Lone Wolf: Redemption 2, Ch. 2

The Passage of Titans

Three seasons had passed since my marriage to Heather. Many in the pack were wondering when we were thinking about having pups, but we had never even thought of getting "busy" with each other. So far, the furthest we had gotten was sleeping on top of each other.

Lloyd had found a mate of his own, a lovely chestnut brown Alpha from the former Eastern pack. Whenever they both needed to hunt, Heather and I would baby-sit their two black-brown pups. On one such night, Brandon came charging into our den and darted behind me. "Hide me!" he whispered frantically.

"What is it, you old fox?"

"She's after me!" If it were possible for him to compress his body any smaller, he would have.

"Who?"

In answer, a single, gray-brown-furred fox paw poked over my back and a single claw pointed out of the den. Where he was pointing, a petite female wolf was prancing about, looking in all durations and crying, "Brandon! Brandon?" She sounded smitten.

I smiled and put a paw over my eyes. "It's just love-struck Karolyn. What is the problem?"

Before Brandon could answer, the she-wolf walked over to me and asked, "Have you seen Brandon anywhere?"

"Not in the past couple of minutes, no. You might want to check with Marcel. They do, after all, play golf together a lot."

"Thanks," she replied as she began to walk away. Then she stopped and added, "But I tracked his scent to your den."

"He was here a few minutes ago. Try looking in that direction." I pointed in the opposite direction from which Brandon had come.

"Thanks again," she finished as she ran off.

Brandon got up and walked around to the front of the den. "Thanks, man. I owe you one."

"Actually, Brandon. Scratch one of the favors I owed you from my run through Yellowstone."

"Still, thanks."

"So, tell me why I just lied to one of my best friend's daughters," I said with a playfully threatening tone as I pressed him down with a paw on his back.

Grunting from the pressure, he replied, "I'm not ready for a serious relationship yet."

I laughed and commented, "Come on. You have to find a mate some time. I know for a fact that you have been single for all four years that you have been alive. It's time to live a little, Brandon."

"Hey. If I want to have a girlfriend, I'd rather have a vixen than a she-wolf."

"I can understand that sentiment," I responded as I lifted my paw off of him. "Try to stay out of trouble, my friend."

"I give you my word. Though, I can't say the same of you," he retorted as he nodded toward the pups that were just waking up at my feet.

Then he turned tail and ran as I muttered, "Oh, crap."

A week later, we were asleep in our den when I heard a concerned voice request our names. I looked up and immediately asked, "What's wrong?" The wolf requesting us was Eve, and, for the first time I had ever seen, she looked distressed.

"Winston, he…come," she choked out with tears in her eyes. With that, she turned and walked away, tail drooping between her legs.

Both Heather and I, knowing that this was nowhere near the take-no-prisoners-Eve we knew, followed to see what was so tragic that she had undergone a full personality-reversal.

When we arrived, the realization of what the occasion was ended up hitting us with full force. We could hear the rattling coughs of a dying wolf and, as we were allowed past to join the group of Lily, Kate, Humphrey, Garth, Lloyd the Younger (the result of a rename when my brother Lloyd was found to be alive and well), Jasper, Kate and Humphrey's pups, and Church, we saw Winston lying on a bed of white flowers, emitting the coughs.

Immediately, Heather, the most sympathetic of the wolves in the den, rushed to the former head-Alpha's side and asked if there was anything she could do to help. He chuckled and quipped, "Just give me a few days and I'll be right as rain." He coughed, more violently this time, and added, "Seriously, there is nothing you can do, my eldest granddaughter. There is nothing that can help me right now, other than my death." Heather began to sob, but her grandfather lay a paw on her cheek, just below her eye, and said, "Don't cry for me, Heather. I've lived a good life. I've seen the merger of three packs into one. I've seen the packs turned away from the brink of a war that would have annihilated them all. I've even seen the barriers between the ranks dissolved." He then looked straight at me and made a final joke. "If you don't give us great-grandchildren before Eve goes, she'll pull you onto the deathbed with her and make you."

"Understood, sir," I replied as a last chuckle rippled through the twelve assembled wolves.

"Good," Winston sighed as he laid his head down on the bed. Watching his paw as it fell off of Heather's cheek and his chest as it stopped rising and falling, I saw the exact instant the old wolf died.

At that moment, I turned and exited the den. When I hit the open air, I raised my head and loosed my most mournful howl. Within a minute, the entire pack had joined in.

At the end of that week, Garth came in with distressing news of his own. His father, and Heather's other grandfather, Tony had also passed away from age. Unlike Winston, Tony had passed away peacefully, with almost no pain. Small favors. Now, Church and Eve were the pack Elders, head-Alphas. Within one week, the pack had lost two of its most legendary leaders. Now, we had to figure out how we would exist without them.