We left nothing, but our paw prints in the snow

Chapter 29

Chapter 29:

Summer was easy. By the end of it the cubs had been on their first hunt. I was very proud of them. Some of the wolves had left the pack, to go and start building their own. They'd wander the woods and beyond until they found their mate. My brother decided to stay another winter. He'd found his mate here, and wanted them to stay with the pack a bit longer, because his mate was younger than him. Then they'd leave come spring and have their first litter.

Pup had become strangely distant. I'd pushed her as far as her body would allow, and now she was at her physical prime, but I could tell, that despite the fact that she was happy, something was missing in her life, and I knew that it was something I couldn't give her. I had a feeling that she's leave soon, but that was only a hunch. I had to talk to her about it, but I thought I'd wait for her to come to me. I knew she would, soon.

I was still thinking about leaving the territory and bringing the pack somewhere else, away from the humans. Over the summer we hadn't had much trouble with them, because he hadn't been driven to relieve the humans of any of their sick sheep. But we had lost Bark and Daisy to some of the human's traps. I had to remember how Bark had loves scratching his nails of the bark of a tree, thus his name, Bark. And how Daisy would love to lie in a field of daisies, and whenever you smelt her, one could smell the daisies on her fur.

Each death had almost brought me to lead the pack away, but Mate had insisted that we stay until the cubs were stronger. And we had to wait for Pup to become ready too. She was tying us to this place. Now less because she couldn't do the journey physically, but because something in her soul tied her to this place, and until she released that bond, or left us, we too were bound to this place.

Pup, on occasion had asked us to leave without her, but she was part of the family, and we wouldn't leave her for anything. She could leave us. Everyone is free to leave us, but as alphas we are not allowed to leave anyone behind.

We had also come across more weird killings, but we'd learned and didn't approach them. We weren't that hungry yet.

As winter started to approach again, and frost decorated everything with it's crystal patern, I was starting to grow nervous. This was the hardest time of the year. Everything we could hunt left, or became scarse, because their food was also slowly disapearing to winter's icy clasp. Soon we'd be left with almost nothing to hunt, and we'd be forced to help the humans with their sheep again. I had to remember last winter, when my old pack had done that, and I had been driven away. In some ways, I was happy. It had led me to my pack and to Mate. In other ways, I wished I had had more time with my mother, to learn more about raising cubs.

Finally I was forced to take that route again, and Mate and I led the pack to the border of our and the humans territory. I sniffed the air, and smelt a mixture of metals, fires, meat, both alive and dead, and humans. There were sheep, cows, horses, cats and dogs, and a couple of other smaller things.

Luckily, this place was small. There'd been tales going around, traveling from pack to pack, about huge human settlings, where there were more humans than all the wolf packs put together. Those were places a wolf never wanted to go, because apparently, one would be killed on sight.

“Mate, should we really do this?” I bumped my shoulder against his, searching for reassurance. He gave it to me, and we prowled along the edge of our territory until we found a herd of sheep closish to our territory.

I could smell the anticipation of the pack, and the ignorance of the sheep. They had no idea we were here. I had checked to make sure we were upwind of them, so that they didn't catch our scent, but I now had the feeling that these sheep had gone stupid from being with humans. Even if they had smelt us, they wouldn't have know what we were.