Rejected by the Alpha, Claimed by His Brother
Episode 12: The Weight of What Comes Next
The pack came home in pieces.
Not all at once — not the dramatic unified return I might have imagined if I'd had time to imagine anything. They came back the way dispersed things always come back — in twos and threes, emerging from the tree line with the particular disorientation of wolves whose hunt-purpose had been suddenly and completely revoked and who didn't yet have a framework for what had replaced it.
I stood at the edge of the pack grounds and watched them come.
Some shifted as they crossed the boundary markers — humans stepping out of wolf forms, pulling clothes from the emergency caches at the tree line's edge, looking around at the grounds with expressions that ranged from confused to w
