Lone Wolf Lovers

Chapter 6, (Outcast) Canis:

As Canis ran relentlessly through the brush and over the few hills that lined the forest, guilt and worry tore into her lungs and she collapsed onto the ground, breathing heavily. Her grey pelt muddled with the pine needles strayed across the damp forest floor.

Her mind was a hurricane of, What have I done? I didn't mean for any of this to happen, not with Tuka, not with Lupus.

It's all just too fast. It won't work.

She had a deep, gut feeling in her heart that was urging her to love Lupus. It implored her, Canis, Canis, Canis...Go to him.

...You love him.

But that was only her heart speaking, not her mind, which ordered her to do the opposite. Canis, Canis, Canis. You know you love him...But you wouldn't break the law of the wolf.

Never...

Apparently, Canis was a wolf who listened to her heart instead of her mind. She was foolish to trust it, Look what has become of trusting myself! I've lost my friend, my dignity, my loyalty...

But not my love...

Looking breathlessly back on it, it just didn't fit into place like she thought it would a few days earlier. The thought of going to see Lupus at Dusk hung in her soul like a graceful leaf, hanging from the top of a tree. But now she finally realized that winter was coming, and that leaf would have to reluctantly fall down to the ground someday soon.

And with a gaping hole in her chest, Canis decided that day should be tomorrow.

I'll tell him that it won't work out. I'll fix this whole mess.

I'll gain back everything that I lost from the moment I laid eyes on him.

She groaned with pain and exhaustion, mentally and physically. She strained slowly to her feet and started hesitantly making her way to GreyPack's camp, where she was going to tell Lykaios who she was seeing and plead for mercy.

Canis wasn't the pleading type, but she'd do anything to make this better.

She entered the camp's thorn walls, and as she did, all attention turned to her. Every wolf scowled upon Canis as if she was a fleck of rotted meat in your meal, in which you had to throw away, because what good would it do to your hunger?

She hated that look of disapproval, and it wasn't a look that she got often, either. What's going on? Why do they scowl at my attendance?

Then she noticed, at the center of the pack stood Lykaios, darkly staring from atop the boulder where he sat at Tuka, her foul gaze pinned on Canis.

"There she is," she snarled at Lykaios, not looking away from her friend, "She's the dreaded little traitor!" A murderous look spilled across Tuka's face like blood spilling from a wound. Her brown eyes were slits, and her ears were pulled back, almost pressing against her neck fur, which was sprung up in hostility. She must've already told him about Lupus...in her version of it.

I can't stop her now.

There was a moment of silence, and in it, the watching GreyPack wolves were dead quiet; the Guardians, the mothers and their pups, the Trainers and Trainees, their eyes quickly regarding each friend carefully. Maybe deciding which one was friend or foe.

Lykaios barked to Canis and Tuka, "That's enough, now." Canis was still in shocked sadness at her friend's ferocity towards her. Almost as if she hated her...

No, not Tuka. The sweet, gentle friend who would never think of hurting her, was this what she becomes, due to Canis's actions? It can't be fair, it can't be real. Canis gave her a sympathetic look, but Tuka threw back at her friend a low growl of deep hatred, before turning her head to the Alpha.

Lykaios's gaze swept over his audience like a tsunami of wisdom, but also distant strength. It hushed everyone up, especially the two Grey wolves, standing in the center of camp, awaiting to be possibly exiled. Hopefully NOT exiled.

What's going to happen to me? I can't compete with what Tuka must've told him. I'll definitely be cast out...

With a heavy heart, she started to lose hope for her future in GreyPack. She started to worry, and worry, and worry as Lykaios once again shushed GreyPack with a persuasive flick of his tail. "I have been alerted of a traitor lurking around in GreyPack." He sighed in depression, as if these words were not his own, "So I am being forced to exile Canis from GreyPack."

There was a moment of horrifying silence. Canis felt as if her entire world had just been shoved off a steep cliff by Tuka, and her title, her family, her loyalties, her entire life, thrown away. The downhearted Alpha struck yet another disapproving look at her that said all to clearly, I thought you were better than that, and, If only you were just as loyal as Tuka, here.

She couldn't move, couldn't speak, couldn't do anything but slightly nod in his direction. A giant brick was thrown upon her soul, pinning it to the ground, leaving it there to rot away.

She was so disappointed in herself. She wanted to run, to run away from all of this, to start a new life somewhere far, far, far away.

But as she was dragged out by the scruff of her neck by the sympathetic grips of Fellan and Sigiura, something clicked in her mind.

I made a choice.

My heart did...

...And now I have to stick to it, with Lupus by my side.

He's the only one who I can love and who I will love will all my heart,

...because without his fierce love for me, there's nobody else.

I'm a Lone wolf now.