It was time for a change. The girls at home just kept getting younger and more annoying with every spring and it just wasn’t fun anymore. Then there was the fact that my best mate Theo was about to have his second litter of pups with Violet. Cute as the little buggers were and as much as I respected Theo for finding a good woman, I wasn’t about to stick around and be Uncle Roy again. Not with my mum switching between nagging about how I still hadn’t settled down and how my baby sister Maude was still missing. She’d run off in one of her angsty rages last fall and hadn’t been seen or heard from since.

I would never understand why she got so worked up about being rejected. Then again I wasn’t sure I could. She was painfully plain and awkwardly shaped. Certainly she didn’t look anything like the sweet little morsel that she was passed up for. I couldn’t really blame Dash for choosing Willow over Maude. Heck, if the girl hadn’t been so obviously vapid, I might have made a play for her too. Heaving a sigh, I looked back in the direction of my parent’s den. Mother was pacing again but she stopped when she caught sight of me. Groaning and already imagining the nagging and prodding that would ensue, I did the only thing I could think to do.

”I’m gonna go look for Maude, be back later!” And with that, I turned tail and ran. Call me a coward…I dare you. You don’t know my mother.

It wasn’t that I wasn’t concerned about my baby sister. It was more than I struggled to really care about anything lately. She was probably fine, off sulking somewhere and would come back when she was ready. Of course she was usually only ever gone for a month at most, so I could see why our mother was a bit concerned. Most likely I’d find her hidden in some grungy little hole, muttering to herself. But at least it would give me time to figure out what the hell I was going to do with my life.

I searched all the usual places that Maude liked to hide but there were only faint, lingering traces of her if there were any at all. That was...strange. My little sister was a creature of habit. She used the same hidey holes and always came back. She’d come back when Jace had paired up with that little white wolf their fourth year, she’d come back when Grove had played that awful trick on her. I still think I let that little punk off too easy. My sister was plain and obnoxious, sure, but no one deserved to be played like that. At least the girls I played with knew that it was just a game. I made certain that they did; there was no future with any of them.

”Okay, so maybe I should start to worry.” There were still a couple further hiding holes that I knew about, they were south east of the lands we called home. If she wasn’t there...well, hopefully she’d be there. I hadn’t planned on this excursion taking more than a day or two; in fact I’d only planned on it being that long because no doubt Maude would be difficult about coming back.

When I finally reached one of her furthest hiding places, I began to sniff around. Unlike the others I’d checked, this one at least held more of her scent. She’d been here at some point in the recent past...but not too recent. Growling and a bit annoyed for already having wasted an entire day with nothing to show for it, I poked around the area surrounding the hollowed out tree. It had been a few months at least since anyone had been here, let alone Maude. If she hadn’t come home, where had she gone? Though it was a tight fit, I curled up inside the trunk of the tree and tried to put myself in my sister’s mind.

”If I was homely and alone and had just been rejected by a third potential mate....ugh, this is stupid.” How was I supposed to put myself in her place? I was handsome and if I actually wanted a mate, I’m sure I’d have my pick of any unattached lady wolf back home. More than one had tried to snare me this winter, that was for sure. Some of them were a bit vindictive toward each other in the process too. I let out a frustrated grunt and contemplated the state of my own life.

I was nearly eight and had not once been tempted to settle down. Sure there had been a few likely candidates but in the end they’d fallen flat and lost my interest. Even my place in the pack was ambiguous. No real rank or function, just sort of floating around and helping here or there when asked.

”Maybe Dad is right...I need to find a purpose.” How exactly I was supposed to go about doing that, I wasn’t sure but I would worry about that after I found Maude and dragged her scruffy ass back home so Mom could lecture her and leave me alone. For now though, I’d rest and begin the search again in the morning.

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Morning came and I wasn’t in the mood. The tree was a little too small to sleep comfortably which meant that I was stiff and sore. Also it smelled like a skunk had been spooked somewhere nearby. Neither of those things would have me in the best of moods on their own, but combined...yeah, Maude was getting dragged back by that bushy tail of hers when I found her.

I hadn’t really come to any epiphany on where to search but figured if Maude had been really upset, she would’ve just kept going. As this was her furthest hiding spot, it was hard to say what direction she would take but she wasn’t really likely to have thought about it much. Sometimes I wondered how I had ended up with such a strange, unattractive, unfortunate little sister. But, there was no helping it, I would just have to pick a direction and keep on moving. Eventually I would have to come across someone who remembered seeing her, right?

Well several hours later I was beginning to question my assumption that someone would have seen her. The woodlands had shifted from the deciduous trees of my homeland to the coniferous trees of a land I’d never been. The smells were different and not entirely unwelcoming. Crisper, greener. It smelled like earth and I was startled to realize in that moment that I truly did miss my sister and was worried that something might have happened to her. On the chance that she might be lingering nearby, I sucked in a deep breath and threw my head back, letting out a long, tenor howl. If she heard it, she’d come, of that I was sure. But if she wasn’t close enough to hear...well then the it looked like I was going to have to actually form a plan to find her.