"Your… your son?" Naku could see and smell the fear in him, and it pained her beyond recognition to see her only pup in such a manner.
"Yes," Naku turned away from Toboe and began to walk off, she stopped and looked back to see if he was following; he was but keeping his distance, " I am sorry, Toboe, for any pain I ever caused you. But you were my last son and the Hunters always found us… now matter where we ran to."
Toboe ran up so he was beside Naku, "Hunters?"
"Not long after you were born, one after another, our once large and proud pack began to thin. The Hunters were killing us off. We even tried to blend in with the humans; we took on their form, yet even then we were killed. It was when you brother was killed, and after your sisters had been, that I decided I would hide you to protect you. That old woman, she was a rare human indeed, she agreed to raise you, she had always showed us mercy when all other would not." She looked up into the sky, "Naru, my sister, wanted to put an end to our slaughter and so went to the Hunters and for a while acted as through she wanted to find out how they could always find us… and she got her answer. They laughed as they said they had tagged the Alpha-male. But my sister being who she is became a wolf right in front of them, and she killed every last one she saw. When she came back to tell what she had learned, Hokori, being as loyal to his pack as he was, left us that night. He ran away from us so that we might live."
Naku had lead them to a wide river. In her refection Toboe saw, not a wolf, but a woman. She looked so sad. Her brown eyes shown with tears, and her red hair was cut to her shoulders.
Toboe looked at the refection and to the wolf beside him; both were crying. He put his head under hers, and their refection showed the human form of Toboe wrapping his arms around the woman as her fell to her knees and hugged her beloved son.