Chapter 1
A wonderful orange butterfly softly landed on the end of my snout, making me sneeze noisily. The beautiful creature took off from my nose before beating its wings and fluttering into the line of trees that surrounded the dewy emerald green grass upon which I was stood.
Standing up and stretching out my small body, I began to climb out of the small nest-like space I discovered under the roots of a giant oak tree. A small yawn escaped my muzzle as my tongue curled upwards to lick my slightly dry nose.
My stomach growled loudly telling me it was feeding time and that I needed to start hunting for my first prey of the day. Unfortunately, for a wolf pup, hunting is extremely difficult which meant another day of scavenging for bugs and berries and any other edible roots and plants I could find.
I learnt my lesson last time I tried to eat unknown berries as I was vomiting for three days, after I ate some berries that looked and smelt harmless even if the bright colours did give a subtle hint that they were poisonous. But its not my fault they looked like the yummy raspberries mama used to give me, however, never again shall I venture to eat the unknown foods of the forest.
Anyways, I gazed up at the canopy the trees formed over me, as I walked away from my latest hiding spot.
The mouth watering smell of fresh meat, wafted through the forest and my small nose twitched, wanting to locate where the amazing, yummy smell was coming from.
As soon as my nose honed in on the fresh smell of the meat, my instincts took over and I went sprinting towards the smell, yipping and yowling as I ran.
Skidding to a halt in the large clearing, I spotted, what I hoped would be, my next, extremely large, meal. A fallen stag. It was only a young stag no older than a year or two at most, but a good meal none the less.The fact that this fresh meat was just sitting out in the open should have been a warning to me, but due to my wolf's childish manner and strong self preservation instincts, it overlooked this obvious fact.
As I began to dig in, I hear a deep rumbling growl coming from behind me. I whipped around, only to come face to face with glowing yellow eyes encrusted with a ruby red ring and drawn back lips revealing terrifyingly, acicular fangs.
Rogues.
Another hostile growl left the large wolf's mouth, making a small whimper leave my mouth. I bowed my chest to the floor, ready to attack and defend myself if needs be, while bearing my teeth at the scary wolf.
Bad move. A huge paw came down and swiped across my frail, little body sending me spiralling through the air, landing heavily and skidding across the clearing floor into a fallen tree trunk which outlined a section of the clearing.
A spasm of pain shot through the right side of my body at the impact of hitting the fallen tree. As this happened more rogues seemed to appear out of the shadows, slinking towards me, all the while, letting out wolfy laughs at the whine of pure pain that escaped my muzzle.
Another rogue decided to take the chance and advance on me while I was down. A gaping mouth full of serrated teeth seemed to hover above my fallen form, before attacking by sinking it's frightfully jagged teeth into my side, tearing through the flesh and sending daggers of pain through my already quivering figure.
Rivers of blood flowed over my stomach from the jagged, torn, painful skin. Another growl of content left my attacker as he gazed at the damage he caused.
Powerful howls suddenly echoed around the forest. The rogues whimpered, glancing around before most of them scampered off into the woods.
I could sense the last rogue, hovering just in front of my exhausted body, as it considered whether or not it was worth killing the injured pup or just leaving it to die alone or in the hands of more powerful wolves.
Again the dominant howls resoundrd through the woods, as the rogue let out one last warning bark before turning on its heels and scampering in the opposite direction of the howls.
A sigh of almost relief, left my muzzle as the rogue seemed to leave me to be killed or eaten by the wolves released those overpowering howls into the confines of the dense woodland.
Staggering onto my weak, wobbly paws, I managed to stumble through the trees, soon realising I had mistakenly wandered into another packs land while in search of my meal gone wrong.
The blood loss from my side was immense and was starting to make me feel dizzy and weak. My wobbly legs soon collapsed underneath me, seemingly giving up on attempting to remove myself from the packs land, while my willpower to escape was still at the highest level possible.
In this moment all I could think to do was to attempt to scoot into the shelter of the underbrush and home that the scent of my blood wasn't pungent enough to attract the scary pack wolves.
Unfortunately, for me, there was no strength left in my body to push myself along and into the underbrush, so instead I just laid there and waited.
'I can't believe this will me my death' I thought to myself, 'Never getting to meet my mate or finding my old pack'
As a last thought, I took a long wistful look at the canopy of trees, which sheltered my frail body from the warm sun. The leaves rustled with the small breeze that blew through them, playing a symphony as it whistled through the branches. Peaceful. Oh, so peaceful. And oh, so deceiving. Lulling my weary brain into a false sense of security.
I sent a prayer to the Moon Goddess asking that she may allow me to live and not perish at the hands of these pack wolves. And with that, my fuzzy head settled atop my paws and the surrounding world crept into darkness.
