Hellhounds

Purpose.

Everything is here to serve its purpose.

Purpose was precious. Sacred. Survival.

Every living thing has a precious piece, and that precious piece is the reason we are still existing. I counted my fingers. Ten, next. I counted my toes, wriggling each stubby appendage within their thick wool socks as I ran through the familiar mantra.

I heard it in their voices, more than my own.

I tapped each finger again. Ten.

Pretty blue eyes. My fingers drummed harder.

One. Two. Three. I heard their laughter chorus with the screams of their final moments. I shuddered and let myself sink into the earth. Everything was gone.

A purpose. I tried to scream but my mouth would not form words. My nails bit into the soft earth as I collapsed, desperate for something to hold onto. I’m wanted. Those words felt like a lie, bitter and rancid without ever touching my tongue. They wanted me for what I promised. They wanted my ruin. Blubbering sobs dissipated into the wet dirt, silencing me with all the care nature could manage.

My survival is essential. I crawled to the pile of stones, bowing my final farewell with my lips mashed to the stone. A practiced action. Bodies were piled around our family like trenches, a cruel manufacturing of our safety. The necessity of protection driving the count my father had begun years before my birth.

I stared at the pile of stones that marked where her body lay. A lonely feature, far from our homeland, far from the graves of my sisters and brothers.

She was never meant to be lonely. My heart ached with the weight of my own fate. Hand twitching for the ceremonial blade with a longing I hadn’t felt since my sisters were taken.

My precious piece is mine, I traced the blade over my breastbone. I am the only one responsible for its care. I notched the tip beneath my rib, needing to feel my steel against my skin to breathe. I could end it all. My breaths were deep, the edge of the blade biting through the coat to kiss my skin. Put an end to the curse that ran in my veins. I pushed, just deep enough to break the skin. I could let the hunt end. Let them win. I tapped each finger twice more, dropping the knife as I counted my extremities, the buttons on my coat, the gemstones missing from my jewelry.

I am here for a purpose. I never doubted Mama’s words. They were the source of my nightmares. I am wanted. I am essential.

The sob scraped my throat as it forced its way out into the open, cutting me open at the throat, carrying away what was left of my strength as the breeze stripped me of my reality.

“I love you, Mama.” I kissed the stones that covered her grave. “I’ll live for you, if you will it.” I found the strength within myself to rise to my knees, looking out across the dark waters with hope. I left the knife on the stones, a reminder of the life I would give for her.

The life I had already given, the purpose that was given to me.

It had felt lighter, when they were still here.

Pack provides safety.

Ours was torn apart.

My brothers were torn apart.

My sisters ravaged and displayed as war trophies before their lives ended. Short. Brutal. Miserable.

I clutched the pendant, remembering a time when I used to watch Mama do the same.

Every time we ran.

Every time we were at the mercy of her latest Alpha.

I never knew my father. Her mate had died in the hunt. The price paid for pretending he could protect a breeder and her litters with only his body.

I was born running through the forest.

Raised knowing there were prices on our heads; that the Alphas around us wanted the claim, and that they would spill blood to earn it.

Mama had always been strong. Adaptable. She never let her guard down, and she kept me beside her—the youngest, the runt, the only survivor of the bloody massacre that had once been our family. Paranoid, was what our human neighbors used to say when they witnessed her protective nature.

The memory was laughable, the cruelest joke of fate. No one calls you paranoid after the nightmares are revealed, after such a gruesome death. Ironic, how they only believe your story after the worst happens.

It was always the same. The violence, the loss, the blood forced into my legs to run away from the overbearing scent of doom. Carrying bodies until I collapsed and praying human eyes wouldn’t bear witness to the rites of a pack that had long been forced feral.

Only, now, I was the lone survivor. No one was left to guide me through the familiar process of escape.

Left to bear the sympathy of the masses. Neighbors that knew me as a fragment of myself. The only daughter of the hard working single mother, Julia Ulven. A fraction of the family that once sat around the kitchen table for dinner.

The youngest of five litters, I wasn’t meant to be alone so soon. Mama kept me safe, even if that meant mating with Alphas who cared more for brutality and the rush of the Hunt that came with claiming a Breeder than the care she required. Even when it meant owing favors to keep my suppressants supplied. She never let them touch me. She never let me forget who my father was.

Show your strength, Yulia, not your loss. I needed her courage. I struggled to form relationships with the humans, we each saw the other as the freak. I kept myself busy with school, and chores, losing myself in the mundane.

I learned to ignore the stench of blood soaked laundry. Screaming became background noise. Locks on doors became sacred objects of my prayers.

I didn’t need friends. I didn’t need more people to become targets.

I stood with a jolt, my muscles quivering as if they were having a panic attack of their own. My own skin was suffocating me.

Get out. I could already feel the air changing. The shift of the wind bringing with it the suffocating scents of the town we had last called home. I knew they would come for me. Killing Mama wasn’t enough. They would claim me for revenge. My stomach twisted as I pictured their snarling faces.

Get out! I whipped my head in both directions, desperate to find an exit. They’re closing in on you. I bit back the howl I yearned to let loose. A cry I would hold inside along with the rest.

Let me out! My wolf was panicking, the loss of our mother creating a hole she filled with primal instinct. Let me out! I was shaking, nearly jogging in place as my nails began to peel at my clothes. They felt like lead. Restraints. My scream shook the evergreens when the damn broke on my lips, contorted in agony as I cursed my own instincts for giving away my location.

Get it out. And I let my feral tongue fly.

I flooded the air of the forest with my pain, preaching to the Earth herself on the trials of my meager existence. I stood in the eye of the storm, a torrent of woe echoing around me in a vacuum.

The howls that responded, cut through my sorrow like a hot knife, bringing me back to my senses. Personal grievances held no weight in the eyes of nature. These cries knew nothing of my sorrow, only their own sense of conquest.

Get out!

I was running before I knew my legs could move. Tears blurred my vision, scrapes forming along my arms and legs from my reckless surge through the dense forest, the fresh snow covering the blood that trailed in my wake.

There was no escaping the Hunt. An escape would require a means to an end, and a direction to head. I had neither. This was panic. Fear of the unknown.

Just keep running.

A loathing for decision making that burned so hot in my own blood that I drove myself into a state where my brain didn’t have to make one. I was adaptable, I could learn to make a useful place for myself almost anywhere. I would leave the direction up to the Goddess.

I was made to run, and my instincts were all that remained of the traditions of a dead pack.

I couldn’t judge how far I’d run, only that the first had thinned and the dirt was slowly turning into rocks. The sun was slowly dipping beneath the tops of the tree line, the sound of rushing water nearby enough to slow my pace.

My instincts drew me towards the sound, rocky shores lining the clear stream away from the layers of falls visible upriver. It was still too cold for a swim, though snow no longer littered the ground beneath my boots, but the water still called me to its edge.

Mama always loved the water. I smiled, bending down to feel the surface with my fingertips. We had lived in a lot of places, and there wasn’t a single one without a special swimming spot.

Early morning spent packing up the van with enough supplies to feed an army.

Long winding drives with old punk music from Mama's golden days blasting through the open windows.

My older brothers teaching me to swim. My sisters and I collecting rocks to stack into the tallest towers. Afternoons filled with laughter and evenings warmed beside a fire that burned as bright as her hair.

Those days held some of my fondest memories.

The cool breeze left shivers on my skin, catching a faint whiff of smoke. I followed the river towards the source, until the smoke no longer carried in the wind and my nostrils were assaulted with the smell of spices and cooking meat.

My muscles all seemed to register the threat before my brain could process it.

Alphas. Too many of them.

I strained to hear the voices through the trees, the rushing water behind me camouflaging my own noise as well as theirs. I didn't want to get too close. I couldn't get too close. This was foreign territory, and I had no one to call for help.

But the river pulled me forward anyway.

Not because I wanted to risk it—no, every instinct screamed to turn back, to vanish into the shadows and keep running until my lungs gave out—but because something deeper, older, hummed beneath my skin. A whisper in the blood. The same one Mama used to pause for, eyes distant, listening to a voice only she could hear.

Trust the water, little moon. It remembers where we’ve been. And where we need to go.

I crept low, staying to the tree line, boots silent on moss and damp stone. The scent of spiced meat thickened in the air—venison, maybe, slow-roasting over open flame. Laughter followed, sharp and rich, punctuated by the clink of glass and the murmur of too many voices. Too comfortable. Too careless. Alphas didn’t live like this, not unless they were safe. Or unless they were the danger.

I crouched behind a fallen cedar, its bark silvered with age, and peered through the lattice of frost-bitten branches.

I glanced down at my clothes, sighing at my own sore sight. Was it a tragedy to look so strikingly like the picture of your own circumstance? I shook my head, clutching at the necklace once again in thought.

Fear will get you nowhere.

Pine needles crunched beneath the thick soles of my boots as I abandoned the riverside to seek out the source of the smells. The trees were ripe with fresh markings, the line of their camp made clear, yet discreet. The pine was sharper, a haze of pheromones relaxing the tension that strained my grieving body.

I inhaled deeply through my nose, focusing on the spread of scents as the breeze blew them towards me once more. A camp rife with the spicy musk of virile males, just as the mornings were beginning to warm and the urge to breed began to fall upon all living creatures.

I paused, the smell a silent war cry in the wind.

This was not a proper pack. The variation of scent was almost non-existent, rankings that bled from the soul in thick blankets of aura were hard for me to define. There were no females here. No young pups. No elderly. Their scent was one of strength, a hunting party. But from where? For whom? Why were they here?

I took a single step back, hesitant to cross the border separating their camp from the rest of the forest, and breathed in the tainted air of their border. The sky was familiar, I saw it in my dreams, it filled with smoke in the worst of my nightmares. This forest was filtering to Black Forest lands. The realization struck my chest light lightning. I ran home, and I could make it—the twinges in my muscles brought a stop to that line of thinking. I would not be able to outrun them, and who knew how strict they were about their borders?

One thing was certain; I wouldn't be able to run for much longer. The distance I covered in my grief had depleted the remnants of my lacking stamina. The ripe stench of Alpha permeating the path was making my head feel light.

I shuddered to think of the reaction my own scent could bring to a camp of males as the season crept closer. Humans and wolves alike, are animals. My own heats were cursed from the beginning. Mama worked hard to keep me on suppressants, but I’d left them at that dreadful townhouse. I would succumb to the heat soon enough. The control I could expect from myself within the border was unknown, much less that of the males.

Could I be a mate? A Chosen?

It was a long lost childhood fantasy- the kind that died when my father was killed and everyone stopped calling me princess. I shuddered, remembering when I wished for nothing more than a seemingly blissful life such as theirs.

Thoughts of them brought fresh tears to my eyes. I let them fall to the earth with my head craned back, pretending I was back beneath those same skies.

My mother died to protect me from one thing, and one thing only. She wanted me to find a mate; she loathed the idea of me becoming a pack breeder—as the new laws of the forest decreed. The damage of my own life had yet to be spun. My own body’s response to the purely masculine scent was hard to deny. I would not last alone, any hunters they had would smell me before I could cover enough ground to dissuade pursuit. I could confront the beasts, or run from them.

Fear gets you nowhere.

I took a step toward the line of scent.