A/N This one is set during season 3. Thank you to everyone who reviewed, followed and favourited, and for the prompt. It is currently a work in progress. In the meantime I hope you enjoy this one.

Lupus

Rhydian lifted his head and howled, his anguish tearing into the freezing night. Above him the stars glinted in the clear sky and he remembered the feel of Maddy's hand tucked snugly in his own. Fitting there like it belonged.

"See that one," she said to him, a brilliant grin lighting up her face in delight. Her face was uplifted to the night, arm pointing into the inky black, as her head tilted back at him to make sure he was looking.

"Rhydian!" Exasperation overlaid with joy and he blinked away from her face, obediently directing his gaze up, stammering out a "Right, of course, sorry." He could almost hear her roll her eyes.

"You don't have to be out here with me, you know," she muttered with a wry twist of her lips and he dropped his eyes back to her with a reassuring smile.

"Course I do. No, really," he added at her raised eyebrows, "I do." He flourished a hand, dramatically. "Show me the stars."

Maddy cut him a look, eyes slightly narrowed, lips pressed together resisting a smile. "Fine," she sighed as though reluctant, but he heard the underlying amusement.

"That's Cepheus." She pointed. "Draco, Lynx, Perseus, Ursa Major and Minor." He tried to nod and look like he knew what she meant, that they didn't just look like glittery lights to him. He wasn't convincing enough. Her shoulder barged into his, almost sending him flying.

"Hey!" he protested, his grin matching hers.

"You are such a bad actor," she jibed shaking her head. He took exception to that.

"No. I just…they're just…"

"Not your thing," she supplied, helping him out.

"Right," he tilted his head to one side, "You can still like them though."

Now her stance became less friendly and more challenging.

"As though I need your permission?"

He raised his hands in mock surrender, not prepared to fight on this one.

" 's not what I meant Mads," and he almost heard the exasperation, the weariness of the she-wolf's father as he sighed "Alpha females."

A flutter in his chest caught him off guard, a warmth somewhere inside as he recognised, she was his Alpha female…Not that he'd told her that specifically…

She had turned back to the sky, oblivious to his racing thoughts. "I really want to see Lupus one day. The Wolf. You can't see it this far North."

"The Wolf," Rhydian echoed back, his artists mind sketching a wolf running among the stars. "I think I'd like to see that one," and she must have heard the sincerity in his voice because now she looked at him again with a smile of all soft delight that lit up eyes.

Grinning widely, she stuck out a hand. "Deal."

"Deal?" he queried.

"When I go see Lupus," she said it slowly, almost a command, punctuating each word with a head tilt, "You're coming-with-me."

His hand wrapped around hers in the darkness, warm skin on skin, marvelling at how natural it felt there.

"Deal."

In the present loneliness Rhydian tried to spot the constellations she'd mentioned, still only seeing pinpricks of light.

'We'll find each other.'

At his foster home his sketch pad lay open to a new drawing, two wolves, loping across the heavens, their paws finding purchase on the inky black, their bodies a mesh of stars.