The twin Wolves: A Short Story

Twins

The heavens were gray, thunder giving warning of the harsh storm to come and the clouds' bellies full and ready to unleash their wrath upon the earth below. They cared not about the frantic female shifter in her wolf form looking for her pups, Romulus and Remus, who had somehow managed to lose themselves among the dense forest. A forest that seemed seconds from coming down due to winds strong enough to sway the trees, harshly ripping at their leaves from their homes on branches and sending them into the wolf's eyes forcing them closed.

The she wolf was going mad. Rabid even. She had smelt another wolf shifter - a male - in the area and knew he would kill her pups if he found them, if only to produce his own with her. Yet, she could not find her pups! Their scent was gone, nowhere to be smelt for hours now because of the relentless winds! She crawled under a thicket of bushes looking for them, knowing they must be hiding, for one of them was terrified of thunder. She knew they would be together, since they were always refusing to be separated. She found nothing, though. That is, until she emerged from the other side.

She was used to the sight and smell of blood, even craved it sometimes when she was feeling her primal wolf instincts more than usual. As the Luna or Female leader and mate of the Alpha or male leader of the pack, she regularly witnessed many wolves challenge her mate for the Alpha position. Most were shown mercy and only left the challenge with a missing ear or a large patch of fur missing from their wolven bodies and a lesson learned. Others though, repeat challengers in particular, were dealt a brutal and gruesome death. The Alpha could not afford these wolves to continue to defy him only because they did not learn to obey him the first time, so they were killed.

Having been witness to so much, she believed the sight before her would surely cause even the most calm and controlled of murderer's stomach to turn with the threat of a foul retching. The kind where you can't stop, even if all that is being dispelled is stomach acid.

In the small area hiding behind the bush she had been looking under, she found her pups. And the male wolf shifter. Only he had been spread over the entire clearing. The young boys in their wolf forms were covered in fresh, thick, dark red - almost black- blood. It dripped from their fur in small drops, staining the earth with it's evil color. The trees resembled the pups, blood covering the trunks of tall trees and leaves on the shorter ones. Their branches decorated with intestines and pieces of skin of the male wolf, almost as if someone had thrown them up into the sky like confetti. She could tell it was he from the faint scent of him she could catch under the smell of all the blood.

She returned her shocked gaze back to her pups who had been playing some sort of sick version of the game tug-of-war with the male's leg when she first entered the clearing and were now staring at her in excitement. The one who had let go of the leg first yips, and stumbles over pieces of the bloody carcass on his way to his mother, his brother - having dropped the leg - not far behind. They shift into their naked two-legged form and shout "Hey Ama! Look what we did!" in unison as they approach the she wolf who by now has also shifted and is looking upon her children in horror.

"What have you done?" she mumbles in question to herself under her breath whilst looking around again as her pups embrace her, staining her with blood. The boys though, being wolf shifters, heard her question and one, Romulus, replied "We killed him! Just like Apa does to the pack members that are big ugly meanies to him!". "Yeah, cause' he called us 'stupid pups'! So we made him shut up cause' we're not stupid! We're super-duper smart! And strong!" added Remus with passion.

The mother could only continue to look on in astonishment. Their innocent replies a complete contradiction to the scene before her, causing a nervous unease to grow within her belly and spread throughout her body. How did they manage to kill a fully grown male shifter?!?! They're only 7 years old!!! She thought. Even some pack warriors were unable to defeat rogues of such strength! She could tell from his scent he had been a Beta or second in command before he lost his sanity and was banished from his pack.

Suddenly, she remembers the day they were born and the warning the pack elders - the wisest wolves in the pack - had told her and her mate that day. "You must heed our warning Lyla, these twins will kill us all if they are not contained! Their power will consume their minds and their wolves will be the most vicious creatures we have seen in centuries! Even now as children we can sense their mighty aura... it threatens the very foundation of our pack! They WILL be our doom!"

She had thought the elders insane. That maybe they had lived a couple hundred years too long and were going senile. Now facing her naked, blood-covered children though, she thinks that they may have been right.

She releases the memory from her mind's clutch, focusing on Romulus and Remus. "Uhm, boys, let's go home and get cleaned up, ok? You guys are filthy!" she says with a unsure, nervous smile. "Ok Ama!" They shout in agreement, not at all aware of their mothers tactic of changing the topic.

As they walk back - or run in the pups case - in their naked two-legged forms to the pack cave, the Luna has a dreadful feeling in her heart. She knows if any other wolf were to become aware of the situation, Romulus and Remus would surely be sentenced to death immediately. The very thought of her children dead made her heart feel as if it were being torn to shreds and burned with fire. No, she thought, no one can know... I MUST protect my children! No one will lay a hand on my pups! She decided.

Thus began to unfold a series of events that would eventually lead Romulus and Remus to become the nightmares of the very creatures that lie in the dark. Under the protection of their mother, they grow to be feared throughout. They took over the Alpha position from their father and conquered, pillaged, and killed any pack they came across in their travels around Europe. There were no survivors and the few that did manage to survive only lived to tell the gruesome tale of the twin shifters that were more akin to the Demons of hell than the wolves of earth.

                                                                    FIN