The Island of Misfit Wolves

Freaks and Losers

Have you ever seen that movie, oh what is it? Something about Rudolph and an island for all the misfit toys. Last Christmas I came across it when I was just flipping channels bored out of my mind. As I watched that movie I realized something. It was something that I should have probably recognized earlier. Maybe I did know it on a subconscious level and had just never admitted it to myself.

I, Eleanore Rose Cabot, member of the Echo Islet pack, am living on my own little island of misfit wolves.

Now I don't think it was ever planned out.  No one stopped one day and said "I think I'm going to round up all the freaks and losers of the  were population and start my own pack".  It just sort of happened slowly, one messed up wolf at a time. 

It began with our Alpha and Luna.  Now in a normal pack the Alpha is usually the strongest, most dominant male around.  Here not so much.  Not saying he's weak or anything but, Alpha Ryder  isn't the most dominant male out there.  In fact I'm pretty sure he's the bottom.  He is super smart though.  Everything we have is because of our Alpha.  He makes sure we're kept hidden from the human world, even as we are forced to live half way in it.  He plays around with human business and financial stuff and makes sure we always have everything we need.  And he protects us from more dominate packs by keeping us hidden on this little island in the middle of nowhere.

Luna  Zach on the other hand is pretty dominate.  In a normal pack he would hold a position of power.  Probably not Alpha, but something like Head Warrior or something.  But, he fell in love and mated a male which is cause for banishment and in some cases death in most of the traditional packs. 

So Luna Zach and Alpha Ryder ran.  And they continued to run even as they collected more of the abandoned waste of traditional pack rulings.  I was maybe ten when Luna Zach found me.  I had taken my little brother Nick and ran after the death of my mother.  We had been trying to survive living in the woods by staying in wolf form. 

We were cold and hungry when he approached us in human form.  If our wolves could have cried we would've both been bawling.  I can't remember what words he used but he was so sweet to us.  No male wolf had ever talked to us so softly or rubbed or heads so gently and when he fed us I knew we would follow him anywhere.  Come on I was ten and starving,  food was a big motivator.

We traveled for maybe another year before Alpha Ryder found the island.  The pack was getting too big to travel undetected and there were too many children to be able to run from threats easily.  He and a couple of the older people left us in the woods.  They were gone for weeks.  Some of the pack members thought he had abandoned us, that we had become too much of a hassle.  But after a month he and the others returned with not only the deed to the island but also supplies and building materials. 

It has taken time to build up our small community on our island.  We still have to go into the human world for school, work, and the things we cannot grow or build ourselves.  But I don't think I would change the way things have gone because we are all just one big happy family, filled with the  people that no one else wanted, and I don't think I could live without.