Finding Destiny

          I am…no one. I am an orphan, a runaway, a mutt, and a tramp who has been to one side of the wilderness and back. I have no identity. I don’t even have a name.

          All of that’s going to change. I haven’t been searching my whole life just to get nothing in the end. I need an identity. I need a soul. I need a life.

          You might ask why I’m standing at the edge of a town and not going in. I hate to admit it, but I’m afraid. I’ll say it again: I’m afraid. Me! A dog who has defended herself from her abductors, invaded others’ territory, helped fight a war, and…You get my point. I can’t believe what a coward I am, either. All my life I’ve had no problem with putting one foot in front of the other, moving on. Yet when I get to the place where all my questions could be answered and my history restored, I chicken out. I’ll just say it: I’m afraid I’ll be disappointed again. I’m afraid it won’t be him. My brother.

          I’ve been searching for him and my mother for what seems like forever. Even when I have real hope that I’ve found them, it always turns out my hopes were false.

          I haven’t always known that I have a family. I didn’t even know what a mother was until I was a few weeks old. Maybe it would’ve been better if I had never known. Then I wouldn’t have gone on this insane journey.

          No, wait; the knowledge of my family kept me going. If I hadn’t known my family existed, I would’ve never had the strength to survive Roan and Soran.

          Roan and Soran. Those names still make me burn up inside with hate. Roan hurt me physically by biting and hitting me, and Soran hurt me mentally by never defending me, making me feel like I wasn’t worth enough to defend. When I was a pup I felt like there was no escape from them, until the day I learned I had a family.

          I was seven weeks old.

          “Go ahead, pup. Lick it,” Roan coaxed from the side.

          I tore my eyes away from the huge, shimmering icicle in front of my nose and stared up at him. I pictured him lying beneath the icicle, and it falling and crushing him. I hid my smirk.

          “C’mon, it’s fine,” Roan cajoled.

          I backed up quickly when he leaned forward, but all he did was give the ice a tiny lick. He sat back unharmed, licking his lips. “Go on, pup.”

          Curiosity swept through me and I forgot to be cautious. I jerked my head up and gave the huge, blue icicle a big lick…and felt my hot tongue fuse to the cold surface. I tried to pull away, but was snapped back. My tongue felt like it was being ripped out of my head. I grunted and whined as I tugged and shook my head back and forth.

          Roan snorted and grunted with laughter, and from the corner of my eye he looked like a shaking red blur with one chipped fang gleaming in the sunlight. I imagined his fiery-colored fur burning into flames and the earth swallowing him up, taking him down where he could never hurt me again.

          Humiliation replaced my curiosity, and I glared at the icicle until I thought I could melt a hole right through it. I slowly peeled my tongue off the hard, cold ice, slowly, carefully…and whipped around to sink my teeth into Roan’s leg.

          “Augh!” Roan cried, knocking me to the side with his free paw. I lay in a heap, quietly breathing, knowing that I was alive and that I would live to regret it.

          Roan limped over to Soran’s resting place, muttering and cursing all the way. Soran looked up with an amused smile on his smug face. “What’s the matter?”

          “That little whelp just bit me!” Roan snarled. He held out his paw, which was now even redder with blood.

          Soran inspected the wound, then stretched out, yawning lazily. “It’ll be fine. I swear, you’re the only wolf I know who whines over a little nip.”

          “You call this a nip?” Roan held out his paw, which only now had stopped pouring blood. He licked at it gingerly. “Bites just like her mother,” Roan muttered, glaring at me.

          I lay still, scarcely daring to breathe. Mother? I only had a dim understanding of what that word meant. My mother. I had a mother?

          Soran looked at Roan with a wry smile on his silvery face. “C’mon, Lover Boy. Get over her. Aniu would’ve never had any interest in you even if she hadn’t found Scout.”

          “There’s still a chance, right?” Roan growled. He glared at something off in the distance. “But then Scout -that dog, that husky- came in. And she forgot everything else except for him.” A low snarl hummed inside Roan’s throat.

          Soran still wore an amused grin on his face. His sense of humor had always been a little…different. “Look, Roan, you got your revenge, right? Scout died, Aniu’s mother croaked, Seminole kicked the bucket, and we got ourselves a little toy in with the bargain. That was a great trick we played. You got your revenge, I got to have some fun with the husky-lover, and we didn’t get caught! I still can’t figure that part out.”

          “We ran like heck out of our pack’s territory, that’s why,” Roan explained gruffly. His left paw crunched up into a fist. “I didn’t get that second pup, though.”

          “Huh?”

          “While you were running away with the whelp over there, Aniu had another pup. A boy, from what I could see. I almost got him, but then Aniu bit my paw. She nearly broke it.” He looked down at his wound. “Actually, she bit the same leg that little monster just did.”

          “Huh! Like mother, like daughter, right?” Soran drawled.

          “Right.” Roan’s eyes suddenly darkened, and he looked straight through me. I felt his anger brush the air, and I knew when he looked at me, he saw my mother. And Roan was still angry. Very, very angry.

          My heart slammed against the inside of my chest, over and over. I froze for a moment, quivering, as Roan advanced toward me with that dark shine in his eye. I bolted, and I could barely hear his thundering footsteps behind me above my own pattering footfalls and battering blood in my ears.

          ThumpTHUMP, ThumpTHUMP, ThumpTHUMP.

          Roan was coming up behind me, ready to hurt me again, ready to bathe me in my own blood. I ran faster, fear surging through my limbs like electricity.

          THUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMP.

          I couldn’t breathe. I was choking on my heartbeats. I needed to slow down, to breathe, but then Roan’s breath burned my tail, and I ran faster.

          THUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMP.

          I was going to collapse. But I had to keep running, had to keep away from him, my torturer. My heart was going to explode. I was either going to die from fear or a heart attack before Roan even got me in his claws.

          THUMPTHUMPTHUMP–

          “You little–!” Roan’s teeth closed around the back of my neck, and I flailed my legs desperately as I hung from his teeth. Soran stood laughing on the sidelines.

Hate broiled my insides. I reached up and slashed Roan across the nose.  He howled, but clamped his mouth shut before neighbors heard, and dropped me to the ground. I scrambled to get away, but his heavy paw pressed down on my back like a weight. I whined and coughed as he pushed me down down down into the dirt, and I could smell the dark scent of the earth as he ran his claws through my skin. He whispered to me that I took after my mother as a mindless weakling, and I was worthless, and that it wouldn’t matter if he killed me right then because I didn’t matter. Those words are still in my mind today, even though I do my best to shut them out because I know they’re stupid lies. But I didn’t know that then, and I was pitiful enough to believe every word.

“Roan, stop!” Soran pointed his nose to the north and sniffed. “You smell that?”

“Yeah,” Roan said, holding me down by my tail as I tried to run away. I whined in pain and in fear of my tail getting ripped off.

“What do you think it is?” Soran sniffed. “Smells like a pack heading this way.”

“So we’ve got to hide the kid!” Roan exploded, “If they find out what we’ve been doing to her, they might kill us! You know how a lot of wolves go crazy over pups!”

“Yeah, yeah,” Soran murmured.

I suddenly found the strength to tear myself away from Roan, and ran as fast as I