The Alpha Female

TWO: BECOMING GAME

CHAPTER TWO: BECOMING GAME

            I sat alone in my bed, stroking the rabbit who lay on my chest.  He was still shaking, still slightly uneasy about my smell.  I probably reeked of wolf.  I wouldn’t doubt it.  The fact that I partially smelt of human probably didn’t help much either.  Still he stayed, feet splayed out behind and in front of him, flat against my stomach, ears perked and eyes wide.  He may have been quaking as if he was set on vibrate, but I was okay with it.

            I propped an arm behind my head, creating a make shift pillow for myself as I snuggled deeper into my cot.  My cot was nothing more than a straw mattress covered in a few worn deer skins.  That was what my pack did.  After each kill they would drag the animal back to the den and have it skinned.  The pack women would then clean the skin and make it into whatever was needed at the time, while others would strip the carcass of its meats in order to prepare them to eat.  Our pack consisted of nearly forty individuals ranging from whelps to elders.

            Sometimes we even snacked on rabbit.

            I continued to stroke the quaking fluff ball that was laying on me, acting like my own personal heater.  Being a shifter meant that my body temp was higher, making me less susceptible to the cold, but I still enjoyed an excess in warmth when I could find it.

            “Suka!” My mother called from the downstairs.  We had the only two story house in the den.  It allowed us a better vantage point, if anything ever happened to the rest of the pack, they were to report here.  We also had room to accommodate them as well. 

I cocked my head to the side, staring into my rabbit’s eyes. 

“You hungry?” I asked it, but the rabbit didn’t reply, not like I was expecting anything.  It wasn’t like animals could talk. 

            “Suka Rae, it’s time to eat!”

            “Coming mother,” I shouted back before rolling my eyes and sitting up.  The rabbit leaped off of my stomach and onto the cot.  I threw my legs over the side of the cot and ran a hand over my face.  I gave the rabbit one last quick stroke before rising to my feet and starting down the hall.

            When I made it to the ground floor my parents were already waiting at the table, my father didn’t seem amused.

            “If it took you that long to respond to a pack emergency..” he began as I took my seat.  “We would all be dead.”

            “Yes father.” I commended, knowing that he was perfectly right.

            “An alpha cannot grow lazy because they feel like it.”

            “Oh calm down Darach.” My mother chided as she sent me a sorry smile.  “She’s still a girl for a little while, let her be.”

            “If we let her be she will never be ready to lead this pack.” My mother rolled her eyes before extending her hands, interrupting my father before he could begin preaching to me again about how terrible of an alpha I was being. 

            My father and I grasped her hands and began our prayer to Wentshukumishiteu, the god that protected small animals and children from hunters.  It had become a ritualistic occurrence in our household ever since our pack’s first hunter related casualty.  We then retrieved our hands and began eating our scant meal of dried venison and fiddleheads.

            Our pack lived purely off of the land, so all we ate were plants and whatever meats we could find.  Most of our plants consisted of fruits and berries native to the area, that way when we planted bushes and flowers it would blend in naturally with the landscape, creating the illusion that they grew there on their own accord.