It's entirely the wrong question to ask Annie. Maybe if it didn't come with so much heavy weight attached for her personally, she might have read the right meaning into it. Instead, it strikes her as such a suddenly, inexplicably terrible question to ask her of all people.

A laugh escapes her before she can clamp down on the feeling that kept bubbling up within her. It's nothing like those flat, dry soft barks of derisive laughter that she made rarely when something really got her going. No, it's almost uncharacteristically giddy instead, but thankfully brief. "For all it does us when there's nothing left to fight for. We can't call ourselves that anymore. We have no right."

Even she looks shocked by her outburst when she's through. Her pale eyes are wide as she looks over at the other two shifters, and her lips part as if to say something more, but the words just aren't there.