Wolv

Sneak Peak

The two of us stepped into the shack after our compatriats, and I blinked my eyes in the dim light as my vision quickly adjusted.

The shack was nothing special--four walls and a roof. A sagging table stood in one corner, full of deep gouges and dark stains left by years of filleting knives and countless prized catches. The remains of a pike were strewn over the table, casting a thick odor across the room.

I looked around, mentally taking a measurement of our tiny room. The building was roughly a square, with about twenty feet to a side.

Hutch padded his way over to the table and grabbed the pike with his jaws, dragging it down onto the floor.

"Doesn't look like its that old." He sunk his canines down into the side of the fish and pulled off a chunk of flesh, chewing thoughtfully. The remaining three of us watched him with no small amount of disgust as he snapped the meat down, swallowing audibly. He caught us staring at him, and shrugged. "I'm sure it's fine."

We didn't need any more encouragement. I stepped forward and tore off my fill, chewing the cold flesh quickly and swallowing as fast as I could to avoid tasting anything. Any revulsion I'd felt was now overruled by my need to eat; as a wolf, I had a rather high metabolism to maintain, and like everyone else, I'd been falling pathetically short in recent weeks.

The tiny, red-brown wolf took her fill last, and the four of us curled up next to each other, yawning and licking our chops. With the sun now well below the horizon, the temperature was falling quickly, and it didn't take long before we were all pressing ourselves together as tightly as we could manage in an attempt to conserve body heat.

I growled under my breath as Hutch shifted next to me, kneeing me in the chest. Being the largest of us, he was in the center of our wolf-pile, as he generated the most heat.

Hutch was an Alpha--a large, powerful canine, adept at hunting and blessed with extreme endurance. In our old pack, he'd been the best tracker; since we'd fled that life, he'd been invaluable in providing for the four of us. He'd tried his best to teach us how to hunt, but we hadn't made it easier for him.

The remaining three of us were Omegas. In the pack, we'd been responsible for mainting territorial borders--we'd never done any big game hunting. We were far smaller than the Alphas, we were physically weaker than they, and while we could run faster than them, in a race between the two ranks, our lack of endurance would eventually halt us in our tracks.

But we weren't in the pack anymore. We were more than three hundred kilometers away, wandering the vast, largely uninhabited wasteland that was northern Manitoba. The landscape up here had thousands of lakes chiseled into it; great scars left behind by glaciers that had long since retreated down to nothingness. This was the land of the Canadian Shield, which meant that for the most part, the terrain was flat yet rocky, with precambrian rock being exposed all over the place. Coniferous trees were the dominant flora up here--they were built to survive the bitterly cold temperatures that winter brought each year.

The remains of our pack, back in Atikaki Provincial Wilderness, were probably doing much better than we were. While wounded and frightened, they had the den; it would always be there to shelter them, no matter the weather. The four of us were always on the move--we'd searched for a place to settle down, at least for the coming winter months, but it seemed that something was always there to shoo us away. One time, it had been a particularily brave bear, intent on chasing us out of a tiny cave. Another time, we'd picked a spot too close to a First Nations Reserve, and had ended up running to avoid being shot at by a group of local hunters. From coyotes to civilization, there was seemingly always some obstacle preventing us from settling down.

So we kept moving north. At some point--hopefully--civilization would finally draw a line on the ground and go no further from the equator, and we would have plenty of truly uninhabited land to dwell in.

That had been my reasoning, anyway. None of us were overly familiar with the communities in the northern reaches of the province, and while I'd learned a bit of the local language before I'd been bitten, I hadn't had the opportunity to enter into an immersion program in one of the northern reserves. I'd wanted to do that next year.

Being turned into a wolv changed those plans drastically--obviously! Then again, in my new form, I was able to travel and explore as much as my heart desired--within reason, of course.

I wiggled my body, creating a tiny space in which to stretch. I flexed out my forelegs, cracking the joints noisily, then set my head down between my paws.

"So, Nadie? How's that fish sitting with you?" I mumbled half-heartedly.

The wolv pressed into my side--Nadie--shot me a withering glare. "I'm doing my best to not think about what I just ate, thank you."

"Coulda had that doe if y'all had just flanked the way I told you to..." Hutch grumbled from the middle of the pile, earning himself a paw to the ribs from the Omega on his other side. "Ow! C'mon, Tara, I was just sayin!'"

Tara shook out her red fur, sending a tiny shower of grass into the air. Hutch squinted his eyes, then threw his head back and sneezed.

"I know," she growled. "Maybe you should remember that none of us are as fast as you! The bloody thing outran us long before we had a chance to flank anything!" She snapped out her words, and the tiny shack fell silent. She sighed dejectedly through her nose. "I'm sorry, Hutch. We're trying is all I'm saying."

Hutch nodded quietly, than curled up on his side in the midst of us, tucking himself into a ball. His head rested gently on his tail, and I knew that he didn't want to talk anymore.

We were all on edge, from weeks of failed hunts, and unsatisfying carrion meals. On top of that, with winter coming and the temperatures dropping, we had begun to shed our summer coats. When I'd looked earlier today, there was a thin layer of fur already beginning to replace my uninsulated summer fur, but overall, my coat looked patchy. Some places, especially on my chest, still had areas of long, summer fur that had thus far refused to fall out. It looked awful. Heck, it looked embarassing!!

I rolled over, pressing my back into Hutch's, and facing my stomach towards Nadie. She blinked sleepily at me, than shimmied her way closer to me. She intertwined her paws with mine and pressed her belly up against my own, whining softly. I licked her underneath her muzzle, earning a brief, yet content, sideways glance, before she shut her eyes.

I could feel her body heat warming my underbelly, from my chest down to my tail, as her skin pressed gently against mine; as my belly lay along hers. Her heartbeat thumped quietly in her chest, syncing up with mine as we both began passing out. I unconsciously lifted a paw out from between us, and draped it around her chest, silently hoping that she was warm enough.