A/N: Thank you for all of the lovely reviews so far, they mean a lot!

DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN THE LORD OF THE RINGS!

They walked in silence, for fear of alerting other creatures of darkness of their presence, if they had somehow failed to hear their entrance. The grey wizard's staff lit their path, not that she needed it, she had decided to stay in her wolf form which came with handy-dandy night vision.

Though, at one point they were walking along a narrow ledge when Gimli broke the silence to tell the rest of the Fellowship about the strange metal that the dwarves use to mine for there, mithril. According to Gandalf Frodo's uncle, Bilbo, had been gifted with a shirt made of this by the dwarves, and it was worth more than the entire Shire. 'Man,' she thought, 'at some point I really do need to find out what he did.'

They continued on walking for the rest of the day once more in silence. Or at least what Anra assumed was the rest of the day; there was no way to tell down where they were. She hated it down there; it was about as different as you could get from the forest where she came from, she was happy to see that Legolas agreed with her on that point. In fact the only person who seemed at ease down there was Gimli, which made sense say as he was a dwarf and they were in a dwarf mine. Everyone else was twitchy and on edge, even Gandalf and Aragorn, and they always seemed to be calm, but what unnerved Anra the most was just how twitchy and upset Gandalf was acting, he seemed to be even more so than the poor little hobbits that jumped every time someone kicked a pebble.

So it was pretty safe to say that the young Nightstalker was a little more than just relieved when they stopped for the night. She settled herself down next to Aragorn, hoping that the ranger would be able to put her nerves to rest. As usual his strong steady presence had a nice calming effect on her, though even that couldn't completely disband all of them.

As if sensing her anxiety, he reached a hand over and started to gently stroke her soft fur. He ran his hand down her back a couple of times then scratched behind her ears, this did the trick. She leaned into his hand enjoying his touch, and when he began to carefully pet the soft fur on her head and face, her tail started to thump against the ground.

He chuckled lightly, "What do you like that?" he said in a low voice. Anra licked his hand in response before resting her head on his outstretched legs and going to sleep.

As she drifted off she realized how much she cared about everyone in the Fellowship. She would miss them all very dearly when their mission was complete, 'Especially Aragorn,' she thought. They had become like a second pack to her in the short amount time they had been together so far, well all of them but maybe Boromir, he was still a jerk. Though she missed her real pack, she was already feeling sad about the day when they all had to leave each other and go back to their old lives. She had no idea what she'd do if she lost one of them.

The next day was very much the same, just a whole lot of walking. Original when they had first entered the mine, she had been happy about the heat, after all of the snow on the mountain, but now it was way too hot, and it was stuffy too. She longed for the cool shadows cast by trees in a forest, or even the cold snow from the mountains again.

It was only part way through the day when Gandalf announced that he had no memory of where they were. 'Well this is just great!' she thought in annoyance. 'We're stuck in a hot stinky mine with goblins and who knows what else for who knows how long!' Anra shook her head and told herself she needed to calm down.

She shifted and sat down a little ways away from the group, hoping to be able to get her emotions in check. Ignoring her silent wishes to be alone, Aragorn came over and sat down next to her.

"Is everything alright?" he asked her in a soft voice.

She gave him a weak smile, "Yeah everything is fine, I was just thinking about some friends of mine from my pack."

"What are they like?" his voice was curious.

Anra's expression visibly brightened when she thought of her pack mates, "Well, there's Isla, she is one of my best friends, she is one of the kindest, smartest people I know. She was always the brains from our group, the one who'd plan everything. She always knew exactly what to say to get us out of trouble, and even when we were just pups-in-training she was one of the best hunters in the entire pack." Her voice trailed off as she thought of her best friend, she wondered what she'd say about her feelings for the currently man sitting next to her. 'No, bad Anra! You do NOT have feelings for a human,' she scolded herself, though her reprimanding voice didn't even sound entirely convinced.

Oblivious to her internal battle that happened to be about him, Aragorn continued, "Who's the other one?"

"The other what?" she asked playing dumb; she didn't really want to talk about Eron to Aragorn.

He gave her a look as if to say, 'You're avoiding the subject.'

"Oh, you mean my other friend?" she said, scratching the back of her head.

"Yeah," he said raising an eyebrow.

She sighed, "His name is Eron."

Aragorn took note of how sad her voice and face looked when she said this, but he also noticed the angry undertone. "What happened?"

"Let's just say when I left we weren't on the best of terms."

"Did you to have a fight?" he asked.

"That's a pretty safe assumption to make."

"What was it about?"

Anra sighed and ran her hand through her hair, "He didn't want me to go to the meeting, he didn't even come with Isla to see me off when I left."

"Do you know why he didn't want you to go?"

She shrugged, "I don't know, I mean we've been best friends for as long as I can remember, I guess—I guess he didn't want me to get hurt and he'd miss me."

Aragorn reached over and gave her hand a quick squeeze, and said, "Hey don't they say absence makes the heart grow fonder?"

She stared out him for several long moments before they both started cracking up, "I cannot believe you just said that." She had a large grin on her face; now she was glad he had come over to sit by her. But at the same time that she was laughing, her mind was racing, had it just been her imagination, or had that actually be jealousy she had heard lacing his tone when he had said that? 'No,' she quickly dismissed, 'why would he be jealous of you and Eron, first of all he doesn't have feelings for you, and second of all he has Arwen, who'd he have to be crazy to leave for you.'

Now with her mind turning these thoughts she decided to go digging for some information about the couple. "Is that what you were saying to Arwen before we left?" her voice teasing.

She noticed he immediately stiffened at the mention of the elf princess. "Umm, not exactly," his voice was stiff and uncomfortable; clearly he did not want to go further in-depth with this conversation topic.

But then again, none of her wishes were ever granted, why should his be? She tried to make her voice sound as concerned and friend-like as possible, "What do you mean by that?"

He shifted uncomfortable, "We both decided that it would be better if she left and went on to the Grey Haven."

"Oh," she said awkwardly, what are you suppose about something like that?

Lucky for them that was the time that Gandalf figured out where to go from where they were, when Pippin asked how he knew he told him that the air smelled fresher. 'Well, if I had known that was all he needed to know then I could have told him that hours ago.'

As they began to walk again her mind drifted back to the information that Aragorn had released to her about him and Arwen. Though she couldn't help but be happy that they were done, she didn't want to just be his rebound from the elf maiden. Not that she actually had feelings for him of course; this was just all…hypothetical, of course. Though, in all seriousness, she could not be his rebound, she could not take being constantly compared to Arwen, which would not be fair in any shape or form. The she-elf was perfect in just about every way possible, she was beautiful beyond doubt, incredibly kind and sweet, Anra couldn't even imagine her getting angry, and she was also very neat and proper, a proper lady, something that Anra couldn't ever fathom being, it had to be soo boring being so clean and polite all the time.

Anra's mind then wandered back to that emotion she had heard in voice that may or may not have been jealousy, it seemed too unlikely for her taste. As she had thought before, he had no feelings for her, besides what would he be jealous of? There was nothing going on between her and Eron, just the thought of it was weird to her, the two of them had been friends for so long that he was practically a brother to her. Though then she thought of something Isla had said to her when she had been helping her get ready the day before she left. She had said something about how the only reason Eron was so upset was because he loved her and didn't want her to be swept away by the outside world and forget about him. At the time she had assumed that Isla meant love as in a way that friends loved each other, but now she began to wonder if she had meant it in a different way. She thought back to the advice she had given Arwen about what Aragorn would have said with his both his voice and eyes, she wondered what Eron's eyes would have held if she has looked into them before she left. Surly nothing more than concern for a dear friend, that was all. That had to be all.

And about the other part of Isla's words, Anra had just told her they were being paranoid and that she'd never be able to leave them behind, they were best friends. But isn't that exactly what she was doing now? She had volunteered for this Fellowship without a single thought of her friends and now she had a new group of friends, one of which she knew she had feelings for no matter how much she denied it.

She shook her head to clear it of these thought, and looked around to see where they were at. Anra opened her mouth gaping at the beautiful abandoned dwarf city she was seeing, the pillars were huge! She wasn't listening to what the others were saying about the area they were in, she only started paying attention to them when Gimli gave a cry and ran off in the direction of a cavern of sorts that was off to the side.

The rest of the Fellowship followed the sobbing dwarf into the room; in the center of it was a tomb that held his cousin. She felt bad for the poor dwarf that had been clearly excited about getting to see his cousin when they had got there only to find out that he and the rest of this company had died. 'Or been slain' she corrected herself as Gandalf read out of a big book about how the dwarves had been cornered in the very same room that they were in, and died.

She glanced around nervously when Gandalf got to the last part of his reading; she jumped out of her skin when Pippin knocked a skeleton and bucket down a well in the back of the room. The guilty hobbit flinched every time the bucket hit something as it fell down deep into the mine, which by the way, was many times.

Gandalf snatched his staff and hat back from him and snapped angrily, "Fool of a Took! Throw yourself in next time and rid us of your stupidity!"

Now Anra could understand why Gandalf was so angry, but she felt like he was taking it a little far saying that, the hobbit already looked extremely guilty and upset. She was walking over to try to comfort Pippin, when the drums started up, the drums that the dwarf book had been talking about.

Fear clenched in her stomach, she was glad that none of her companions were able to smell it. Boromir ran over to the old rotten doors to close then, but in the process was nearly hit by an arrow. He leaned against the closed doors for a second and said, "They have a cave troll."

Aragorn joined him and the two men started to bar the door with whatever they could find lying around. Gandalf was gathering the four hobbits behind him whispering to them words of encouragement, while Legolas strung his bow and was soon joined by Aragorn doing the same. Boromir drew his sword and watched the door intently, and Gimli stood on top of his cousin's grave and challenged, "Let them come! There is still one dwarf in Moria that draws breath!"

Anra shifted and stood next to Gandalf in defense of the little hobbits when Legolas let his first arrow fly into the face of a goblin that was breaking through the rotten door. It gave a scream and fell back, but its spot was taking up by two more, and soon they had demolished the door and were pouring into the room.

Everyone was quickly engaged in their own battles and Anra was no exception. Once the monsters had gotten with in pouncing range she had attacked, careful to dodge the blades they held when she tackled them. The air in the room stunk of fear, blood and sweat and soon that was all the she-wolf could taste too.

'Uggh, goblin tastes horrible,' she thought with a shudder as she sank her teeth into one's throat, quickly killing it. She spun around and leapt on another one without a second between. Anra had been slowly making her way across the room not even noticing it until she looked up and saw Boromir fighting a particularly large goblin. He was so intent on the one he was fighting that he did not notice that another one was sneaking up behind him with its blade drawn, about to give him a killing blow.

Anra gave a vicious snarl and dove onto the goblin that was behind him, Boromir turned around just time to see this. She dispatched it with a sharp bite to its throat that tore out anything and everything important. The Gondorian gave her a brief nodded of thanks before he returned to the fighting.

The steady stream of goblins seemed to have stopped coming into the room, but before she could breathe a sigh of relief two goblins came in holding onto the chain of a giant cave troll. Everyone just seemed to stop and stare at it for several moments before the battle continued. Now the troll's grunts and snarls were added to the loud noise of battle, she could hear the hobbits calling out and goading the creature, though she couldn't look up from the goblins she was fighting to see what was going on with the new addition to the battle.

The troll's club smashed Gimli's cousin's tomb with a bang, a few moments after that she risked a quick glance up to make sure that the dwarf that had been previously standing on it was okay. He was, she saw him a couple of paces away hacking away at the enemy. But that quick glance revealed something else as well; it showed Aragorn being hit by the troll's club and being flung across the room into a wall where he proceeded to lay limp unmoving.

Horror filled the she-wolf when she did not see him rise again. She killed the goblin she was fighting without a second thought, and then started to shove her way across the busy room towards where the ranger laid. Anra was scarcely paying any attention to her surroundings as she made her way over, this cost her dearly, she barely felt anything when a goblin stabbed it blade into her side. Her only reaction was to turn and swiftly tear its throat out before she continued on her way to him.

When she finally got to his side she gave him a quick sniff to make sure he was alive, which he thankfully was. She gave his face a hasty lick of relief before she placed herself in front of his unconscious body to defend him.

Anra had been closing her jaws on yet another goblin when she heard a gasp, her head snapped up to find the source. It was Frodo; the troll had impaled him with a huge spear in his stomach. Merry and Pippin gave fearsome war cries and leapt onto the troll's shoulders where they started to stab at his neck and head. Anra jumped up and clamped her teeth down on one of the troll's wrists angrily, and refused to let go when he started to swing her around trying to dislodge her.

The troll let out a moan and began to sway back and forth; she saw the two hobbit cousins jump off of the troll from the corner of her eye. 'Oh no,' she thought, 'he's going to fall and I can't tell where and when I should drop.' Panic once more filled the she-wolf as she tried desperately to see the ground from where she hung, but she could not.

Anra squeezed her eyes shut and let go, she felt momentarily weightless as she dropped, but then she landed. She had not chosen a good time or place to land. Had she had landed on solid ground she may have been okay, it might have stung a little, but over all she would have been fine. But she did not land on solid ground, nope; she landed in the rubble of Gimli's cousin's tomb.

Her paws slipped in between pieces of the broken rock painfully, aggravating her injured side even more. Her head snapped down and smacked into a larger piece of the tomb, stunning her. After lying there for several moments Anra carefully started to pick her way out of the debris, this proved to be a rather difficult task because her injured side was making it hard for her to move her back left leg and her vision kept blurring in and out of focus from hitting her head.

By the time she made it over to the rest of the company they were getting ready to keep moving, not wanting for anymore of the goblins to catch up to them. Anra's fall had gone unnoticed for the rest of the Fellowship had been crowded around the ring bearer.

The young Nightstalker was so out of it that she didn't even wonder why Frodo was okay even though he had been stabbed by such a large spear.

They all started running and at first Anra was having trouble keeping up, but then her adrenaline kicked in again and she could no longer feel her injuries. They continued running until they reached a great hall where they were surrounded by hundreds of goblins. The goblins formed a tight circle around them as if waiting for some sign before they attacked.

That said sign never came, because then a harsh orange light filled the other end of the hall and all of the goblins scattered fearfully, this was not very encouraging for the Fellowship.

Gandalf told them it was Balrog, and that it was an enemy beyond any of them. So they continued running, at one point they came to a gap in some stairs that they all had to jump, but they all thankfully made it. Finally the last bridge came into view; they all ran across it, dodging arrows that the goblins were firing at them from afar. All of them crossed it safely except Gandalf; he stopped half way and then turned to face the giant fire demon.

It appeared that he was confronting it, but she could not hear what he was saying. All Anra could hear was the blood rushing in her ears, her adrenaline was wearing off and she was quickly becoming woozy from blood loss.

She stumbled a bit, and was leaning against the wall for support, when she saw Gandalf fall. Everything seemed to stop for a moment when he caught himself on the ledge and it looked like he might be able to get back up, but then his grip slipped and he fell. Anra tipped her head back and let out a loud mournful howl, a lament for the fallen wizard.

Then Aragorn was pushing her out of the mine into daylight, when his hand brushed against her injury she snarled at him, but he barely noticed, he was still stunned from seeing their friend fall.

Once she was outside she squinted her eyes against the bright sun that they had been without for the past days that they had spent in the mine. She stumbled along until she felt grass under her paws, then she flopped down heavily on her uninjured side, feeling weak from either grief or blood loss she could not tell. All she could tell was that she did not believe she would be able to get back up.

Tears streamed down almost everyone's faces when Aragorn instructed Legolas, "Legolas, get them up," gesturing towards the hobbits, then pulling Sam to his feet saying, "On your feet Sam."

"Give them a moment for pity's sake," Boromir cried out, not even bothering to hide his tears.

"By nightfall these hills will be swarming with orcs. We must make for Lothlorien. The orcs and fell beasts do not dare venture there. We can rest and mourn once safe," he replied firmly. As Legolas collected Merry and Pippin, Aragorn looked around for Frodo. When he saw him he called out, "Frodo?!" the hobbit had started to wander away from the group. "Wait a moment Frodo. We move together."

Once the ring bearer had made his way back over to their group Aragorn looked around at all of them and asked, "Where is Anra?" The others looked around anxiously not sure where the she-wolf had gone. "Anra!" Aragorn called out, the worry clear in his voice. The others followed his example and started to spread out calling her name.

Anra could vaguely hear her friends calling her name, but could not summon the strength to answer; she had lost too much blood. Aragorn was the one that found her lying in the grass, her breath coming out in ragged pants.

"Someone bring me the medical pack!" he called out desperately to the others. "Hey girl," he said softly to her, "I'm going to need you to hang in there for me." He could tell that she had lost a lot of blood, but it was hard to tell how much exactly because she was covered in both her own and goblins' blood. The Dunedain grabbed his water skin and carefully poured some of its contents onto her side to wash away some of the blood so he could tell exactly where the wound was.

He whistled softly through his teeth once he could clearly see it, it looked pretty bad; it appeared that she had been stabbed by one of the goblin's blades. It was still bleeding heavily, so as soon as someone gave him the medical supplies he pressed some cloth to it trying to stop the bleeding.

Holding his hands on her like this he could feel her breathing getting weaker and weaker, "Come on, come on! We're not going to loss you too!" He could hear the panic in his voice, but he did nothing to hide it. Then her sides started heaving and her eyes started to flutter, "Hey, hey calm down," the ranger said softly, hoping she was not about to have a seizure or something. Then Anra shifted.

Once the woman's breathing seemed to calm down again Aragorn quickly wrapped her wound, when she was in this form it was right above her left hip. Then he lifted her up in his arms cradling her carefully against his chest, conscious of her wound. He instructed the rest of the Fellowship to start moving, Anra needed more medical attention than he could offer at the moment, he just hoped they'd get to it fast enough.