Emory ♠️

The forest was dark and smelt of blood.

That's what Emori remembers most about that fateful night. He'd been able to smell the coopery tang of it long before he ever made it back to the Pack. At some point he'd dropped the small quail he'd been dragging back to feed his Mother and her newest batch of pups. He'd been able to smell her blood on the wind, and he knew instinctively that he'd need the quail no more.

By the time he made it back, legs trembling from a terrible, creeping awareness, he'd been far too late.

His newborn brothers and sisters, tossed carelessly around the small den. All had been lifeless. In another life he would have howled the Moon to fullness with them every night, he would have taught them how to hunt, he would have helped them find their place in the pack.

They'd lost their lives right along with his Pack.

His Mother and his Father and all of his elder brother and sisters. All of them had fallen under the strong, unwavering jaws of another Pack. It must have been a huge Pack, Emori knows, to have so completely demolished his own. It must have taken an incredibly vicious, remorseless Pack to slaughter pups, no less.

The Moon is as full now as it was that fateful night he stumbled back into his den, half-sick already with the scent of blood.

Emori doesn't know how it came to be so full, for he has sung no songs to it. His brothers and sisters and Mother and Father are no longer around to herald it's change.

But the Moon is full, regardless.

He's trudging lifelessly, mindlessly, through the brush, the Moon lighting his path. A path with no destination since Emori has nowhere to go.

A sudden rustling catches his attention and he freezes, ears pricking forward. He wonders, vaguely, if it's the Pack that slaughtered his own returned to him. Would it be a kindess or a calamity for them to end his life now?

But it's not a remorseless Pack of pup slaughterers that steps past the line of tall trees. It's a single wolf, her fur as black as his, colored with a smattering of white.

He watches her scent the air, her eyes catching the moonlight. "Lone wolf?" She asks.

He bears his neck to her in deference. "I am- I am alone," he allows.

She regards him. "Do you wish to be alone?"

"No," he says softly, trembling. But what choice does he have? His Pack is gone. His mother and his Father and all the pups.

She scents the air again. Maybe she can smell the stench of blood clinging to him. "I am Maela," she says.

"Emori," he tells her. The name his Mother gave to him. It is all he has left of her, and it is not enough.

"Come with me," she beseeches. "Come and be no longer alone."

She looks like his Mother, he realizes. And not just her dark, shimmering fur. But her eyes. They speak of kindness. They speak of long nights under the Moon heralding it to fullness and they speak of pups that need to be taught. They speak of second chances.

"Yes," he says.