The lone wolf

Chapter 8

Phew, living room polished and hoovered, third load of washing going, kitchen wiped down, child entertained (without TV) and now he is sat down to lunch. A successful morning I think 😜 now on with the story!! Thank you all for reading, voting, commenting and messaging 😘 love you all
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Sakura POV
UGH! Whoever invented alcohol is a jerk! My head was throbbing after the party last night, drank way to much and Luffy and Ussop were so lively it was exhausting. I had passed out asleep on deck but woke up with a blanket on, who gave me the blanket? Zoro and Brook were the only ones still awake before I fell asleep.....oh well.
I got up with a stretch and made my way to the kitchen, with the blanket round my shoulders, for some water and a small bite to eat to settle my stomach and head.
Sanji and Robin were in the kitchen already, I grunted them a greeting and sat down pulling the blanket tighter round my shoulders. Sanji placed a glass of water and a plate of French toast in front of me before speaking,
"Why do you have Zoro's blanket?"
You could tell he was slightly annoyed despite trying to hide it, he better not be starting to get overly protective.
I gave a little shrug,
"Don't know, just woke up with it on"
Though not fully satisfied Sanji dropped the subject and went back to cooking for the others.
I'd never paid attention to Zoro's scent so I took a sniff of the blanket. It was intoxicating. You could smell a little bit of sake in it but the smell was mostly a deep, musky masculine one. I closed my eyes, bringing the blanket up to my face and inhaling again. I abruptly stopped once hearing Robin chuckle, with a blush I left it round my shoulders and set on with eating my French toast embarrassed.

I quickly left the kitchen after eating to avoid further embarrassment, luckily Sanji didn't notice. I headed to the crows nest guessing that's where Zoro would be, odd that he would give me his blanket, hope he wasn't cold last night.
As I made my way up I could hear the clinking of metal and once I opened the hatch I saw the reason why. There was Zoro, wearing an open blue shirt revealing his entire upper body, weight training. The weights were HUGE! It was quite a vision to behold.
I climbed into the crows nest and cleared my throat to get his attention but couldn't look at him when he turned to me,
"Oh, hey Sakura, you wanting something?"
I'm pretty sure my blush was coming back as I stared at the floor answering him,
"Uhm, well........sorry to disturb you but I just wanted to hand your blanket back" I looked up at him and spoke rather quickly, "thank you very much for the use of it and I'm sorry if you were cold last night, please forgive me"
I bowed to show my gratitude and also to hide my rosy cheeks, why did I behave like a shy pup around him?
I heard him chuckling and glanced up to see him giving me a closed eye smile as he held his weight over his shoulder....his smile was so cute.
"You look better when you smile, rather than frown"
After realising what I'd just said to him I froze waiting for a response
"And you look better when you're not snarling"
At this I gave an annoyed whine and an angry tail flick only causing him to chuckle again. He walked towards me and gave me a pat on the head,
"You make a cute dog"
He left the crows nest on that note as I threw a snarl after him, cheeky.....bloody......grrrrrrrr.

HOW DARE HE!! I'm a lycan warrior and then he calls me a cute dog! Arrogant, insufferable so and so. How dare he say that then laugh.......even though his laugh was cute........and his smile........and the way his muscles look while training.
As I walked along the deck lost in my own thoughts I ended up bumping in to Nami and, in my panic over my thoughts, ended up yelling at her,
"I HAVE NO THOUGHTS!"
She just stared at me as I tried to recover myself,
"Urm...I mean....I.....oh I don't know what I mean"
I lowered my head, tail and ears drooped, embarrassed....yet again.
Nami just looked at me confused, and rightly so, before speaking,
"Hey, well, I just wanted to tell you that you might want to go look at today's paper. They have your wanted poster in it."
This made my ears perk up, I got a wanted poster?
I thanked Nami and went to the kitchen where she said the paper would be.
Luffy and Sanji were in the kitchen arguing over the fact Luffy was hungry and Sanji was unwilling to feed him the now. Brook and Zoro were also here having a hushed conversation at one end of the table, weird. I shrugged it off and picked up the paper while leaning against the table and skimmed through the pages until I gave a wee "oh". Luffy stopped pestering Sanji once he heard me,
"Everything alright Sakura?"
I gave him a little nod, "yea, just my wanted poster, the bounty is higher than I thought and the name isn't very inventive"
Luffy, Sanji, Brook an Zoro all looked round me to see the paper. The poster had two pictures on it, one was of me in my human form, ears erect and wolfish smirk on my face as I crouched with my daggers. The other picture was me in giant wolf form bearing my fangs and roaring. Zoro read the title aloud,
"Hell Hound Sakura of the Strawhat crew, 85 million beri.......mine is higher"
"For now" I glared at him.
"Oh my sweet Sakura-swan looks so good" Sanji noodled danced beside me.
"Guess this makes you officially one of our crew" Luffy laughed with a massive grin, I couldn't help but wag my tail at that until Zoro, who was stood closest behind me, shouted,
"Hey, watch where you're waving that thing!" He seemed to have a blush on him. I apologised and curled it beside my leg.

Everyone was settled again. I sat at the table with a cup of tea from Sanji as I watched Zoro clean his swords, so shiny! Chopper was sat next to me going over old books to do with wolf-human creatures and was asking me questions on what was real and what was folklore while Robin listened. Nami came in holding a map and sat down,
"Is that where we are going next?" I asked,
"Yea but not much is said on these islands, just that their called the western isles and the one we're due to land on is called stormyway" Nami laid out the map and gave it a quizzical look.
"Why is it called that?" Chopper looked up from his books to look at Nami but she shrugged,
"Don't know"
In that moment the boat gave a violent jolt as waves and thunder crashed down upon us. We all ran outside only to see a sailors hell, thunder rolled above us as gales whipped through us and waves battered beneath us, jumping against the sides. It was horrendous, everyone started running round attending to the ship trying to control her in this weather. We seemed to be in control of things, I'd just rigged one of the sails and had turned to see what else needed done and then I froze in my place as a monstrous wave roared towards us threatening to obliterate us.

Cliiiiffhanger! Once again I'm so sorry for late updates but I appreciate each and everyone of you that have stayed with me and thank you and welcome to all my new readers. Love you all 😘