Aceso scoffed, “The Mountain’s laws are older than you or I will ever understand. They can and do what they must, nothing more.”
“Are you alright?”
She nodded, “Yes, the damage wasn’t permanent, only the memories remain and the lessons I was meant to learn.” She looked off towards the south east, “Come, my Enforcer. We have a den to find, a home to build, and a pack to forge, and only three days to construct it all.” She looked at him with a small smile and bounded off into the forest. William leaned down on all fours and followed her.
William wasn’t entirely sure Aceso was as alright as she claimed to be. The memories and scars of what she had endured, pertly because of him, would not be so easily washed away. He knew this from experience, he still carried his scars. But he wouldn’t press her any further on the subject, at least not now, and bent his mind to the task at hand.
They must have searched for hours. He had followed Aceso as she ran in great strides. They would explore anything that might be useful, a large pile of rocks here, a felled tree glimpsed by a break in the tree line there. He wasn’t physically tired, but the search for a home was wearing on him. Aceso peeled off her chosen path and William followed her. She seemed to increase her speed and William had to concentrate to keep up. Aceso jumped over some loose stones on the ground, William ran around them. She ducked under a thin fallen tree and ran up a slight hill. William followed and stopped at the apex of the rise.
From their vantage point they could see a good deal of the forest inside the cavern. The trees were all of a slightly uniform height and they were all lush and green. William couldn’t remember the last time he had seen a tree that wasn’t green and still standing. There are no dying trees here. The thought struck him as a little strange. Even in his forest there were some dead trees, brown and wilted that stood among the live flourishing ones. Here there was not the slightest hint of brown, except in felled trees and the dirt.
Aceso jumped down and started running eastward again. William kicked off the ground and bounded after her. She had obviously seen something worth investigating. William ran through the trees, following after his alpha. Aceso dodged through underbrush and around the trunks of trees. William followed but he chose his own line to run along. He would run past her and she would find a short cut through two tree trunks, jump through and be in the lead again. It was a game that they were playing and Aceso was quite good at it.
Just when William was about to take the lead, a howl cracked through the relative silence of the forest. He skidded to a halt just as Aceso kicked herself to a stop with the help of a nearby tree. William cocked his ears to the side and looked back at Aceso. She had her head up and her ears were pointing toward where the sound came from. They jumped toward the sound of the howl and began running.
They didn’t bother to play. They were running in straight lines now. The howl hadn’t been a warning but a calling. It was a howl from a voice that William hadn’t heard before. The howl was issued again and it was closer than William would have guessed. He shouldn’t have been surprised though, the direction that he and Aceso were running in would eventually take them right into the north side cavern wall. He looked up and the wall was close.
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William saw Katherine and Achelois standing among a copse of trees, waiting for them. William noticed that Charles and Nicolas had not shown up yet. William jumped into the air and landed on his hind legs and jogged to a stop next to the two females, with Aceso coming up behind him.
“What did you find?” William asked.
Katherine swept her arm toward the north side of forest. “Our new home.”
Where her arm indicated there was a large pile of rubble that had been pushed to either side of a crevasse in the solid cavern wall. The rubble looked like a walkway that led straight into the cavern wall itself. The crevasse opening looked a bit narrow.
William looked sideways at the cream-colored werewolf and walked up to the opening in the rock. The opening was a lot bigger than he had first supposed and he could enter into it easily. He stuck his head in and the crevasse winded its way back into the rock. He took a few steps inside of the gloom. The passage was short, and he stopped after a dozen paces. The crevasse opened up into an irregular shaped cavity that was large enough for all of them to sleep and live in space. The really cool thing about this place that William noticed was that the rock made natural shallow cubby holes. There were at least six that he could count. He wanted to stay longer and check out their new home but somehow it didn’t seem right, to make himself at home without the other members of his pack. Besides Katherine and Achelois had found the place and should get the first choice of where they would stay.
William walked out of the rock back into the cavern’s version of daylight. He was smiling until he realized that Nicolas and Charles still hadn’t shown up yet. I am really starting to hate that guy. Aceso wanted him to make an effort to keep the pack together. Would she continue to ask him to put up with and appease one man over the good of the pack? He knew that that kind of thinking was exactly what Aceso didn’t want him doing but he couldn’t help it. He just didn’t like the guy and he found himself hating the kid more and more with every new insult.
William shook off the thought of Nicolas with effort and walked back to where the three women were standing. “That place is great. How did you find it?”
Katherine looked at Achelois as she spoke. “We wouldn’t have found it at all if it wasn’t for that fallen tree over there.” Her voice had a soft high-pitched quality that was soothing.
William looked over at the indicated fallen tree. “How does a dead fallen tree way over there lead you to find a crevasse in the cavern wall over here?”
The Katherine replied, “That’s what got our attention. We came to check out the tree. It took us two seconds to realize that it wouldn’t be suitable for a one-person lean-to, much less a den for six of us.” Katherine pointed to the pile of moved rubble and black stones. “But that pile of rocks looked promising, so Achelois and I moved some of them seeing if there was a reason there was a pile of rocks there.”
While she was speaking William caught a scent. It was Nicolas. He and Charles were very close by. The still air of the cavern was really bad for detecting anything by smell at any kind of distance. Katherine noticed it too. She stopped speaking and waited as the two werewolves joined the rest of the pack among the trees.
“Were there any problems?” Aceso asked.
“Why? Did you miss me, baby?”