P I E R R E  R U B E U S

227 MOON & 2 WEEKS

It had been five days since the funeral. It had been five days since neither Lucifer or Ivory left their rooms. It had been five days since the Alpha buried another loved one into the ground.

Nothing had been the same since the attack. Our pack had shrunk by seven, leaving thirty of us. The dead were buried and mourned, and guards were doubled. We did not put up walls, since we did not believe in the separation between us and the vast expense of the wild.

I constantly visited Lucifer and Ivory; both were grieving badly, each in their own ways. Ivory spent the days reading, painting, memorising Elliot's face in their pictures. Lucifer spent his by staring at the wall, doing nothing. Wasting away.

He was worst than Ivory, not even daring to face the death of his little brother. I could smell the stench of fear and bewilderment radiating off him. Our attackers were not werewolf, nor human. They were something else - heavenly beings. We had always assumed other packs to be our greatest danger, but alas, we couldn't be further from the truth. It forced both Luc and Ivory question their beliefs.

He would ask me in that strange cold, gravelly voice, asking why they were attacking us, why they had killed Elliot.

Ivory's questions were worse. Were the heavenly beings not meant to be good? To be kind? Why was Lupa not protecting us?

Lucifer had changed. His eyes had dulled, glazed, and once or twice, I had caught him chugging down vodka; a starved man who'd found an oasis in the middle of the desert. If it had been anyone else, I would not been quick to judge, but Luc hated alcohol, through and through. It had destroyed his family.

They were left with no answer, replied with silence. Their days filled with doubt and helplessness. We were losing our future Alpha, and something had to be done.

That night, Ivory got out of her house. It was a surprise, and some of our people froze and stared at her. They wanted to see if she had changed. If she would be more gentle. Like her mother.

"Pierre." Ivory said quietly to me while I was chopping wood for the fire. A single name was enough for me to stand up immediately. She never called me by my first name. I followed her without any hesitation. She gratefully offered a ghost of a smile.

We walked through the woods, the fragrance of pine around us as the crunch of our boots against the snow filled the silence.

We needed no words to be comfortable in our own skins.

We trudged through the forest, the blank white land dazzling our sharp eyes, the trees black against it. She kept the pace, and that worried me. Ivory was always ahead, always rushing off to somewhere, leaving everyone behind.

I mustered my courage and tapped on Ivory's shoulder. She turned around, her stare as blank as the snow. I took one hesitant step towards her, waiting for her to back away. 

But she didn't. 

My arms circled around her and I pulled her in tightly.

It was a friendly embrace to comfort her. Nothing else.

Iv slowly returned the gesture, surprising me.

At first it was a soft pressure of her hands on my back. And then she crushed me with her arms that couldn't quite reach around my waist, choking out a broken sob that made my heart ache. There was no shame in crying. I was relieved to find that at least she hadn't shut me out.

I patted her back and comforted her as well as I could. She seemed to pour out her despair as her tears dampened my coat, and her sobs shook her tiny frame, trembling as I held her up from falling to the ground. I let her cry it out, not once speaking.

A word could shatter this.

It was a few minutes before I placed a hand around her shoulders and we continued towards our favourite place that we had gone to since we were mere pups. The Ebony creek.

It was singing as always, running smoothly in never-ending cascades of blue. It hadn't changed, unlike the rest of our world. We sat on a log each, and just watched the shimmering cerulean of the water. I counted my heartbeats, perfectly timed, and I held my book in my hands. It was shut.

Iv offered me a pair of earpieces and I took it. She took out her iPod, an old model, with a silver casing, and plugged in the two-in-outlets piece in, before inserting both the ends of our earpieces into it. There was the familiar click as she picked a song. The bass was deep and beautiful, and I recognised it.

It was our favourite track. It wasn't a song appreciated by every warrior, but Iv and I were very much different. We let the music flow through us, Iv laying her head on my lap, letting me run my hands through her soft, sable hair that ended at the nape of her neck.

She was small, almost like a child, with the confidence and assured, inexplicable beliefs of one. She was beautiful without even realising it.

Lucifer appeared out of nowhere, particularly since the music drowned out the rest of the world...including Luc. He sat beside Ivory, and with a swift movement that ripped the earphones from out our ears, he pulled Ivory up and out of my touch, to lean against his chest.

I picked up the iPod and calmly wound the earpieces around it. I could see Ivory smacking Lucifer's knee as she bit back a smile at her brother's possessiveness.

"I'm sorry," Luc said to Iv, glaring at me. At least he still had it in him. Ivory shook her head and pressed a palm to her left eye.

"I feel like it was my fault," she replied, her voice never once faltering, and once again I marvelled at her strength. "I couldn't protect him. I couldn't stop them-"

"It's no one's fault, Iv. Elliot....Elliot wouldn't want to see us like this. I'd bet he's up there now, shaking his head and wagging his finger at us. You know him. He'd probably have a huge room, full of toys and wooden trains." Luc interrupted, and laughed as he spoke. Ivory couldn't resist his infectious laugh, even with it's undertone of bitterness.

She nodded and let go of Luc. "I saw his star, Luc, it was so tiny, but amazingly bright. So much like him, don't you think?"

I could see that Luc was itching with discomfort. He clenched his fist, struggling not to scoff at Ivory's beliefs. 

"Right," I stood up, pretending as if I hadn't been blatantly staring and eavesdropping. "I'm going to grab a meal. Luc, you up?"

"...Yeah," Luc muttered, moving away from Ivory who sat back down and shrugged.

"I guess...I'll meet you back at the house later, " Iv said, scrolling through her playlist quietly. 

Luc climbed over a root, and we left Ivory to her music. After walking out of Ivory's earshot, Luc grabbed my elbow, making me jump.

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but is there something between Ivory and you?" His dark eyes bore into mine, and for a second, just a split second, I felt a twinge of fear. Almost as if he could sense my fear, he tightened his grip on my wrist. "You do know that she can't be with you, don't you? Lupa would never allow that."

I resisted the urge to pull away. I felt sick. If Luc would ever turned on me, I imagined it would be over Ivory. Even before Elliot's death, he would never Ivory and I to share a minute alone.

"I know that, Lucifer. It's not...like that - I know my place." I answered with calm precision, finding the courage to meet his gaze. His brows twitched as he looked - really looked - into my very soul.

"Good," He smiled, relaxing his grip and thumping me on my back. This was as decent as he had been for the past few days. I breathed slowly, breaking his gaze. "A stag or two would do me some good. You?"

"A couple of reindeers would fill me up." I nodded as I peeled my clothes off one by one, hanging them on a branch 6 feet off the ground. I laced my shoes together, throwing them over the branch, and stood, completely bare in front of Luc. My bones ached with the cold, and I felt the wind acutely against my skin. There was no shame in nakedness among brothers.

This felt normal, so very normal, and for a while, I forgot about everything that had happened that week. I supposed Luc felt the same, because as soon as his black briefs slid down his hips and landed with a quiet rustle at his feet, his eyes shone, and he straightened up, growing a foot taller.

I was stunned by how I had forgotten how unnaturally sculpted Luc's bare body was, painted with white scars, and black shadows that danced when his muscles rippled. I watched as he threw his briefs into the tree, his eyes never once leaving mine. It was hard not to grin at him, when he was giving me the most incredulous look. Had he forgotten how I looked like under the coats and jumpers too?

Without speaking, we both knew what the other was about to do. I sped off first, feet digging into the stinging cold that seeped through the soles of my feet. My growing claws found hold on the cracks in the slippery ground. I could hear Lucifer shouting over the whistling breaths that sang through the gaps between my clenched teeth. The Earth was silent for once, except for Luc and I. I felt every particle on my skin, heard every leaf that fell, as we flew through the woods that we grew up in.

Left; the boulder where Luc and I took our first leap. We sprained our ankles that day, because we were too busy yelling to remember to turn.

Front; the path where Luc and I ran through, when we were playing Hounds and Hunters with the cubs our age.

Right; the waterfall with strangely sweet water. It spilled over the crystal icicles that hung over the edge, a watery curtain that veiled the cave where Ivory and I shared a kiss - I stopped myself, remembering that Luc could hear my thoughts if I wasn't careful.

I hadn't realised that I had turned completely, until I registered that I could smell Luc a mile to my right. He was running at an angle, where he would cut me off in 10 seconds...and now.

A large, black wolf, skidded inches in front of me, but I was prepared. With a whoop, I pushed off my hind legs in a powerful jump, that formed a priceless arc over Luc, who gaped in surprise. I landed with a soft thud, ice crunching under my paw.

The hunt is on, Luc snapped his jaw at my tail as he chased me into a clearing, pouncing on me and playfully nipping at the folds in my coat. Huffing and puffing clouds of white vapour, we rolled over until I was on top, my paw beating his chest. We laughed, and a wild relief overcame me. We hadn't laughed in forever.

It took us minutes before we untangled from each other and raced off again, further into the woods, where the reindeer grazed on the grass that were buried under the snow. We used our senses, and sniffed out a herd of about 10, a hundred metres from where we were. Lucifer took the right, and I, the left. To a spectator, the ratio wasn't in our favour, but to Luc and I, 10 reindeer were too easy.

We closed in on them, silently stalking their every move. It was far too late at 20 metres, before they could smell us. The leader bayed, and the group scattered, but not too far.

Luc shot past in a blur, slashing his paw across the leader's throat. I chased after a doe and her fawn, sinking my teeth in the doe's rump. She shrieked, kicking me in my chest, but still dropping down from the wound. I let the fawn go, and instead, went after the rest.

Luc took the pair of young stags down, within 20 seconds, and with a clean slice that was so precise, a doe stumbled and folded onto the ground soundlessly. I let two more fawns escape, their youth making them stumble into shrubs where they hid. Pouncing on a doe, I sank my teeth into her neck, making a fast kill, before I dragged her back to the trio that Luc had begun feasting on.

I closed my eyes, saying a silent prayer to Lupa for giving our prey wisdom and life, before digging in. We gouge on our food messily, leaving most of the carcass intact for other wild predators, before we headed back our killing path, for the other reindeer that we had killed.

Luc and I howled our success proudly, and I bumped into him with brotherly affection. He was about to do the same, when we both heard an answering howl. We froze, our minds trying to make sense of the stranger about a mile away.

The howl cut off as abruptly as it started; the stranger must have realised his mistake. Luc and I turned to each other, mouths agape, blood dripping from our chins. 

Intruder.