A/N: ZareEraz here! I know its been a while but here's the next chapter! I hope you enjoy it and please excuse any spelling mistakes I might've missed because my beta reader HeartQueenVivaldi can't edit this one because she hasn't seen Wolf's Rain yet! (But don't worry, I'm working on it! :3) Happy reading and don't forget to review!

Chapter One: Snow Forest

A solitary howl rose into the air, climbing into the frozen air above the forest of snowy trees. The notes on the wind dove and rose again as the howl silenced all other sounds and movement in the forest, the animals frozen in panic as the predator made his presence known. Fat squirrels ceased their endless search for food, the caribou lifted their heads to the sky – their eyes wide in fear and the beavers, voles and hares ducked back into their homes in skitters and splashes. It was a wolf, the most ferocious predator of the forest. The howl continued on for a minute, ghosting over the land just like its source. The white wolf's paws sunk lightly into the snow as he sat on a rocky outcrop in the forest, his muzzle open to the sky, his large chest pushing out the air that turned into song around his fangs. The wolf's voice rose a few notes, and then dropped down an entire range of sounds before tapering off and fading from the air.

Why am I howling? The wolf thought. I have no kill, I don't have a pack to call, and there are few predators in my territory to keep away…so why do I howl? Kiba snapped his muzzle shut, growling at himself and standing up on his four strong legs. He was a lone wolf out in the forest on his own, and yet he was howling like he had a pack that he wanted to find, like he was lost or they were lost. It made no sense to him, but still he howled. He never received an answer no matter how long he raised his voice to the moon as it bathed him in its silver light. It was puzzling, but he still felt the need to do it.

Kiba shook his head, throwing the thoughts of his odd howling to the wind with the last of his notes and padded down the rocky outcrop, his pads feeling the ground beneath him. The air was crisp and cold, the perfect day for a wolf like him. The sun was bright above him as he walked, shining through the pine trees of the forest, making the snow sparkle underneath their branches. It was as tranquil as a forest could get: the calls of animals were still quiet after Kiba's howl, and whatever water hadn't frozen was burbling along somewhere just inside his field of hearing. The wolf was perfectly fine to live here, and had for several moon cycles since he'd left his homeland. He had a full belly from yesterday's hunt and he was free. That was all that should matter to him. But it wasn't.

Kiba felt lonely, more than he should. He had no pack – they were killed when he was young by a forest fire – so he had no family to protect. As a pup, he'd been fed and raised by an old woman who lived in a solitary shelter built from stacked logs a few cycles of the moon by foot from where he was now. Her head looked like his fur, the purest white and it hung around her face like the tears of the moon. She smiled a lot, barking at him when he did something that amused her and growling when he did something bad, like chewing through that soft thing she sat and rocked back and forth on. A chair, that's right. But he'd loved her, in his own way, and she loved him back. Kiba couldn't remember his own parents very well, so that woman became his whole world, and to the pup, she'd completely filled the space of his mother in her own, human way. She'd filled his head with human stories about a place that was a heaven on earth. Kiba understood the earth part – that was what he walked on, could feel and see and touch and run across…but the heaven part? He couldn't fathom what it was because it wasn't something he could see or feel. It just was, or it would be. The woman had petted his fur while she talked about this Paradise, her rough, old voice laying over him like a blanket as her gentle hands stroked his small body.

Kiba, my beautiful wolf, one day when the world is cold and dying, the wolves will find Paradise. Then, the world will be beautiful again; full of flowers and bright days where everyone is happy, where everyone is safe. It will be a heaven on earth and your kind will open it up. Don't you know how wonderful that is? I hope you find Paradise when my old bones are gone. I think that you will, you're such a clever little wolf aren't you? Kiba had yipped at her in reply, not quite understanding what she was saying, but it made the woman happy, so he showed her that he was happy too. And then he'd yawned, a long day and evening of running around in the snow and trying to catch mice (without success) rolling over him. He was tired. It was time to sleep. He'd drifted to sleep, his tiny body warm in the cabin where the woman lived with him. She stayed awake though, petting her little companion, her dark eyes shining in the firelight of her home, her wrinkled face shadowed with the age of her body.

I found you in a patch of flowers…white ones that I have never seen before and have never seen again. They were so beautiful, lying all around your little body, as white as your fur, Kiba. The flowers saved you from the fire that killed your pack and the land spared you, led me to you that that you might live, little one. Someday, I will not be here for you. I'm dying, Kiba. You will leave this land and never look back once I'm gone. Your destiny must lie in a different place than this. You can't stay with this old woman forever. She probably didn't think that the little pup in her lap was still listening, but he was, on the edges of sleep he heard her words, and they stayed with him, seeping into his dreams of white flowers and a full, red moon.

It was a while before it happened, maybe eight moon cycles or so, that the woman died. She'd fallen asleep in her teeth-torn chair and never got up. Kiba had been a strong young wolf by then and he knew what death was. He'd whined at her passing, sorrow dropping his ears, but he knew that it was her time and she'd known that as well. She'd left the door open for him. Kiba licked her wrinkled hand once, in thanks, before walking out into the snowy forest around him. He ran, a free wolf once again.

Since that time, Kiba had traveled all across the land, keeping to himself and hunting when he needed too. He slept when his body said so, and got up when his amber eyes opened. That was the life of the wolf: to live only in the present, all thoughts of the future put on hold to revel in the thrill of the hunt, the brilliance of the moon at night. But even as he ran, there was a nagging feeling like he was missing something, even when he had everything he needed. In human time, two years had passed since his birth, and he was a strong wolf now, and proud. Even as he walked through the forest now, he felt the little animals around him scurry away because of his presence. He was a predator of the night, they were right to fear him. But Kiba could smell something in the air. He could feel it on the wind as it rushed through his white fur.

Something was coming.

The forest was beginning to die around him, ever so slowly. The needles on the trees were less green, the soil drying up a little more each moon he spent here. The other animals were starting to leave too, one by one. There was less prey to hunt, less berries to forage when he couldn't manage to hunt. It might take many, many moon cycles, but this green, snowy expanse of trees would shrivel up like a corpse left out in the sun after a kill. The wolf would have to leave. He felt it in his bones. This once fertile hunting ground that sustained him since his early moons would no longer be his shelter, it would no longer feed him or fear him or hear his quiet pads and claws scrape along the ground. It would no longer hear his lonely howls when he cried to the moon at night – when his heart and bones ached for something he didn't know he needed. Like a memory on the edge of his mind, shadowed by forgetfulness. This feeling had been his companion from the day he was born, a looming darkness of knowing something wasn't right. Kiba knew this wasn't how he was supposed to live, but it was all he had since his pack had been destroyed by a fire. He needed something else. He knew he could change it; he knew he could find what it was wrong and fix it. He knew that once he did that…he could find what he sought, whether it was the Paradise the old woman told him about or something else. He would find it. Whether it was the Paradise she spoke of or something else, he would find it. He knew this deep within his soul.

A cloud passed over the sun, dark and grey, carrying with it a bulging body of snow. The wolf looked up at the sky, his amber eyes shining as the sun peeked out from the cloud as it passed. It wasn't alone…it was brining friends. A blizzard was on the way. The air would be thick with snow soon and if he didn't find shelter the wolf didn't stand a chance. Kiba snarled at the coming storm, as if he could ward off the elements before dashing into the trees, his strong leg carrying him effortlessly. He could run like the wind, he could surely out run the storm long enough to find a cave to wait it out. It was only a matter of time before he found one.

The other animals of the forest could feel the approaching snow as well, scurrying into their little hideaways and tree holes as fast as they could. Kiba flew by all of them, his claws digging into the earth, kicking up dirt and propelling him forward as a white blur. There were very few things that could stop him now, only a much larger predator or the coming storm would slow down his seemingly endless speed. He ran, towards the mountain, towards the edges of the northern forest that would eventually lead him south, away from this land that had been his whole world since he was born. He couldn't stay here any longer. This place held nothing for him now but memories, and he wouldn't stop…even for them. He could survive anywhere, that was his birthright as a wolf. Kiba ran for hours on end, dodging trees, feeling the wind rush past his fluid form, his eyes trained on the mountains ahead of him.

The clouds came in great numbers now, blocking out the sun and shadowing the land, the first snowflakes drifting down through the trees to the ground. The storm had begun. The snow started piling up on top of the already high snow and in just a few minutes Kiba's legs were buried up to his knees, making gripping the ground harder. The snow fell harder, blinding the wolf as the wind howled through the snow forest, obscuring the wooded land around him. The darkness was almost complete now, the white flurries of snow aiding the shadows of the storm. The cold dropped immensely, tearing through the wolf's pelt, soaking his fur down to his skin. Kiba shuddered with the freezing wind, but he didn't let it have the satisfaction of beating him and kept running. He had his pride as a wolf to uphold, no storm would beat him. His breath ghosted into the freezing air, his bright red mouth the only color in the storm besides his glowing yellow eyes. Kiba's fangs gleamed in what little light could still be seen in the storm and had any onlooker spotted him, he would appear as a ferocious ghost of the forest, a spirit of the wild as free as the winter wind itself.

Kiba came to a particularly deep drift as he leapt off of a small cliff, landing in the snow heavily, his legs sinking into the snow up to his belly. The snow was fresh, even the wide pads on his paws couldn't hold him up very well and he sank deeper and deeper as he went along. Soon the blizzard was throwing bits of ice down from the sky, the shards of frozen water clawing at the wolf's eyes and muzzle. He snarled, challenging the storm even as he looked for shelter to wait it out. By this time, he was shivering terribly, the cold seeping into his bones. The air seemed to freeze solid now, the ice coming down lowering the temperature even more as the wolf pressed on through the forest. He had little shelter in the trees, the howling wind finding ways to get to him on the ground. Kiba looked up, towards the mountains as saw that he was close to their base, their peaks of snow rising far above him. There's got to be a cave or shelter. This forest has none. The wolf leapt, throwing himself out of the snow and running towards the mountains as fast as he could, pushing against the elements to reach his goal.

It would be night now, the stars just coming out of their sleep up in the black expanse of the sky but Kiba couldn't see it that night, the roof of clouds covering the stars, the snowstorm covering the clouds and the trees covering him. But there would be other nights to watch the stars, right now, he was racing against the storm, determined to find shelter and beat it before it even had the slightest chance of killing him. He wouldn't let that happen. The wolf dashed out from the tree line, coming to a small valley that edged up to the mountain, a frozen river running across the land like a vein. At the far end of the valley, he could see the rocky passes of the mountain and the yawning, dark mouths of caves that were safe from the storm. Once inside one, Kiba would be warm, out of the snow and wind and ice that plagued him now. He howled in elation, his powerful voice lost among the baying winds. All he had to do was cross the river and he could rest.

The wolf leapt down the hill, rushing into the valley and kicking up snow in his own flurries that rivaled the blizzard. The river was close now, so close that Kiba could see the dragging branches of the few, bare conifer trees of the region caught in the frozen river, their trapped limbs shawled in snow and ice. The wolf skidded to a stop at the banks, checking the river's ice, making sure it was thick enough to take his weight. The wolf stared down, his eyes boring into the ice. He couldn't see any water moving underneath, which meant the river was frozen solid, if not almost solid. He carefully took the first step out onto the ice, his pads and claws gripping the slick surface ever so slightly. Even if it was frozen, he could still cause cracks if he wasn't careful. The wind blew snow off the ice, throwing it in Kiba's face as if to spite him. The wolf growled, taking another step out into the river in defiance of the wind. As he gently inched his way out into the river, the storm blew his snowy paw prints away with each step, erasing the fact that he had ever been there. Kiba took another step and then another, making his way across the frozen ice. The wind gave out a terrible gust, pushing the wolf sideways, making him lose his grip on the ice and slipped to his belly. He growled, bringing his leg into his body, paws underneath him and pushed his bulk up. Kiba braced himself against the storm and continued to fight his way across the river. Once he was near enough to the opposite bank, he leapt, clearing the ice and dashing back into the forest.

He began his climb up the mountain, weaving in and out of the trees and leaping up boulder and rocky outcrops until he found a cave big enough to shelter him from the storm. Kiba panted in exertion, his tongue lolling out. The wolf tiredly padded into the dry cave, sniffing the shelter for signs of other animals. There were a few musky scents, but they were so old that this cave couldn't have housed anything for moons. The white wolf shook himself off, the rattle traveling down his head, neck and onto his torso until his tail flicked the majority of the snow and ice off his fur. He wasn't as cold now, the interior of the cave significantly warmer and drier that the storm outside. The wolf circled around the ground for a few moments before settling down to sleep. He was exhausted but he'd managed to ride out the storm and would do so in this cave until it blew itself out. Right now, it was time to sleep. He could hunt after the storm; he could run after the storm, he could search after the storm. All that could wait for a night or two. Kiba's eyes drifted shut slowly, his breathing evening out. His eyes watched the entrance to his cave, the snow and ice whirling past him, unable to touch him now that he was inside the mountain. He huffed at the storm and drifted off to sleep.

...

A/N: And there you go! I'll see you guys next time! :3