still stood with mouth agape. Finally, he snapped out of it.

            “You’re excused for now you waste of fur” Boss spat at Bear. Then he whipped around so that he was nose to nose with Atka. “And you’re excused until you have those pups!”

With that, he stormed off while the pack rushed up to congratulate Atka. Of course my mother was the first to get to Atka since they were best friends, and she tried to keep the rest of the pack from getting to her. Bear and I still didn’t move. Bristol noticed us and limped over to us, grinning.

            “You took a beating too, huh?” Bristol smiled at Bear.

Bear gave him a sloppy smile.

            “And what happened to you?” Bristol asked me.

“Huh? Oh, sorry. I had to stop Dakota from turning around to be the hero again”

            “I figured he would” Bristol replied, rolling his eyes.

By then, the rest of the pack had cleared up, so Bristol and Bear went to go see Atka. I stayed where I was and looked back at where I had seen Boss disappear. He wasn’t heading in the direction where my siblings and I had tried to escape. And as dangerous as that sounded, not knowing was far worse.

            I was right. The next time I saw Boss, he was leading a small procession back to the pack. These wolves were strangers and it was hard to tell if they were a small pack that had just been beaten or if Boss was bringing them to do something bad to us. The pack gathered in front of the den again, anticipating the group’s arrival.

            “I told you I had plans for you” Boss told me. “And here they are- you’re going with them”

I studied the group in front of me. The apparent leader was a light brown- grey color similar to my mother’s with dark patches over his eyes. The next one was the same color but a little darker with the same patches. The third was a female, grey, with the patches but also with white on her legs, stomach and face. The fourth was different from the others. He was the same brown and had white on his legs like the female, but he was different somehow…

            The leader approached Boss submissively.

                        “Well thanks… we’d be in a bunch of trouble without her- and you!”

            “You better watch out for her… she fights and escapes”

                        “Oh right” the leader stalled. “Go!” he barked, roughly shoving me forward.

Boss grinned and watched happily.

                                    “Yeah, go!” said the brown and white wolf, pushing me into the snow.

I gasped but kept my mouth shut.

“Bye Mom” I managed before being led away.

            Sitka and I stood side by side, trying to judge how tough our enemies might be. It looked like two were male and two were female, so it could be a fair fight. Everyone was frozen, glaring at each other. One flinch could start the fight.

            “This is our territory!” the biggest male declared.

“It’s not marked!” I growled.

The wolves started to circle. Circling made me nervous and I could tell Sitka was getting nervous too.

“Sitka” I whispered. “They make one move, you attack okay? I’m right here to help you”

The wolves stopped circling so that the biggest male, the one in charge was in front of me. Tension hung heavy in the air. Each of us waited for the other to make a move.

Suddenly, the smaller, darkest male started to run… but not at us…

I cocked my head and watched. Was he chasing a squirrel?!

            “Diego! Come back here! We’re in the middle of something!”

                        “No! I’m in the middle of something!” Diego replied stubbornly, pausing in the middle of his chase.

The leader sighed and shook his head. These wolves couldn’t be much older then we were. I couldn’t help it. Relief and humor at Diego welled up in my chest. I burst out laughing. Sitka started laughing too. The leader looked at us, insulted, but the two females started to laugh along with us. Finally, the leader gave in and started to laugh too.

“I’m Dakota, and this is my sister Sitka” I finally offered, stomach hurting from the laughter.

            “I’m Tanner, these are my sisters Melora and Sasha and that was my brother Diego” the leader replied. “Are you guys on your own too?”

“Yep, just escaped” I grinned. “Is this really your territory?”

                        “No!” Sasha laughed. “I think you guys got here first! If someone wasn’t trying so hard to be an alpha, we probably would have left you alone”

Tanner glared at his sister and muttered, “Thank you for sharing! But if someone actually listened to their alpha, we probably… would … have territory… yeah!”

Sasha giggled at her older brother and Melora rolled her eyes.

            “So, um, six can make a group…” Tanner started awkwardly.

Surprisingly, my own ears started to fold back.

“Yeah, um it could almost make a pack…” I mumbled shyly.

                        “You guys are pathetic!” Sasha smiled. “Swallow your macho pride and just say that we’re a pack!”

“That sounds good” I said weakly, wagging my tail sheepishly.

            “Yeah” Tanner agreed in the same tone.

            Being in a pack again felt good. We still had our freedom but we didn’t have to worry about smaller things only two wolves could handle. After our little “spat”, we decided to explore the territory together. Dakota and Tanner quickly became friends and although I wasn’t as social as my brother, I was becoming friends with Melora and Sasha. Melora had as short a temper as I did even though she was just a little more skittish. Sasha was completely different from her younger sister. She kept a cool head, always seemed to be happy and acted like a puppy. Diego, on the other hand, had to have been a puppy- he really acted like one! As kind as he was, he was even more stubborn then me and never missed a chance to act immature.

“Well, at least we know that the area really is clear” Dakota chirped happily. “But even if there were, I think we could handle them!”

I would have been happy too except Diego was trying to catch my tail as I wagged it. By the time he had actually caught it, I’d had it! As soon as his teeth closed around my tail and covered the white tip, I spun around and got so close to his face, our noses almost touched.

“I swear Diego! If you do that one more time, I can promise you you’re not going to have any teeth to catch anyone’s tail with!”

The little dark brown wolf cowered on the ground and tried to make himself sink into the snow. With a snort, I turned back around to the rest of the pack who was staring at me.

“What?”

Tanner studied me but Dakota shook his head with a smile.

            “Come on guys! We might as well find a place to rest before it gets dark!” Dakota said cheerfully.

                        “Who made you alpha?” Tanner inquired jokingly as he playfully nipped at Dakota.

            “When I decided I would be!” Dakota barked back, trying to tackle the brown wolf.

Before we knew it, we were all running and tackling each other, letting our puppy sides run off their energy before we had to go back to being a real pack. I knocked over Diego but hardly needed to: before I got to him he tripped over his own feet and rolled, sending powdery snow everywhere. Then Dakota came out of nowhere and made me do the same thing. He laughed out loud and attempted to tackle Tanner again.

            When the sun sank behind the trees and the moon started to