The Hunted

The smell of smoke wasn’t something that Xander would likely ever forget for a long time to come.

The way that it clung to his nostrils, the way that it scratched his throat and made it difficult to breathe.

The rain pattered against the sizzling remains of the pack-houses, nothing more than charred rubble that had been reduced to nothing in just a short few hours. It was horrifying to look at, and even more horrifying to think about.

All of his pack-mates, the little ones, the elders, his...

His parents.

They were all gone.

Xander crouched lower, his muzzle meshing against the undergrowth and his belly fur was flush against the damp soggy ground caking him in mud. His breathing was labored as he hid within the shrubbery as more of the hunters ran by, he could see them and the tromping of their heavy black steel toe boots sloshing in the mud, breaking fallen foliage loudly in front of his hiding place. And even so, as the whiskers of his muzzle were not even a inch away from them, as his heart raced in his chest thumping so very loudly... He held his breath not daring to make a single sound or move.

A set of heavily armored feet stomped particularly close to his hiding spot, causing him to flinch before he could even think to stop it.

His ears pressed flat against his skull, disturbing the underbrush where he was hiding. From where he was crouched the only thing he could really make out from the figure next to him was a jagged hunting knife strapped to his waist, a pistol with a wrapped handle, and rough weathered hands that had a series of long scars over his knuckles. There was dried blood under the nails of that hunter, and he watched as the man scraped it out with his pocket knife. As if that life-blood hadn’t just belonged to innocent wolves that had been senselessly slaughtered and cut down.

Xander wanted to weep and howl, to bury himself in the mud and let it suffocate him.

“Find the bastard wolf and kill him!” The hunter must have been in charge swore loudly, as he called out in a gruff icy tone that told him the man was rapidly running out of patience.

Xander nervously gulped as fearful nervous tremors wracked his darkly furred body, he didn’t know who the man giving orders was. And he most definitely didn’t want to meet up with him any time soon if the rushing footsteps of the other hunters was anything to go by.

It felt like hours waiting for them to leave the area, his paws felt glued to the spot as the combination of smoke, mud and rain cemented him into place. The slightest sliver of the moon hung in the sky as he moved, still crouched down in his wolf form. The smooth gray fur that had usually glistened under any kind of light now looked mottled and black as the rain came down in buckets.

His home...

It was gone.

Torn apart by others as if it had never even mattered let alone existed to begin with.

And for what?

Because they were different? Because they had something that those wolf-less assholes didn’t?

Because they were better than them?

What reason was there to destroy his home? His pack? Every single little one that hadn’t even gotten their wolf yet?

As far as he could tell... there wasn’t one.

Pointless, that was what their deaths had been.

Pointless.

Xander’s deep blue eyes glowed ominously with the darkening of the sky. Not waiting one more second for some straggling hunter to just come in and just kill him he took off fleeing from the clearing. But not before he closed his eyes, cementing the image of the ruined remains of the pack-houses and the smell of singed fur into his memory. In a sadistic way he never wanted to forget this.

He couldn’t linger for long though, and so he turned tail and ran.

Leaving the life that he had so utterly cherished behind.

“I don’t have long,” Xander thought to himself as his lithe form raced through the forest despite the deep gash on his flank that had dried, no longer bleeding out heavily. The pain hardly mattered, not when the alternative was death.“I need to get what I need and leave, before they find my place and...”

The sour taste in his mouth felt akin to vomit.

He was a blur in the thickly wooded area not once stopping or slowing down until he had reached the edge of the forest that branched off onto an apartment complex that his parents had specifically rented for him to go to school.

He had asked for such a place for his sixteenth birthday even if his family didn’t understand it. To have privacy, to learn more about himself without being a part of the pack, and to just... have some space.

Those thoughts curdled like spoiled milk.

He had wanted space away from them, his pack. But now... now he’d never get to see them again. How was he supposed to deal with that kind of guilt?

Transforming back into his human form, naked as the day that he was born Xander made his way to his apartment window.

Sliding it open, he silently slipped inside. He didn’t have time to imagine the things that he would miss from here, the only thing that he could be concerned about now was making sure that those hunters wouldn’t find him.

He was the last remaining wolf of his pack, and as such he would live and he would thrive just as his parents would want him to.

Grabbing a backpack, he scurried around his apartment making sure to keep all the lights off so that if his apartment was being watched from the outside they wouldn’t know he was home yet. They would eventually know that he’d skipped town, but by then he could only pray that he was hundreds of miles away by then. He’d never given much thought as to where he would go outside of the little town his pack had been from, as far as he had been aware, he would live and die here just like his ancestors. But now...

Well, dying wasn’t really an option right now.

Stuffing his bag full of clothes that would keep him plenty warm, and all the cash that he’d had laying around, and whatever canned goods wouldn’t weigh him down too much. Xander went to leave the apartment but something caught the corner of his eye, looking over he teared up.

It was a family photo of his mother, his father, and him from one of the wolf-coming celebrations of one of the little ones that was now cold and dead out there. It was still in the same crappy finger painted picture frame that it had always been in, a gift.

His breathing shuttered hoarsely, and his vision watered.

Reaching over gingerly, he pulled the picture from the frame and stared at it.

His mother’s jaw length golden hair that had streaks of gray framed her smooth tan face and brought out her deep blue eyes that had been crinkled in a smile, brought on by his father. Her brightness was the opposite of his father’s dark pepper gray hair that was combed back in a business-like manner letting everyone see his holly green eyes.

Then there was him...

Xander.

He was often told that he didn’t have much of his father in him, just the angular arch of his dad’s nose to prove that they were truly related. He had begun to dye his hair to look more like his dad’s, but practically everyone in the pack knew that it wasn’t his original hair color. His father told him it was never a bad thing to look more like his mom, he had always joked that it was a miracle that Xander hadn’t inherited his ugly mug of a face even if his mom said otherwise.

However, his eyes... eyes that would be the only thing that remained to remind him of his mother from now on, he had nothing from his dad.

Now that they were...

The word dead hung in his mind like a noose, it hurt him to even think of it.

Xander huffed softly and rubbed his sleeve over his watery eyes wiping away the tears that were attempting to form. “I will miss you two so much..” He whispered softly to the photo before he slipped it into his bag. He would always no matter where he went, take this with him.

It would be his reminder of what once was.

Xander shook his head attempting to dispel the thoughts and memories of his parents, he would always remember it. The feeling of hands pushing and shoving him out, the noise of glass breaking and the sounds of the agony filled screams of the people he held most dear telling him to run far far away, and to never look back.

He swallowed at the memory of what had happened just hours ago, it bubbled up like acid despite his efforts. He shook his head more firmly, as if that would chase away the memories.

“No.” He choked out, swallowing down the bile that wanted to rise with every passing second. “Now is not the time for this. Later...” Xander forcibly told himself , burying that bubbling agony of tears and horror. Before slinging his bag over his shoulder and leaving his apartment in the cover of darkness for the last time.

Heading out to someplace he didn’t even know, with only his instincts guiding him to someplace new.