Chapter 24
New Life on Baffin Island
Two months later…
Claws, Mica, Magril, and Lilly had all given birth to their first litters, but only two of them had their mates with them to raise their litters. Although Stinky and Garth had survived—despite earlier confusion about Garth's fate—Scar and Liam did not.
Claws had given birth to six puppies five days after Scava, Kate, and Humphrey were all killed, and she named them Dahlia, Kara, Christina, Jordon, Justin, and Scar. Dahlia was named for not just the flower, but also a sad, dark song called "Black Dahlia" she'd heard a human listening to. The name of the band was something like "Hollywood Undead," but Claws couldn't really remember for sure now. It'd been before she even got pregnant when she heard it, but she hadn't forgotten that heart wrenching song. The second verse had hit her especially hard because the singer had sounded like he'd been on the verge of crying before he was half way through his verse. And Scar was, obviously, named for his deceased father whom he'd never now. Claws wasn't sure how she'd thought of the names Kara, Christina, Jordon, and Justin. They'd just come to her for no reason at all.
Mica had given birth to fourteen puppies. She was lucky Stinky was still alive or it would've been difficult raising and naming them all. The nine girls' names were Kate (she was named for their deceased grandmother), Kelsie, Kaylee, Maddie, Susie, Missy, Chrissie, Abigail, and Kaydence. The five boys' names were Cody, Cooper, Tyler, Zach, and Dakota. Although Stinky and Mica loved them all dearly, none of their names came from any special sources, unlike how Claws had named Dahlia and Scar.
Magril, also a widow, just like Claws, had named her eight children—four daughters and four sons—all by herself. The girls' names were Madison, Amy, Molly, and Ashley. The boys' names were Liam (obviously named for their father who died when The Howling Rock had collapsed), Hunter, Travis, and Brandon. Just as Claws had done with her young son Scar—naming him for his late father—Magril had the same thing in mind when she'd named her oldest son after the father they'd never now. Claws and Magril had gotten closer because they both lost their mates almost the same way. Although Magril couldn't replace Princess as Claws's best friend, and Magril perfectly understood why, they were both good friends in the two months since they'd reached Baffin Island.
Lilly, unlike Claws, Mica, and Magril, hadn't given birth to a mixture almost evil mixture of sons and daughters. She'd given birth to one son and five daughters. If Garth was dead like she'd feared so many months ago, she would've named their only son after him, but he was a live, so they'd followed Mica's example of naming a daughter after Kate, Claws naming a son after Scar, and Magril name a son after Liam. Lilly and Garth had agreed to name their only son after Humphrey, who had been brutally murdered by Scava—who Lilly mutilated when he'd turned his back on her—on the day they'd finally reached Baffin Island. That way, they wouldn't forget Kate, Humphrey, Scar, and Liam. That wasn't to say they would forgot anyone else who died. They'd always remember everyone who lost their lives until they were dead themselves. Lilly and Garth had named their five daughters Nikki, Julie, Zoë, Sadie, and Courtney.
Stinky and Mica had become the Alpha male and the Alpha female of this new wolf pack for several reasons. The primary reason was because of all the death. Because Fleet had been killed when that train derailed, Claudette, the oldest of Kate and Humphrey's two Alpha offspring, was a widow, and therefore, she was automatically out of the pick to simply because she was a widow. The second case of this was Princess and Runt. Runt was still alive, but Princess had been killed by Scava not far from here. The third case of this was Magril and Liam, but even if Liam was alive, they couldn't become the back leaders because they were the youngest of their generation, excluding Runt. And because Kate and Humphrey had both been killed by Scava, that automatically made Stinky and Mica the new pack leaders. Stinky was the oldest Alpha offspring who still had a mate, and they were the first taken into consideration for being the new pack leaders.
The windowed wolves now lived with some of their fellow pack members who had also lost their mates. Magril was living with Candu and his only surviving daughter so they'd have someone help raise the three-month old wolf pup called Natalie. Claudette and Runt lived with Lilly and Garth, and acted as an aunt and uncle for their first litter of puppies, even if they were their cousins, not their aunt and uncle.
To this day, over two months after Scava was killed by Lilly and Claws, the twelve survivors, out of twenty who had been alive the day after the world had ended, were still shaken by what had happened to Kate and Humphrey two months ago. They were shaken by all of the deaths—Kate, Humphrey, Princess, Fleet, Sweets, Candy, Scar, and, at one point, they'd feared Garth was dead. They'd never forget what happened to their friends, nor would they ever forgot them and everyone who died when the world had ended. The only wolf they wanted to forget was—
"—that motherfucker called Scava," Stinky said to Mica, his mate, when their children were play outside the den and out of hearing range. "I hope he is burning in the deepest pits of Hell and that he'll be there forever."
"I wish we could just forget him and everything he did to our friends and family," Mica almost cried. "I don't ever want to hear Scava's name, anything that sounds like it, and I don't want to hear anyone talk about him again for as long as we live. But, yes dear, I'm sure he's burning in the deepest pits of Hell forever…but even that is too good of a fate for someone like Scava…but we're living a new life now, Stinky, and we can't spend the rest of our lives thinking about what we went through because of him."