Fang

Chapter 1 - Star

The silvery female alpha pricked her ears. She sniffed the air, gritting her teeth. There was another wolf about. She turned to her two, four-month-old pups. They were a light and dark grey huddle, looking up and her with wide, blue eyes.

"What was that, mama?" asked the lighter one, twitching her own ears and staring at her mother with baby blue eyes.

"Stay here," the mother whispered, crawling outside the den. She sniffed the air intently, baring her teeth and prowling out in search of the foreign wolf. No-one was messing with her babies, even if it gave off such little scent.

She tracked it into a bush, which she pulled back sharply, snapping her jaws and growling. She went to attack the intruder, but then held herself back.

It was a pup.

The wolf pup backed away, falling clumsily down. It whimpered as it tried, but failed, to escape her presence.

The mother wolf lowered her paw and closed her mouth, trying to seem less intimidating. A large, black wolf came up behind her.

"Sylvia," it whispered in a gruff, male voice, "What's the matter?"

Surprised, she turned quickly around, then breathed a sigh of relief.

"Adolph," she breathed, "It's a pup." She turned back to the terrified animal, "It's okay, I won't hurt you. Where are your parents?"

The pup just whimpered and shook its head, stumbling ever backwards. Sylvia sighed and took the baby gently in her jaws, and carried it out into the moonlight. There, she was able to see it more clearly.

The pup was very small, perhaps only about eight weeks old. It was a sandy colour, with hazel eyes and a slightly darker brown marking on its forehead.

"It looks like a little star," Adolph mentioned, following Sylvia.

The pup winced, then cried out, "Sta - staw- stawwr!"

The black wolf gasped, and the silver one raised where her eyebrows would have been. The pup shivered and tried to huddle into itself, whimpering again.

"It's cold out," Sylvia tried to whisper out of the corner of her mouth.

Adolph nodded, "take him inside, we can adopt him. He could be an addition to the pack."

"I'll call him Star," the female sighed, then carried the pup into the den to introduce him to her other pups.