Orion

Four. Circumambient

He'd been in wolf form for so long before Tobiah had offered him the car that Orion didn't even crave human food like normal.

Rabbit.

It had been on his mind for days, but he wouldn't shift; had no reason to shift now. Rabbit would have to wait.

Orion had been dead set on following his nose, but that damned rune on his wrist was talking to him- no, screaming at him- through the currents. And the damned thing was definitely stronger than his nose. He felt completely lost and confused by the fact that he didn't have to use his canine instincts for once to find something. Now, he was looking inside the waves of Chaos for his answer, and it seemed to be working.

Was this how the humans who had blind faith felt?

Orion didn't like it. The feeling bordered delusion. It put a sour taste in his mouth that he was violently hoping wouldn't last.

At the restaurant that he was sitting in as he waited for his to-go food to finish being prepared, Orion looked down at the bandage wrapped around his wrist. The damned rune bled through every time it was covered, but it had to be done for his own sake. Like a disobedient pup whose mother told him to leave a scrape that was scabbing over alone, Orion liked to pick at the damned thing.

The skin bordering the cut was not infected, it wasn't discolored, nothing. Perfectly healthy, and it had looked like that since the day he had woken up to the strange current flowing just below his skin. It didn't hurt. It smelled faintly of blood and the Moon.

When Orion moved in a certain direction, the current -which always moved counter clockwise around the island of flesh in center-flowed faster, and in other directions it would slow. The speed of the blood flow made him feel anxious.

Growing up, everyone told Orion how sweet he was, how caring, but somewhere along the line, those feelings had dwindled to naught. There was no sad, sentimental reasoning behind it. Just one day, it was gone. Somewhere along the line, empathy seemed to drain from his body like water did a full tub, and just as quickly as well, if not a more speedy reaction.

A long, long time ago, Orion found himself having trouble feeling anything that wasn't anger, or annoyance... even in the slightest.

It was said that anger was easier to feel than the feelings of buoyancy, and the young alpha could only agree. He couldn't remember the last time he was truly happy. He floated along like a dutiful, sometimes tyrannical cloud doing what needed to be done, behaving how situations called for, and making decisions other alphas had been afraid to make.

It was hard for Orion to believe in anything imperfect that he hadn't righted himself.

His pack for instance.

It was an apple rotted to the core by bad seeds. What was once a great, strong pack, had been corrupted by the chain of command. The Alpha couple, the Betas, the Thirds in Command were all corrupt, and Orion's own mother had been the cause of it all. From her, it trickled down until when he became of age, Orion felt he had to take matters into his own hands.

So he did.

And he killed his mother first to begin the process of restoring a pack that his parents were no longer fit to run.

Then his father.

Then his brother.

And then everyone else who held power. The second Orion had taken the trash out, and the pack saw and understood that he meant business, they all but whipped themselves into shape.