🐾 WILCHELM

He's never been very good at being the standoffish loner-wolf or the big brutish pack-warrior that he was intended to be. Maybe it's the dog blood in him, the fact of nature that his mother, betrothed to Urgrim, some ferocious warlord, one of many mates, encountered a stray golden-furred mutt during her travels. In a world of grey, that goldenfurred fellow brought Yzera great comfort. They parted with love in their mouths and hearts and when Urgrim smelled the dog on Yzera, he believed the lie – death and chaos, as was the pack way. 

But the golden-furred boy, the only one to survive a hard and too-long birth, was proof of something else. Urgrim knew it. But he could not prove it. His pack, thirty-five strong and bloodhungry, would dethrone him in an instant. 

So, instead of discarding the boy, Urgrim took his son under his claw. Before the pack, he named Wilchelm his successor. 

His training was brutal, painful. He caught Wilchelm painting and beat the lad until he gave up story and song; there was a way for a wolf to behave, and that wasn't it, traipsing in flowers and thinking of love. 

The boy tried his best, though; a poet, an artist, he learned to hide his truth beneath what his father wanted to see – until he had to no longer, for a stampeding herd took his father's life and Wilchelm ran rather than take a throne he did not want. Politics and backbiting were beyond him. He'd much rather find somewhere to settle and watch the sun. 

And he did find that place, too. He found it in the mountains. And then the mountainspack found him. A woman with half a face. An old wolf with hatred on his face. 

What're you doing here, growled a she-wolf bigger than any Wilchelm had ever seen, and Wilchelm just smiled at all of them, because he felt something in his chest that told him this place was right– 

Looking for you, he said, and his eyes lingered on the older male who burned full of ichorous hate. Looking for you.