Alouette slugged through the tall grass of Ruieze Fields, the singular free-land she’d come accustom. Her gold tipped ears flopped heavily against her chocolate fur while her eyes struggled to focus through a translucent shield of tears. Ebon grief compressed her chest, crushing her heart in a vice grip. Helpless against the emotion, a whine whistled from her lips. Both Samhain, her father, and her brother, Thoth were dead. Two such strong wolves were ripped from her life, and so soon after her mentor The Monster (Tick Tock), and her mate Tobias. Too many wolves were gone in a short span of time. Her grief was edged with panic. If they, the unbeatable, could have there lives severed so swiftly, what was she still doing alive? She the weak; she the beatable. If Thoth were dead, then she should have died first, right? Being the submissive sibling, it was she who ate last and survived off the dregs of prey. Being submissive, she’d have been helpless against attack. It was her place to be a meat shield for the strong, for they were vital to the propagation of a prosperous, proud wolf kind.

Thin legs wobbled and she sank into the sand on Ruieze Lake’s bank, driven there by her crippling remorse. Her sunburst eyes set on the luminescent, trying to understand what she was without her family. All she had left were Beltane, who she’d never been close with, and Sekhmet, the terrifying female who Alouette was avoiding. She’d failed Sekhmet. The mission to discover why Thoth had betrayed - and even how - she hadn’t solved yet. Her inkling of an idea it that occurred some time ago at the puppy gathering in Spirane. That’s when he’d changed and that was when Sekhmet demanded answers from Alouette about her brother, but Alouette hadn’t discovered the cause of his dispositional change.

And now, she was going to have to face Sekhmet in failure. Alouette was convinced she was going to die, and while her mind shouted that she deserved the fate of being killed by Sekhmet, her primal instincts made her guts hurt with fear. With fear sitting atop of her grief and loneliness, she could barely breath and it made her inch closer to the edge of the lake, thinking to submerge her head so she could cut off the emotions burning her organs.