Solace

Chapter 2

Iris

Iris was scared. What had she been thinking, going to unknown wolves, getting herself into another pack's territory, and to top it all off, in their home! What if they were the kind who locked the women up? What if they would simply keep her a prisoner making her escape worth nothing?

Her breathing had started to quicken and her heart was beating so fast it felt like it would pop out of her chest any minute now. She shifted into her lupine form, craving the clarity of wolf instincts over the tumultuous emotions of being human, and jumped to the ground. Iris felt a slight glee at being able to shift at all, still so used to dealing with horrors in the form of a human.

She looked around the cramped room; a window on one wall, a wooden vanity and a bookcase on another, and a door on the wall that didn't occupy the large bed. Iris wanted to feel safe but the only place she could fit, though barely, was under the bed. There no one could sneak up on her and she could keep watch on the door from a safe place.

She crawled under the bed a bit clumsily, proud of finding a safe spot, and turned to the door. Iris' head laid on her large paws and she sniffed quietly as she adjusted her body into a comfortable position. She laid there, waiting, for she didn't know what, for so long that at some point her anxiety had calmed enough that she had fallen asleep.

And she woke to a blonde cub sniffing her nose. With a start, Iris yelped and smacked her head in the process on the bed above her. It hurt so she let out a growl of pain which made the cub back away slightly. Iris was pretty sure the cub wasn't supposed to be here so she simply grumbled leave me alone and put her head back down.

The small wolf didn't leave, though, just seemed to get even more excited. He started to spin around and let out noises that said are you watching are you watching look look, and did all sorts of tricks in front of her. But when she saw he was about to trip, she quickly leaned towards him. However, before she could reach him, the cub whimpered as if he thought Iris was about to hurt him. Mortified, her eyes widened and she lowered her ears, letting out a whine that signaled she was sorry she had scared him. The cub swiftly perked up again while Iris backed away to the safety under the bed.

But then the door opened with force and three men flooded the room, looking ready to kill someone. And Iris feared that someone was her. One of the men was the Alpha that had been here before, Alex, she thought his name was. Beside him were a redhead man and a blonde man who was only slightly shorter than the redhead. Alex with his black hair, however, was the tallest of the three, but not much.

The blonde rushed forward to the cub and picked him up, while the redhead growled at Iris. "Noah, are you okay?! Were you hurt?!" the blonde asked. The cub just happily wagged his tail and licked the two men, his parents presumably, eagerly.

"Leave us," the Alpha said and soon it was only her and Alex in the room.

He came closer and crouched down in front of the bed. "Did you hurt him?"

No! she whined, Of course not, he's just a cub!

Alex studied her and Iris felt like she was under a microscope. His eyes, bright red, were trained intently on her, not wavering in the slightest.

"Good," he said after a moment, "I want to trust you, help you, but I can do that only if you are of no threat to me or my pack. Am I understood?"

Iris made an affirming noise which seemed to be good enough for Alex as he smiled at that.

"Now, would you like to join us for breakfast? The whole pack is there but they won't bother you. You don't have to shift back if you don't want to, many of us stay in our wolf forms for long periods so it's nothing new to see a wolf at the breakfast table," Alex informed her with a small smile.