and he growled and bit her other shoulder, but she swung him off. “Do you know the hurt, the lies I’ve had to face?” He clubbed her back extra hard, and she whined as she went flying and hit the ground, dazed. Lupus strode over to her, expecting her to admit defeat, but he was surprised when she struggled upwards to face him again. “Do you know what humiliation is?”

“Yes,” he grunted, “What’s heading for you after I win this.”

“Well, I’m not going to be humiliated anymore,” Aleu proclaimed softly, gaining volume with every word, “You can have my territory. You can take my pack, but you can’t take my pride. You can take my title as pack leader…but you can’t take my SPIRIT!” Aleu threw herself at Lupus and gave it all she had. Lupus was surprised, so he didn’t defend himself very well for the first few seconds, and Aleu fought with vengeance. She scraped his skin and slashed his face, only stopping when he reached up and sliced her hard across the left cheek. She banged him down on his back in the mud, breathing hard.

“Aleu! Look!” Linder shouted.

Aleu looked behind her to see all the fighting had stopped. All the wolves were staring at her, and she noticed Lupus’s remaining fifteen wolves had all encircled the Ravens Wing wolves, trapping them. Under her gaze they all stepped away awkwardly, and Flint came forward.

“Aleu’s right. She deserves to be pack leader.”

“Huh?” Aleu said, bemused. Wasn’t Flint her enemy and a traitor just a minute ago?

“Why would you say that, Flint?” Lupus said in a low voice, looking smaller and weaker in his current position on the ground under Aleu.

“First of all, Aleu’s had to fight to get to be pack leader,” Flint began, “You got your title through blood. This shows Aleu should be more respected than you, because she’s a courageous fighter.” It had been awhile since Aleu had had a compliment. She didn’t know how to take it. She satisfied herself with smiling faintly at Flint and waiting for whatever he was going to say next. So far he was being her hero, saving her from the loss she had been dreading but hoping against hope could be avoided. He was making that hope come alive inside her.

“Second of all,” Flint continued, “You’re getting old. We need a pack leader who’s younger and able to take risks.”

“But when I die, the title of pack leader will pass to you,” Lupus mumbled bitterly, “You’re my best and most loyal supporter.”

“Me? No,” Flint said, looking with apologetic eyes at Aleu, “I’ve been a traitor to my real pack. Though I’m not the only one…” He looked around at other former Ravens Wing wolves, who tried to remain stony-faced but few succeeded, “But I was the first in the betrayal. Aleu deserves to be pack leader more than me.”

“But her heritage!” Lupus exclaimed angrily, “Do you have anything to defend the dog blood running through her?” Aleu dug her claws into Lupus’s shoulders just a little harder…

Flint stared hard at Aleu as if considering something. “The way I see it,” he said slowly, “is if Aleu mates with a wolf, the three quarters of dog blood in her will be reduced to half that in her pups. If the pups mate with wolves and it goes down the line like that, the amount of dog blood will get less and less until there’s nothing but a sliver left. In the end it won’t matter. Besides, we need some dogs around here to show us how to have fun again…I, for one, accept Aleu as my new leader.”

There was thoughtful quiet where no one moved. Then Flint silently padded in to stand among the Ravens Wing pack still squashed in the middle of the Golden River wolves. Aleu held her breath, hoping, praying.

After a few seconds of uncomfortable silence, one lone wolf Aleu recognized as another traitor very slowly and very hesitantly joined Flint amongst the crowd. Another wolf followed, then another. Soon all the Ravens Wing wolves were in the middle, and then the Golden River wolves began to move in, having taken Flint’s argument into consideration. Aleu hissed out a breath in relief as one by one every Golden River pack member joined the others to make the new, larger Ravens Wing pack.

She grinned triumphantly down at Lupus. “It looks like you’re out of a job.” He refused to meet her eyes; instead he just looked miserably defeated. She began to feel a little sorry for him, but only a little. She had just won her first war; with Flint’s help, she had won.

“Do you surrender your pack, your territory, and your title?” she asked, even though she knew he had to.

“Yes,” he said quietly, “I surrender to you, Aleu.”

“Then you’re free to go,” she said, jumping off and letting him up. He heaved himself up, shaking his head, and backed away from her.

“Aleu, look out!” Linder yelled. Aleu turned to see Senna’s enraged light brown face fuming behind her. Senna raised a paw and bashed Aleu in the head, knocking the wolf-dog back a few feet to the riverbank’s edge. Aleu saw stars as she barely felt herself teeter, and then she fell, spinning head over tail into the browned waves.

Her mind swam into a bruised dark blue, and before it faded to black she heard a faint splash.

She awoke groggily to voices drifting up and down and a distant, screaming shriek from somewhere far away. Suddenly it seemed like a huge boulder smashed into the side of her head, and she groaned as her eyes fluttered open.

Flint’s face was peering down earnestly into hers, and a relieved grin split his face. “Aleu! You’re…back.”

She slowly raised a paw to the side of her head where blood was pounding into her brain. “Where am I?”

“You’re in Lupus’s pack cave across the river,” Flint explained, “Or, it’s really your cave now…By the way, you’ve got quite an impressive scar there, on your face. I can’t believe Lupus laid it into you like that, but you beat him! And geez, Aleu, you scared the pack half to death. First Senna whacked you across the skull, and did it so hard you fell into the river! I couldn’t believe she did that, either…” As Flint went on for awhile, Aleu lifted a paw to her face and felt the place where Lupus had scratched her. There was a raised bump, but she knew the bump, but not the brownish slash, would go away in time. She had seen her brothers get scars from doing dumb stuff, but she had never been marked with something like this. It made her feel different, wilder, tougher. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when she thought of how her parents and siblings would react if she came home with a scar on her face!

“…Do you remember that?” Flint was asking. Aleu shook herself.

“I remember a splash, after I fell in the river,” she said, “That’s it. After that it’s all black.”

“Well, after you fell into the river I…well, I…” He forced the words out before he choked on them. “I jumped in to save you. It would’ve been pointless to have you drown after all we’d gone through to get you to be pack leader, right?”

“Thanks,” she said, looking up at him with grateful eyes, “I…really owe you.”

“Owe me?” Flint laughed a little. “What about Linder? She went crazy after she saw you fall! She almost jumped in after you, but then I did, so I guess she changed her mind and decided to take care of Senna. She threw herself onto her and was fighting like a maniac! She got Senna beat up really bad. I didn’t know Linder could be so wild.”

Aleu carefully looked around. About twenty wolves were scattered around the stony floor of a huge rocky cave. Some were eating, others sleeping; some were tucked in their own little corners, talking with friends. Their voices bounced around and echoed against the walls and made a buzzing sound in Aleu’s ears. She would have to get used to this.

The cave entrance was white with blasting snow blowing outside, and the scream Aleu had been hearing all this time was the wind. They were in the middle of a gigantic snowstorm.

“How long have I been out of it?” Aleu asked. Flint’s forehead creased as he thought.

“Almost a week, I know that for sure. Around five or six days. That was because of that dang bruise Senna gave you on the side of the head, and your nearly drowning in the river. When I got to you I thought you were already dead. You’d sunk almost to the bottom, and even when we got you to shore and pumped some of the water out of you, you wouldn’t move. Linder got you breathing, though. She kind of shrieked and gave you such a big whack on the chest I thought if you were already dead you would definitely feel that in the afterlife. But you started coughing, and then you kind of half-opened your eyes. Do you remember that?”

It felt to Aleu like Flint was describing someone else who had nearly drowned, not her. “I told you, everything was black,” she muttered irritably, clutching her head. She eased herself up and staggered past Flint to the center of the dark cave. Almost immediately she heard someone call out her name, and she spun around to see Linder rush up to her and embrace her.

“Aleu! You’re alright!” Aleu was surprised to hear Linder’s rough voice thicken, and as the she-wolf pulled away Aleu saw the palest glitter of tears in Linder’s yellow eyes. The wolf