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Werewolf of the North

Chapter 3 – Crazy On You

I sprinted over to the tight circle of four wolves that were focused so intently on Penny – my Penny!

"Get away from her you bastards!" I shouted as I lifted up the smallest wolf, a sandy brown one and tossed him ten feet into the nearest tree, crashing into it and knocking it over with a loud "boom".

The other wolves simply stared at me, apparently unsure of what to do next. I took this time to run forward and scoop Penny up, cradling her body in the crook of my left arm and over my shoulder as I gave the biggest wolf, a dark russet colored one, an uppercut punch right under his massive jaw. I probably shouldn't have done that, but when he started to sneer and growl at me I really felt threatened for Penny.

I realized that he must've been the leader because the two uninjured ones both lunged for me. I narrowly evaded them, ducking and even rolling once so that I was able to flee the clearing.

I decided that trying to outrun wolves as a human while carrying Penny was hopeless, so I jumped up and reached for the lowest branch of a massive pine tree and managed to pull myself up and off the ground. The coverage was so thick that I was able to prop her up against the massive trunk and place her in a position where I thought she would stay without falling – as long as she stayed unconscious. We weren't too high up, so I wasn't all that worried. I heard one of the wolves approaching and froze, waiting to see what they would do next.

It was a brown wolf this time, not one of the original four that I had seen in the clearing. "Great, there's more of them," I muttered to myself. I knew what I had to do, and at the current moment I really didn't feel like fighting an entire pack of wolves. In fact, I don't think I've ever felt like fighting wolves, mainly because I never had before and was sorely inexperienced. Another black one had joined the brown wolf, so I had to get rid of them both before any more showed up.

I crouched, my body tensing up as I waited for one of those mutts to come a little closer to the tree we were hiding in. At the precise moment I sprung forward, my transformation happening as I appeared through the many branches of the tree. I made a mental note this time to make sure I cleaned up before going back to Penny.

Both wolves were smaller than me (one of them by a lot, actually), but I aimed my initial attack for the larger one. It was just like when I hunted for food; always take out the mother moose, bear, cub or whatever it was first.

Just as I did when I had hunted for the moose earlier, I managed to land on it's back, but when I tried to dig my claws into it's shoulders it twisted away before I could trap it. I rolled off of its back and into the snow, where the brown mutt was ready to attack. It dug its claws into my underbelly and took a long sweep across my stomach. The gashes were shallow, but it was enough to really send me over the edge. I kicked with all of my strength and sent the wolf flying, right into the black wolf, which I now noticed, was much bigger than I had originally thought. I jumped back onto my legs and charged the two wolves that were temporarily dazed.

About halfway to them I noticed a medium-sized gray wolf that was bolting furiously towards me. After having hunted other wolves before I could tell that this one was a female. I must have attacked her mate.

'Who the hell do you think you are? If you EVER touch my brother again I swear I'm going to rip your head off!'

'Okay, so it's a sister – I was close,' I thought to myself.

'Wait a minute.' I stopped running, now staring stupidly at the wolf that was racing towards me with a vengeance. 'Who said that?'

'I did you idiot!' screamed a girl's voice.

I turned around and stared up at the tree I had hidden Penny in. 'Was that you, Penny?'

'Leah, wait!' shouted a new voice.

'He threw Seth into a friggin' tree! Normal wolves don't do that, not even werewolves!' she screamed back.

'You don't understand! He's one of us!' said another voice.

'Where are all of these voices coming from?' I asked myself, but it was too late. I had managed to put together that the grey wolf was Leah, and that I had thrown her brother Seth into a tree just before she collided with me, her jaws wrapping around my throat.

'This is for you Seth!' she cried, but I didn't really notice. 'Where were all of these voices coming from? How come I could all of a sudden hear what this little wolf was saying?'

'Little!' she shrieked, completely irate now, but still, all I could do was stare at her with wonder. I had stopped trying to resist her; all I was now thinking about was her voice and how it had gotten into my head.

'She can hear me,' I stated to myself.

I felt her jaws tighten menacingly, but just at the moment when I felt her teeth draw blood as they sunk into my throat, they released. I lay there on my side, not sure why I had just been spared from the female that was now spewing curses at an unimaginable rate.

'I told you to stop Leah!' a voice thundered over the rest that were now arguing with the female. I looked up to see the black wolf standing amongst the other males – five in total – who were all glaring at the gray wolf that was standing over the sandy brown, which I assumed was her brother.

I got up cautiously, and while they were still in the middle of their heated argument I took off, back to the tree that hid my Penny.

It didn't take long to get there, but it felt like forever because I had to be careful not to make any noise to alert the fighting wolves. I could now hear all of their voices in my head, and it was starting to give me a migraine. I wanted to tell them all to just shut up, but that would have brought me back to their attention.

'I don't care if he threw him into a tree Leah, Seth was fine and you knew that!' shouted the deep, booming voice. It sounded strangely calm for someone who was so angry.

'To try and attack a fellow werewolf like that is completely inexcusable!' screamed another.

A small timid voice spoke up. 'Really sis, it didn't hurt me all that much. I don't even have any broken bones –'

'Shut up Seth!' screamed Leah.

By this time I had reached the tree. 'Oh no!' I accidentally shouted as I raced towards the crumpled heap at the bottom of the tree. 'I knew this was a stupid idea!' I thought to myself. 'Penny!' I actually shouted, which came out as a loud bark.

The seemingly unconscious girl jumped up instantly, a big smile on her face. "I knew that you could take care of those mutts, Damien!" she beamed proudly at me. "I pretended I was dead! I'm just as good an actor as you!" she said, just barely managing to keep her voice below a whisper.

'Damien? Is that your name?' asked the same calm voice I now knew belonged to the black wolf, who was the leader.

'I think he's back by that girl he called Penny!' growled an angry voice.

I knew that they were now heading for me – and my Penny. I immediately got down on the ground, and gestured towards my back with a twist of my neck for Penny, which I realized didn't hurt nearly as much as it had five minutes ago. 'That's odd, it was just bleeding like crazy.' I thought to myself.

'Did you actually try to rip his throat Leah?' shouted a voice in disbelief.

'Did you even see what he did to Seth?' Leah retorted back, her voice now a bit calmer but still furious.

"You want to leave now?" Penny asked. "Okay, but let me just go back and fetch your backpack." She smiled and started jogging towards the clearing and the approaching wolves.

'No!' I easily cut Penny off and motioned to my back again.

"Damien we can't just leave it there, all of our stuff is in it!" she said ignorantly before she started running towards the clearing again.

This time when I stopped her I growled gently as I motioned for her to get onto my back.

She really looked frightened now, but thankfully didn't bother to argue this time.

As she jumped onto my heaving body I took off without even checking to make sure she was ready.

"Whoa! I almost fell off back there, Damien! Why are we going so fast?" she asked as I felt her place her hands on my wet shoulders and tried to grasp at my fur to hold on, but they slipped.

"Oh my God, why are you wet? Is this… blood!" she shrieked. "What happened to you Damien, what's going on? Did they hurt you?"

'Obviously,' I thought to myself, a bit too sarcastically considering the circumstances.

We had been running for about ten minutes, heading in the direction I thought would take me away from those other wolves. I must have been doing an excellent job, because I could no longer hear voices in my head – which was a big relief; that migraine was really starting to hurt.

Penny had been unnaturally quiet since I had started running. I had an uncanny feeling that it was because I had growled at her back by the clearing. I truly felt sorry, but I could never communicate that to Penny fully as a wolf. And now that I had completely destroyed my spare set of pants, I think that I was actually stuck as a wolf for the foreseeable future.

I really could not continue with Penny being mad at me like this. I stopped running, slowly this time, so I wouldn't frighten her. I had noticed that Penny had slid down my back, so she was holding onto clean dry fur just past my shoulders. She never liked blood, and I realized that it was stupid (but most of all selfish) of me to expect her to hold on to my bloodstained fur for an unknown amount of time.

"Why are you stopping? Where are we Damien?" she asked, her voice quivering quite a bit, but she tried to hide it. Great – not only had I frightened her, she was actually afraid of me now. I had to find some way of meaningfully apologizing to her.

"Are there more of them?" she squeaked, her voice now clearly fearful. I shook my head, my big shaggy body swaying back and forth as it followed. "I-I don't understand Damien."

I started to shake my body gently, trying to get her off of me, and after about two minutes or so, she finally half-slid, half-tripped off my back. I felt bad for her; I had honestly terrified this poor girl, my Penny.

As she stood there, looking around in every direction with her knees trembling softly, I motioned for her to stay, which I can honestly say was very difficult. After standing there stupidly for an ungodly amount of minutes, it finally came to me. I yelped loudly, yet softly, to catch her attention. I lay down on the ground, and put my hand – well, paw actually – up in the air.

At this Penny smiled weakly, understanding, but still very scared, which was evident by the way her teeth began to chatter slightly. She managed to nod her head. "Okay, I'll wait here."

I tried to give her a reassuring smile, but I think it came out as the kind of smile one gives when they snarl, or smirk perhaps would be a better description of it, because Penny didn't seem very relaxed, or even reassured, by it.

I quickly ran about twenty feet away (close enough to keep Penny within my sight but far enough to not let her see what I was doing) and started to very carefully draw with my paw in the snow.

It was a fairly pathetic attempt at writing "SORRY P", but I drew a sad face beside it, which I think would be enough to let her know how badly I felt, but then an even better idea appeared in my head. I checked that Penny was still in her place, and ran another little ways off, about fifty feet.

I turned back into a human, and while buck-naked, proceeded to roll around in the snow, washing off any blood that I still had anywhere on my body. My back was particularly hard to reach, but it was the most important part because that was where she gripped my shoulders while I ran. The icy snow was unbelievably cold, but at this moment it felt amazingly refreshing as I got to clean off my body from all of the blood and dirt I had accumulated over the last few days. As I did a final check for any more blood, I noticed that the large gashes from the wolf's claws I had received on my stomach were suddenly gone. I felt the back of my neck, and there were no bite marks either! "What the hell is going on here?" I asked myself frustratingly, completely confused now.

'You don't understand! He's one of us!' started to play through my mind over and over again.

I finally snapped out of it and back to reality and realized that I had wasted entirely too much time; I needed to get back to Penny. "PENNY!" I shouted out, hoping my voice that had deepened and increased in volume over the past two months would be able to reach her.

"YES?" I heard her faint voice in reply.

"WALK TOWARDS MY VOICE!"

I quickly dove through the air, morphing back into my wolf form in an instant, my fur shooting out in all directions, slightly wet from all of the snow I had melted, and bolted back towards Penny, now feeling pleased with myself, and both of my brilliant ideas. When I caught up to her she had already reached my message that I had written in the snow. She was standing over it, wearing the biggest grin I had ever seen on her face – and grinning was a daily exercise for my Penny.

I stood beside her, ducking down to rub my head in her hand. She giggled as my soft fur brushed through her equally soft hand. "Thank you, Damien. That makes me feel infinitely better." She leaned over to kiss the top of my muzzle. I grinned (making sure it would be interpreted as a friendly one) and licked her cheek.

"Okay, now it's my turn. I want you to turn around and don't look back." She commanded, her melodious voice firm yet equally gentle. I indulged myself in my curiosity and faced the opposite direction. I stole a quick glance behind me and saw her crouching, writing something in the snow.

I quickly turned back, feeling oddly guilty that I had disobeyed her orders.

"Alright, you can turn back around now."

When I looked back at the spot where Penny had been writing, I saw a big heart, with both of our names inside of it. Besides that she had written: "Thank you for protecting me. ALL the time." I then saw that my sad face had been crossed out, and beside it she had drawn two smiley faces.

I wasn't sure if wolves could cry, because I think I felt like shedding a quick tear or two. This girl really was incredible. I started chuckling to myself as I thought about the hilarity of our predicament. Ten wolves had just attacked us and she had seen that I was badly hurt but now perfectly healed, yet all she could do was thank me. She didn't ask questions; she was just glad that I was there to take care of her. And as long as she wanted me to, I would be the luckiest guy in the world to be able to do it.

"Damien?" she asked.

'Yes?' I turned to look up at her.

But it wasn't Penny who had called my name. I looked past her to see who had called my name. We were both now looking at a beautiful Indian girl – but it was strange because she wasn't Inuit – who standing about twelve feet away. Next to her stood a slightly shorter boy of the same heritage, who I assumed was her brother Seth.

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