Having apparently lost interest in the conversation, she sped off back into the woods, cackling and raving as though the whole incident had never occurred. But Felix, the whole time, did not break his glare from Cyril.

"Oh, don't look at me like that," Cyril said, "and don't act so high and mighty. I don't even know why you put up with that hag."

"Sybil can't help the way she is," Felix responded. "She was made to be the voice of prophecy, and prophecy always comes with a price."

Cyril threw up his paws. "There you go again! You talk about it like you believe that hogwash. But if you ask me, fortune-telling is the dullest thing in the world. Cards and crystal-balls and tea-leaves are all such wastes of time. Don't you think so, flower?"

Lilly looked up in surprise, amazed that she had somehow gotten pulled into the conversation. "I… I… I don't… I don't know much about it. My sister used… used to say that she had dreams that told the future."

Felix now pointed to Cyril. "There you go! There you go! Even the white devil admits it!"

Cyril shrugged. "If flower says that's its real, then it must be real. That doesn't make it any less dull though. But enough talk about fortunes. It doesn't really matter how anyone's life turns out anyway. Tell me, have our respected elders made their decision about the war?"

"Yes," Felix responded, "and they're going to war."

Cyril clapped his paws together in delight. "Excellent! They'll all be annihilated! What a show!"

"No!" Lilly cried out. "No! Not another war!"

"I told you, flower," Cyril responded, "there is always another war. Accept the fact and

you might learn to enjoy it."

"How can you say that, Cyril?" Lilly cried. "War is… war is evil! You can't seriously want it to happen!" Then she turned toward Felix, seeing him as her last hope for sanity even though she did not realize it. "You, you've got to see that another war just means more killing, more destruction, more death! You see that, don't you?"

Felix was surprised by Lilly's outburst. But he just shrugged. "Whatever will be, will be. It was all decided a long time ago and ain't nobody who could change it. Especially not you, miss."

"So, you two are just giving up?" Lilly said, her voice so desperate that it was sliding into anger. "You two don't think it's worth trying to stop the war? You don't think it's worth making that choice?"

"I never make choices," Felix answered. "I never do anything out of free will."

"That's because you don't believe in free will," Cyril answered smugly.

"At least I'm not like you; you don't believe in anything," Felix shot back.

"On the contrary," Cyril said, "I believe in beauty. And that's all I need to believe in."

Felix seemed to grow increasingly upset, as though this conversation was getting the better of him and he did not know how to respond. Finally, he said, "It's a good thing for you that I don't believe in choices, or else I'd hate you for choosing to act like you do."

And without another word, he stormed off into the forest. Cyril watched him go with delight. "Oh, come now," he called out, "an insult like that is too pitiable to warrant my attention. Don't you have anything else?"

But Felix was gone.

"I guess we showed him, eh flower?" Cyril remarked as he smiled in Lilly's direction.

When Lilly did not answer, he turned to see what was wrong. She was once again locked deep in thought and would not even look at him.

"Flower, what's wrong?" he asked as he put his paw on her shoulder.

"You didn't have to hit her," Lilly responded, lifting her eyes to Cyril's for the first time.

"I was trying to defend you," he said.

"Still, there were other ways to do it. You didn't have to do that to her. And you didn't have to be so rude about it to him."

Cyril sighed. "There you go again. That old bleeding heart! Always trying to make everybody see the best in everybody else. And anything less is a crime!"

"It's not that," Lilly answered, her voice trying to find some kind of firmness to steady her heart. She wanted to look away, but knew that she could not if she was going to get her point across. "It's just that you shouldn't have hit her. She's old and frail. Does hurting her make you any better than the others who hurt me?"

"Well, you didn't stop me, flower, so how much better does that make you?" Cyril barked in frustration.

Lilly's jaw dropped slightly. All the light seemed to disappear from her eyes. She could not answer. She did not even know what she could even begin to say to that. So, instead, she quickly ran off, off into the forest, as far away from Cyril as she could.

"Lilly, I'm sorry! I didn't mean it!" he called after her, but it was too late. She was gone.

Lilly ran through the forest, approaching the mountains. Within a moment, she had the bottom of the path leading up into those mountains, the path which the Cascade wolves used the communal meeting places and, for a lucky few, their dens.

But before Lilly could get a good look at it, she fell the ground. Something – or someone – had smacked hard against her chest and knocked her down. As Lilly regained her focus, she saw Glaucon standing above her. Adeimantus was not far behind him.

"Well, well, well, and where have we been off to today?" Glaucon said wickedly. "Trying to sneak away when nobody was looking, huh?"

"No, I wasn't!" Lilly answered. "I was just out for a walk, honest."

"Oh, shut up!" Glaucon said. Then, to enforce his demand, he stamped his paw down upon her ribs, at the exact point which had been broken before and which both of them knew was not fully healed.

Lilly heard, or rather felt, the crack of bone. Eyes dimmed by emotional pain seemed to griw a little dimmer as physical pain surged outward from her rib through the rest of her body. She found herself unable to speak as the pain was too great. All she could do was let out a little whimper as her head fell back into the ground at an unnatural angle and her eyes began to close in despair.

"Come on, come on, let me do something!" Adeimantus said as he approached.

"You'll get your turn after I've finished with her," Glaucon responded. "Now, what else should I break? Maybe that pretty little snout of yours."

He forced Lilly's face into the dirt as he put his paw on her snout. She felt her neck twist in a way it was not designed to and pieces of rock and dust filled her nostrils, almost clogging them. Her eyes could not close fast enough to avoid the burning cascade of dirt particles that made them want to tear up. But Lilly refused to cry, especially now when she was directly under attack. She had learned long ago to pray for her enemies, not to cry before them.

Glaucon's paw was slowly increased its pressure. He was serious about breaking her snout, apparently, but was going to take his time and get as much out of this moment as possible.

"Get off her!" came a voice from behind them, Cyril's voice. Though Lilly's eyes were still filled with dirt, she could just barely see Cyril appear overhead. Then she felt the mighty weight suddenly lift and she turned her eyes to see that Cyril had pushed Glaucon off of her.

Cyril than grabbed her paw and gently lifted her from the ground. "Are you okay?" he asked as her studied her and tried to wipe off as much dirt as possible.

Lilly held her rib in pain, but said, "I'll be fine, I'll be fine."

Now Cyril turned on her attackers. "How dare you too do that to her! She's our pack leader's mate! What were you two thinking?"

Glaucon snarled. "If you had seen the things her pack did to ours up north, Cyril, you wouldn't be defending her."

"And since when do you respect our pack leader?" Adeimantus added.

"That's all you two brutes are good at, isn't it?" Cyril barked. "What about when the curs come north? You still going to spend all your time beating on her rather than fighting them off? What good will that do anybody?"

Glaucon and Adeimantus now backed off slightly. They exchanged looks of guilt.

Cyril looked from one to the other of them. "Yeah, I thought so."

"Wait," Adeimantus said, beginning to advance again, "why are we even listening to you? Where were you when we were fighting the Jasper dogs? And just who did you lose at the Pit River?"

"Yeah," Glaucon said as he too advanced, "we were the ones who lost everything while you sit here fooling around with the northern rat. So don't you be lecturing us, Cyril!"

Cyril made to block Lilly as the two bigger wolves bore down menacingly upon them. Lilly looked at him as best she could, considering that her eyes were now watery and red from the dirt, and saw that he seemed to have absolutely no fear as the two large wolves bore down on them.

"I think it's time we teach pretty-boy a lesson, don't you?" Glaucon said with a vicious smile.

"Then we'll finish up with his girlfriend," Adeimantus added, revealing his teeth.

"Well, well, you two do have such ambitious plans, don't you?" Cyril mocked. "And when you get done with us, I wonder what your little minds will set themselves to smashing next." His gaze now fixed itself behind the two towering terrors. "But I would seriously consider reconsidering if I were you, because this could get you in some serious trouble."

"You have no authority over us," Adeimantus said as he approached Cyril, ready to bite.

"But I do!" came Conn's voice behind them.

Glaucon and Adeimantus jumped and turned to face him, both trying to give some awkward kind of salute but bumping clumsily into each other instead.

"Sir, we just noticed your mate was gone and we went to find her," Glaucon said apologetically.

"Yeah, we just meant to bring her back to you, sir," Adeimantus added.

Conn looked at them suspiciously, and with a sense of fury buried underneath. "I have a pretty good idea of what you two meant to do. Now get out of here before I do something about it."

Glaucon and Adeimantus both tried their clumsy salute again and began to rush away. But then suddenly, Adeimantus stopped.

"Sir," he said, "if I may, there was something else I wanted to talk to you about."

Conn gave him a look of utter disbelief, disbelief over the fact that this wolf would dare to try and talk with his superior after being caught abusing his superior's mate. But Conn felt it was still his duty to listen. "What is it?" he asked angrily and impatiently.

"Well, I think… I think I have a way to hold off… hold off the Curs," Adeimantus said, his voice cracking. Certainly, he must have had some nerve to address Conn, for how else could he be so nervous doing it?

"What are you thinking?" Conn was skeptical, but as he had no clue how to defend his pack, he had to be open to anything.

"During our last hunt, I remembered that the reason the river's so low this time of year is because of the dams up ahead. You know, the natural pile-ups and the beaver dams that clog the river up for a while. I was just thinking that if we could just break the dams, the river would return to its normal strength and be impossible to cross again. It would stop the Curs dead."

"Until the beavers rebuild the dams, that is," Conn said.

Adeimantus put on a shivering smile. "In that case, sir, we could just kill all the beavers. It's not like they're people."

Conn sighed and then was silent for a few moments. He seemed to be sorrowfully turning things over in his head, as though he had been given two unsavory choices and had to choose the least unpalatable of them. Finally, he nodded. "Fine. When the Curs arrive, break the dams. But don't kill any beavers! This is a canine war and a canine war it shall stay!"

"Yes, sir, of course, sir," Adeimantus said with several hurried nods and another salute before running away in the direction Glaucon had disappeared in.

Conn now turned back to Cyril and Lilly. Unfortunately, despite having just saved them, the look in his eyes betrayed no sympathy.

"Well, I guess that was one lucky break, then," Cyril remarked. "But those brutes needed to be taught a lesson. It was high time you finally put your paw down, if I may say so. We might make a leader out of you yet!"

Conn showed no sign of being amused by this prattle. Rather, his steely gaze refused to break from Cyril's icy eyes.

"Lilly, come with me, now," Conn ordered. "And stay away from my mate, Cyril."

Cyril began to protest as Lilly slipped by him and reluctantly found herself at Conn's side. But before he could speak, Conn said, "No arguments, Cyril. Keep away from Lilly; that's an order."

Lilly could not bear to look back at Cyril as she slowly followed Conn back upward toward their den. Nor could she bear to look at Conn, who did not seem to mind walking ahead. Instead, she looked to her paws and tried to wipe out all the bad things that had occurred this day from her mind.

As always, it did not work.

The Cascade Pack has a new stratagem but old tensions run high.

Shall they be able to put aside their differences to save their home and themselves?

Read on.