Prologue
Hail pelted from the sky. All who were capable left to restock the supply of food. Only the young, sick, and old were left behind to wait for the fresh kill. Even the Alpha female was forced to leave her pups where they were, frightened and hungry. They whimpered as they curled around each other, fighting for warmth. One young fae was different. She believed in her family members, trusted that they would be taken care of.
She turned to her siblings, trying to cheer them up.
“Mother and Father will come back; they promised! They have to! We just have to find something to do while we wait for them!” She paced in circles, deciding what to do. “Let’s go play in the back room!” She perked.
Her siblings were silent, except for a lazy moan.
“Fine!” She frowned, agitated. “I’ll go play by myself.” She crawled through the many tunnels, not taking one wrong turn, and came out in a large room. It was the nursing room, but since the Alpha female had already had her litter, they wouldn’t need it until the next litter. The room was completely empty, except for a few blood stains on the floor from when the litter was born.
The little pup sighed. Noticing an acorn in the middle of the cave, and being easily-amused, she batted it around on the floor.
After a while of the made-up game, she realized that some of her litter-mates would like it. She crept back through the tunnels to the main den, where all her siblings were sleeping. Not wanting to disturb them, she turned.
As she was about to go back to her acorn game, she was stopped by abruptly by a foul smell. Scrunching her nose, she went to investigate. It came from around her siblings. The stench came from her youngest brother. She nudged him, telling him to wake up and get the stink off of himself, when she felt his body was cold. Frightened, she did this to the rest of her siblings, to find that none of them were radiating body heat, and they all had the same disgusting smell. She knew what that meant...
Tears stained the little pup's face as she sat at the entrance to the cave, waiting for her parents to come back. She tried to peer through the blizzard, but she could barely see two inches in front of herself.
After two cold days of living off of the emergency food, the little pup left her familiar home, knowing that no one was coming back...