The Lone Wolf

1, In the Hole

"I'm going to ask you one more time."

Fox startled out of his stupor. He had been half-dozing again, remembering a dark time, similar to this one, maybe worse, maybe the same, depending on how this all went down. He refrained from looking directly at the small group in the room with him. He glanced at their feet, the only sign of acknowledgment he'd give them.

All of them were Alphas. Two women and two men. He was having a hard enough time with all of them being in the same room and all of their attention on him, he could hardly look at them, let alone speak to them.

"What is your name?" One of the male Alphas asked. He had asked it five times already, over the course of the evening, or the day, or the night. There were no windows down here, in this dark cement hole. He had no idea what time it was, or how much time had passed. He just knew that he was hungry, and thirsty. The only light right now came from a single lantern they had set on the floor.

Fox remained silent, fear and exhaustion keeping his mouth shut. He could hardly muster a strained mumble, or even a hum.

The Alphas waited for a moment, and once it became apparent that Fox wasn't going to answer, the male Alpha threw his hands up and turned to the staircase leading up out of the hole. "I'm over this. He can stay and rot down here for all I care."

The remark didn't sting Fox; he had heard worse and had been expecting that kind of reaction anyway. The other male Alpha sighed heavily and followed after the first Alpha. After a moment, one of the women left, too. Only one Alpha remained.

She stood there for a long while, quiet, probably thinking, staring at Fox where he sat on the floor of his cell, knees tucked up and arms wrapped loosely around his shins, his forehead resting against his knees.

Eventually, the Alpha crouched down, resting on the balls of her feet, elbows propped on her thighs. "If you answer my questions, I'll let you pick between three choices of something fresh for your dinner tonight." Ah, so it was evening, or at least late afternoon. Fox felt a small rush of relief at knowing what it might look like outside. "And if you still refuse to talk, then all you will get is leftover scraps from someone else. Do we have a deal?"

It wasn't much of a deal, rather than coercion. Fox was undeniably hungry, though, and he didn't want half-eaten scraps. Something warm and filling sounded a thousand times better.

It took some inner encouragement and some strength to muster up enough of his voice to speak. But he managed. "With... water... too?"

He couldn't see it, but he could feel her smiling in triumph. "Yes," she said. "With water, too."

"Fox," he told her.

"What?" she asked, predictably confused. Fox licked his lips and tried to clear his throat.

"My name... It's Fox," he whispered.

"Oh," the woman replied. "That's an interesting name. Don't think I've heard of a werewolf named Fox."

Fox wanted to say that he named himself, but he didn't have the energy for unnecessary chit chat.

"So, Fox. What made you want to trespass in our territory?" she asked. Fox thought it was a funny way of wording that question. What made him want to? It had been an accident. Their territory was so huge they needed four Alphas to run everything smoothly. He thought he'd been traversing through yet another town on his hitchhiking journey. He was a passenger in a car of a kind old man willing to help someone out, and the moment Fox felt the shift of a strong territory line passing underneath him, he immediately demanded to stop the car and for the old man to let him out. The man obliged, although confused, and Fox attempted to run right back the way they had come, but it was already too late. A pack wolf spotted him, pointed him out, made a big commotion about seeing Fox in the territory, and soon he was being tackled to the ground and pinned there. A group of Betas had tied his wrists and ankles and gagged his mouth, and then he was dragged to this small little hole in the ground, locked behind bars. Not long later, the Alphas showed up for interrogation.