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Perfection comes in the form of a well-worn burrow under a tree. Dirt is scratched out with sharpened claws, the walls shaped by the form of a wolf trying to fit into the space. Once Tommy has a carved-out hole for himself, he begins to fill it like his parents taught him. Bracken to blanket the bottom, with softer mosses as padding. As his nest takes shape, Tommy allows a moment of hope that this might be the last nest he ever has to make.
He's had five nests in his lifetime, but this will be the successful number six.
With his nest perfected, Tommy begins to scout out his new territory. To the east, just out of the woodlands he inhabits, is a grasslands that would be perfect for pack hunting. A mountain range brackets the open space, and a river runs straight through the middle before winding into the trees.
Tommy might not have a pack to hunt with, but he could possibly take on a small deer if he was lucky.
To the west, the forest stretches out. There’s a ravine that splits the trees in half, and if the wind blows in the right direction, he can scent a faint trace of other wolves. They might not be shifters, like him, so he makes a note to never cross the ravine.
His new home is beautiful. He has his burrow, and he works on shaping a path to the river so he can get water. Occasionally, if he’s feeling daring and the sun is warm enough, he shifts back to his human form to lie in the clearing outside of his home. A firepit is constructed, along with a couple of snare-traps to try and catch smaller mammals.
This is not the first nest that Tommy has slept in alone. It is not the first that only fits his own wolf, because he has nobody else that would ever want to be close to him.
His burrow – his new territory – might be perfect, but they are lonely.
Not that Tommy cares. He is almost an adult, and doesn’t need anyone to help him. Certainly not the last pack he left, which was less of a pack and more of a group of hunters that found him. At night, alone in his burrow, flashes of a porcelain mask flicker behind his eyes as he drifts to sleep in the moss.
Autumn makes the forest look like a fiery inferno. Bored of his usual patrolling routes, Tommy decides that today would be the perfect day to expand his routine. The western woods offer miles to run, scampering through the trees and watching the bright colours above him. While the thick canopy offers the best protection and hunting grounds to a lone wolf, they also dry out in harsh heat. Luckily, autumn is a wetter month, so he doesn’t fear this nest burning to a crisp like the last one.
He continues bounding through the trees, playfully chasing after a rabbit that tries to scurry away from his overly-large paws. Together, the two of them reach the ravine, and Tommy bites back a startled bark of laughter when the rabbit dives off the edge.
He’s still laughing internally when someone mimics his bark. A soft sound, rumbling low from across the ravine, and Tommy’s ears flatten instantly as he seeks out the sound.
A wolf stands opposite him, separated only by the gap into the earth between them. A dark chocolate colour, close enough that it might be an actual wolf, as opposed to a shifter. It acts like a wolf, ears pointed forwards yet his hackles are raised, cautiously studying Tommy. The stand-of between the two of them stretches, until the mystery wolf yips.
His tail wags, and Tommy decides that it isn’t a natural-wolf. That’s a shifter.
He doesn’t return the greeting, and instead does his best to mimic wild behaviour. He lowers his head, knowing that most wolves try to avoid confrontation if possible. They’re both out here on their own, but Tommy doesn’t doubt that there are other shifters. Where one goes, others follow.
Fleeing is the best option, and he races off into the trees. He blurs between them, scenting different trees to mask the path back home, before he reaches his burrow. It’s not difficult to clamber in, tugging bracken over the entrance to hide him away from the outside world.
Another wolf. Another shifter.
Sleep doesn’t come. In the distance, he hears a wolf’s call, and pretends like he isn’t urged to reply. It’s open, a welcoming call to a pack that might not rip him apart, but Tommy doesn’t believe it.
He won’t lose another nest.
Nest number six is his home.
**
Bending to check the trap, Tommy stares at the empty snare. Nothing. Not even a mouse. He grimaces, before trudging through the thick layers of fallen leaves to reach the next trap. The pattern continues, and out of his fifteen traps, he recovers a singular rabbit.
Winter is always hard. Autumn is definitely fading now; the air has a sharpness to it that makes him wrap his deer hide tighter around his body. He doesn’t have much from his pack before this, just a ratty bag containing the only possessions he owns.
It’s no use. One rabbit isn’t enough to feed his starving wolf-form, so he shifts and decides to patrol further into the woods. It’s difficult to stay quiet when his paws crunch on every leaf, but he forces his head down and tracks a scent in the direction of the ravine.
Don’t get him wrong, he knows he shouldn’t approach. But curiosity gets the better of him, and before he can stop himself he’s following the treeline along the edge of the crack. The scent of shifters lingers along the edge, but he doesn’t encounter anybody for a while. Not until he’s been walking for over five miles along the edge, where he runs into humans.
‘—deep, I think I could survive the fall,’ a young brunet says, peering down into the ravine below him. At his side, a taller man hovers anxiously.
‘I really think Phil would be unimpressed if you fell in the ravine, Tubbo,’ the man comments, and Tommy takes a closer look at him. Man is probably an overstatement; teen would be more accurate. Possibly close to his own age, or a little older. They’re either shifters, or they belong to the shifter pack, because they both smell of wolf-scent.
Tommy stays quiet, laying low in the undergrowth as he watches the two of them bicker back and forth. The smaller one, Tubbo, has no self-preservation. He leans closer and closer to the edge, throwing countless rocks down into the endless ravine.
They’re both dressed in human clothes. Nothing like Tommy’s deer hide, or the furs that the hunters made Tommy wear. The two of them look like they could pass in a normal human civilisation, and it makes Tommy’s head spin a little.
If he could do that, could he live in a city? Somewhere with people, and noise, and human items. He used to love curling up with Sapnap, and listening to the man read to him in the evenings. Occasionally, when the hunters returned to the main camp, Tommy would get to listen to them play music.
A city might have all of those things, and more.
His daydreams are broken by a rock landing on his side of the ravine, a couple of meters away.
‘We can see you, dipshit.’
‘Tubbo! What if it’s a wild wolf?’
Tubbo shoots his companion a withering look. ‘Then it won’t take offence at being called dipshit, Boo.’
Tommy snarls, flattening his ears back as he rises his hind legs up, shuffling back slightly. The two humans watch, clearly with better vision than Tommy had thought, until he runs right into a tree.
Humiliation washes over him as he falters, and the shorter human bursts out laughing. Even the taller one, Ranboo, is smiling softly as Tommy growls. If he was in his human form, he has no doubt that his skin would feel hot to the touch, as it always did when he embarrassed himself.
‘Hey, it’s okay! We’re not here to bother you,’ Ranboo calls out, voice soft and gentle.
But Tommy is a wild wolf, and therefore pretends like he understands nothing of what they say.
He flees back to his own territory without pause.
**
His avoidance of the ravine lasts till he’s injured. Cooler weather drives herds of deer and bison into the valley, and with the starvation of rabbits, Tommy has no choice but to try for bigger prey. His attempts end up with him almost being trampled by a bison, and then gored through his hind leg by a stag that didn’t like him attacking the herd of deer.
Regardless, without food he’ll die. He moves back to the ravine, hoping to trap prey against the chasm that stretches down, before his scent attracts wolves.
‘I told you he’d be back! Hey, Mr Wolf!’
Tommy recognises Tubbo, dressed in a thick coat with a hat on his head. Ranboo is with him, but there’s a third man that Tommy doesn’t recognise instantly. A wispy-haired brunet, with dark eyes like George’s. Tommy suspects that the man might be the chocolate wolf that Tommy saw weeks ago, but he doesn’t do anything other than stare.
‘He’s injured,’ the eldest of the trio says, gaze narrowing on Tommy’s hind leg. ‘Where’s your pack, pup?’
He bristles at the accusation of being a pup. He is fourteen, perfectly old enough to be out here by himself. Growling low, he ignores the three of them and sniffs at the ground to try and track the rabbit he’d been scenting.
‘Did you get injured hunting?’
Tommy nudges at the ground at the base of a tree, uncovering an old warren. He sniffs deeper, but it’s clear that it’s been abandoned. He still sticks his muzzle in, just in case something got left behind.
‘Is it a shifter?’ Tubbo asks, and the newcomer shrugs.
‘Could be, but I think we’d know if another pack moved in.’
‘What if… what if it’s just him?’
Tommy makes the mistake of freezing up, tail ducking between his legs in a shifter-gesture that they clearly spot.
‘Oh,’ the older shifter says, staring right at Tommy, ‘Are you alone, pup?’
He growls again, harsher this time. Shows his teeth off, raising the fur on the back of his neck like he was taught. It’s a challenge, even with the space between them.
If anything, the chocolate-wolf softens further. ‘You’ve got to be hungry, here,’ the man offers, hand reaching to a bag on his side.
Tommy takes a wary step back at the quick movement, before he watches as something in silver foil is taken out. The hunters used to have those, packed in their bags when they left camp. The wolf watches as something is unwrapped, a strange looking item he doesn’t recognise.
It’s thrown over the gap.
Tommy barks in alarm, darting back into the undergrowth as it skids in the dirt.
When it does nothing but sit on the ground, he cautiously emerges. Sniffs, then lowers his front to wiggle closer. The lower to the ground he gets, the safer. His approach is watched by the others, but they can’t get to him from where they are, so Tommy pays them no mind as he reaches the item.
It smells like food. Not necessarily tasty; there’s something squishy surrounding what looks to be meat. Tommy nudges at it with his nose, separates the items then licks warily.
Delicious.
He scarfs the food down without hesitation, including the strange squidgy bits, before raising his head back to the humans.
The chocolate wolf smiles. ‘I’ll bring you more, if you come back tomorrow.’
He understands the words, knows that they know he’s a shifter and he has no pack, but he’s not so stupid as to turn away food. He won’t make it through winter without eating, and he can’t hunt on the plains without back-up.
Slinking back into his own territory, he wonders why the pack have the same shiny material that the hunters did.
**
It becomes an arrangement. Tommy goes to steal what the chocolate wolf – Wilbur, he introduces – offers out. Usually, it’s something called a sandwich. They taste good, and now he’s eating at least once a day. It isn’t enough, but Tommy can sometimes supplement it with the food he can hunt in his own territory.
After at least a full moon’s worth of this arrangement, snow starts to fall.
Tommy stays curled up in his nest, rather than going to see Wilbur. He suspects it’ll be cold outside, and he doesn’t like the cold. If he’s truthful with himself – he always tries to be – the chances of Wilbur turning up when it’s this cold are slim. In fact, he doubts that the wolf will show up at all in the depths of winter.
Tommy has to find a different way of surviving.
Eventually, when the snow refuses to stop falling, Tommy is forced from his burrow. He pads through his territory, snowflakes staining his dirty coat as he tracks pawprints into the snow. It’s easier to find prey, at least, with tiny footprints guiding him to the home of a warren for the winter.
But the ground is too hard to break in, so Tommy has to settle for marking the point in his mind, before heading on to the ravine.
Sure enough, Wilbur isn’t at their meeting spot. Nobody is, although there’s a strange wooden board that’s been put up. It’s got squiggly lines on it, markings he can barely make out with the snow still falling heavily.
He suspects it might be writing, but Tommy can’t read. That was a gift reserved for the hunters, and before that, the Alpha of his pack.
Something close to despair rises in his chest, as he continues to try and stare at the board. His leg throbs from the still-healing injury, and he decides that maybe it isn’t worth fighting the cold snow anymore. His hind legs buckle first, followed by his front as he collapses into the snow.
He shuts his eyes. Snowflakes cover his face, soft and gentle despite the biting kisses of cold, and Tommy huffs. At least it’s numbing the pain in his hind leg, he thinks, forcing his body to stop shivering. Had he been able to find a good source of food for the past couple of months, the cold might not have been so bad.
He’s not sure how long he lies there, but by the time the call comes, he’s half-buried in snow.
It pierces through the air, an undeniable call of an alpha. A howl that echoes in his mind, and urges him to open his eyes. When the sleepy fatigue that’s washed over him doesn’t allow it, the alpha calls to him again, and Tommy fights tiredness to flick an eye open.
On the other side of the ravine is a wolf. A golden wolf, the same colour as Tommy’s fur under the dirt and blood that constantly stains his coat. A golden wolf with bright blue eyes, staring right at Tommy. He’s surrounded by a pack, at least fifteen wolves that linger in the treeline, the blizzard obscuring Tommy’s view.
Get up, pup.
The alpha howls again, a summoning call, and Tommy’s sluggish brain tries to comprehend why he’s been called to like he’s one of them.
It takes a while to stand up. His legs don’t want to work, and he’s cold, and there’s nothing he wants but to go back to sleep.
The alpha is right at the edge of the ravine, close enough that his scent washes over Tommy. Pine needles and the strange drink that Sapnap called coffee and old books.
He attempts to bark, but it comes out strangled and weak. Regardless, the alpha’s tail swishes and he barks in return.
Happy – play – come here – pup
He’s freezing. It sinks in that he was about to freeze to death in the middle of the woods, and that the only thing that saved him was the alpha opposite him. Tommy yips, more in shock than anything else, and scampers away from the ravine as quickly as possible. Behind him, the alpha calls out again, but Tommy ignores it as he flees to his burrow.
**
They gather in human form. When the blizzard stops, Tommy is delighted by the group of shifters that begin to pool together on the other side of the ravine. They bring food, more sandwiches that are chucked over the distance as Tommy observes them… chopping down trees? He’s slightly confused by what they’re doing, but they seem to be building.
‘—and I’ve always hated the cold, but dad’s pretty insistent that it’s a good place for us to stay,’ Wilbur says, legs dangling over the edge of the ravine as he throws another slice of meat at Tommy. He catches it in his mouth before chewing it down, tail leaving patterns in the snow as it wags behind him.
‘Are you actually going to help, Wil?’ calls another shifter, the largest in the pack. Tommy observes the red-eyed wolf curiously, glad for the distance between them. Even in human form, the man is huge. Tommy spotted his wolf a couple of days ago, and decided he was easily twice the size of Tommy.
Wilbur grins. ‘Nope, I’m keeping the pup company.’
Tommy barks in annoyance, trying to convey that he is not a pup. He’s an adult. A fully-grown Big Man.
Wilbur just laughs. ‘Oh, pup, you’re going to be a gremlin.’
He has no idea what Wilbur is talking about, but the man throws another piece of meat, so Tommy ignores the comment.
The pattern continues for the next week. The humans arrive at the beginning of dawn, and leave late in the evening. Whatever they’re building seems to grow in size, but Tommy is usually distracted by either Wilbur, or Tubbo and Ranboo. They chat away to him, and Tommy basks in the knowledge that somebody wants to talk to him.
Today, something has changed. The shifters look slightly nervous as they gather around their strange structure, while Wilbur offers out no slices of meat.
‘Hey, pup,’ Wilbur greets, eyes flicking back to his own pack. ‘Today’s a big day.’
Tommy isn’t sure what he means by that. It isn’t the full-moon, nor is it anywhere close to spring. He doesn’t think it’s going to snow again, but he may be wrong on that. Tommy’s never been good at predicting the weather.
He’s startled from his thoughts by the arrival of the alpha. Surprisingly short in human-form, the blond man comes to stand by Wilbur’s side. ‘Right, mate, everything is good to go. Are you… do you understand what’s happening?’
Tommy cocks his head to the side, confused.
The alpha, who Wilbur calls dad and the others call Phil, furrows his brow. ‘We’re going to provide a bridge. You’re going to come over here, so we can look after you.’
Tommy snorts. He doesn’t know what a bridge is, but he knows that there’s no way that they’re getting across the ravine.
‘You’re perfectly safe,’ Phil continues, ‘Nobody is going to hurt you. We just want you to join our pack, yeah? Somewhere warm to sleep.’
The alpha sends a nod back to the others in his pack, and Tommy watches as the construction is lifted off the floor. It requires most of them to lift, and as they pick it up, it stretches high into the air. Higher than the shifters, stretching half way up the trees as they approach the ravine.
Then, the let go.
Tommy yelps as the thing begins to fall, darting to the side as a resounding crack echoes out.
The construction, the bridge, has hit his side of the ravine. Snow puffs up, getting lodged in his nose as he studies the new thing on his side.
Only, it stretches over the ravine.
Tommy blinks, staring owlishly at the shifters on the other side of the ravine, then at the bridge.
‘There we go,’ the alpha coaxes, and Tommy realises what they’ve done.
They can reach him.
He yelps, then snarls, then backs away as the alpha tries calling to him. Tommy isn’t an idiot; they’re coming after his nest. But they are in human form, and he is a wolf, so he sprints as quickly as he can through the trees to try and reach his burrow.
Why are they coming over? Do they want his territory? Tommy has quite clearly scented it; they shouldn’t want his space.
Why were they trying to break in?
His burrow is his safe spot, so he clambers in and pulls bracken over the entrance and hides under the moss and his deer hide. If he stays silent enough, then nobody will find him.
Quiet as a mouse.
Unfortunately, he ran straight to his house. He’s not sure how long it takes to hear footsteps in the clearing, but it isn’t long enough. Tommy whimpers, burying further into the moss as voices echo outside.
‘—do they lead?’
‘Over here, below this tree.’
‘A burrow. Makes sense, for a small pup,’ the alpha says, voice recognisable.
Someone is right outside his nest.
‘Are you in there, mate?’ the alpha asks, clearly knowing the answer.
Tommy whines low in the back of his throat.
‘Oh, pup. We’re not going to hurt you, okay? Can you understand us? I really don’t want to have to shift in the cold, but I will if—Tubbo!’
Something is pulling the bracken away from his house, and Tommy yelps when a muzzle pokes into his house. He cowers back as far as possible, watching as the muzzle becomes a head, and then the shoulders of a wolf, and finally an entire shifter is in his burrow.
The wolf is a light brown, with flecks of gold throughout his coat. Curious eyes seek him out, and Tommy growls in the back of his throat at the intrusion.
The wolf yips, tail wagging as he lowers his head, an offering of submission.
Tommy growls again.
The wolf-pup sniffs curiously, nudging at moss with his muzzle. Then, hesitantly, he takes another step towards Tommy.
Tommy stays frozen. He refuses to move, even when the muzzle reaches him, nudging at his ear and then down to his neck, before he licks Tommy.
He yelps, then batts a paw at the wolf opposite. Tubbo, the human that Tommy trusted to throw food at him, takes this as a sign to lick him again.
It turns into a sort-of fight. Tommy trying to escape from the grasps of the wolf pup, while Tubbo pounces on him and begins scenting. He’s not been with another wolf in so long, that he forgets that he’s returning the gestures of friendship until he’s licking the boy’s muzzle right back.
Tubbo nips at the back of his neck, before turning to the exit of the burrow and crawling out, leaving Tommy alone in the dark.
A bark from outside tells him that he was expected to follow, so he reluctantly sticks his head out.
There’s a lot of shifters, all in human form. Tubbo’s wolf-form is sitting by the side of the alpha, tail wagging and head still lowered to show Tommy he’s friendly.
‘Should have known you little shits would get along,’ Phil mutters, before his smile turns to Tommy, ‘Come here, mate. That’s it, it’ll be easier to read us once you’ve scented.’
Tommy lingers. His burrow is too small for the alpha to reach him, but he also doesn’t want to be far from Tubbo.
He crosses the distance between them, approaching the alpha with his head low to the ground as he sniffs at the man. Phil lets him, before offering out a wrist.
As Tommy shoves his snout against it, a hand is wrapping around to the back of his neck. Fingers dig into the fur, mimicking the feeling of being scruffed.
Tommy’s brain short-circuits. He can’t think, can’t focus on anything but the scent of an alpha and the feeling of the back of his neck finally being held.
‘That’s it, little one,’ Phil soothes, as Tommy slumps helplessly into the man’s lap. The alpha laughs, stroking between his ears and over the back of his neck like he never intends to let Tommy go.
‘Not fair! I was the one that put all of the effort in!’ Wilbur cries out, dropping down at Tommy’s side and stretching gloved-fingers out to his coat. Tommy doesn’t protest being held, not when his head is foggy and his wolf-brain is thoroughly content with an alpha looking after him.
Phil snorts. ‘Tough shit. Alpha privilege, all new pups are mine.’
‘He’s staying in my nest,’ Wilbur argues, and Tommy belatedly realises that they’re trying to get him to join their pack.
A new pack. A new chance of survival.
Tommy tries to ignore the thoughts of what happened to his last pack. Flashes of fire and ash, of blood on his tongue as he ran as fast as his legs could carry him.
‘He gets his own nest, Wil. He might want space, if he’s been on his own for a while,’ Phil tells his son, still stroking through Tommy’s fur. ‘You might be golden under all this dirt, mate.’
A new nest. Another nest.
Nest number six was supposed to be his final one, but Tommy decides that he could maybe live with it being lucky number seven.