Eyes of the Wolf

36
I wake up a wolf, with a human packmate at my side. Belatedly I recognize Eagle from breakfast. I also realize that she is shorter than me, when I also remember that I am on the couch, and she is not. She stirs and looks up at me, awakened by my gaze. Her eyes avoid mine, and wander over the rest of me.

“You are beautiful,” she says. “I’ve never seen such coloring, even on a bitten.”

I grunt, feeling too lazy to return to a more vocal form. She sounds like Rain, and it annoys me a bit.

“Poor thing,” she coos at me. “You were lonesome while you were napping. Do you miss anybody?”

I cock my head to the side, not understanding. She pets at my ears.

“You called to me while you were sleeping. I fell asleep over there.” She points to the other couch.

I think over this and decide to think about it later, and rise to my feet, get off the couch, and shake out my flattened fur. As Eagle drops to a crouch and walks to my bed-head side, I hear footfalls on the porch outside and lift my head. A male wolf trots in, human, and stops when he sees Eagle calmly brushing out all the rumples in my coat.

“Alpha says it’s time for a hunt,” he tells us, then looks at me. “You get that?”

I growl when he meets my eyes—the way he says it rubs me wrong. As we stare each other down, I see him bristle, but the contest ends when my hunting teacher, Thorn, sprints through the door, breathing heavily and looking excited. Her enthusiasm affects me, and I, too, am excited, though for what I am not yet sure. My contest with the male ends when I am distracted by the newcomer.

“Eagle, hunt!” she says to my companion.

“No doubt to test the new wolf, right?” She leans around my shoulder to see her friend. I haven’t noticed that her head has been lower than mine this whole time, but now that there are two humans, one being taller than me, looming around, I realize that that is why the male irritates me so.

I look back to him and growl, but he only glances at me.

“You aren’t Pack, wolf,” he snarls to me. “Don’t try to challenge me.”

My knees waver at his voice, and subconsciously I recognize that this must be what Eagle was talking about earlier, about dominance. At his order, I feel an urge to drop and cringe, to beg forgiveness.

“Get the hell up, Eagle!” he snarls to the woman at my side. “She’s beneath you. Nameless.” When she doesn’t comply, he reaches by my nose to grab at her. Her fear of him burns at my nose.

Pack.

Her fear enrages me, and I leap, flattening the man with my forepaws on his shoulders and growling him in the face. I smell his surprise, and his sudden fear. It smells better than Eagle’s.

She is Pack. He is not. He threatens Pack. He is not Pack.

I hear footsteps around me, but they are unimportant. This man threatened my packmate. Since he is more dominant than her, it falls to me to protect. He avoids my eyes, but I search out his gaze, grabbing it with mine until he drops it, submitting. His chin lifts, displaying his throat. I growl, and he whimpers.

“Wolf.” The voice is familiar, and the scent reaches my nose. Blaze. “Off, please.”

Though voiced as a request, I recognize the order within it. I glance up, and Blaze stares me off my charge. Chastised, I sit against the couch as Blaze sends the other wolf out.

“Shift into a human so I can talk to you.”

I comply, not thinking anything of it until I was human again. Then, I felt self-conscious, and went to find my camisole and boxers again, a blush rushing to my now-furless face. I donned them behind the couch.

“Any particular reason you attacked him, Maya?” he asked while I clothed myself. He sounded concerned. When I thought about it, it had seemed to make such perfect sense, but at this point I wasn’t so sure.

“I-he threatened Eagle, and I sorta flipped out.”

“Is that what happened?”

“He came in and told us about a hunt, and then he growled at me and said I wasn’t Pack—”

“So you attacked him?”

“I’m not finished yet, Roger.” His gaze darkened, and I reminded myself belatedly that he didn’t like that. “He said I wasn’t Pack, and that I was Nameless, and then he came over and reached for Eagle, telling her that I was Nameless and that she should stand. She smelled like fear. I felt I was…I was protecting her when I jumped him.”

He was quiet for what felt like a long stretch of time before saying, “You can’t just attack other wolves, Maya. It’ll get you labeled as a dangerous wolf, and you’ll be run off. You know that, right?”

“If I’m protecting another wolf?”

“It’s…I dunno, Maya. I don’t make the rules; the Alpha does.”

“Won’t he understand if that’s what happened?”

“Yeah, but…” He exhaled a gust of air. “Just don’t make trouble for awhile, okay?” When I opened my mouth to argue, he cut me off. “At least until you’re Pack and you can back up your challenges. Since you’re bitten and not Pack yet, you can just get sent off if the Alpha decides you’re a threat. Just…don’t be a threat.” He smiled grimly. “Now c’mon. We’re going for a hunt.”

:o3

Changing twice in two hours was a strain, and thrice in a day was no party statistic either. It had taken me less than a minute to go from wolf to human when ordered away from my “victim” (as Thorn was now putting it), but going from human to wolf again was taking me almost half an hour. By the time I had fully Changed, I am lying, panting, on the ground, exhausted.

*You all right, wolf?* a wolf asks me. I look up and see the one to whom the voice belongs, and I recognize the black wolf with the white stripe on his face and the white socks. Alpha. My tail involuntarily gives a few thumps against the ground.

I am tired, I think, dropping my head again, my tongue picking up some of the dirt on the ground.

Alpha drops his head and snuffles at my brow. I roll onto my side, extending my nose so he has a clear path to my throat. I have no thoughts of challenging this wolf. He runs his nose through the thick ruff on my neck, then noses my ear and nips it gently. I start, and sit up as he skitters away. I am familiar with the invitation, and I follow, my strength inexplicably returning. Alpha leads me to the rest of the pack, all wolves, and we charge into the forest, ignoring the howls of a lonely wolf in the direction of the village.

:o3

The moon is gloriously full. To my vision, silver shadows blur by, in a rush, as the Pack and I run through the forest, not yet chasing a quarry. From what I understand, not all will take part in the actual hunt, but the Pack and I all run. Despite our immense number, the Pack make relatively little sound. They sound like panting and the occasional howl. I make the sounds of footfalls; I am the loudest even among the pups that are not even tall enough to reach my shoulder. The rest move silently with their paws. It is not long, though, until I no longer think I and they. I think we.

:o3

Only the most dominant wolves accompany Alpha and I on the actual hunt. Blaze stands along with us, as does Talon, Niko’s father. The Beta stands to Alpha’s right, and his mate, Moss, to Fang’s. It is she who suggests Sparrow, since she saw him subdue me on my first day. Spine, the wolf I fought earlier that day, is not allowed to join, for if I decide to be wild, he will be no help, since he has already submitted to my dominance, though he is one of the highest in Pack structure.

The seven of us lope through the woods, searching for a scent. Since we have not yet scented our quarry, there is much playing among the packmates. Talon, I decide, is a swaggering creature that teases at the other wolves. Moss is a peacemaker when Talon pushes Beta too far and is scolded. Alpha is easygoing on the hunt, focused, but not to the point that he is not amused by the goings-on by his packmates. Blaze focuses mainly on Alpha, but obeys both him and Beta, and watches me, too. Beta does not like Talon. Sparrow slinks along at the back of the pack behind the rest of us.

It is him that scents the buck. He barks to get our attention, and then we all sniff at it. I remember a similar musky scent, and the memory of bringing the owner down trickles into my head. We pant harder, looking in the direction of the fresher smell.

We spread, all heading in the overall direction of the smell, stopping every so often to reacquaint and correct our directions. Alpha and I are glued side-to-side, with me only slightly behind him out of respect. I understand that he watches me, looking for signs that I am not in control. I wonder in the back of my mind if he has heard of what happened with me and Spine.

Finally we crouch in the trees. We sense the other wolves doing the same around the copse. We see the buck, and a couple of others. We will not get them. We come for one.

A couple of the deer grow edgy, and rise to their feet. The buck lifts his head and looks around. A twig cracks, but it is on the side of the prey, not any of us. It spooks them, and we break cover and descend. The other deer flee, leaping through the trees and disappearing. The buck follows, but Moss leaps ahead of his left shoulder, turning him right so that we can run alongside him. He smells of sweat and fear and musk. Alpha falls from my side as I follow on the right flank, and then Beta leaps for the throat ahead of the buck. In its terror, it no longer thinks ahead, and only notices the wolves at its heels and sides. It is a quick kill.

This time I know to let Alpha, Beta, and his mate Moss eat before me, and after them I dive in and rend muscle and flesh from one of the haunches. As I eat, the Alpha looms over my head, and before I finish he bites my nose.

*Do not get greedy,* he chides me. *Other wolves need to eat.*

Reluctantly I drop my prize and back off, and Talon takes up where I left off.

:o3

We get home, heads low and panting hard. I see the other wolves shift to humans, and the very sight is enough to put my belly to the dirt. Alpha puts his head up at the sound of my body hitting the ground, and comes to me. It is at his urging that I shift back. When I became human again, he smiled at me and helped me to my feet. I swayed a little, since I was still tired, and had half the support as I did earlier. With one hand still supporting me, he claps my bare shoulder.

“Good hunt, wolf,” he said. I grinned, my eyelids still drooping. The rest of the pack comes out and pats my shoulders and arms and back. James smiled in return and took my hand, lifting it as high as he could without lifting me off the ground.

“Does the pack accept Dawn as part of its own?”

Dawn? I thought, bemused, as the wolves cheered and yipped. I still smiled, though. I wasn’t alone. I didn’t recognize most of the faces in the crowd, but I recognized Roger—Blaze—Adam, Eagle, Niko…

Niko?

He met my gaze with a lopsided smile, his eyes flitting once over the rest of my bare body before meeting my eyes again. I didn’t even know how to react.

“Dawn, huh?” The pack turned as one to the group of people at the back, unnoticed in the high of the hunt. “More like cantaloupe or mango by her coloring, isn’t she?”

The woman who spoke sauntered down the middle of the pack, parting the crowd like Moses parted the sea. Her silver blonde hair was up in a ponytail, bangs framing the sides of her eyes of a glowing blue. Next to me, the Alpha—my Alpha—growled warningly.

“So you took her in despite my orders? Pretty ballsy stuff, don’t ya think?” Her voice was high and mocking as she stood just in front of us. She was tall enough to stare James in the face, and make me thoroughly uncomfortable. Amazing that, before I grew fangs and a tail, I never really had this much of a short complex.

The woman turned and looked me in the face with unabashed challenge. Insulted and furious now, I glared right back. In this form, I didn’t need my nose to smell her surprise, but it added a pleasant undertone to the look on her face when I didn’t back down. Her nose wrinkled, and her upper lip twitched along with it.

“Don’t dare get arrogant, little human bitch—” she snarled at me, striding forward. In a blur, there was a black haired boy standing between her and me, and I heard the rumble in his chest from behind, even though he wasn’t turning it on me. There was a crack, and Niko’s head went back, but his feet didn’t move.

“You, pup,” I heard her practically spit. “You betray your own pack, bringing that outsider here. I—”

“She is a wolf now, pretender. You call me betrayer when you kill your own mate to—”

Her voice deepened to a growl. I saw Niko’s body shake, and I realized she had grabbed him. “You defy Pack law bringing that bitch—”

“Frost,” my Alpha barked, his voice much deeper than I was used to hearing from him. Her gaze snapped to him as he strode forward, exuding the air of pure predator. Many of the people around us dropped to their knees from the power he was putting out. “He is my responsibility, not yours. You back the hell off of my wolf.”

Frost glared at him, every muscle of her body screaming in rebellion. My Alpha’s head lowered, covering his throat as, even human, his body breathed lupine aggression. “He is mine.”

“He disobeys Pack law.”

“He is not yours to punish.”

“And that human of yours is a threat to your Pack as well. Yet you accept her here. That is a betrayal of your Alpha, Fang. I ought to kill you here.”

Around her, several voices tore out their own protests of growls from human throats. Some were half changed, some fully. If Frost went anywhere near our Alpha, she would not survive it. That was clear. Her dominance over individual Pack wolves wouldn’t save her if an outside wolf tried to take down our Alpha.

Her eyes razed over the other wolves. I saw Quill glance from Niko to her before her gaze rested on me and hardened. Clearly there was one thing she and Frost agreed on wholeheartedly.

“You all would remain loyal to this traitor?” Frost breathed, her voice soft and almost surprised. “Fine.” She stepped away from James, Niko and I, then strode unflinching through an uneasy crowd of growling wolves. Her packmates watched carefully as she came, no doubt waiting to see if anyone would jump out and try to attack their Alpha. I looked to their faces, and felt a horrified leap in my chest as I recognized the big man who had been in my house when I had been human. He never looked away from Frost. I didn’t see the woman from that time, though. I could only assume that she was dead, or wherever the rest of Frost’s pack was. As uncharacteristic of me as it was, I strongly hoped that it was the former.

The whole pack watched as they left, and listened after they had disappeared. It wasn’t until all that remained was their scent before James turned to Niko and grabbed him by the throat. Niko yelped in surprise before James slammed him into a tree. Niko stopped struggling long enough to aim a kick with his left leg, and when James blocked it, strike hard with his right, earning his release. The two stayed a couple yards away from each other and then circled.

I felt skin against my arm, and I jumped before I recognized Adam watching grimly. *This is the second time that Niko has disobeyed the Alpha. It is death for him.*

I turned and watched, horrified, as they shifted and charged. Black on white like a gruesome, blurry yin and yang, they clashed together, biting every bit that they could reach. They yelped and cried and growled and barked. Blood and spit flew around them, illuminated by the vague yellow lighting from the porches around us. It was like watching Blaze and Niko fight back by my house. Adam had been there for me then too. I squeezed his hand, not remembering when I had grabbed it.

Both wolves were flagging when Niko stumbled on his bloody foreleg and James descended on him. The Alpha’s teeth grabbed Niko by the scruff of the neck, leather collar and all, and tossed him like a sack a couple yards away. He slid a few more feet besides, and didn’t move. The Alpha walked to him, hackles up. I saw Niko’s eyes reflect the life as they flicked to the black wolf.

I couldn’t stand it.

“No!” I screamed, running and standing between the wolves. My Alpha took a few steps back, surprised, but his gaze hardened. He shifted to a human and glared down at me. I shuddered, my knees weakening.

“Step aside,” he demanded. My legs spasmed, and I lifted my foot before stomping it down.

“You cannot kill him. It was my fault—he was protecting me.”

“A change of heart for him. Even on my orders, he didn’t protect you before.”

“What?”

“He abandoned his post, protecting your home and father. Couldn’t be bothered to protect you anymore.”

Niko left my house? He abandoned my father to his death? I was tempted to turn back to him, to demand the truth from him, but I knew that if I didn’t stand up for him now, I would never get the chance to do so. Instead, I straightened my spine and stared more resolutely up at the Alpha.

“You protect this wolf, Dawn?”

I nodded. He gazed solidly at me for several seconds before huffing and jerking a nod at me. He glanced down at Niko and waited for the silver wolf to give him his attention.

“Get out, wolf,” he ordered. Niko’s whole body went stiff. “You are no longer of this pack. Get out.”

I watched Niko slowly rise to his feet. His whole body shook. He was a mess to behold—his silver coat was mottled with mud and dirt and spit. One of his paws didn’t touch the ground as he stood, its only contact with the ground being the steady drip of his blood from him to the dirt. His head stayed low, defensive, before he dropped his nose to the dirt and shook his head, dislodging a chewed-through collar so that it fell to the dust. He glanced at the Alpha—his Alpha no longer—before gazing to me. Our gazes locked for the fewest of moments before his dropped and he walked from the village and into the trees.