Balto rose to his feet and yawned as he always had, only to remember the last day's events. So many wolves he had grown close to, gone. The wolfdog sat in the cave and wheeped for hours until his stomach had told him he needed to keep moving. Chances were, those hunters were still in the area, and Balto wasn't looking forward to a round two.
The wolfdog peeked out of the den, looking at as much of the outside world as he could, and jumped at the sound of twigs snapping. Balto quickly withdrew into the cave and waited for a few minutes. Did the hunters actually chase him down? The poor hybrid kept a worried look when he heard barking, which told him he was done for. Balto shut his eyes, embracing his end. "Mush! Mush!" a human was with the dogs too.
While fighting one of those mutts was by no means difficult, a whole pack of them, and a human with a gun was not a fight Balto was willing to take.
A solid ten minutes had passed, Balto wasn't dead, and there weren't any barking or human voices. Still weary of what could possibly be waiting for him outside, the wolfdog stuck his head out once more. Not a single sign of a dog or human except for paw prints and footprints. Balto let out a deep breath, he narrowly avoided death this time around.
Balto pounced on a rabbit, quickly killed it, and started digging into his meal. The wolfdog stopped at the sound of something being dragged across the snow. "Mush! Mush!" it was the same voice from earlier. Balto stopped eating for a second, as to not making any noise. "Mush! Mush!" the voice repeated until it got further and further away. Balto finished the rabbit off, before getting up to walk in some direction, any direction, he just needed to find a new home for himself.
The wolfdog poked his head through the bushes in the same direction as the human and his dogs were going and saw what he only heard in stories. Tall, brown objects where humans lived. Some wolves referred to them as camps, others referred to it as death itself. Balto vaguely recalled his mother calling these things a "town' however.
The Wolf dog's curiosity took over him for a second as he started walking towards the town. More particularly towards what stole his attention the most, the ocean. Balto had always wanted to see it, but never could due to his pack's territory being so far away from the sea. "How much did I run yesterday?" Balto thought.
Balto walked up the shoreline until he came across a wooden structure not too far from the shore. It looked somewhat cosy, but it was too close to the "town" for his interests. Despite this, Balto made his way up a board that led up to what he assumed was the entrance. "Oh my god!" said a feminine voice. The wolf dog's head jerked to the side as he heard that voice.
What he saw were a bunch of dogs, with fur rougher than his own. "Wolf!" one of the dogs cried. The wolfdog slowly started backing away. "Somebody go get Steele!" one of the dogs screamed. It sounded like a female. The wolfdog quickly slinked away and started running as fast as he could into the forest nearby.
Balto sat down in the same den he found himself in this morning. "Looks like this place is going to be my home for the time being." the hybrid laid down and sighed. Whoever this Steele was, Balto could already assume that he wouldn't like wolves, or wolfdogs.