Anyone who means anything is gone. Hyperion is gone. Helios is gone. Cyric is gone. The only who remains is Ankou and he's decidedly missing for now. I spent the whole first month back looking for him but Ankou is good at hiding. That's not a skill I think he needs to be working on. He needs to be working on killing, on maiming, on making a name for ourselves. We are still the brood of Hyperion, the blood of exotica. My father taught me all about our bloodlines and how special they are. To be properly initiated, we need to kill someone. The only question is, who will be the lucky corpse? Without Ankou, I'm just going to have to get a good head start. I start hunting, tracking day old trails to see where they go. For now, I'm window shopping. Every trail that ends in a breathing body, I study.

No one knows any better that I've been there. I'm good at covering my tracks. I've studied a lot of different wolves over the past few weeks. I've been collecting samples of hair and scent, memorizing all of them so I can find them later. Now I have only to play a game of eenie meenie minie moe and see who gets to see my bad side first. I'm heading back to another trail that I've been keeping an eye on, a female with a midnight cloak. She travels alone. I haven't found a mate or cubs yet but they could be close. I stop in my tracks when I find a more recent trail over it. Nostrils wrinkle back as I glare down the path. Who is trailing my prize? A soft growl of warning scrambles in my chest but I silence it and start stalking down the path, following both trails now since the second only shadows the first. Who is trailing her and why? Do they have a plan in mind or are they just looking for something to do? What kind of intentions do they have for the female? They will have to answer to me because she is mine.

I travel only a little ways before I have to stop. There's someone aproaching, fast. I instinctively dive toward the bushes, crouching down and waiting to see who comes by. Surprise flickers in my two toned eyes as black appears in the trees. It's the female, the one I've been tracking. Who is she running from? I don't think about it, only act. When she gets parallel to my position, I launch out of the bushes, landing halfway on her back. Using momentum and weight, along with the surprise of my attack, I'm able to knock her off her feet into the dirt. She scrambles up quickly but not quickly enough. A snarl rips from my chest as I dive in at her, taking her neck in my jaws. I squeeze down, crushing her windpipe as she struggles in my mouth. Whimpers and yelps escape her lips as she tries to back peddle out of my grasp but she's already choking on blood as she grows weak, her eyes bulging with panic.

I let go, stepping back to watch her scrabble and jerk as she tries to get up but she's too far gone. She manages to limp a few steps but her body is already shutting down from lack of oxygen. She falls back down, her paws digging sideways in the dirt as she struggles, her mouth gaping open like a fish out of water. I hear gurgling noises coming from her throat and her eyes find mine, the question in them obvious. Why? A dark chuckle drips from my lips as I look her right in the eye.

"Because you're alive."

D A E M O N