Cold

Chapter 1: Abandoned

Somewhere tucked away in a corner stood a metal dog crate. The room the crate was in was dark, cold and there was a constant dripping of water right next to it. Just close enough for the splash of the drip to soak the bottom of the crate. There were other boxes on shelves all around the room and there was broken equipment scattered through the room. It was a large storage room that was only used to store items that were no longer needed or useless.

The dog crate was starting to rust from the constant water. The surface had become rough and red and it stained the beautiful white fur of the small wolf inside it. The wolf was not much bigger than a pup and he still had many traits of a pup. Still, it was quite clear he wasn't a pup anymore.

The crate was too small for the wolf. He couldn't stand up to his full height, nor could he lay stretched across the surface of it. His blue eyes with a golden line were closed, but he was awake and intensely listening to everything outside of the room. The footsteps, the voices, the noises from objects being used. Each time a sound got too close, the wolf's ears would tense towards the sound and he would hold his breath until the sound moved away again. The ears were torn along the edges, but the wounds that had caused that had long since been healed. There were other scars running over the wolf's body, but most of them were healed too. Some were still red and raw and the one running across his belly, a long gash, was only halfway healed.

Every single person that had ever entered the room had hurt him in some way. Mostly physically, but there were a few that went for mentally hurting him too. He wasn't safe. He had never been safe and he was never without fear of what was to come next.

He vividly remembered how he ended up in the small crate a couple of weeks ago. Sometime during that day three men had come in and he had scurried away in a slight panic to hide. He had chosen a hiding spot in the only free corner left in the room and then glued his eyes to the floor, hoping he might be overlooked, naked and in his human form as he was. Fate did not agree with hope, and the very corner he was hiding in turned into a trap when the three large men stepped up to him. They were grinning down at him and held an evil glint in their eyes, a look he would never see after learning the hard way that looking into the eyes or glancing up to someone will end up in pain. He had made himself as small as possible and kept himself lowered as much as possible, but the moment they moved towards the corner he knew he had made a mistake.

A gruff and grainy voice made his chest tighten in fear and the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. "Always in the way... useless." The short sentence didn't give him any time to get away, even if he had had the room to do so. The other two men were blocking him, so he did the only thing he could do and that was basically lie down in the floor in submission. It didn't help. They didn't even think about commanding him to move. Instead, he was kicked aside, sliding along the floor as one of the men stepped aside so he'd crash into something. His back smacked into a metal shelf unit, hitting it hard enough to make the shelf unit wobble. Something, thankfully not very heavy but still hard, fell on his shoulder and shattered. He was surrounded and covered by sharp pieces of broken glass while he gasped for air. The men placed whatever it was they wanted to store away in the corner and left without even looking at him.

The kick and hitting his back had left him unable to breathe for a few moments longer. His shoulder was throbbing from the item that had fallen on him. He couldn't name it. He was never taught such things, hell, he was barely talked to and he couldn't remember a time when he was outside this room. He didn't speak well either, as that was something else that was forbidden for him. When he leaned on his arm to get up, the small glass fragments dug into his lower arm and hand. He felt the glass from his hair trickle down onto his back. Slowly he got up, careful to get the least amount of cuts possible. Once he stood, he looked over his hand and arm. He found a few deeper cuts, but nothing that would remain bleeding for long, so he left them as they were.