A/N: If you would like to follow for more constant updates and / or to keep in touch, you can find me at TheUnknownOne_3 on Twitter.
November 2018
Mole Harbor Bridge, Gnu York Subdistrict
City of Zootopia
Under the open skies and down the unknown streets of a portion of the city, that he probably would not have recognized even if he had been sober, a large wolf was trudging along. A bottle of brown liquor hung precariously between two digits on his right paw: long having lost its original brown paper sack to the wind. The large wolf's lips were peeled back in a manic and fearful fashion while no attention was paid to how disheveled his gait was as he stared at the metalworks of a set of divided bridges that went out over some river.
The headlights from the two lanes worth of light traffic resolutely streamed towards and rushed away from the jacket-laden predator periodically while he made his way to the center of the bridge. Despite how loud it was to listen to the rubber tires going over the metal-grating of the roadway, the wolf could hear none of it. The only thing holding his attention in his mind's eye was the snarling, and the snapping, and the screaming from mammals on a random day – months prior – after he had been shot with a Nighthowler pellet. His nose was filled with the scent of fear conjured up by his mind. He tripped when the sound of bones crunching ran through his mind and he tasted the spray of hot blood on his tongue when his knees hit the ground. The bottle clattered against the metal while his stomach voided a large volume of acid and whiskey mixture through the slatted grate.
Dave Mingan was going on his fourteenth day without sleep and not even the drink was fixing his problems. Stumbling back to his hindpaws, he scooped up the bottle with a snarl before spitting out some of the remaining bile and drowning the sour taste of vomit with another pull from a quickly draining glass bottle. His free forepaw was on autopilot as he began to ensure that all of his personal belongings were clear of his trench coat pockets before he rolled the article of clothing off of his shoulders and letting it fall away to the metal catwalk. He barely even noticed when the bottle slipped from his grasp again. This time, the bottom ring of the bottle landed perfectly, and the article exploded into large shards before they nearly all fell between the openings. He had been looking: the wolf would have seen how the glass and the liquid glittered in the streams of dissipating light before falling towards the roiling abyss below the bridge.
He was haunted by the mammals that he had injured… and, especially by the one that he had ended up mauling to death.
The sounds of a spinal column being severed made his guts heave again: so violently that the wolf was thrown over to the outer railing of the walkway and forced him to look down at the water below. It was hundreds of feet down to the whitecaps. His body shuddered violently as all of his internal mechanisms were trying to figure out if he needed to puke again or not. His tongue was so saturated with saliva that it had begun slipping through his clenched fangs, dripping through his lips, as a result of the feeling of sickness.
With ears pinned back and his tail thrashing behind him, the large male wolf threw a leg over the railing to bring himself out onto the ledge of a metal I-beam. An outward display of fury was betrayed by the shaking of his knees from the fear of the heights he was at. He had not even noticed that cloud-cover had begun to mute the star-laden inky blackness of the sky several minutes before and, surprisingly, he did not notice when decently sized and icy-cold raindrops began to splatter over his ears and snout.
...
Coming off of a long and odd shift at her store, Rory Silverthorne was tiredly staring out the windshield of her car. Her eyes were silently processing pieces of visual information to a brain that was halfway on autopilot. The music, from the leading pop station, was quietly surrounding her while the windshield wipers were sweeping the steadily increasing droplets of rain from the clear glass surface. Little things out in the distance caught her eye over the moments she had crested to the flat portion of the top of the bridge. Yellow turn indicators blipped on and off further down the roadway. A mammal was walking along with a light-brown overcoat on the walkway left of the fast-lane. She moved over into that lane to pass a slower vehicle.
Upon taking another cautious look at the pedestrian lane, the disappearance of the brown coat startled the she-wolf.
Her paw instinctively went for the brake pedal as her eyes quickly began to adjust to a fuller alertness as she scanned for the mammal who had been walking along. She was able to filter out the light enough to catch the briefest glimpse of a gray tail as it went over the side of the outer railing. It had been instinctual for her to floor the accelerator, in an effort to get alongside there faster, despite the fact that she had only been three-hundred yards shy as it was.
"Dear Gods, no." She whispered urgently.
Her right forepaw smashed against the hazards button that was sitting in the middle of her dashboard under the radio before she slammed on the brakes. Fortunately, there had not been a vehicle that had followed her around the other car. Unfortunately, she locked up the front wheels and likely shredded the rubber, to some degree, on the tires in an effort to get stopped. Rory's head tracked the mammal, after they had appeared from around one of the upward-shooting I-beam supports, and she found herself staring at their back. She could tell by the profile, now, that she was staring at a wolf. The car was thrown into park before both of her paws slammed into the latch of the door handle.
"No!" She screamed desperately at the window as her paws failed to make the door do what she wanted.
Rory's widened eyes took in the fact that the other wolf was looking down at something in their raised left forepaw. The paw fell down and to the left. Rory caught a split-second of the glow from a smartphone screen before it vanished over the edge: falling to the waters below the bridge without a single care. The wolf's head was down as their forepaws came together: as if looking at something else now. The poor she-wolf had even registered the fact that tears were spilling from her eyes when the door finally popped open for her. The rain splattered her muzzle and washed them away. A piercing scream was punctuated by the crack and wash of thunder and lightning. The next thing to have slipped from the male wolf's pawpads, as she could scent him now, was the vestiges of a tri-fold wallet.
The scream yielded no physical response. No turn of the wolf's head. No flick of the tail. Or his ears.
He was in an entirely different world.
"Stop! Please!" Rory screamed, throwing herself over the inner railing to the catwalk. "Don't do this! Gods, please, don't do this!"
The she-wolf's arms were outstretched, slowing her approach so that she would not startle him into slipping on the slickened metal under paw, and eventually she was standing close and to his right. Enough so that the painfully dull orange overhang light was able to illuminate the driver's license that was in his paw. The thing that he was staring at. He wasn't hanging on to anything. He was simply leaned back against the top rail with his tail curled around one of the down-wires.
If he leaned forward…
Or, if a sudden gust of wind blew through…
It would be over.
Not even the rain could stifle the swirling scent of a sickeningly drunken male wolf nor the scent of the fear-stricken she-wolf now.
David Mingan, is what was written on the license.
It was only a glimpse that caught that before the pictured article fluttered away.
One.
Two.
If all flooded back to the she-wolf's mind, in an instant. The videos of a large male gray wolf, having been struck with a Nighthowler pellet, attacking mammals at some unknown intersection before killing a male cougar who attempted to subdue the savage predator. The video had shown the wolf practically dismantle his ancient hunting rival. Rory was one of the first mammals to realize what she was witnessing at that moment. From the second, after the pellet impacted, to the entirety of their incarceration by Lionheart's goons, and then the time that was spent in Zootopia General's critical cases ward. The victims had seen every, single moment of their individual ordeals.
"Mister! Please!" She screamed. "Mister Mingan!"
Horns were blaring, over the splattering of the heavy raindrops across the metalwork, on the roadway behind the two wolves from the anger of other mammals at the fact that there was a vehicle parked in the middle of the roadway. Those sounds drowned out the clack of claws against the railing as Dave voided his stomach over the waters. The smell was putrid… sick, even… indicating several weeks of heavy drinking that was beginning to take a toll on the male's body. Namely his kidneys and liver. It was the sway of his shoulders that forced Rory forward.
She lunged and wrapped herself crossways over the larger male's frame. In retrospect, she later noticed that he was positively huge for a gray. Far exceeding the normal difference between males and females. The thing that sat at the forefront of her mind in the moment was that, if he stepped off of the ledge, the she-wolf would either have to let him go or she would be pulled over with him. The fact that her body was shuddering under the wracking sobs was most certainly not helping her grip.
"Not like this! Don't do this, Mister Mingan!" She bawled for a mammal that she did not know. "Please, Lion Christ! Don't you dare jump off this bridge!"
"Dave Mingan doesn't exist anymore." The male growled.
Rory could not stop the wet giggle that slipped between her lips even as the tears kept pouring into the streams of rainwater running through her fur.
"That's funny…" She admitted between her humored sobs. "Because I can tell you that you do exist by the simple fact that I've got you wrangled right now."
"Miss… Let me go."
Even though he was breathing through his nose, Rory could smell that he had to have ingested enough alcohol to have closed down the entire bar scene on Remington Avenue.
"I have no pack. I have no home. The only thing that I have left is a vivid highlight reel of my worst days… set to repeat inside of a locked room… Again… and, again… and, again… forever."
Rory watched as Dave turned his head to look down at her with a side-eye. The water splashed and tweaked at the fur around his eye-sockets and the wolf's pupil was blown out enough to take in every bit of light that he could. The sight was unsettling due to the fact that it looked like she would fall into the depths of Dave's pain, sorrow, and loss.
Just as he wished to fall off the ledge and into the darkness below the bridge.
The lone wolf was done with this world.
He was ready to die.
And, there was conviction in that.
"Go home, Miss." Dave finally slurred, turning his head down to attempt to unlatch the she-wolf.
"No, no, no!" Rory belted out. She began to try to tug him over the railing backwards: though, it was in vain. "You're not going to make me live with that!"
"You're the one who stopped." Dave muttered, finally freeing himself of her right paw.
A snarl was ripped from the male after Rory slammed that paw onto his shoulder and jammed her claws through his shirt and into his flesh. The she-wolf felt Dave attempt to spin around to confront her, but her digits were holding him firmly to what little ground that he was standing on. Rory leaned up and wrapped her left around the furious male's neck to whisper in his pinned ear.
"What they did to you? How it haunts you?" Rory hissed angrily. "You are about to do that to me!"
Rory was well aware of who David Mingan was; after all, she was the eldest daughter of the Silverthorne Family Alphas. Despite how different packs tended to stay in close contact for diplomacy purposes, the two most senior pups from the two largest packs had never met. Mostly because of the fact that the Mingan parents had been killed early in his life. There had been a dispute with a Meadowlands prey organization, which turned out to be known later as a gang, and the group of antelope ended up raiding the pack's compound and killing the majority of the family. David Mingan had been taken under the wings of several extended family members so that he could be molded to their standard of eventually becoming the pack's Alpha. The other purpose of that was so that the pack organization would change depending on which female he took as his mate. He had never been to a political meeting between packs. At least, not when she had been to them when she was younger. Her raising was far smoother and more streamlined.
And, she had just rolled the dice on the fact that she had never heard an ill word of the Mingan heir. She challenged him to be as good of a mammal as she had always heard that he was. The tactic was below the belt, but there was no illegitimacy in the statement.
That is when she felt it. Dave began to shake and slide down the railing until he was sitting on the ledge of the bridge, hindpaws hanging out over the water, before he began to weep. Rory had to let him go long enough for the male to deflate before she could reach through the railing and wrap her arms around his neck to give the emotionally wrecked male a hug. The depth of their situation struck home after several minutes of silence had gone by. It was then that she unwrapped him, stood up, and leaned over the railing to try to get him to his hindpaws again.
"I've got you, David. But, we have to go. The cops will probably be on their way." Rory urged him.
"Why?" He asked drunkenly.
"Because my car's been parked in the middle of the bridge for almost twenty-minutes now. Mammals are starting to take notice." The she-wolf said, looking back to see several other vehicles slowly passing her sedan. Looky-loos, no doubt. "Come on, I'll take you home."
Fortunately, the lone wolf was spry enough on his paws to not slip off of the ledge while trying to throw himself back over the railing and onto the walkway. Rory merely had to pull him by the seat of his pants so that he could complete the maneuver. The she-wolf was distracted by the tan jacket that was laying on the ground: completely missing Dave throw himself over the road's guardrail and nearly onto his head. She collected the garment and hopped over to open the rear passenger door so that she could usher him inside. His soaked jacket was tossed to the floorboard and the door was shut as soon as his tail was inside.
Rory jumped into her seat and took off: resetting all of the default settings within the sedan before she adjusted the rearview mirror to look at Dave. He looked uncomfortably cramped as he laid out in the rear seat. The she-wolf turned up the heat and looked again, catching the view of his face from the passing illumination of a streetlight. The look was slack and unconscious. Her white sedan was redirected further down the highway while a deft right paw found her cellphone. She speed-dialed her parents and pressed the device to her ear. It only took a couple of rings for them to answer.
"Hey, sweetie. How's your night off?" Her father greeted.
"I had to work, daddy." Rory replied quickly. "Something happened. I'm bringing someone to the compound and you guys need to be there. There might be serious diplomatic ramifications involved here… And, bring Miss Danvers, please."
"We're already here, Rory." Her mother said loudly, not standing as close to the phone as her father was.
"Diplomatic ramifications? What do you mean, sweetheart?" Her father queried in confusion. "Who did you find?"
"David Mingan…" The she-wolf said quietly, taking another glance back at the lone wolf.
She could not see or hear if he was still breathing or not.
"I'm calling the pack council right now, Rory. How far out are you?" Her mother cut her father off urgently.
"I'm taking the offramp. See you in fifteen." Their daughter told them before hanging up the phone.
The Otterdam Subdistrict was a higher-end suburbia of sorts. It was partitioned by several tributaries, leaving some of the area as islands. One such island, not far southeast from the Downtown Subdistrict proper, was owned entirely by the Silverthorne Pack with one access road. Rory had driven a little faster than she normally liked to on the skinnier roadways and ended up making it down the driveway in only ten-minutes as opposed to the reported fifteen. She rounded the corner and aimed the steer tires towards the overhang near the front entrance. Nearly a dozen wolves were standing near the door: waiting on her arrival with concerned, and even grim, expressions on their muzzles. Her parents, Doctor Michelle Danvers, her elderly grandfather – one of two Betas, and two of the family's lawyers – all three a part of the pack's council, as well as four of the most senior Deltas of the pack.
As soon as the door was open, Rory walked over and gave her parents each a hug. Due to the fact that she operated her own business and lived near to that location, she did not always get to make it home every week to see them. Elizabeth Silverthorne, her mother, was entirely business as she looked her soaked daughter over before looking at daughter's sedan. Noah Silverthorne, her father, on the other paw looked concerned more for her than anything. Both parents could see that their daughter had been crying by the redness in her eyes. Rory tipped her head sideways, stepping over to the edge of the overhang: indicating that she wanted to speak with them privately first. None of the rest of the pack moved nor would they until Elizabeth or Noah gave an order. The rain splashing out over the asphalt landing would hush their conversation until a decision was made for an order to be relayed.
"What happened, Rory?" Noah asked firmly.
She recounted the story exactly as it happened: trying not to break down into tears again at the freshness of the scare that she had received. The whole point of crossing over that bridge was to get to the compound so that she could relax for a couple of days. She would not have, at that particular time, if it had not been for the fact that one of her employees had not shown up to relieve her. So, there was a bit of a reprieve for said employee. But, that was a whole other issue entirely.
"Well… That confirms some of the rumors that we had heard from members of the Jacobson Pack." Noah muttered.
"What rumors?" Rory asked in confusion.
"The word was that there had been a coup, so to speak, by the outlying family members of the pack. Once they realized that David would not side with one faction or another, to elevate certain members over the others, they banded together and removed him as the Alpha before casting him out of the pack. The Jacobson's thought there was more to that last part, but they could not explain it any further. They just said that David disappeared right after that council meeting." Elizabeth explained, voice raising in surprise at the connection of the dots.
The heat of the moment on the bridge had not allowed for the she-wolf to fully process what Dave had said to her. The memory of the statement sent a shiver through her soaked body as she began to tear up again, looking straight down at the ground. The male's desire for death was not just because he had killed another mammal or that his direct family had been dead for years. It was because the worst thing that could happen to a wolf had literally also happened to him.
"So, that's what he meant when he said that he didn't have a pack and didn't have a home…" She said sullenly.
Rory could not imagine her family suddenly shunning her from the pack in such a fashion. A pack's rule of expulsion was something that was supposed to only be used under dire circumstances for either the individual or for members of the pack: wherein one group or the other was a threat to the opposite party. It was a rare thing to hear about happening since wolves were hardwired to be pack oriented. The entire ritual of leaving one's pack to find a mate and start a new pack had died out of need and use at the turn of modern times, as another result. Now, all you had to do was meet someone nice and then the two Alpha pairs would hash out the politics going forward between the two packs.
To the rest of the Mingan Pack, Dave had just been a pawn that needed to be swept off the board in the first move of the internal power struggle for control.
Noah turned his head towards his father and jerked the end of his muzzle towards the car. It was his voice that broke his daughter's train of thought.
"Take him inside and get him cleaned up. And, someone make some coffee. Nobody says a word about this until we come up with a plan." He ordered the Deltas.
It was Elijah Silverthorne that stepped over to the door and opened it for the younger members of the security team. Her grizzled grandfather was still as spry as ever despite how gray he had become. The former pack Alpha was nearly snow-white and one of his eyes was missing within a jagged scar that ran from his temple to the back of his right cheekbone. He had lost it during a leadership challenge, before the advent of pack councils, where he ended up fighting off a young Beta to retain his position. The young male wolf, not of Silverthorne blood, was killed for attempting that particular coup. Two-years later, politics – both internal and external – was handled by pack councils. The death stirred the whole city, in the days prior to the TAME Collar Initiative, and the packs all agreed to do things differently so that the city did not decide to suddenly start talking a closer interest in intraspecies activities. Back then, the ZPD would never have considered getting involved, but everybody knew the times would eventually change.
"Woah, pup!" Elijah said, raising his wrist to cover his snout. "You have got to lay off the bottle…"
"Christ, Boss! He's bigger than his father was." One of the older Delta's said.
"I figured that he would be." Noah admitted. "Don't startle him awake. I don't want to have to clean up anybody's blood tonight, do you understand?"
"Yes, Sir." Four Deltas sounded off.
Rory watched as the passenger door, on the opposite side, was opened so that two of them could hook Dave under his arms to drag him out about halfway.
"What's going to happen now?" She turned back to her parents and asked.
"You're going to go clean up and get some sleep. We will fill you in on what the Council decides in the morning." Her mother said, kissing her daughter on the forehead.
"If we reach a decision, that is." Her father said, planting an equally sweet kiss on the opposite side of her temple. "Good night, sweetheart."
...
Three days and nights went by before the sun's gentle waves fell across Dave's eyelids and forced the mental boot-up sequence required to wake him. A deep breath was exhaled as the tension deflated from his whole body. He felt sore, but good, but he did not feel all that great about rolling onto his side. It took a couple of moments to clear his eyes with the back of his wrist. A twist of his left arm came with the tug of resistance at the crook of his elbow near to the radial artery. Needless to say, the feeling brought his eyes fully open at that. The soreness in his neck was pronounced as he rolled it down enough to look.
He saw the IV lines just as his ears picked up the sound of the echocardiogram when he realized that there was a lack of movement in his right forearm… entirely due to the fact that he was cuffed to the bedrail.
That was when his brain engaged the biomechanics for his nose. The more he sniffed, the more his brain was able to register that he was in a foreign house and that there was nothing familiar about it or the mammals that had passed through the area with a fervent frequency. The walls were of a dull tan coloration, and it was decorated rather conservatively. A chair here, a mirror there, small table with a pure-white and patterned doily in the corner with one of those annoying little vases on it.
Then, there was the mahogany door that promptly opened.
Dave was not sure if it had been the echocardiogram machine or the clattering of the metal pawcuffs that gave away his conscious state.
But, now, he was sitting up with one hind-paw over the edge while six wolves entered the room. Immediately, his hackles raised as his hindbrain screamed: threat!
The Alpha pair, two Deltas, a dainty little she-wolf in a white coat, and one scarred-up old wolf. She was probably his doctor, and he was probably the former Alpha with familial ties.
"Mister Mingan. It's good to see that you're awake." The Alpha male said courteously.
"I'm not a Mingan." Dave replied, his voice was scratchy from not having had anything to drink.
"If I may… David," He replied. "You may not remember me, but we have met twice before. A long time ago, before your family was attacked. I know exactly who you are."
"You may or may not have me on that point, Sir. But, I have the distinct displeasure of knowing more than you do." Dave said evenly.
The elevating level of tension was felt within the room, radiating off of the lone wolf who did not know where he was and the two Deltas who were not happy with the disrespect being shown to their Alpha. Nobody was growling yet, but the two guards were not all that far off. It was only Dave that noticed the side-to-side bounce of the Alpha's head: indicating that he both agreed and disagreed with the statement.
"Did I hurt any of your pack?" Dave asked suddenly, disarming the lot of them.
"Heavens, no." The sweet, feminine voice of the Alpha's wife sounded next. "It was not that kind of incident, David."
"That's good to hear…" The lone wolf said, looking them all over again. "If I may and if you'd be so kind… I'd like to ask that you unshackle me and possibly return my clothes, so that I can back up off of your porch and be on my way."
"Danny, get those cuffs off. Politely." The Alpha said, growling out the last of the order. "Unfortunately, David, there is still a couple of matters that need to be taken care of before you can leave."
Visually, this was where Dave lost his composure. Upon feeling the proximity of the unknown Delta approaching him, and while staring at the Alpha male, his lips peeled back in what could have been politely described as a frown. It was the Delta that ended up growling when he took note of it, but he only noticed it after the pawcuffs clattered uselessly around the tubed railing.
"Cole, you and Danny are dismissed. Wait outside." The Alpha female dispelled the tension with her soft words.
The she-wolf doctor stepped through all of their lines-of-sight to take stock of the machines and the drips: ignoring the pissing contest that seemed to be about to transpire within the patient's room. Dave watched as the Alpha she-wolf's words were immediately listened to. Only his eyes moved to follow the two individuals as they exited without so much as a word of caution. The Alpha male had stepped closer to the foot of the bed, but it was the doctor that broke the silence first.
"Mister Mingan. Do not attempt to get out of this bed. When it was apparent that it did not seem like you would wake up quickly, we decided to hook you up to the intravenous drip and that meant that we also had to put in a catheter. You do not want to remove that in the wrong fashion. Do you understand me?" The she-wolf explained, but with a painfully bored tone.
"I understand." Dave replied tightly.
The doctor stepped back over to the Alphas and began to speak again. "He seems to be in good shape. I recommend that we observe him one more night before letting him roam around."
If it had not been for the fact that Dave's wrist had been unshackled, he probably would have been rather upset about still being "restrained" to the makeshift hospital bed. That fact had drawn a perturbed glance downwards towards his covered crotch as the she-wolf left the room: forcing him to notice that was not wearing any clothing at all. Out of the corner of his eye, Dave noticed that he had a large patch of bandaging over the top of his right shoulder.
"That's one of the issues that we need to address." The Alpha she-wolf mentioned.
"Was that one of yours?" He asked the mated pair.
"Yes." They said together.
"And, I didn't hurt any of your pack?" Dave asked again.
"No." They both replied.
"Then, there's nothing to speak on in that regard. And, that means that it is my turn…" The lone wolf said flatly. "If I've been kitnapped, I must inform you that I'm not worth anything. Nobody, from the old pack, will be coming for me. Not with pay in paw. And, not for a fight."
That was where the couple, previously in unison, broke their formation.
The Alpha male frowned heavily and pulled back like another wolf had taken a swipe at him.
The Alpha female fought against the heavy urge to grin all while she snorted out loud.
And, then, there was the elder who was still in the back of the room.
His loss of composure had resulted in a bursting-out of laughter.
It was, quite possibly, the first time that Dave had ever seen an Alpha male attempt any sort of damage-control with any member of the public – outside of his own pack. Dave's father, in the short amount of time that he had known him, had never attempted to reel in a situation that he, himself, had put the pack in. Unlike that of whoever in the fuck it was standing before him. The Alpha she-wolf had obviously been able to read between the lines of each of the males before her: and, that did nothing to stave off her entertained emotions. She was nearly laughing at this point.
"Pup," The elder growled, still thoroughly entertained, a moment later. "You're here with the Silverthorne Pack and you are not a hostage."
The lone wolf directed his eyes from the elder wolf to the Alpha male; squinting a bit before offering a nod that could be considered as polite. For Dave, it was a simple understanding of who he was speaking with now.
"You're right… It was a long time ago. If my lessons served me right, you are Noah and you are Elizabeth. I can't recall if we ever met again after that one night, though." The lone wolf said, looking between the two for a moment. The Alphas both nodded to confirm that that was indeed who they were.
"We did not. Not long after, your pack was attacked. After that, I can only recall a couple of instances where one of your aunts or uncles was assigned to meet at the Congress of the Packs during representative appointment votes and only once in the last decade." Noah explained.
"Well… In any case, I still have this distinct feeling that I'm not going to be allowed to leave once I'm cleared by your doctor." Dave finally set his mindset straight.
"It's a very delicate situation right now, Mister Mingan." Elizabeth began. "We had heard that there had been an expulsion from within your pack. At first, many of the pack Alphas thought that you had finally wrestled enough control to remove the biggest threat to the pack's name."
"But, as time went on, there was no sign of you – which I would have expected at the Congressional meeting – and there was no sign of any other Alpha." Noah added when his wife paused.
"There were whispers of a disappearance after that… and, then, whispers of fracturing within the pack. That kind of solidified the idea that you might have been killed in many Alphas minds." Elizabeth finished.
David Mingan could not help but smile a little. He could see the full picture now. "But, I'm not dead… And, if I haven't been abducted, then my surfacing – anywhere near your pack – is going to put you two right in the spotlight. The other packs will concoct their own ideas about how that happened and most of them will think that I was snatched up by you all - a rival pack." He explained, more to himself than them.
"And, you will still be coveted. Some of those Alphas will berate themselves for not considering an abduction of their own." Elizabeth offered more in a bitter tone.
"What… Why would I 'still be coveted'?"
Noah stepped around to the left side of the lone wolf's bed with a deathly serious look on his muzzle.
"It's not that you don't have a pack, David… It's that your former pack is not the Mingan Pack anymore." He said.
"You're the last true Mingan left." His wife confirmed.
That meant that he was still the Alpha.
But, is that a good thing... he thought quietly.
The humored expression from mere moments prior was surpassed. After Dave looked between the three wolves within the room, recalling that the third was likely Elijah Silverthorne, a deep rip of laughter bounced around the interior. The reaction puzzled the Alphas the most. The elder's frown dipped even further as he pushed himself away the wall that he had been resting against.
"If you boil the statement down with honesty…" Dave said between his chuckling. "What that really means is that there's a forty-percent pack rate with the eldest pups being breeding-age females… Which means that the more desperate Alpha pairs, who came to the same conclusion that you just two mentioned, will consider abducting and holding me hostage simply because I'm a walking bag of reproductive material. An asset to the Packs of Greater Zootopia with no supporting members to defend him against such a disgusting objective."
"Don't say it, pup." The elder warned: reading Dave's mind.
The statements had made both the Silverthorne Alphas cringe openly: neither of them could meet the bedridden wolf's eyes.
"Don't say what, Sir? 'Male sex slave'?" The wolf chuckled again as the elder began to snarl at him. "Honesty burns like hot oil, doesn't it?"
"That's enough!" Elijah shouted.
"I remember my lessons, all those classes on pack profiles that my aunts and uncles taught me, Mister and Missus Silverthorne… Your eldest pup is a female. Is that sort of treatment that I'm to expect?" Dave breathed the words, watching as the elder quickly crossed the room, before turning his anger on himself. "Christ only knows why I got so sentimental out there… I should've just hopped that railing and jumped off that fucking bridge."
"You cur!" Elijah snarled just as Noah physically intercepted his father.
"We would never do such a thing to you, Mister Mingan." Elizabeth said, loud enough to be heard over the snapping jaws of the pack's Beta. "If anything, we want to protect you from such things happening."
Dave felt the turmoil within his body zap all of his energy and force him back against the pillow while dragging his eyes up to the ceiling.
"Get out, please." He asked softly.
Noah was already trying to physically remove his father from the room. The door had opened with the two Deltas standing within the frame: finally deciding that it was time to possibly intercede in the tensions inside the room they were ordered to guard. Elizabeth held fast for a moment before she realized that the lone wolf was no longer going to speak on the matter at paw. At least, not right then. That was when she turned to leave. But, she only made it as far as the door before turning back.
"Why were you on that bridge, Mister Mingan?"
"The Nighthowler Incident? All those missing mammals?" David closed his eyes and hissed out a breath. "All of the other species, at least the ones who recognize me…"
He gathered enough strength to tilt his muzzle down to look at the she-wolf as the sounds of that day began to filter back into his mind.
"They just call me 'Lucky Number Seven.'"