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Here's some more of the fanfic. I know you guys must be getting impatient. I'm sorry!! This is one of the longest fanfics I've ever written, and it's taking me FOREVER to type up!
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 could to who-knows-where.
“Hey!” Roan yelled, “Get back here!”
“For Pete’s sake, Roan,” Soran muttered.
“You just shut up,” Roan growled.
I scampered behind our cave and hid there behind a molting pine tree. The needles prickled my nose, and their spicy smell was nauseating, but I didn’t make a sound. I had learned that staying quiet would help me get less beatings from Roan. Maybe silence could help me now.
Roan was my real tormentor, but Soran never lifted a paw to help or defend me, even though he never hurt me. Soran simply didn’t care about me, and that’s the reason my hate for him was even more so than for Roan.
I lay there, shaking. An overwhelming surge of insecurity swept through me, and instantly I wanted nothing more than to curl up somewhere safe, between loving paws, and cry and cry until Roan and Soran drowned in the salty river of my tears. I thought of the mother I had heard talked about. Was she real? Could she hear me?
“Mother?” I whimpered pitifully into the wind. It tossed away my words, and I felt more alone and stupid than ever. “Mother…”
Approaching footsteps below made me duck, and I listened, terrified, as they marched closer and closer until they were right in front of the cave. There were a hundred, a thousand footsteps. I imagined duplicates of Roan and Soran coming to hurt me, and I burrowed down into the snow.
“You two are intruders here,” a deep voice rumbled, “This is not your territory.”
I peeked over the ridge and saw an elderly gray wolf standing up to my two abductors with a pack of ten other wolves at his back.
“We’re sorry,” Roan said in an emotionless voice, “We didn’t know we were in your space.”
“Really?” the older wolf replied, arching an eyebrow, “I can tell you’ve been living here for a few weeks. The edge of my territory is only a few pawprints to the east. You haven’t scented it in all this time?”
“Look, who are you to be telling us this?” Soran blurted out.
Roan kicked him. For all his gray fur, Soran had never had much gray matter in his head.
“I am Kalim, leader of the White Storm pack,” the wolf huffed, straightening up and glaring at Soran, “And you are on my territory, so I suggest you come up with a good reason why I should let you stay!” Suddenly Kalim stopped and sniffed. His right foot pawed at the snow. “Do I smell…?” He sniffed again, and narrowed his eyes at Roan. “Do you have a young pup living here also?”
“Pup? Geez, no!” Roan exclaimed hastily, “If you smell anything, it’s the baby, uh, uh, deer we killed this morning! A wolf’s got to eat when a wolf’s got to eat, right?”
“I’m not so old that I cannot tell the difference between prey and my own blood,” Kalim said icily.
“Well, c’mon, Kalim,” Roan said with a weak grin, “Why would we have a pup hanging around here? Do we look like the kind who babysit?”
Kalim stared at them, and then sighed. “Very well, then. You may stay, but I’ll be keeping an eye on you. Good day.”
The wolves turned and padded off into the snow, disappearing into the distance.
Roan glared at Soran. “Nice.”
“What? I had no idea he was the pack leader,” Soran said innocently.
“I think it was kind of obvious,” Roan said, rolling his eyes, “Old guy? A pack following him? He starts talking about territory? Hmmm, let’s think here…”
“Hey, not everybody can be the brains of the operation.” Soran went over and lay down in front of the cave.
Roan snorted. “Oh yeah? And what are you, the foot?”
Soran closed his eyes and growled softly.
Roan looked around with sudden urgency. “Hey, where’s the kid?”
“You let her go, you go find her,” Soran said with his eyes still closed.
“Gee, thanks for the help,” Roan muttered.
“My pleasure.”
I curled up beside the cave, shivering and waiting to be found. Kalim and his pack had opened something up inside me. I had only seen other wolves (besides Roan and Soran) from a distance, but now, knowing the wolves could be reached and talked to, I had new hope. Maybe one day I could escape from here…
“Gotcha.” Roan scooped me up in his teeth and carried me to the cave. I went limp in his mouth, but a hot star seemed to hurtle out of the sky and stamp itself on my heart. I felt a warm determination in my chest that one day I would escape, and hopefully leave Roan and Soran crying for their mothers just as they had made me cry for mine. I would escape. I would be free.
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Great suspense! Keep it coming! *anticipates*
It should be up in my gallery in a few days. Good reading everybody!