The Boy Who Cried Wolf

The Inn

"Did you see the way he looked at me? It was like he thought I was about to tear him to pieces." Elijah complained gruffly as they walked away. There wasn't much light to begin with on the cloudy day, but what was left was fading quickly.

"Only when that man came out— before that he was excited to see you," Daniel corrected.

"He's the one that told us to stay away from Teddy yesterday, right?" Anna frowned.

"It doesn't matter," The alpha grunted. "I don't want him around Teddy. He'll poison the boy towards me."

"Nobody can stop a mate bond. This whole town is just going to have to get over it. At the end of the day, Teddy's going to want to be with you— no matter what anyone else says."

"Yeah?" The alpha's voice grew. They had passed farther down the street and he was confident he could speak loudly without Teddy his bodyguard hearing them. "When?"

"Well, you've got to make progress Alpha," Anna explained softly. Her focus was quickly drifting as they passed;she'd never been within a human village before and her eyes darted around at every passing building. There was a cheery yellow bait shop, a little blue bakery, and even a lilac colored salon with a purple and white striped awning. Wolf buildings tended to be utilitarian, and since they lived in communal homes they had little use for currency or little shops full of nonsense.

The longer they were there the less the sheer act of existing felt like an assault on their senses, and Anna having the weakest senses anyway was quickly warming up to Belford.

"What we really need to work on is how you both talk to humans. If we're gonna be kicking about Belford Bay for a while, we're gonna need to work on that," She heard Daniel say as she turned back into the conversation. Elijah looked equally displeased at this assertion.

"Shit man, it's just weird. We never really use each other's names." Anna shrugged.

"What do you mean if we're gonna be 'kicking around Belford Bay for a while,' Beta?" Elijah asked. His voice paused both those who walked down the wet stone street ahead of him.

"We're not just gonna drag him back by the tail, Alpha!" The girl snorted before being cut off by the sharp glare of the Alpha. She pursed her lips in annoyance and went back to cataloging the buildings and signs that they passed.

"She's right. You need to build a relationship with him. It's very easy to overwhelm humans, their emotions move a lot slower than ours do." Daniel stopped walking to explain. He spared a cursory look back towards where he knew Teddy had been.

"I don't have time to be worrying about human emotions." Elijah gruffed, crossing his large arms across his chest with pestilence. "I don't have time to be worrying about humans, period. My brother is hungry to take my place, don't you understand? I've got to get Teddy– the boy back as soon as possible. I don't have time to move slowly."

"Alpha," Daniel attempted calmly. "You said it yourself... he was frightened of all of us, and that's only natural--"

"I'm not letting some damn human ruin our whole pack, Beta."

Anna, noticing the other two had stopped walking, dwindled in her own steps and stared up at the second stories of the shop buildings they were passing by. Each window above the little building had a box of white chrysanthemums blooming and dripping from the water.

"I'm not asking you to let a human ruin the pack," Daniel sighed heavily. "I'm asking you not to let your impatience ruin it."

Elijah's eyes flashed red and he growled deeply in warning. Daniel dropped his head in submission, but he didn't back down from his principles. With the most experience in human ecosystems under his belt, he knew he was right. Teddy didn't seem like the 'throw caution to the wind type' and demanding he act like that would only serve to seed resentment.