Dion's jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. "Aranur asked for the time so that I could stay home with the boys while they were out of school."

Gamon touched her arm. "I'm not complaining, Dion. I'm just surprised.

You don't usually get so much time off when the raiders are getting active."

He glanced meaningfully at his nephew. "Let me know if you want to come over for a game of stars and moons then," he said. "I'm getting tired of beating Tehena."

The other woman snorted. "I only let him win because he outranks me."

Gamon shrugged. "A win by the moons is as sweet." The two strode off.

Dion was left to stare after them. Aranur looked at her soberly. "You earned

the break, Dion. Gamon knows that."

"I earned it," she agreed slowly, "but I can't have it, can I? Knowing that the elders are already wanting me to go out again even when they give me time off-that puts the pressure there already. How can I enjoy these ninans when I know that, as I take time with my boys-and with you-someone

else is at risk by my absence?"

"You think you're the only one who should take risks?"

"You know I don't think that," she retorted.

"Do you want to quit?"

"No," she returned sharply. Too sharply, she realized. Her voice already

betrayed her. She took a breath. "I want our sons to learn duty and discipline, and the only way I know to teach them that is by example. But how can I teach them if I'm not where they can see me?"

"They understand your duties, Dion."

"Do they? You see them more than I do. You're their father; I barely feel like an aunt. What kind of example do I set?" She looked up then, meeting his gray gaze with eyes filled with self-loathing. "I don't know how to nurture them. I never had a mother from whom to learn mothering. I had a father and a twin brother and a roughhouse life in the mountains. I wasn't prepared for motherhood, but to run and explore like a wilding. I'm the perfect wolfwalker, but even with Hishn's four litters of pups I haven't

learned how to nurture my own except as a distant healer. I am a mother, yet I have no mothering to give to my sons. What do they get from me?"

"It's the way you were raised, Dion-"

"Aye," she threw it back. "I was raised to act and yet think, to fight and to

heal, to run trail yet need my home, to want nurturing but be too independent to accept it. Everything I do- everything I am is dichotomy.

What balance can my boys get from me when I cannot balance myself?"

He pulled her close. She resisted for an instant, then went almost hungrily, violently into his arms. He crushed her to him. Then, lightly, he stroked her

hair. "You are yourself, Dion. That's all they need from you."

Dion shook her head, but Aranur pressed her closer. The strength of his arms sunk like teeth into her body, and she pressed herself against him as if he were all that she sought. Deep in her mind, Hishn howled. In her head,

Dion snarled with the Gray One until her mind was blank and echoing with the packsong.

Her need built like waves, smothering Aranur's words until all she could

feel were his arms like steel bands.

They didn't speak as they rode out of town, though Aranur frowned as he studied her. She was changing, he realized-her joy was being squeezed away. Some of it was disappointment in herself; but some of it was from him. She was trying to please him, to be what the county expected her to be as a weapons master's mate. And she was taking risks with the raiders

because she saw it as her duty. He wondered if what she needed wasn't to mother the boys, but a mother to nurture herself.

The twisted roads skirted the fields of grains and new tubers. In the flatter

part of the county the towns were built in hubs, with the houses around the commons for livestock. Here, where the rising mountains folded the earth into ridges, the layout of the towns seemed haphazard. Contour farming gave the county the look of an Ancient painting: Lush lines of rootroad trees shifted the flat, striped texture of the fields to a doubly arching canopy, and the dirty white lines of the roads themselves brought stark delineation.

Their own home was in a small cluster of four houses, halfway up the hill that overlooked the town. The wild growth that reached almost to the sides

of their home hid the excavations of Gray Hishn and her packmates so that the ground appeared smooth, not pitted and sunken as it really was. By the time Dion and Aranur rode up the narrow track that led to the stable, their two boys had climbed down from the watch point and were running across the commons. Suddenly, Dion found her eyes blurring. She had to turn away from Aranur to get a grip on her emotions.

But he caught her arm. "Dion?"

She took a breath and shook him off. "It's nothing. I'm fine."

"Are you?" he asked steadily.

She took another breath. He was right. Tule was right. She needed to back

away. She watched him almost blankly as she realized that even she herself believed it. "I'd like... " She paused. "I'd like to take the boys with me back to Kitman tomorrow-if the skies are clear of lepa."

Aranur studied the way she stood, still half poised as if ready to leap back on her dnu-or as if she had not even stopped running trail. "What about Still Meadow? The boys have been on Gamon's case daily for a hint that he would take them out there."

Her smile was crooked, twisted by bitterness at the thought that her boys would beg Aranur's uncle for the trip she should have been there to give them. "I'll take them across the grassland on the way back-as long as it's not still too boggy. Still Meadow is a stone's throw from Kitman."

His lips firmed as he read the set of her expression. "You're going to finish

up with that ringrunner yourself, aren't you?"

She nodded, watching the boys scramble through the gates. "Her eyesight depends on it. I told her I'd come back."

He studied her. "Dion, the raiders... I won't be able to come along this

time."

"You know they never strike on the main roads. And even if they came back for a second attack, they couldn't reach as far as Kitman with all the crews on the roads."

He watched the boys race toward the commons fence. "And the boys?"

"Do you really think there is danger?"

"No. But it still bothers me."

She touched his arm. "It's the thought of the raiders' intent that bothers you,

not the reality of their position."

He sighed. "I think you know me too well. Still Meadow is as safe as anywhere else," he agreed.

"The boys could use the time in the woods. They've almost forgotten what

it's like to simply run trail for the fun of it."

"Like you?"

She looked up. A faint smile touched her face. "Like me."

"Momma!" Olarun cried as he vaulted the commons fence. "Look at me!"

He sprinted toward his parents.

"Look at me, Momma!" Danton echoed. The smaller boy dove between the rails, scraping one shoulder and half twisting as his forward motion was arrested. He ended up in a tumbled pile of lemon grass. He sat up, his lower lip trembling, and Dion thrust the reins in Aranur's hands and sprinted to his side. But by the time she got there, he was standing, shoulders back, pretending not to feel it, and she was left to hug Olarun awkwardly while

respecting Danton's control.

Aranur watched them drag Dion off to show her their textile patterns. He wondered later, as he sat at the kitchen table and watched her with the boys, if she knew how much they needed her. Just as she pushed herself to please him, they vied for her approval: the fabric patterns both boys shoved in her hands for her perusal; the look on Olarun's face when she praised the bandaging he had done on the barn cat's open puncture; the way Danton tried to string his own bow to show Dion that he could... Aranur found himself wondering if Dion was right- if she had done enough for the elders. The more she did for them, the more ingrained her duty to them became, until it overshadowed everything else. Even now, as she showed their freckled younger son how to feather an arrow, her eyes were half focused. He knew that Hishn was in her mind, and that she automatically read the patterns of human movement across the hills near their home. But

if she simply ran trail without purpose, without scouting, just to enjoy the forest, would that be enough?

Then he looked past his mate and his children to the weapons on his wall.

His jaw tightened again, and he had to force himself to relax and smile as Danton aimed an imaginary arrow. If raiders were watching his mate-and him again-there could be no complacency between them. This county was wide open, and the raiders were too widespread. As long as Dion ran trail alone, she had to protect herself. He didn't worry about the boys. A mother was the fiercest predator a man could ever face-and Dion had the strength of the wolves in her arms. No one would hurt their boys. As for Dion... He knew, watching her, that no matter how long she lived within his boundaries, he couldn't keep her from the forests, from the Gray Ones who

had locked themselves into her mind, or from the mountains that were part of her soul. Yet if the mountains, the forests, the wolves were not enough for her, what could give her the strength she needed to face the burdens she bore?

He glanced involuntarily toward the door, where he could hear the faint scuffling on the porch. Hishn had returned and was finding a place to nap. He glanced around his home, with its arched windows and smooth, polished root floor. It had been graciously grown, with large, open rooms and mountain views from the windows, but few visitors stayed here who weren't family. It wasn't Dion who drove them away, he knew, but Hishn who made people nervous. The wolf had fought for Dion before, when Dion's bond was new, and Dion had not understood how it would affect the wolf. Because of that, Hishn had lost some of her instinctive wariness of men. More than once the creature had turned against those with whom Dion simply argued. Aranur's lips twisted in an ironic smile: His mate was opinionated enough that when she argued, she did it passionately, and the wolves responded to nothing if not to strong emotions. Had the Gray One been male, it would have been the same, but in a different way-the protectiveness and jealousy would have turned to territoriality. As it was, no matter how large their home, there was room only for Hishn, her cubs and mate, and Dion's family with them.