Going back to our territory, where packs of keelish had gone missing, I was both nervous and hoping to come across a squad of humans out on the hunt for keelish. I was disappointed. Foire didn’t sense anything, nor did we come across any humans or signs of them. Thinking of it, I was not at all surprised that, if they were here, they had left no trace. One of the first things I was ever taught as a child was how to pass through the jungle without leaving tracks to lead to my tribe, and since the humans knew there were keelish around, I could guarantee they never left their tents without their beralts.

Foire might be able to sense humans through their beralts if they were within a quarter mile, but even then I couldn’t be sure. He struggled to sense the Martanimis Pythons with their cold-blooded nature, and they weren’t deliberately hiding from us. I might be able to see them if they were nearby with my [Improved Vision], but I doubted I would be able to see hidden and hiding humans without a serious error on their part. I struggled to figure out how I could possibly protect my pack and myself from the humans, and I found myself drawing a blank.

This might now be the moment the [Administrator] had warned me about–the time to flee to the east. Yet, I didn’t feel that it was “obvious” to me as she had said. If a tribe found us, I couldn’t imagine that they would be able to fully wipe out the swarm. Maybe if they committed the full strength of even their noncombatants, but I couldn’t imagine that any tribe would be willing to do so, even the Nievetsali tribe with their warlike ways. Then what could be the incoming threat? And what could other [Administrators] be planning?

As we stepped through the brush and the rain pelted down on us, I shook the thought of escape from my head. I was told that the moment for escape would be obvious to me, and it wasn’t, so I wouldn’t think about it. Instead, I needed to see if I could capture someone and get some information about the old Viertaali tribe. A part of me mourned that I didn’t count myself among their number any longer, but most of me took pride in the pack I was building, the future I could see.

Regardless of what I might be forced to do moving forward, I needed only to focus on the pack for now. Our search for humanity thwarted, I motioned for the rest of the pack to continue the hunt without me and returned to the den by myself. I couldn’t be bothered to participate in a hunt that was so mundane as this one, and instead set off to return to the den where I had hatched from.

The journey through the familiar jungles went quickly, and I didn’t see or sense anything noteworthy through the pounding rain. My feet sunk deep into the muck, and even with the miserable weather and conditions, I still lamented the steps I took into the den. The claustrophobia within the den’s walls immediately struck and frustrated me. I wanted to live above the surface, to see the skies, and enjoy the views, but for now, I was stuck within the bounds of the den.

Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

I shook the frustration from my mind and body as much as I could as I rounded the corner into my den. There, the “forgotten” of my pack worked on the last of the wolfstag bodies while the wolfstag pups wrestled and romped under Arwa’s tired gaze. That the wolfstags and Arwa herself lived comfortably under the watch of so many keelish was in no small part thanks to Sybil’s frequent return and magical “guidance”. Arwa perked up when she saw, or perhaps smelled me, and trotted forward before sitting before me.

When she sat like that, Arwa was well over five feet tall, and her gnarled mass of horns brought her to be at least as tall as my own six and a half feet. While she sat patiently waiting for my approval and affection, I looked at the pups that began to follow their mother towards me. I idly scratched at Arwa’s ear and under her chin while I watched the trundling pups fall over each other in their attempt to come near me, where they looked up at me with curiosity and excitement apparent on their fuzzy little faces. They had grown in the past days, and over the 10 or so days since we had initially taken in the wolfstags, the little pack had changed markedly. Before, they’d weighed maybe twenty pounds apiece, but now, with the little masses of horns beginning to poke out at the base of their skulls paired with the explosive growth they were experiencing, I would be surprised if they weighed less than thirty pounds each.

One of the males, the brave one that had growled at me in our first meeting, had continued to grow faster than his siblings and seemed to be their leader. The pups followed him, and I could feel that he was close to needing to have his first hunt, at least, the sooner that that happened, the better according to [Evolutionary Guide]. Arwa seemed to have mostly weaned the pups, and they all needed to begin to work together with us keelish already in the hunts. Since the pups no longer needed their mother all the time, I decided to begin to take Arwa on the hunts and resolved to return the next day with Sybil and maybe a couple others. With her influence, after all, it would be much simpler to communicate what we needed from Arwa.

With that settled, I took just long enough to speak with the members of the pack that I hadn’t seen these last couple of days since I’d been keeping an eye on the eggs before they’d hatched. Fria had become the de-facto leader over the weaker and less impressive members of the pack that had been left behind, and so far as I knew, Sybil got in contact with Fria at least once a day to ensure that the pack under her command was developing. If these weaker keelish were the ones that became the providers for the wolfstags… then they could provide for their needs within the den, while there were others who worked with the canines for the hunt.

I wondered over how to organize the hunters with the wolfstags, and then the newest hatchlings as well, but didn’t care to think any deeper about it. With little more thought to it than that, I returned to the hatchlings’ den and set to trying to organize and prepare the first live hunt for the hatchlings, and, before long, the pups.