Ƭħє ŞąЬяє'ƨ Şħąmє
Chapter Nine: Leaving
Diego stalked slowly through the night.
His paw had healed enough for him to walk, and it only twinged slightly now as he put weight on it. Other than that, it barely bothered him. What was bothering him were the choices he'd made.
He'd left the pack. But he wasn't brave enough to go straight back to the herd.
Terrified hazel eyes gazing up…
Diego shuddered. No, going directly back to the herd and hoping to be accepted as one of them again was out of the question. Besides, if Akira and her pack was aiming for the herd in their next hunt… What could he do? Saving one child from a pack had been disastrous enough; saving a whole herd would be suicide. What could he do?
There was a chance he could go back to the pack. Say that he'd decided against doing what he was currently doing. But that would leave him in his previous dilemma; he'd have to attack the herd. If he went back to the herd, he'd be attacked by the pack.
Think, Diego, think.
Out of nowhere, something that Soto had once said jumped into his head. Completely random; and completely welcome.
Time spent in reconnaissance is seldom wasted. Relax, Diego. Let your instincts take hold. Then strike.
Diego let out a low, bitter laugh. He'd betrayed one pack, he'd betrayed a herd, and yet here he was, listening to the ghost of his original pack leader. Shaking his head slightly, he let his mind wander, then settled into a loping run towards what he had once called his family.
***
It's hard to realize, sometimes, that even though everything may have changed for you in your life, that other people have moved on with theirs. Diego reflected on that as he watched the herd from the secure location of what he called his 'lair'. It was about twenty meters away from the herd; close enough so that they couldn't sense him, but he could sense them. Convenient. It also meant that he was on his home ground; he knew every shred of land in a one-mile radius, with his lair as the epicentre.
Including the dwelling of a certain herd nearby…
Diego shook his head, blocking out that particular thought, and pointedly ignoring the hunger he could feel biting inside his body. He stretched and laid down on the rough floor of his lair, pricking his ears up and listening to snatches of a conversation on the wind. A conversation that he would have once given anything to be a part of, and now only wished he couldn't hear.
***
The herd should have been asleep. In fact, everything in Diego's mile-radius ought to have been asleep.
So why could he still hear conversation?
Slipping quietly out of his lair, he stalked through the twilit night, hoping against hope that the pack hadn't arrived…
***
Ever had one of those moments where the world just seems to utterly and completely freeze? Yeah. Diego was having one of those. Concerning a sabre a few years younger than him, and rather good- looking. She was also keeping the herd awake with a story about her trying to catch a baby bird Dodo when she was just a baby. That story was keeping the herd in stitches of laughter, while the storytelling was sitting very confidently in the middle of them, velvet eyes glittering in the night.
And Diego was furious.
He knew where that sabre had had to have come from; he knew what she was trying to do; and by the way she'd entranced the whole damn herd, they wouldn't believe him!
Think, Diego, think.
What the hell are you supposed to do now?