Ghost padded through the forest, sniffing along a trail, the taste of blood mixing with that of packed snow and pine. There was usually little game in the area just outside the Wall, the men of the Watch and the people of Mole's Town thinned most packs of deer and elk for their own food.
Yet tonight Ghost scented rare prey. A wild boar. Not the skinchanger's boar, that was still locked up.
This boar was truly wild, unconnected to another being. Ghost slinked along, tongue darting to the ground here and there. When the scent became strong enough, he took off at a run, a white streak darting between trees until the land opened up to pure white. He came toward the top of a hill and slowed, taking the air. He peered over the hill and saw his prey below. His muscles tensed, then he leapt over the hilltop and rushed at the boar. It was smaller than average, though its tusks were honed to dangerous points. Ghost took it from the side, teeth digging into flesh as they tumbled across the snow.
The board let out a shriek, then a grunt, and tried to pry itself from the direwolf. Ghost wrenched his head down, tearing away a massive chunk of flesh from the boar's midsection. The boar made to run. Ghost licked his lips and charged again, this time tumbling with the boar into a tree trunk. Ghost's back hit the trunk, wedged between the boar and the tree, he huffed with a not insignificant amount of pain. The boar righted itself and made to charge. Ghost scrambled away, just missing a strike from the tusks. The boar hit the tree and one tusk wedged in the trunk.
Needing no further opportunity, Ghost attacked again and within minutes was sated by the warm blood and meat of the boar's carcass. Once fed, he sniffed along the ground, gradually making his way back toward the massive wall of ice. Along the main trail once again, Ghost felt something rustle within him. The direwolf snarled silently, then shuddered.
His eyes were not his own. His desires were not his own. They belonged to someone else, and yet were of his making. The man, not a master but something the men might call a friend, or something else nothing had a name for, inhabited him. Ghost smelled the room he was in, the fire and the hearth, the furs and the fabrics, the woman and sex. Those smells had become familiar as any to Ghost in recent times. The woman had smelled different when he was a puppy, and he had loved her scent even then. Now, he often craved it, needed it as the man did, though in a different way. The man was his, his friend, his caretaker, the woman was kindred to both. A bond Ghost neither understood nor cared to existed between them. Had she her own wolf, Ghost knew he would have mounted her as much as his man had taken the woman, perhaps more. The loyalty beneath the desire, however, drove both man and wolf to her side again and again.
Yet the man's thoughts were not on her now. What little Ghost had gleaned of human thought he found confusing and mostly unnecessary. Food, sleep, comfort in rest, connection to the most loyal, sex - these he understood in his own way and knew were important to man and beast alike. Hunting was needed, too, though man did not always see it that way. His man, the one inside him now, fought that impulse and yet it ran through him almost as strong as it did in Ghost. One day he might see it, but for now the man directed them back toward the Wall. Ghost went, as he intended to anyway, and while the man was within him, seeing with his eyes and scenting with his senses, Ghost felt their minds seeking answers from one another, but the questions were too nebulous to give coherent answers. Yet one fact they agreed upon: protect the woman, no matter how or when. If she was in danger, they would get her out of it, together.
The man smelled something through Ghost. More men. The wild ones from above the wall. Draped in animal skins did nothing to hide their humanity from Ghost. He wanted to return to the warmth of the room with the woman, to lay beside her as the man did and feel her fingers in his fur. Yet the man pressed back at him.
"Soon," and internal voice whispered to him. "We won't leave you. Look to these men. See what they're doing."
The direwolf huffed, almost snarled, but the man pressed him on and so he obeyed. Easing along the trail, ready to dart into the shadows if needed, he moved along until the scent almost overwhelmed him. He slipped off the trail into the woods to come alongside a handful of the humans moving in the dark. He crept closer, staying hidden, and followed to hear their words.