Eyes of the Wolf

39

I lap up water from one of the creeks a mile or so from the main Pack. Nearby, my packmates Eagle and Thorn lie in the shade, eyes closed to the sun peeking through the leaves and tongues lolling from their mouths. The blood of breakfast is washed away in the water, leaving my muzzle wet with only water once more. It’s not that I mind still tasting the rabbits and squirrels; I just get irritated when the fine fur on my snout gets caked together.

I gambol around on the game trail we found earlier, heedless of the sun on my fur. It is hot, but my legs need to stretch and eat ground, even though my hindquarters, forelegs, and lower hind legs burn from the exertion. I do not understand this burn—I have not run enough to warrant a feeling like that.

Thorn tells me that they do not think my running in the sun is intelligent while Eagle merely watches. I wag my tail and stretch out my forelegs, half baiting them and half trying to make them feel better. I am growing more capable of thinking as a human in this form, but I am still not a human. The more I use it, the more I understand that sentient thought only goes so far. That is okay, since when I am like this, I don’t really want to think anyway.

They find my reluctance to quit amusing, but it is not long before my head is drooping and I want to go back. We return.

:o3

After I changed back, I washed my face more thoroughly and emerged in the ensemble that was getting to be routine for me. Strange, since I had never been fond of shorts before. With all this werewolf stuff, I was getting to be about as modest as a baboon.

Well, maybe not that bad.

It had been weeks since my incident with Quill. I could only assume that she had been chided by some more dominant wolf, since she had only avoided me since. However, it was undeniable that that there were wolves in the pack that shared her views. They acted nice enough, but it was getting harder and harder to be ignorant of such things when every bit of body language, breathing rate and change, and even scent suddenly conveyed so much to me. Some of what I had learned since my entrance to the pack was that I was much more dominant than I had allowed myself to believe; even the higher ranking wolves treated me with a sort of deference even if they were more sympathetic to Quill. It didn’t make much sense to me. The whole dominance thing was one big puzzle to me, and an annoying one since I could count the number of wolves in a pack of sixty that would meet my eyes…without resorting to using my toes.

“Dawn!”

My head shot up, and I saw Summer, Niko’s little sister, running full tilt toward me. She was fast; I had barely braced myself when she impacted hard with my body, making me stagger back a step.

“I don’t believe you made Niko go away!”

“Uh—” What?

“Quill says I can’t be around you because you made Niko go away and you’re nothing but a shifting halfie, but I don’t think so!”

“Oh-kay?” Quill was getting busy. But Summer hadn’t been my friend earlier, when we had met before. I brought this up to the child, who was still leaning heavily on me and making me uncomfortable that she was as young as she was and yet still almost came up to my neck. I hoped she was tall for her age.

“You were okay,” she told me simply. “But Quill’s being a butthead and saying that you’re such a bad wolf and that I’m not allowed to be around you, so I told her to stuff it and here I am!”

Okay. I saw what this was. “So you’re going to be my friend because your sister said not to be?”

“Leave us.”

I spun and looked at Blaze, who was walking up to us. He looked disdainfully at Summer. I saw her stiffen and open her mouth, but then she shuddered and sent a nasty look at him before turning on her heel and stalking off.

“That wasn’t nice,” I said, my voice a bit icy.

“She is just like her brother.” His voice was disgusted. “She wants to do something just because those in charge tell her no. It only causes trouble.”

“I thought none of the wolves liked being told what to do?” I’d certainly developed tendencies to get mad whenever someone told me to do something, even if it was an imperative voiced as a request.

“Niko takes it to an extreme. He doesn’t hackle about it—he just turns around and disobeys. The only reason he was here this long is because the Alpha took a liking to him. Even so, if you coming over and seeing wolves hadn’t been brushed off as an accident, he would’ve been gone sooner.”

“Do you have a problem with me being here?” I asked. My voice was definitely icier than I wanted it to be, but his mouthing off was rubbing me wrong.

“No. I just don’t think—” He took a breath and let it out in a gust. “I don’t think you deserve this. Especially not because he thought it would be fun to play with a human that could put his tail between his legs.”

His voice had gotten softer, but he was still tense, and, had he been a wolf, his fur would be standing on end. Apparently he felt strongly about this, but was it about me, or Niko?

“You must really hate him.”

“I’m glad he’s gone,” he said, his heart fully behind his words. “Wolves like him tear the pack apart. The Alpha makes rules to protect the pack. That she seems to be doing the same thing is not good.”

“She’s just a child,” I reminded him.

He suddenly seemed exasperated. “Well, whatever. Just don’t encourage her.”

And he left me there, wanting so badly to give him a bald spot with my bare hands and in two seconds flat. Short hair be damned, I could do it if I wanted to.

The skin on my arm felt tight. I looked down to my arm and saw goosebumps erecting the hair on my arm as it all turned from dark brown to almost blonde. I took a breath; irritating as Blaze was, it was nothing to Change over.

But jeez—every wolf in this pack was so uptight. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d even laughed—everything was so tense, what with all the dominance and the dislike aimed my way. I loved the pack, but it was getting exhausting to be here. I needed a break from it all.

And then I knew. On some innate sense I was able to find the Alpha in the center of the village, lounging among a bunch of his wolves in his furrier shape. Within the past week one of the pack had found a big shade at Costco on a clothes run, and now the canopy extended over a bunch of horse-sized wolves.

On the outside of the group, I dropped my eyes to the Alpha’s nose. “Can you tell me where Sparrow is, please?” As I spoke, I made my voice as humble as I possibly could—I had learned by both first- and secondhand experience that you could never be too humble around a more dominant wolf. Never demand answers, never look them dead in the eye, especially when they were in their lupine form. Then they were all the more sensitive to such mannerisms. Anything other than the most submissive, and it was considered a challenge and treated as such.

The big black wolf nodded and got to his feet, weaving carefully between his panting packmates. I followed him to the nearest house and inside, where he walked to a dresser and sat next to it, looking to me expectantly. It took a bit longer for me to understand since I was not in my more receptive shape, but I finally got it and got him a pair of shorts from one of the drawers and handed it to him. He took it in his mouth and carried it to the next room. Seconds later he emerged as a sweat-shiny human, still breathing heavily from the Change.

“He went to town,” he told me simply.

“Where in town?”

His expression grew wary, and his chin dropped as he regarded me. To a human, this was an expression of regarding, but my wolf instincts recognized it as a dropping head—a warning.

“You’re still a bit young to do that, aren’t you?” “Young” meaning recently Changed.

“My control’s gotten a lot better,” I told his chest.

“I would prefer that you didn’t go to town.”

I took a breath and nodded, feeling semi-imaginary hackles rising. I was really growing to dislike being told what to do.

“I understand,” I said quietly. He blew air through his nose and stooped to catch my eyes.

“He should be back soon.” I dropped my gaze and nodded again, seething. I didn’t want to submit. I wanted to make him drop his eyes. I wanted to go where I pleased. But I couldn’t. More than I wanted to rebel, more of me fought against disobeying my Alpha. I would behave.

He smiled encouragingly at me and walked away, so I exhaled, stripped, Changed, and grabbed my clothes before following him out the door. I plan on waiting for the Alpha’s son on the road, before he parks his car.

:o3

I wake to the sharp, muggy scent of exhaust, and I rise sneezing. Gravel is crunching under heavy rubber wheels, and I turn my head eastward to see the dually truck rolling down the road. I scoop up my clothes in my mouth and lope toward it, waiting for it to pass before breaking cover and sprinting behind it to sail easily into the bed. The whole vehicle rocks, and suddenly my paws slip as the truck suddenly is much slower than I am. On the smooth bed, my paws have no traction, and I crash into the window, then scramble backward to trip on the clothes I dropped. All this occurs before the truck comes to a full stop, and when it finally stops rolling Adam is out the door and glaring with a pistol in his hand, slightly at rest when he recognizes me. I flinch at the weapon. He doesn’t seem happy.

“Maya, don’t do that,” he growls as I send reproachful glances at him over the side of the truck. “I could’ve shot you. I thought you were attacking.”

I thump my tail a few times against the tailgate. He glares at me for another minute or so before he sighed and leaned his back against the back door, facing away from me. “Are you going to Change, or am I to continue a one-sided conversation?”

I comply. The Change is faster than it used to be; I’ve gotten more adept at shifting my forms since then. I pulled into soggy clothes once I finished. I remembered Niko saying once that it was odd putting on clothes dampened by your own spit. Now I understood what he meant.

When he heard my bare feet on the hard plastic, Adam called back, “So any particular reason you chose to jump me on the road?”

“I wanted to know if you would come with me to see Chris.”

He groaned. I leaned my arms on the rim of the bed as he turned and considered me for a heartbeat or two.

“Oh, all right,” he finally assented. I grinned and hopped out of the back to run around and clamber into the passenger seat.

“So we’re driving?” His tone was amused as he slid back into his place behind the wheel, slipping the gun into a holster and placing it gently under the seat, pointing toward the back.

“Yep.” He shook his head and started coasting along, perusing the road for a place to make a U-turn. Finally, he found a clear shoulder. We turned around on the dirt, and headed back out of the forest again.