[Thanks for all the reviews and Faves!, but I really,really could use a Beta reader or two! Please drop me a line if you can!]

Aleu and Niju

Burned Forest Riverbank

She awoke sore, hungry but most of all thirsty. The inky cloud had subsided and let the morning rays stream through the burned riverside forest. Everything smelt like the color black.

His form surprised her as she approached the better half of the bank. The side they slumbered on had burned bits and debris in it. Smelling burn was enough; she didn't need to taste it, again.

"Oh! …Why are you still here?" She didn't sound demanding, but curious in a tired voice.

"I'm waiting." He sat tall by the bank, he had a naturally proud build.

"For what?"

"You."

She was taken aback. "Me?" Bejeweled blues opened wide. She dipped her supple frame down into the stream.

An adorably pink tongue lapped loudly and he was surprised by her ravenous thirst. Not that he had been any less thirsty when he awoke. She spoke again, once she raised her head and let her tongue catch the water running from her chin. Her voice sounded slightly suspicious. "Why?"

"Because I need you." That earned him an incredulous glare- at least as much of a glare as Aleu was capable of.

"Don't flatter yourself halfbr-" No. He'd better not go there, or start using that word. He didn't know how long it would take them to reach the clan, assuming her cooperation. She had better cooperate. She left his clan in a very irresponsible way and now they needed him, or at least somebody to lead. She made that clear last night. He really did need her, then she could go on her merry way back to whatever she was rambling about last night. He didn't want her to throw another little tantrum- he had to watch his mouth, and his temper.

"Aleu." He corrected himself as fast as he could and proceeded from there quickly. " The clan needs a leader, now. Without one they're disorganized and lost. Understand?" His tone slightly condescending.

He continued. " Take me to them, tell them that you've put me in charge. Explain to them that you couldn't handle it…Or whatever you told me last night." He rose towards her. "They might need a little convincing, but it'll be better for them in the end."

He sounded a tad bit too confident. Ugh. But Aleu felt it was better than his usual flagrant arrogance. In truth, she had mixed feelings about leaving the clan solely in his paws, but she just wanted to be done with it. Clean her paws of them all and go back to where she probably belonged. Or keep looking elsewhere.

Aleu sighed deeply and her ears fell back. That'd mean she'd have to go back. Leaving her position to him from here was tolerable. However going all the way back, confronting them, telling them how she had failed them, and how they'd all be taking directions/orders from Niju for the foreseeable future felt nearly unbearable. But what if they didn't listen to him...? She knew Niju was strong, but he wasn't that strong. He couldn't strong-handle all of them into listening…Then what would they do? No! She just couldn't think about it. She needed to forget and return home, they weren't her responsibility anymore.

"Do you hear me?"

She felt like her mother... She was more than a house-dog! What was happening to her? "Okay, I'll…" Her voice was a little hoarse and she stopped to clear it. "I'll take you to them. I'll tell them…I don't know what I'll tell them. It wasn't meant to be, I guess."

Aleu felt her conviction return. She suddenly felt very selfish for wanting to just disappear into herself, as if she was letting down her father personally. Sure, he lived as an estranged loner, distancing himself from the harsh words and judgments made against him in Nome. But when Nome needed him, he was there. He was more than there- he was the hero. She may not be leaving them in the right paws, but she was going to make sure they saw her return. They could have easily lost all faith in her, not that there had been much of it lately. But in the chance that the promise of her return was enough to keep them together, and optimistic- who would she be to rob them of that faith?

Letting the clan see her off may even be enough to give them hope that Niju wasn't so power hungry and vengeful that he would kill all who didn't oblige. She really wasn't sure. But his current diplomacy lead her to believe that he really was trying to do all he could to save the clan now. "I'll tell them Aniu was wrong."

Niju's fur bristled. "Don't say that!" He barked at her, suddenly testy.

Aleu backed up and slid against the jagged boulders that the stream wore away.

"What! Why?" She had a demanding glare in her eyes as only she could.

His tail dropped back to normal height and his fur relaxed. "Because some clan members believe that Aniu is never wrong. Saying that would crush their hopes, or cause them to get very defensive with you, enough to outright rebel against you." He informed her curtly.

She looked perplexed. " Wait…But that would mean that I should be leading them!" Her mouth turned into a little frown as she was lost in thought.

He gave her a subtle smirk. " That's entirely possible. You may just feel you don't quite meet the Great Aniu's expectations. Also possible." He was towing the line between insults and drawing conclusions with her.

Her brows knitted in a glare once again. "What are you saying?"

"I'm saying she's not wrong for making you the "chosen one". She just demanded too much of you too early, you weren't ready. You said it yourself and I must agree with you there. But the clan needs me. Now is the time for action. The clan cannot wait for you to become ready. Aniu can make a path, but you don't always have to follow it. Sometimes it's better in the long run if you don't." He was growing impatient with her slow reluctance.

"How can you know that?" Her eyes narrowed as she subconsciously challenged him.

She sounded dangerously doubtful and it worried Niju. But he wasn't worried just because she doubted the validity of his words and him becoming alpha- it went far beyond that. He cared for the clan, he cared so much it turned him violent against those who would bring harm to it.

He would always lead by example; in what he thought was the right direction. The clan was out of time, and he needed to act now. He knew how to save them, if they wanted to survive- they'd follow his lead. He'd forgive them for not listening to him the first time. It only made him angrier with Aleu, though. She was playing with their lives in her immature quest to "find" her pretty, little, self.

" I wasn't born yesterday, Aleu." He spoke coldly, he wasn't about to tell her how he had come to know about Aniu's ways.

The answer would be pretty clear if she used her head to think on it. Nava. Obviously. Before she could retort, he had turned and began to lead the way- without direction at first. Just getting things moving. "Let's go."

He began to walk along the stream staying on the bank. He was heading down river, knowing the stream must feed into the ocean.

"Niju! Wait!" Aleu called after him, catching up. "What about the fire?"

"It's probably burned out by now. They never last." With her caught up he broke into a run, expecting her to follow. He was a bit hungry, but he could eat when the clan caught its first caribou, he told himself.

Nothing looked familiar, they realized some hours later. They had run silently along the stream, they had run too fast, driven by foolish competition.

Anytime she run in front of him, he ran to put himself in front and she followed- by sundown they were pretty well lost and exhausted. The burn had been a big one, and it was impossible to navigate even for Niju, though he'd never let on how lost he was. In the end it had become pretty obvious. Everything looked the same. Smoldering, black and dead- there were no landmarks, and no scents to trace. Just the smell of fresh ash, which flooded the olfactory senses. They didn't seem any closer to the sea.

When they stopped, it was because the log they had run across was too badly burned and had collapsed beneath them.

"You…You're lost, aren't you?" Aleu breathlessly accused him while detangling her body from his. They'd only fallen about 10 feet, but it was enough to wind them more than they were already.

"No! I'm just…"

He glanced around the lifeless forest floor. Nope- still not a damn thing was familiar, especially not with the impending darkness. Forests in the dark, he'd been through them before…he just wasn't too sure about this particular area.

He scoffed. "Bah! It all looks the same!"

Aleu was relentlessly kicking a hornets' nest by adding "Well if you were lost- why didn't you stop? I mean, I thought we were going in circles, but I thought you would know better."

She could see him tense in the fading twilight rays.

She persisted. "Maybe if you'd slowed down and let me try and help, we wouldn't be lo-" He rounded upon her- she'd let the hornets out.

"Don't play games with me halfbreed!" He snarled, his sudden turn giving Aleu a start.

"You've been playing games with the clan for too long! They don't have time for you to finish your little 'discovery' quest! Don't you get it, you selfish house-pet? I'm doing you a favor by cleaning up the mess you made, because the mess you made happens to be my pack! I would die before I see the likes of you destroy it with your little games!"

Aleu was still momentarily shocked speechless at his sudden flare- but a glimmer of hurt flashed across her finely featured face.

"So don't you forget that…If you know what's good for you. Shut it and follow my lead from now on." He heavily finished, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper.

In his anger, he'd forgotten that nothing but her self-righteousness was keeping her here. As the hurt in her eyes dissolved into seething rage, he remembered. Woops. But he couldn't apologize- he wasn't sure his mouth could even form the word sorry. Especially not to her. Besides, she needed to hear that anyways.

" Oh yeah? You're just jealous because Aniu didn't choose you! Yeah! That's right, she chose me! Me! I bet you'd give anything to be the chosen one! You- you tried to trick me into leaving! She chose me for a reason, and I'm going to find out- one way or another! Don't think you can just boss me into leaving the pack that she put me in charge of!" Aleu screeched at him, her emotions raging inside. Now it was Niju's turn to look vexed.

"What about all you raved on about last night? I couldn't have agreed with you more. Mostly the part about you…oh, what was it…" He mocked her. "Oh yes, not knowing how to hunt a caribou. Face it collar-neck…You're obviously way out of your league." Niju could see the color rising in her delectable cheeks and he loved it.

"Well things change. I might change my mind and stay, or I might go." She added half out of spite and half out of honest indecision.

Nava…Grant him strength to not rip her to shreds right there. "After all you've done- it'd be a crime to let you lead them." His tone was flat yet full of threat.

To his surprise she nodded at him. " I was just going to stick around until the clan starts begging me to come back to power. After a few weeks of your control- I probably won't seem so bad." Oh. So she did have a quickwit side to her, a more mature alternative to her usual meltdowns. Pity he was going to tear her apart for it.

"Why you-" He never got to finish. A bear seemed to just about materialize from the dark insides of the charred woods. It was dark now- which explains why they hadn't seen it, but the funny thing was neither of them could even smell it. To many animals, bears are just a normal part of the forest, but the clan had a bit of a "war" going on with the bear clan long before Nava was alpha. The bears were territorial and so were the wolves, needless to say, there was conflict.

The bear, groping its way through the burn, seemed distressed and panicked. These emotions made bears even more dangerous to wolves, especially because wolves could be a potential threat in a weakened state.

They fled, trusting their senses to lead them somewhere, they wordlessly followed each other just like they had done in the fire. A flash of brilliant white contrasted with the darkness overhead. A snowy owl soared high above to two- almost running with them before rising up and sitting atop a ledge. Their eyes could make out its brilliant white coat in the darkness. It was a fairly warm summer night for Alaska, but neither of them wondered what the owl was doing there, they just rushed passed it as they scrambled up the rocky ledge.

Their eyes following the owl, they noticed the space between the rocks above that yielded into a cave. That would do. The owl, giving a soft hoot- took off into the darkness, seeing its work was done.

There would be no following them, at least not for a bear anyways. It was doubtful the bear would even pursue the two, but the way it seemed to come from nowhere at the height of their anger had given them reason to want to put as much distance between the bear as they could. The last time they almost physically fought each other, the forest was sent ablaze.

"You know what…We're getting pretty good at that whole 'running for our lives' thing." Aleu panted incredulously as she slid to her belly along the stone floor.

She could feel the coolness against her warm coat and it sent tingles down her spine. Ironically, for the first time in a long time she felt a little relaxed. Maybe it was just the exhaustion.

"If we sleep now, we will need to move twice as fast tomorrow." Niju didn't share her humor, or her uncharacteristic relaxation. He sat rigid, facing the opening.

Maybe her words still bugged him, she admitted she hadn't know where they had come from but she was damn proud of herself for saying them. Maybe he was afraid. Maybe he was thinking about how to kill her while she slept. Maybe that was his plan all along, if so she was glad he found her that much of a challenge that he would have to cheat and wait until she was sleeping. Maybe he was just a stiff, pigheaded, chauvinistic, battle-axe of a male who didn't want to fall asleep in front of her. Yeah. Maybe that was it.

Aleu and Niju

Cliff-side Cave

Before falling totally asleep, Aleu remembered smelling something akin to a sweet saltiness. Like that of a sea. Upon waking, she smelled it again- coming from inside the cave. Moreover, if she craned her neck just so and perked her ears just a bit, she swore she could almost hear it too. The faintest echo of a soft tide coming from...Inside the cave? On account of what happened the last time she went into a cave, she was always a little cautious.

Aleu smiled thinking about the day she first met Muru, but the bear waiting for her afterwards was enough to make her a little paranoid. That's why fate had "given" her Niju for a little while she guessed. It wasn't that she needed him, god no. It's just that the bear would probably find him a bigger threat and dispose of him first, giving her time to plan an escape. At least that's what she kept telling herself as she padded her way over as silently as she could to his sleeping mass.

He still wore a stubborn frown even in sleep, and snored softly. Otherwise he didn't really look all that different, just unguarded. Crouching down, she noticed how his whiskers twitched when her breath tickled him. She thought about giving him a scare, but when he suddenly shifted, she lost her nerve.

"…Niju…Niju!" She gave him a shake.

He grumbled and cracked his eyes open in the morning glow. She couldn't make out what he said. Suddenly aware he snapped to his feet.

"What? What's going on?" She could tell he was embarrassed at sleeping in, enough to make him cranky. "Well, out with it!" He stared wide-eyed at her, expectant.

"There's something inside the cave, I think." She sounded a little unsure of herself, and a little…fearful?

"Alive?" He stood to his full massiveness immediately, sounding concerned.

"Well...No- it..It sounds like the sea."

He gave her a glare. She bothered him just to tell him she was hearing things. "It's just the wind. We should go." He was impatient already and turned towards the door.

"No, wait a minute! I can smell it too." She said while lifting her nose to the air for proof.

Well he'd give her that one- she wasn't totally nuts because, truthfully, he smelled it too. A faint sea breeze inside what was otherwise a fairly dank cave. He slowed his moments to leave but didn't stop them entirely.

"Let's go check it out." Oh- she had to be joking.

Terrible time for it, but there was no possible way she could be serious. For starters she had said "let's" giving him the impression they were some kind of a team. He called her on it.

"If you want to come back here with a sled team to go exploring and play games with, I won't stop you. But you have a job to do, starting with my pack. Move it!" He turned back to bark at her, but she was truly relentless- already heading back into the darkness.

"Have you lost your mind?" His voice echoed on the walls.

"No…I- I just have a really good feeling about this."

He scoffed and rolled his eyes scornfully. This morning was starting out bad, and would continue to be such until she planted herself by his side and they were walking in the right direction.

"I'm sure you do, mutt. That's why I'm heading the other way." He sounded a bit more desperately impatient than he meant to. The truth was he hadn't moved in the other direction since he had lost sight of her from within the cave.

Her voice was more distant and echoed now. "Just come on Niju…" He gritted his teeth as her voice reverberated.

He heaved a sigh containing every curse known to wolf and tore after her. His eyes promised murder as he found her in the murky darkness. The cave was very tight and had many winds and bends.

The sound of their claws softly hitting the stone floor below them was the only sound between them for a moment. There was no light now, but they could still sense each other in the dark. Niju thanked his accursed whiskers (the subject of many a taunt in his youth) for guiding him in the dark. They would brush up against stone walls and pillars to let him know what was coming next, though they did little to help him when the floor seemed to give way into sudden dips at times. Aleu, though he couldn't see her, seemed to somehow be holding her own all right. The smell and steady "whooshing" from the sea grew stronger and louder as they pressed on. But it was a very gradual increase- just slow enough to make him wonder why he was going with her. They should have been going the opposite direction hours ago- how long had they been here anyways?

He started when she broke the silence. "Niju?" Her pace slowed as well. "How do you catch a caribou?"

That drew a long exhausted sigh from him. "You're asking me?" The familiar obnoxious guffaw.

" I thought I'd never see the day…" The laugh continued in the dark. "This is just too much!" His ego- despite the injuries it had received in the last few days, had probably just grown large enough to fill the entire cave and then some.

Her head- covered with a lovely soft down-like fur, butting hard against his chest was enough to shut him up for a minute, if not nearly knock him down at the sudden blow. The soft fur yielded a rock hard skull under it. That'd hurt.

Undeterred by his taunt otherwise, she demanded. "Niju, that was a question. If you're such an expert, than surly you must know. Or maybe…I shouldn't ask you. I could probably find a better hunter to tell me anyways. Sorry for the trouble."

Any creature with less pride would have been able to catch that she was clearly egging him on. But Niju only heard the challenge in her voice. "No, I can assure you, my methods are quite superior to your average clan member." He strode up to her in the darkness as they followed the dark path ahead.

"Well then- let's hear about it. If you can't show me, at least tell me what you do." And so he did.

While he bragged- Aleu found many of the things he said to be fairly educational. Having as much pride as Niju had could be a very dangerous trait- but right now Aleu was finding it very useful in tricking him just a teensy-bit. Plus she needed to know that her control wasn't totally gone, the cave was making her nervous.

He told her all about the subtleties of hunting and stalking prey, but every other sentence he would proceed to tell her "You really can't learn it by just hearing about it, you know. You have to experience it, that's the only way you'll ever get better." But then she would inquire about something further, and he would continue on. She did her best to look through his obvious brags, and get into the basic principles of hunting.

"Boy- Yak sure didn't see that one coming… The doe hit him straight on." Niju trailed off.

"So I guess you should always stay…Uh..Downwind from your prey, huh?" Aleu tried her best to keep up, and understand the principles of upwind and downwind as Niju had explained before.

Niju, however, seemed to have little patience for her mistakes. "Well, obviously you do, anyways, Yak and I went down to the lookout ridge for a better look next time and…"

He immersed himself back into his stories. His impatience didn't deter her, they'd been walking for hours and had little else do to.

After a while, Aleu noticed the salty smell becoming much stronger and a faint glow ahead, as it seemed.

Cutting Niju off mid-sentence, she trotted ahead. "Niju! Look! The other side must be getting closer!"

In his attempts to keep up with her, his tail somehow seemed to get tangled up in the process and he came down on his face. Startled by the noise she turned around just in time to see him on the cave floor. He hadn't tripped over his own tail since he was a pup.

When she couldn't suppress a giggle, he glared at her before getting up and charging after her. She stopped giggling abruptly and started running, she was lithe and a little faster than him, given a head start and all. She didn't run like she was afraid of him, but rather like she was playing…With him.

However, he vocally assured her that she was dead meat when he caught up with her, what he would really do- he wasn't sure. He'd really like to rip some tufts out of her luscious and delightfully soft looking fur. Yes, that'd do nice.

She wasn't just running from him, she was also running in her excitement to reach the end of the dreaded cave. As the glow become brighter and brighter, it was almost blood-red. It was clear they had been in that case for quite some time- the sun was dipping below the horizon in a brilliantly colored sundown. Aleu looked out and saw the sparkle of an ocean that lay hundreds of feet below.

Still running, she almost didn't notice how the exit of the cave led to a ledge that stopped abruptly. Her pretty blue eyes grew wide in shock as she desperately tried to skid to a stop, sliding on the rocks. Niju stopped just before she did- almost slamming into her.

Aleu managed to stop, but not before she caught a glimpse of the terrifying fate that awaited any who were unfortunate enough to drop off the edge. Sharp rocks whipped the sea up into a frothy churn hundreds of feet below her paws.

Gasping, she immediately backed away from the edge as quickly as she could, but not before backing into Niju. She noted how Niju had made no move to catch her when she had nearly skidded over the edge.

Now it was his turn to smile. Niju didn't giggle, but it had the same effect. "Impressive, mutt."

Aleu gritted her teeth at him, but managed to look like nothing more than a peeved teenager- though she was grown fully for the most part.

"If I'd fallen, Niju, who'd have taken you back to the pack? Who's going to get the pack to listen to you? Huh?" She got in his face, but his smile didn't waver. "Huh?"

Finally his grin slowly slide off his face and turned to a scowl at her insistence upon irritating him so.

He snorted brutishly in response and ignored her comment. It's been a while since he'd last eaten, and all the recent events had been quite straining on his body…but wolves could potentially go weeks without food if need be. He was just starting to consider prey, but he didn't feel the need for it. Yet.

"I wonder if there are any crabs down there…?" Aleu stepped towards the edge. He guessed she felt the same.

When part of the rocky edge gave away and crumbled a bit more under her weight, she immediately let out a "Yipes!" and stepped back away from the edge for good.

Niju rolled his eyes and turned to look at her. "Hungry?" He spoke dismissively.

Her soft yet intense blues hardened up once again. "No! But a meal would be nice…." She looked far off.

Niju shook his head. "Bad idea."

She was a little angry and alarmed at the simplicity of his statement and took a step towards him defiantly. "Oh? And why is that?"

Niju shrugged his broad shoulders a bit. "I'd rather make that swim in the morning on an emptier stomach, instead of a full one. Apparently there should be plenty of food on that "chosen land" across the way, anyways. " He gave her a cold glare.

Aleu nodded her head. The sun was almost fully down below the sky. Looks like she'd be spending the night next to two rocks. One of them being the cliffs, the other being her most disagreeable counterpart with the cooperation abilities that mirrored that of a rock and his chiseled features made him all the more rock like. They were also blocks that occasionally got in her way.

"Alright." She finally responded before heading back towards the cave entrance once again.

He followed suit. He sat down a few feet away from her, both faced the mouth of the cave. The day's beauty- they missed most of it, was on its last legs. The sun gave one last glow, before it dipped below the horizon. Aleu lay her head down, from the experience of her last journey- she was going to need the rest. Niju held his head up in a silent vigil.

Aleu knew telling him to sleep would be useless, so she remained silent. She could only wonder if his head was as overwhelmed as hers was. These had been some rough few days, and the morning's light would yield their toughest challenge yet.

Just before she surrendered to the world of dreams, she thought about how funny it was that she was with Niju throughout the worst of times- even when he wasn't directly the cause of it…Funny..