CH.25
Around midnight a lone figure pads to the entrance of the den, making sure to be very quiet. He is very worried for this new pack of his. He must try to protect them. As he begins to leave the den, he is unaware of another figure waking up behind him.
The figure watches as Garry leaves the den, unaware of his intentions. As soon as the figure cannot see him anymore, she follows. Not a thought has crossed her mind this day but to protect her pack...... and to her, the pack did not yet include Garry.
She padded after him, making sure to be very quiet. He wouldn't have heard her through all of his thoughts, but she didn't know that. It wasn't too hard to keep an eye on him.
Garry sniffed the air around him. The stench of rabbit hung in the forest. He followed it to a small bush, and there, he found two plump rabbits. They were already dead. Something had hunted them earlier, an had left them to pick up later.
She sniffed the air, too. Garry had failed to pick out the stale scent of a wolf. These rabbits were the prey items of a wolf. His mistake had better not cost her pack!
Garry picked the rabbits up from the ground. They were stiff and heavy with death, but he could manage that. They hung from their necks out of his mouth. His eyes landed on the her as soon as he turned around.
There was no mistaking the smile in his eyes. As soon as he had seen that it was her, he spoke a greeting in her head. Oh, how she hated that! When Lena's father did it, it was alright....but Garry? No....
"Do you mind helping me carry these, Dancer?" He asked. She hated it so much when Garry spoke in her head. The fact that she couldn't block the thoughts of werewolves became a burden when he did this. As soon as he made a move to drop the rabbits, Dancer turned around and ran quickly and quietly back to the den.
Inside, no one had stirred. Slowly and gently, she lay back down on her bed of leaves, and began to sleep.
* * * * *
I awoke to the crackle and pop of a small fire just outside the entrance to the den. It scared me at first, because my mom and dad were not in my range of sight, and I thought it might be a forest fire. It turned out, though, that Garry had collected food while we were all sleeping...and started a fire.
I chuckled at this to myself. He must have changed back into human form to start the fire, right? That must have been awkward. I wondered if anyone had been unlucky enough to wake up and walk outside.
The rabbit tasted pretty good. I would have preferred it with steak sauce, but what can you do? There are no trees that grow A1 sauce in the temperate forests of America.... or anywhere else for that matter... Trust me, I would be a tree eater if they did.
I ate one of the hind legs of one of the rabbits. It wasn't much... but that's what I get for being the last one awake in the pack.
It was a quiet morning. My parents sat on the dew covered grass, speaking in silence... Amy was off training with her parents... Dancer was lying down behind my dad, asleep, and Garry looked at her a few times from where he lie under a pine.
I walked off a short distance. I could faintly hear the fire where I stopped, and everyone was fully out of sight. The faintest smell of wolf found its way to my nose. It slowly became stronger and stronger, and I found myself soon staring into the amber eyes of a proud beast.
It bared its teeth at me through the bushes. A face that would be beautiful otherwise was proving itself to be full of white, gnashing teeth. I growled. A low rumble dribbled from my throat, and my tail raised in threat and dominance. There was no doubt that I could beat this wolf with my eyes closed... If I had been trained for a month, it would've been a sure thing... But as a new wolf, I didn't have much faith or control over my abilities.
Just to mess with the poor wolf, and hopefully intimidate it, I began to change the color of my fur. It started off as a shade of Brown, and I turned it russet, then black, then let it fade into my original white color, and then finally into a sandy brown.
The wolf's tail lowered a tiny bit, but his ears showed peaked interest. I changed color again. It turns out, my fur still has small black and white spots to accent it that never change when I change color. I even began to try out markings. First I went back to white... Then I went to gray with white socks, and then reddish with a white tail tip, black socks, muzzle with white on the sides and cheeks, white underbelly, and dark ears.
The wolf began to growl at that look, so I turned a light gray with white on the face...black around the nose and mouth, and small accents of black in the ears and some other places.
I kind of enjoyed it. The wolf had seemed prettymuch disarmed after the third color change, and was now sitting down waiting for me to do more. I didn't. I bared my teeth and growled again, and that was enough to scare it off. It broke plenty of foliage as it went, and, after my display, I don't think I could blame it.
My parents and Garry, and Dancer came running as soon as the wolf had begun to break foliage. They had to make sure I was alright as soon as they figured out what had happened, and my parents made me change back to white while they made sure I had no wounds. They wouldn't take my word for it.
Finally, the inspection was over, and I was ordered not to leave camp alone anymore. Wonderful.