The Loyal Alone

Chapter Two

She lowered her head, still looking at me, but with her nose nearly touching the floor. Her eyes try to glance back behind her, she turns her head slightly, but I'm commanding her attention. She steps back. And steps back again till she is at the edge of the open cabin before turning and jumping. She trots back a few steps and then stops and continues to stare. She lays down, rubbing her belly on the cold ground and then pops up and trots around the truck.

I knew she was just checking me out, but I was uncomfortable that someone else knew I existed, to say the least. My mind traveled to the pack of guns under my father's cot, as I saw her walk towards to the front of the truck, and back around. I hopped through the window just as she was coming to the back again. I didn't have time to reach for a gun.

She came back around to the end of the truck, a few feet further away and looked back at me. I didn't move for a while, trapped between flight and, well, flight.

Don't fight.

Curiosity and fear, these two things were hand in hand with what I was experiencing, and I was unsure of what to do next. I moved forward, ignoring the pulsing need I felt to shift and dominate the situation. Instead, I hitched up the bottom half of the cabin door and latched in back up into the truck bed, and then lowered the top half and locked it closed. I don't know why my father had kept it open, but I figured he'd be back soon. I was an idiot to go back to sleep when there was no one else here to stand guard. I should have closed the latch, perhaps this other wolf wouldn't have caught my sent.

The bolt lock clicked into place loudly, so much so that if I wasn't already looking out of the window I might have missed my father barreling into this female wolf in the snow.

They tussled a bit, my father seeming hesitant at first, but the female was far less courteous, far more feral. She pushed him off her with a sort of desperate kick from her hind legs to his stomach, and while flipping him she grabbed his under scruff at his neck and twisted him down, biting hard at his neck.

She wasn't on top for long, my father nudging her off of him and positioning his stance as she took off towards the trees. He shook the snow off his fur and glanced back at the truck. His eyes glowing and wide, making eye contact with me before taking off towards this other werewolf and disappearing into the tree line.

"Shit!" I scream, stopping for a moment to cover my mouth, forgetting my father wasn't here to correct me.

Quickly, I open the bottom hatch of the truck and roll out of it landing on my knees. I breathe in through my teeth, the snow is cold as I place my hands on the ground to help push me up. I felt stupid and my face flushed red as I ran forward and into the trees where my father went. Running, this is what I was trained for. I stopped where I saw him enter and smelled the air, fresh with pine and icy, but I could smell him easily, and the female too. I run forward again, huffing through my nose as much as I can as I run to make sure I am still on the scent.

The air is cold, and it hurts my lungs. I also don't run as much as I used to when we were stationary and had a home. Dad would train me every day, running was something I was good at, but I didn't have track shoes, or a father yelling at me to push it. When we had to move, we kept moving, always trying to stay away from others; I don't know who, at this point, it could be anybody. It's been a month or so since I'd ran- like really ran; and well, it showed. Use it or lose it came to my mind.

Granted, I was probably still faster than most women my age-

I stop, there are three trails, one is my father's, the other two are the female's. It could be the trail she came in on and it verged with the current path she is running. I pause and listen, I couldn't hear anything, I'd already fallen behind too much and lost them. Whatever it is, my father is the important one. I stopped for only a moment and kept running forward... but the trails, they were everywhere, it took me a second to realize I was in the middle of a fox trot. A scent trail that folds in and winds around its self in order to disorientate the follower.