My ventures with Spirane and its youth were not finished, that I knew to be true. I had been driven away only by the alpha’s sheer force and the odds that did not weigh in my favor. I knew that I was not done growing and that one day I would take her with her obnoxious little children too. It was a silent promise as I had left the hills of the mountain.

The addictive, sanguine blood that had dripped from the girl’s wounds had only caused me more unrest as I had departed them. My body craved more, more, and more yet I could not provide it with such. To try again so soon would be folly. The young girls’ faces were plastered into my mind as I made the journey to the crags, ears lain back and head dipped low in a menacing manner. I was not pleased with the alpha’s arrival at all and her interference only ensured that I would be back for them – all three of them. Maybe not this day or next, but one day soon.

Her grip upon my throat was still felt as a tightness enwrapped it, another burning reminder of my failure this day, but the pressure would soon fade. I crept along the side of the large rocks that made up the base of the crags – a home in which I was content to have as mine – yet it is the dank recesses of the grotto that lure me in. A peculiar smell wafts from the abyssal depths of one of the openings and my amethyst eyes turn to peer into it before entering. Too-large paws carry me quietly through the cavern as the darkness embraces me and the odor only becomes stronger as I delve deeper.

This tunnel is a dead end, quite literally, a crevasse of such ending any further journeying within the shadows. Droplets of water echo within the confines of the hollow rock and it is here that the smell is at its peak. I step to the edge warily – ever conscious of my closeness to it – and peer down to see the rotten, maggot infested corpse of one unfortunate fool. Its body is broken and mangled from the fall yet there are claw marks upon the walls; my own guess would be that they could not escape once they had survived the fall.

With a shrug I turned from the gravesite and began walking back the way in which I had come only to find a small puddle of rainwater that had dripped through the cracks. I stopped for a moment and looked into it, seeing myself for the first time within the low light of the caverns, and I found that I could not look away.