he had moved on with his companion.

“Are you sure? You seem pretty interested in what's out there.”

“It was nothing,” she replied, “I thought I heard something, but whatever it was is gone.”

“… Okay,” he finished and retreated back into his hole, with Sonya doing the same soon after.

“I hope you know what you’re doing Amak. I don’t want to lose you the way I lost my mother too.”

----------

Present Day

The next few days went by slowly, with Sonya doing everything she could to avoid Steele. She only wanted his owner to come and take him away from her. Once he was gone, she could go back to the way things were before he had dropped in. She would be able to lead the team with Marcus for his first big sled run, without having to deal with anyone trying to take over her team. Slowly, but surely, the day came and when it did, she was completely ecstatic.

Steele on the other hand was feeling a sickly mixture of anger and fear, with the fear taking center stage. For the past few days, he had tried to forget about what was coming. However when his owner did arrive, along with his old team, the memories of what had happened a couple weeks ago hit him like a brick wall.

“But I’m your lead dog!”

“Not anymore. A true leader would have gotten us home. A true leader would have been willing to admit they were wrong! A true leader wouldn’t have lied about what happened! You’re no leader! You’re nothing but a fraud!”

Unlike the dogs of White Mountain, Steele had not been able to hide the truth from the dogs of Nome. After trying to fight Balto away from the sled, he had fallen off a cliff. By the time he had gotten back up, Balto had taken his place and was leading his team, along with any glory he would get from the serum run away. As revenge, Steele sabotaged the marks that Balto had left along his journey, sending him in the wrong direction. While the team got even more lost, he had followed the trail back to Nome. At first, it looked like he would get away with what he had done, but somehow, Balto managed to find the correct path and get the team home.

Steele managed to slip away when his team returned, but he would only evade them for a day before none other than Balto would catch him. He was dragged before the town and forced to admit what he had done. After that, the town, including his own friends immediately disowned him, banishing him from the town.

“Steele, you’re no champion of ours. You don’t even deserve that fancy collar.”

“Steele, I want you to walk away. Walk away from this town. Walk away and never return.”

Those were the last words spoken to him by Balto and his former friends before he was sent out into the cold. After days of wandering in the wilderness, he dragged himself into White Mountain. He had hoped that he would make a fresh start here, but the meddling of another wolfdog would ruin that. He had been revealed and his owner was going to bring him back to the town that had wanted to tear his head off.

“Damn you Sonya,” he muttered to himself, “Damn you and your entire half-breed kind.”

Steele had curled himself up in the crawlspace under the Vance’s house, hoping to hide from his team when they would come into town. Hopefully, if his owner didn’t find him, he would be left behind and wouldn’t have to deal with his former friends. As he looked around the cramped space, he couldn’t help but feel a twinge of familiarity. Before he had left Nome, he had done the same thing under the hospital to avoid being caught before.

Soon he heard the thump of boots on the front porch, followed by a knock on the front door. Another pair of feet answered from inside, “Ah Gunnar, it’s good to see you made it,” Jonathan greeted.

“Thanks Jonathan, I trust you’ve been doing well?” the gravelly voice of his owner replied.

“Oh yes, come in. Can I get you anything?”

“No thanks,” he replied, stepping into the home, “So, how’s my old Steele doing?”

“He’s doing great. I even had my son run him with the team to give him a little exercise.”

“Really? Well, I hope he wasn’t too much for your kid to handle.”

“Oh no, he got home alright. We’ve taken good care of your dog for you Gunnar.”

“Thanks for that, though there is something I’ve been thinking about that you may be interested in.”

“And what would that be?” Jonathan asked.

“How would you feel about taking care of him for a little longer?”

----------

Sonya hummed to herself as she trotted down the street. She hadn’t seen Steele all day and she hoped to never see him again. She hadn’t felt this happy since he first moved away to Nome a few years ago. In the years since, he really hadn’t changed much. He was still an egomaniac who looked down upon anyone he considered inferior, including dogs with a mixed breeding. She was so distracted by her happy thoughts that she bumped right into another dog.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she apologized.

“It’s no problem,” the tan colored dog replied. He was a Chinook, a rarer breed of sled dog.

“Hey, I haven’t seen you here before? Are you new in town?” she asked.

“Yeah, my team just came in. We’re only going to be here for a short time so I wanted to look around before we left,” he replied.

“So what brings you to town? I don’t think I got your name,” she continued.

“It’s Kaltag,” the Chinook replied, “And you are?”

“Sonya.”

“Well Sonya, it’s actually someone else that brings me into town.”

“Oh? Who? An old girlfriend?” she teased.

“Heh, I wish,” he replied, “No, the dog that has brought me here is someone I’d rather not see again, but he’s important to my owner.”

“Who is it?”

“You may have heard of him. He’s a husky named Steele.”

Sonya completely froze when she heard this, “Steele?”

“Yeah. He used to be the lead dog of the team I’m on, but I’m in charge now. We kicked him out of our town when we realized that he was a no good liar,” he replied, his tone becoming more of a growl. “Our owner thought he had gotten lost, but he wasn’t awake when it happened.”

A million different thoughts rushed through her head. Her suspicions were true; there had been more to Steele’s story than he led on. She knew she would have never gotten anything from Steele, but now she had something foolproof: an actual witness, “What do you mean ‘he wasn’t awake’? What happened?”

“Well, it all started when several of the kids in our town got sick with diphtheria. There were so many patients that the doctor ran out of the medicine used to treat them. So, a team was put together that would travel from Nome to Nenana to pick up the medicine and bring it back. I was on that team and Steele was the lead dog. We got to Nenana without any problems, but on the return trip, a fierce storm hit and soon we were completely lost,” So far the story was matching up with what Steele had said, but it wouldn’t for much longer.

“We tried to tell Steele to double back, but he insisted on pushing forward. Suddenly, we went over an icy hill and the sled crashed at the bottom. Our musher was thrown from his sled and knocked out by the impact. We were completely lost and now we didn’t even have our musher to direct us. To make matters worse, Steele just sat there after that, without trying to get us back together,” Kaltag continued.

“Steele never mentioned anything like this. He just told us he’d been knocked out,” she thought as Kaltag continued his story.

“We sat around for hours, thinking we had failed our mission, but then out of the blue comes Balto. I tell ya, I had never been happier to see him than when he came to us that day. He had somehow followed us and had left a trail by scratching the bark off trees to mark a path. All we had to do was follow his marks and we would be home free. Unfortunately, Steele had other plans.”

“So Steele was awake when Balto found them? Wait, Balto was a wolfdog too….. I don’t like where this is going.”

“Steele tried to keep Balto from helping us and gave him a bit of a beating, but that tough mutt never backed down. He wanted to help those kids as much as we did, but Steele couldn’t see beyond his own ego to let him help. As if that wasn’t bad enough, he was careless and knocked the crate containing the medicine over. That was when I knew that Steele was doing more harm than good. I was seconds away from jumping in there myself to stop him when Steele tried to lunge at Balto again. However, he overshot him and fell off the ledge. With Steele out of the way, we let Balto take charge and started to head home.”

“So you left Steele down there?” she asked. Other than a few minor details, the story was still similar to what Steele had told them.

“Well, putting it that way makes it seem so harsh, but yes. We left him because we knew he wouldn’t be able to get us home. However, it didn’t take very long for him to get back up and run ahead of us. He completely had it in for Balto and decided to sabotage his marks, adding extra trails that went in the wrong direction.”

Sonya could feel her blood start to boil. Steele had