I couldn't understand this at all. I was perfectly happy to live in Lupa's pack, helping to train the new Roman demigods… how could I even understand people, if the only family I'd had was the pack? Lupa had repeatedly told me that it was important, that I needed to learn to cooperate with my own kind.

Lupa didn't have many children, and most had died in the attacks on the Wolf House. I had been just a child then, a pup, but I understood the feeling of loss all too well. There's no words to describe how so many deaths felt in such a tightly-bound pack….

Perhaps I could run away, join up with another pack. Lupa's was the first and foremost, the biggest and most powerful, but there were others out there, created by Lupa's children. They'd all been called back to the Wolf House to protect it, but in the time since they had headed out once again. The survivors, that is, hoping to rebuild whatever they could of their old lives.

But then Lupa herself would come after me. I was her most promising pup in ages-the wolf goddess had always operated on different terms than the other Olympians. Have a few children, then challenge them to either kill or be killed. I was different, though, being the only pup in the litter.

That fact did nothing, apparently, to make my mother care for me especially. I'd still had to fight with wolves twice my size and thrice my strength. It was only pure luck that saw me through without any major injuries, though I'd limped for weeks afterward.

I sighed, knowing there was absolutely nothing I could do to remain here. Life was tough, but… it was the only home I'd ever known. Even worse, there'd be no fanfare, no gathering to wish me well. I would start my journey completely alone-and headed off into the wilderness.

Lupa said Camp Jupiter would favor me too well, that they would look at me and see only the wolf goddess staring back at them. I'd argued with her constantly-as long as I had to go away, why couldn't I at least go to a somewhat-familiar place? But, sadly, no. I was to travel east, towards Camp Half-blood. Towards an uncertain future.

I took one last look around Wolf House, then gathered up what little possessions I had and left. Wolf form would be so much easier to travel in, especially if I had to cross almost the entire freaking country-but I hated it, hated the feeling of humanity slipping away.

Still… I'd like to see the look on Chiron's and the camper's faces when a wolf shows up in their valley. That alone decided it, and I called up the feralness inside of me, letting it spill out and take over. Changing forms exhausted me-I wasn't like a werewolf, compelled so much to shift that it hardly took anything out of a person-and I wished I had eaten earlier.

Oh well; these woods were full of deer. I knew how to hunt, even though it was much more difficult alone. The world had faded into greyish hues, but my other senses opened wide to compensate. I broke into a run, carrying my little bundle of human money and clothes in my jaws.

The normal wolves knew well enough to stay out of the way of Lupa's children. We were similar enough when we were younger-and even a young demigod couldn't survive in a out-matched fight against the normals-but around adolescence, we shot up to our full height, more resembling dire wolves than grays. If that hadn't been enough-a few males reached something close to my height-my black coat, tinted with bright silver, would tell them that I had godly blood running through my veins.

That fact alone was the reason why I had mainly grown up without friends.