His gaze drifted slowly to the snow-capped mountain top, then traced back down the valley to the clearing with the little red house. The wind ruffled his fur with a chilly bite. Snow lay thickly over the landscape like icing on a cake; his stomach rumbled, longing for something sweet. How long had it been since he’d eaten something he hadn’t hunted and killed himself?
Today he’d leave this place forever or choose to hang around until he was killed by either the spirit wolf’s alpha or Malik and his pack. The Pull remained subdued. The decision hung in the air like the fog, thick and heavy. He sighed.
Something rustled through the undergrowth, growing ever closer. His ears pricked up, and silence shortly dawned on the scene. He didn’t feel as though he was being surrounded again, merely watched. He set off in a trot, the footsteps followed. He paused, so did they.
“Hello?” Dakota called, his fur ruffled as his skin crawled. “Who’s there?” Something shifted its weight, snapping twigs and crackling leaves. Brown fur poked out from behind a great old oak tree. “Hey! Why are you following me?” Careful to keep his distance, Dakota circled around the tree, until the skinny brown wolf became visible.
Her muzzle, paws and tail were tipped with black, and her eyes were a plain hazel colour. She shrunk into the tree trunk, eyeing him with fear. He held his ground, though he felt just as uneasy as she looked.
“You’re not going to eat me, are you?” the brown wolf asked in a small voice.
Dakota was taken aback. “No. Why would I eat you?”
She leaned forward a bit, still tense. “’Cause you’re with Malik... aren’t you?”
“No, I’m not.”
“But you know him.”
“Yes, unfortunately.”
“I’m Vivian.” The wolf became suddenly animated, a spark firing into life in her eyes. She trotted toward him, now more relaxed, but full of energy. “Alexis’ best friend. I mean, Daine and Raven are her best friends too, but I’m, like, her BFF. We’ve been friends since preschool. You’re Dakota, right? Alexis totally has the hots for you. I mean, why else would she go looking for you? Unless she just wants you to help fight off the other pack,” Vivian mused. “In which case I hope you’re good at fighting, ‘cause there’s a lot of them. Do you like cheese?”
“Wait, wait, Alexis came looking for me?”
“Yeah, this morning, but Kammal caught her. My friend, Shayne, eats a lot of cheese, he has bad breath. Speaking of smelling revolting, you really need a shower.”
“Uh, yeah. Thanks for noticing.”
“No probs.”
“Get away from her!”
Dakota started at the yell, looking up the leaf-strewn mountainside. A short black wolf stood upon a flat, grey boulder, ears flat and tail twitching. There was fury in her grey eyes; Dakota could not help but cringe at her icy gaze. His own eyes were wide with shock and hazed with confusion. Vivian had approached him, not the other way around.
Vivian spoke before he could decide how to react. “WTF, Rave, he’s a good guy, like Alexis said. See, this is Raven. Alexis says she has major issues with trust, but she said it’s understandable because of her childhood. Me and Alexis and Daine are the only people she trusts in the whole wide world. And she trusts Kammal and Jasmine and Shayne but, like, she can’t tell them anything. She can tell us anything.”
“I can’t tell you anything,” Raven spat. Her accent was stronger than Vivi’s or Alexis’, and distinctly Australian, Dakota thought. Though her words were harsh, Vivi’s vibrant mood didn’t miss a beat. “You’d go blab your big mouth about it.”
“No I wouldn’t. I’m good at keeping secrets. Like, I haven’t told anyone about that time you-”
“Shut up, Vivi.”
“Ok,” Vivi said brightly. “Dakota’s really cool. We’re, like, already tight.”
Raven rolled her eyes. “Kammal said we have to stick in pairs.”
“I am in a pair... me and Dakota.” She stepped closer to Dakota, so close he could feel her fur brush his, and smell her fruity shampoo.
He almost laughed, a wolf smelling of shampoo seemed quite odd to him. Dakota swayed, trying to contain his wolfy grin. He felt light-headed, giddy. After so long of being alone all this attention felt good.
“He’s not one of us, but,” Raven sounded exasperated.
“But he can be, just for a little while. Alexis wants him to stay with us, ‘cause she said he’s got nowhere else to go. We could take him in and give him a shower and clothes and-”
“He’s not a lost puppy, he’s a filthy runaway. If he wanted a place to stay he’d go back to his family.”
“I can’t,” Dakota found his voice at last.
The two girls looked at him, as though they’d forgotten he was there. “Why not?”
Dakota shuffled uneasily, ashamed of himself, of what he was. He thought back to the priest he killed, watching the life drain from his face over and over. He replayed the girl he saw in the street, whom he’d wanted to kill too. Her screamed echoed in his mind, followed by the sound of her groceries hitting the ground and the tins rolling onto the bitumen road.
“I’m dangerous.” I’m a monster.
Vivi cracked up laughing, and Raven shortly followed.
“You, dangerous?” Raven huffed between laughs. “Yeah, right. And dingoes ate my baby.”
Vivi turned to her. “Hey, that actually happened.”
“No it didn’t! One of the brothers probably got jealous and killed the baby, then the mother didn’t want her son going to jail so she covered it up for him.”
“That doesn’t even make sense!” Vivi yelled.
“Sure it does!” Raven retorted, her voice always topping the other girl’s.
“Dingoes took the baby! They didn’t find the body because it was in the dingoes’ stomach!”
“Go ask Alexis,” Raven said indignantly. “She’ll say the same thing as me.”
“Lexxiee isn’t always right!”
“You know, one of these days, I’m gonna dump a baby near Uluru and see if any dingoes take it.”
Vivi gasped. “That’s horrible!”
“It’s not ‘cause the dingoes won’t take it!”
Dakota cleared his throat, and the girls’ glare snapped to him. “Uhmm...” he shuffled back awkwardly. “Do you know where Alexis is? Could she come here, do you think?”
“No,” they replied in unison.
“She’s grounded,” Vivi explained.
“Grounded?” Dakota echoed in surprise.
“No, Kammal’s just making her stay inside...”
“Malik wants her dead.” Though Vivi said it in the friendly, overly-excited tone that never seemed to fade, it didn’t lessen the blow of her words.
“What?” he said in alarm. “Why her? Why?”
“Whoa, calm down spastic,” Raven said. “We ain’t tellin’ you why, ‘cause you ain’t one of us. Now, get!”
“’Get’ means leave,” Vivi clarified. “It’s Australian.”
Still horrified at the thought of Malik hurting Alexis, and conflicted by the girl’s command to leave and the urge to stay and find out more, Dakota took a step right and a step back, then turned his tail and walked away.
The question still remained; leave or stay. However, with the new information that Alexis had been looking for him, for him, he felt compelled to stay, and find out more about what was going on here, and keep Alexis safe.
With a jolt, Dakota suddenly realised he’d come a lot farther than expected. Through the trees ahead, he could see the red of the cottage he’d seen from the mountain top. It was only two hundred meters away. The musk of multiple other wolves hung thickly about the worn down track he found himself on. The grass of the clearing ahead was alight with brilliant sunshine – so much brighter than what the trees allowed through to him. He wanted to feel it, taste it, live it.
He took a step closer.
He could hear voices, happy cheerful voices talking and humming, and muffled thumping music, pulsing like the heart of it all. A breeze blew through the trees to him, he could smell a freshly mown lawn, he could hear snow being shovelled. He wanted to see it all. He wanted to be it all.
His paws took him forward six more steps.
A laugh; that was all it took to make him run the rest of the way. It was her laugh, he was sure of it. The undertones and accent were the same. Alexis was laughing, and he wanted to see the smile on her human face.
He emerged in the meadow and paused in the shadows of the trees, searching for her. Would he recognise her?
Sitting on a bench swing on the veranda was a skinny boy wearing Nike running shorts and a blue t-shirt that was several sizes too big. His dusty blonde hair poked out from underneath his new era cap, and beneath his flattened fringe Dakota only just saw the boys pale eyebrows raise at the sight of him. His long, girlish eyelashes fluttered, then he sprung nimbly to his bare feet and retreated into the cottage.
But where were the rest of them? The humming and chatter had stopped, all the remained was the suddenly eerie sound of distance music. A shovel lay abandoned on a slab of concrete in front of a large barn a little way away from the cottage. A dirt driveway led up to it, and through the wide open door a sleek black sports car was visible.
The sound of a riffle being cocked brought his head snapping back to the cottage doorway. Staring down the double barrel of a riffle pointed directly at Dakota was a man, nothing but a pair of low-hanging running shorts preventing his whole body from being on display. His auburn hair was a tangled mess; somehow the colour seemed out of place with his russet skin. Dakota felt all the muscles in his body seize up. The scene was frozen, nothing moved, no one made a sound.
Then, a shadow flitted behind the man, and he stumbled forward, the gun lowering. Dakota seized the moment and darted away back through the forest.
“Christ Alexis, that is the stupidest damn thing you’ve ever done!” the yelling echoed after him. “What the hell were you thinking, pushing me while I’m holding a loaded gun?”
If Alexis replied, she didn’t yell; Dakota could not hear her, and soon he was too distant to hear the man either. A sadness weighed in his heart, and all hope he’d felt that morning was eliminated. It was clear to him that the males of Alexis’ pack wouldn’t let him anywhere near her.
Then, another spark of hope, just turn him around again that day.
Someone was chasing him through the forest. He stopped and look back to see a small light grey wolf catching up with him.
“Hey, dude,” the wolf panted.
“Um, hello?”
“You’re the one who spoke to Alexis, aye?”
“Yes, you’re in her pack?”
“Yeah, I’m her li’l bro. She wants to meet up with you.”
“Really? Wow. When?”
“Tonight. There’s an old lookout tower on a hill to the south-west. If you want to help us, meet her there, in human form. Some clothes will be waiting for you at the bottom of the ladder.”
“Ok,” Dakota could barely contain his excitement. “Sounds great.”
“Bye.”
“Good bye.”
Dakota’s wagging tail slowed as he watched the young wolf go, feeling alone, then as he thought again about the meeting, it sped right up again.
How had he even considered leaving?
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