wc: 553
He wished that he could say that he had scared Range's real mother away and that she would come back for them. But that just wasn't true. He had wondered if she might return to the fire and see what her pups had become, whether they had perished in the flames or not, but even if she had...there was no way that she could have tracked him back to Dahlia de Mai, not with the mixture of scents there in the neutral lands. He hadn't dragged the bag along the ground, so she wouldn't have been able to catch that scent...and his own had already been very prevalent around that area, so she would have had a million different trails to follow. If she'd really been that worried, though, she wouldn't have tossed them into the fire to begin with. She hadn't cared about them at all, not enough to raise them and keep them safe from dangers, so what reason would she have to come looking for them now, even? Gideon didn't understand a wolf who would just throw away their offspring like garbage, and even if she had come...he wouldn't have given them up. He was grateful that she hadn't returned for them and hadn't gone from pack to pack looking for them.
"I don't know who your true father or mother are, Range. I wish I did. I never saw him, but I saw her..and she left you and your sister and took off in the opposite direction. It was obvious that you two hadn't had anything to eat, and you'd been born with another pup as well...it didn't make it. A dark pup that looked like me." If he was going to tell Range some of it, then he would tell him all of it. "You were in a rucksack that had your names written on it; I didn't name you, you two already had your names when I found you." He wasn't sure what else he could talk about. "She had tried to throw you into a fire that she'd made. She was a dark wolf like me and like the pup that had died. I saw the bag miss the fire, but she must not have...she was too busy taking off. Just the top of the bag caught on fire...but I got that put out before the entire thing went. I took you back to Dahlia with me and gave you your first meal, buried your sibling, and asked Bris and Conor if you could stay." And that was the story of how Range and Melee had come to live in Dahlia.
Gideon reached down so that he might pick the little boy up, unsure of what the pup's reaction to this news would be. He looked sad already, and Gideon didn't want to make him even sadder. "You're here with me now, strong and healthy and alive...you and your sister. And that's what matters. You have this family who loves the heck out of you and an entire pack to look out for you. We love you a lot, Range." The boy was more of a son than Gideon could have ever asked for, such an inquisitive and curious child...rarely naughty, always wanting to know more about the world around him. He really was great.
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