1. Hide and Seek
The noise in the pup’s playground was almost deafening as the little wolves played and tumbled around in the spring air.
“Round up little ones,” Gamma Allan called out as he came to stand in the middle of the small circular clearing. Everyone surrounded him for instructions regarding the day’s training.
Among the children was the eldest son of Alpha Eric and heir to the Alpha title, Lyle. He stood a little off to the side, separate from the others, with a few teenage children of the pack's high rankers. Today was his last day of training with the kids because tomorrow, he would turn fourteen and be old enough to train with the grown-up warriors.
Lyle eagerly scanned the little faces, looking for that brown mop of hair, until he finally caught sight of the little girl who always looked like she was smiling.
Chloe.
The tiny ten-year-old Omega, who first shifted just a month ago, had quickly become the bane of Lyle's life.
“So, I see we have some newly shifted young ones amongst us today,” Gamma Allan bellowed as the excited children fidgeted and bounced on the balls of their feet, “for them, I’m going to go through the rules of the game.”
Chloe stood there calmly, her lips resting in that perpetual smile-like position, with the corners of her mouth tucked in slightly.
“Today’s exercise is ‘hide and seek’. This is very important because if we are under attack and you are away from your parents’ protection, you have to hide. You smell mostly of earth and faintly of your parents till you mature, so it is easier to hide than run away. Your personal scent will not be strong till you are mature, but you must know it well, for it might save your life,” he explained to the new kids as the older ones irritably waited for the game to start.
Lyle watched Chloe as she grinned with anticipation. That cute little female was the best at hiding, and he had been the best seeker… until Chloe had shifted. Because he had never been able to find her.
“As usual, the older ones will be seeking,” Allan pointed to Lyle’s age group and then turned to the other side, “and all you younger ones will be hiding, preferably as well as Chloe does,” he smiled down at the little girl who was beaming with pride.
Lyle, on the other hand, groaned inwardly. Allan always praised her for evading him, which grated on his nerves.
“And hopefully, our future Alpha can do better than last time,” the amused-looking Gamma turned to look at Lyle.
The young alpha heir was getting impatient as he was dying to prove himself to Allan. He had always found every single one of the pups, except Chloe, of course, and today was his last chance………..and Lyle knew he was going to win.
“The trick for you little ones is to find something in the forest that smells like you or smells so strong that your scent is masked. Then hide away from sight and in that spot.”
Lyle smiled to himself at that. Miraculously, he had managed to get a good whiff of Chloe’s scent when she bumped into him the day before while she was playing chase. She had a very mild, sweet yet peppery smell that was surprisingly pleasant. And he knew a place just beyond the cleared playground, where there were wildflowers that had a somewhat similar fragrance.
He knew her secret now, and he couldn’t wait to exploit it.
“On my first whistle, shift, hide, and you cannot change hiding spots. You will have fifteen minutes before I send out the seekers,” Gamma Allan announced.
Those fifteen minutes couldn’t come fast enough for Lyle as the first whistle sounded out. He couldn’t wait to show everyone that he was still the best. It was important to him to be better than those who would kneel for him one day. He needed to show them that he was deserving of their loyalty and service. That he was the best wolf of his generation. It was what mattered the most.
As the second whistle blew, Lyle felt his hackles stand up with excitement. His heart raced and his pupils constricted as his body shifted into his wolf form, and he ran straight to the spot with the wildflowers.
The spot wasn’t very far but was in a clearing where the sun’s rays hit the ground without being obstructed by buildings or trees. The plant itself was more like a wild grass, high enough to tickle his wolf belly and with spring upon them, there were small, mild-smelling, purple-blue flowers in bloom.
Sure enough, Lyle could smell the similarity in scent as he breathed it in while running in the grass. Yet, he couldn’t see Chloe anywhere. It was an open glade, exposed and bare, with not much to hide behind.
For a moment, his heart sank that she had tricked him again until he noticed a fallen tree.
Smiling to himself and getting giddy with excitement, he cautiously moved around it. Crouching down and keeping his steps soft, he parted the grass with his snout as he approached, prowling like the predator that he was. Then he slowly poked his wolf snout through the grass under the overhang made by the tree trunk.
And there, completely hidden in the tiny nook, Chloe’s little brown wolf was lying on her side. Oblivious to the seeker scouting her, her big, brown and innocent eyes were solely focused on the slow opening and closing of the wings of a little butterfly, sitting right at the tip of her nose.
But Lyle was so thrilled at finally catching Chloe that he got a massive adrenaline rush. He had sought her out. Finally!
He jumped on her with a growl to pin her down to let her know she was caught, and Chloe’s whole body jerked with the fright he gave her. To Lyle’s complete surprise, she let out a startled yelp and stared at him in absolute horror with her light brown wolf eyes. And then she kept staring. For reasons unknown to him, Lyle, too, was unable to look away.
As the two of them stilled, frozen in that moment, he found her to be… breathtaking.
It was the first time he had ever found another wolf beautiful, and he basked in the warmth of that alien feeling as he really looked at her.
She had the softest fur, which was two shades of brown with a sprinkling of gold on her face that made her look like she was glowing as the afternoon sun made the golden hair shimmer. Lyle was stunned and paralysed as he felt an unusually strong urge to nuzzle her.
He barely knew her, and that particularly intimate gesture was reserved only for family.
Or loved ones.
They simply stared at each other for a few moments till she whined and furrowed her wolf eyes to indicate her sadness. Lyle knew that if she were in her human form, she would have been crying. Guilt-ridden at being the cause of her sadness, he quickly let her up, and without another glance at him, she went running back to the pack housings.
By the time Lyle finished seeking and got back, the little girl was sobbing away as her oldest brother tried to console her. Seeing her so vulnerable and small in her brother’s arms was distressing to Lyle.
He ached to go to her. He wanted to apologise for whatever he had done to hurt her. To tell her it wasn’t intentional. But as he tried to approach her, Allan and the others surrounded Lyle to congratulate him on his great performance on his last day of training as a child.
Lyle should have been happy that he had proven his prowess. That he had made sure everyone knew he was the best. But he found it hard to celebrate that day.
For all he wanted to do instead was to go and comfort Chloe. Make her rest her lips in that smile she always had.
He wanted to tell her that he never ever wanted to be the one to take that smile away.
