She Runs With Wolves

Three.

The morning started out much the same. The pack wandered with little reason other than to patrol their territory; a region I knew as well as I had once known my own home.

Home; even now thinking about it hurt. I missed summers by the pool, hot showers, the smell of my Mums perfume drifting from their bedroom and the leather of the furniture in my father’s office.

There was no point in dwelling on the past.

We had fed well yesterday and wouldn’t need to do so again for a few days and as they all carried on their way, I walked as a human through the forest. My body that had once been well looked after and slightly plump was now thin with muscle. The wolf diet wasn’t as nurturing to my human like it was to the creature I let roam free and the miles I travelled alongside them had left me fit and able to endure as much as the animals.

I had no clothing, the items from years ago lost. Out here in the wilderness I didn’t need them anyway. If anyone should ever come by, they would only see me covered in fur. Not that I’d even seen a person, human or shifter since that night - and I didn't want to.

My hair that had once been spoiled with salon treatments hung dry and feral around my waist. The ends were in ruins from where I had tried to hack at it with an old blade I found left at a campsite.

Thankfully spring was bringing warmer weather and I could wander as a human longer than in the winter, when the cold would snap at my skin and turn my toes red. The pack stopped by a river, a few deciding to chase the fish that teased them just under the surface while others wrestled in the grass or like me, lay in the sun. The tan I once had used to make Leanna jealous, and now even this early in the season it had already come back to me.

If she was here, I knew she'd still be jealous.

Thinking about her hurt more than thinking of home.

I wanted to hear her flea jokes and not for the first time, I wondered what would her wolf have been like? Having raced with the yearling pups earlier for no other reason than we could, would I have been faster than her? Would she have been lucky enough to find her mate young? Would he have loved her like they were supposed to?

I sat up as the familiar brown wolf came over to my side and I gently rubbed behind her ears, treating her like I did the others. To me they were each like a pet, while I lived amongst them, i was not one of them. It wouldn’t be long before the Alpha was due to have her pups and I knew where we were going the second they started to head north.

She returned to the same rocky outcrop every year to give birth them and I lazily opened my eyes to watch her for a moment. Her mate was never far from her side; despite her being the more dominant one he didn’t seem to mind. He would lick at her muzzle and always lay at her side, a companionship my own wolf envied.

I could feel her even now refusing to acknowledge the sight.

We talked about own mate every now and then, the darkness of his hair and eyes. How nice it had been to be held, his scent. The conversation that night was as burnt into our mind, absorbing as much detail from it as we could. My wolf blamed the gypsy, I blamed him. She thought he was a coward for not being able to kill us, and tried to convince me it was all human emotions that got in the way. It was his wolf that warned her of what was going to happen, and he alone that influenced his pack to leave rather than kill me completely.

The new information didn’t help ease my mind. He killed my family and ruined my life.  While the years allow wounds heal, it didn’t let you forget them.

Revenge played on our minds.

Despite the help from her mate, my wolf still saw them as weak and mates are not chosen on those kinds of traits. The wolves in front of us had proved to their pack they were fit to lead, they knew when to travel to lower lands in pursuit of food for the winter and when it would be safe to head to higher ground in the summer. In some ways they reminded me of my parents, firm but fair. If discipline was needed, they’d step up and they made we all pulled our own weight while making sure the young ones were able to grow into adulthood and the elderly were not left behind.