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My father was a hero. He was brave, strong, fast, smart; he was admired and loved dearly by all who met him, and he had charmed countless females, but loved only my mother. When I was young he had been my hero, the one I looked up to the most, and I had thought that forever he would be my hero.
That was until he died.
It was Cosmo who found him in the grass, his body bruised and bloody. He had a slash across his chest, his left ear was torn, and there was the unmistakable scent of a wolf on him - a scent detectable to even the smallest of pups.
We hadn't had time to grieve before we discovered that Spirit was missing. That morning he had gone out to scout the area for elk herds, but he hadn't yet come back yet - and already, I was sure he never would.
At first, mother had been in denial. She sat all day, eyes closed, next to father's body, and she shook her head and muttered softly to him, so quietly even I, with my sharp hearing, couldn't pick up.
Pluto cut off almost all contact with any of us. He had always been edgy, always looking for a chance to argue, but now more than ever. He found trees in the woods to slash his claws against. Bones to kick and bite. Anger, it seemed, was his method to cope with grief.
Cosmo had been good about it all, keeping his emotions to himself, comforting mother, aunt Agate, the pups of that year, but for me, it wasn't something I could just keep inside. It was not only father's death that bothered me, but Spirit's. Spirit's supposed death, his disappearance. We had been close before this. He had been my closest confidante, and I had been his. We spent every waking moment of the day together, playing chase and running through countless meadows.
And then he had just been gone.
But it seemed even after all this, the gods did not take pity on us. Mother ran away just a week later, leaving Pluto, Cosmo, the pups and I to fend for ourselves. Maybe she had thought we could work together to continue the legacy of the pack, but she was sorely mistaken.
Both Pluto and Cosmo wanted the title of alpha, and so did I.
Disagreements like these always appeared to result in wars, according to the stories, and ours was no different, though it was most likely that Pluto's angry tendencies triggered our decisions. Perhaps if he hadn't been so rash with the way he went around saying things, there would have been no alliances and a split Rilter, just three brothers figuring out pack dynamics on their own.
There were plenty more things I may have pondered over if a twig hadn't snapped behind me, but there it was, that crack, and I turned to face the bushes from which the sound had come from, teeth bared and body tense.
"Show yourself, or I'll drag you out," I growled.
I could hear rustling and the sound of paws scraping on dirt, but the wolf - and I could tell it was a wolf - did not speak. Yet.
