All Luka wanted was to see the lanterns, but something went horribly wrong. Maybe it was the mindset he headed there in, maybe it was the beautiful wolf he attempted to save and pissed off instead, either way, he ended up covered in bites, sad, lonely and in need of a hug it'll take weeks to get. Mates aren't supposed to reject one another are they, or has Luka been alone for so long he's forgotten the rules of their society, or maybe that was one he hadn't been taught before he'd exiled himself. Either way, it hurts and he's tired of hurting, but when he happens upon three pups in peril, he only hesitates a moment before jumping in, after all, he knows what loss feels like, and he'd never want another wolf to experience what he did the day he lost his family.
---HOWL DOWN THE MOON---
Breath
hissing out from between his teeth, Slade tried not to yelp at how cold the
other wolf’s skin was against his. Curling tightly to him, Slade hugged the
little wolf, running his hands rapidly up and down his back and arms. The
silent wolf wasn’t shivering, but Slade was, teeth chattering at the feel of
all that icy flesh.
“How the
hell did you end up in that water?” Slade murmured. “We must be the same breed
of idiot, to be out here in this storm. Are more of you going to wash up along
the river? You don’t carry another’s scent on you, but the water could have
washed it away. “
As he
talked, he listened for any sign of the wolf’s heart rate increasing, but it
remained steadily slow. Keeping up a stream of pointless conversation was easy;
he did it all the time when the silence of a solitary existence got to be too
much for him. He might as well have been silent now for how much of a response
he got from the other wolf, even as the day gave room to night. The back of
Slade’s body felt like a furnace between the heat of the fire that was filling
the space and the heavy blankets on top of them. Little beads of sweat were
forming in the space between his shoulders. But his body heat didn’t seem to be
translating well to the other wolf. Slade’s chest and belly stayed cold where
he was pressed to the other whose skin still lacked warmth, though not as icy
as it had been before, and his pulse remained slow.
A healthy
wolf would have been conscious by now, Slade reasoned. Which meant this one had
been sick before whatever misfortune befell him. Had this been his cabin, he’d
have been able to radio it in on the CB if cell phone reception was as
impossible as he figured it would be. Here, all he could do was hope that the
other wolf’s condition would improve by morning.
A sudden
shift in breathing gave Slade a moment of hope, but when no inhale followed a
raspy exhale, Slade gave the other wolf a gentle shake.
Nothing.
Pressing
two fingers to the wolf’s throat, Slade was shocked to discover that his pulse
had grown dangerously slow, and he still wasn’t breathing. Carefully rolling
the other wolf onto his back, Slade knelt beside him, trying to recall the
steps of rescue breathing.
Tipping
the other wolf’s head back, he listened again for breathing, but there was
none. Two breaths, the wolf’s chest rose with each of them, so there shouldn’t
be an obstruction, but when Slade listened and watched for it to rise on its own,
it didn’t, and while the pulse was still there, it was weaker. For the next few
minutes, he focused on giving those two breaths every six or seven seconds and
was rewarded, at last, when the other wolf started breathing on his own again.
Slade
doubted he, or the wolf in his arms, was going to be able to handle a repeat of
that. His nerves were frazzled and the rescued wolf was giving no signs at all
of pulling through this. Studying the pale face, Slade was certain he’d seen
him before. Those delicate features, high cheekbones, and full lips had been
radiant with color then and bronze from the sun. Younger too and frustrated.
Slade had
been tracking a moose, and the young wolf had been stalking through the reeds,
trying to sneak up on a goose. The great honking explosion of noise that
erupted from beside the river had sent crows scattering into the sky, their
caws screaming angry complaints as they’d flown away. That young wolf had come
scrambling out of the marshy flats beside the bank, fur sodden and muddy,
feathers swirling in the air around him as three geese beat him with their
wings, biting his ears and sides while angrily fussing at him.
The pup
had unintentionally brought his raging shitshow crashing through the very
thicket Slade had been camouflaged in, and the result was the loss of the moose
and an afternoon spent teaching the orphan wolf how to get eggs from the marsh
birds without putting himself in such peril the next time.
He’d been
about sixteen or seventeen. Angry one moment, near tears the next. Alone. He
never did get the story as to how, just that the wolf was starving, but refused to go to town
to ask for help.
Foolish,
maybe, but Slade had also understood the wolf’s refusal to beg, and from the
way he talked, town was full of well-meaning wolves whose kindness and
compassion were difficult for the youngster to feel that he deserved.
That
meeting had been on the other side of the river. As had the brief glimpse he’d
caught of the other wolf a year or two after, bathing himself in a pond quite a
way outside of town. He’d considered approaching. Asking if the hunting was
going better. If he’d finally been willing to allow the pack to help him. In
the end, he’d stayed hidden and skulked past, never letting him know he’d been
there. The coward’s way, maybe, but there had been moments in their first
meeting when he’d been tempted to offer the other wolf a home and continued
survival lessons, if only to break the monotony of his own long years alone.
Had he done so, perhaps the young wolf wouldn’t be lying there now, dangerously
close to death.
“I should
have known you’d never keep out of trouble. That would have been too easy,
wouldn’t it?”
Silence. But that pulse beneath his fingers was stronger, and Slade vowed, if the wolf pulled through, to do a better job this time of trying to convince him to stay.
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