Chapter 10

The Anue females and Reia were too terrified to freak. Their B-horror-movie screams scared the wolf puppies into action. Beo (chopped Beowulf), the big gray, got in front of his new pack, growling and showing his teeth. The twins ran around trying to get behind each other for protection. White puppy took off, making her my first order of business.

"They're just wolves!" I shouted at the women when I got back with the runner. I should have chosen a word which meant wolves but did not elevate the terror in the girls by confirming I was, in fact, surrounded by wolves.

"They're baby wolves..." Still using the word wolves! "They're puppies!"

Beo, sensing he had the upper hand, tried to take care of business by running a few feet towards the girls and making even louder angry wolf noises.

"You're not helping, fool. Get back here!" Unfortunately, Beo and I were in the middle of discussing who would be boss. He ignored me without hesitation, going so far as to take a step closer to the girls.

"I'm going to win this, Beo," I said as I picked him up by the scruff. "The girls definitely stay."

He turned baleful eyes on me. I stared back. Finally, he sniffed and looked away. I dumped him back in the encampment. Putting the white puppy in my lap, I picked up the stick I prepared for the occasion.

"Okay, guys. Show time!" I told the twins when they noticed the stick in my hand and stopped running around. "Be cute!"

I threw the stick halfway to the girls. I spent the better part of the afternoon teaching the twins about the stick. On cue, they chased it, getting their teeth on it at the same time. They had been too distracted by the fun of tug-of-war to gain a clue about fetch. For my purposes though, two wolves playing was probably better, especially when their game devolved into an all out tussle. The white puppy decided she wanted to play too. Jumping out of my lap, she grabbed the stick. The twins chased her down to reclaim their toy, which made it a three way tug.

"Remember, I said you had to sleep with me!" I yelled towards the girls, before settling back to wait them out.

It was the suburban cave sexpot who took the first step towards a better relationship between humans and nature. The white wolf puppy yelped in pain suddenly and ran away from the twins. Els broke out from behind a tree before she realized what she was doing. White wolf must have figured 'any mommy in a storm' and changed directions. Els got down for the puppy to run into her arms.

Beo sat up, tilting his head to watch the action. The white wolf's cry scared the twins, but as soon as they got over their fright they approached Els. Surrogate wolf-mommy hissed at them and hugged the white tighter.

"Don't look at me, fellas," I said when the twins tried to hide behind me from the scary blond creature. "I would have continued to play cute so I ended up as the girls' favorite. Your sister is going to be the one to have the ladies on her side now, and she looks like the type to lord it over you boys."

Caryn, Naris, and Reia slowly approached Els. They sat down, watching the white wolf be cute and cuddly with Els. The puppy wiggled out of Els's arms and investigated her new best girlfriends.

"Stay!" I told the boys, before grabbing a little meat pack and heading to the female powwow.

"She needs food," I told them.

"She?" Naris asked, surprised.

"There are female wolves, you know." That got me a snarky glare.

"How did you..." Caryn did know how to finish the question so she looked from the white to the other wolf puppies.

"Earth-Mother gave them to me." Say it with me, fucking brilliant!

Naris was all aces with the glares today. Els bit her lip when Caryn nodded sagely and picked up the white to give it a hug. Reia stood somewhere between awe and imitating Naris.

"You have to give her a name," I said, turning around to glare at boy wolves stalking up to us. The twins ran back to the skins and planted it. Beo ignored me, yet again, and walked into the circle of females.

Beo's larger size intimidated the girls into sitting still. He walked up to Caryn and sniffed her. He waited imperiously until she patted his head before moving on to Naris.

"He likes to be scratched behind the ears," I told her. She tried it and smiled when Beo stayed by her side longer than Caryn.

Finally, Beo moved on to Els. She got a quick sniff and a paw on top of her knee to let her know she needed to get scratching. He spent a lot of time smelling Reia. When she reached out, he growled and backed away, scaring the crap out of her.

"Why did he do that?" Reia asked, looking hurt. Beo ran back to skins and tackled the twins out of the way to take their spot.

"Wolves have tribes. Earth-mother explained to them that they're part of the Anue," I said, building a foundation for the puppies under Caryn's fanaticism. "You're not Anue."

"How do they know that?" Naris asked curiously.

How to explain in front of the mother-in-law that you're banging her daughter and her daughter's two best friends, "Reia doesn't smell like me."

Now we turn to the original conversation, and every female ignore the change of subject, "What are you going to name her?"

Thankfully, the sleight of word worked. The women looked at the white and each other.

"I'll let you in on a little secret," I said. "If you pick her up and look into her eyes, she'll tell you what her name should be."

Another glare from Naris. Caryn picked the white up and did exactly as I said.

"Snow!" Caryn said a bit later. "She says her name is Snow."

Snow?!? That's the most unoriginal name for a white puppy in all of... actually, no one ever named a puppy Snow in this hallucination.

"She didn't really say her name was Snow," Naris insisted but didn't sound as convincing as usual.

"She did!" Caryn insisted right back. Naris looked at me for support. I'm the one who told Shortie it would work! Why would you be looking at me?

"Those two are Max and Dax," I said, pointing to the twins.

"Did they tell you their names too?" Naris asked, officially making snarky the tone of the day.

"Actually, Earth-mother told me." Snark! Snark!

I ran off to grab the twins. They were high-tailing towards Nek's new resting place. I moved Nek's cross a lot farther from the camp. Fuckwad still wasn't dead, but I didn't need his death gurgles to distract the girls from the important task of accepting the puppies into the fold.

"All right! Come on," I sighed. Beo ran past me, taking a scouting post ahead as I walked to Nek's cross before my evening patrol.

The girls' took the opportunity during my nap time to get better acquainted with the puppies. Beo put everyone except Naris off and kept the other puppies from taking up too much of her time. Snow, appropriate for a Priestess's familiar, made everyone come to her by refusing to leave Caryn's lap. The twins ran around like little luv-whores, happily being cute and cuddly for anyone who would hug them.

Reia stuck around to catch the evening sex-a-thon. The wolves howled up as a big a storm as the Anue women, keeping Reia busy shushing them.

Not having been there when man and wolf forged their alliance, I wondered if the girls' acceptance of the puppies didn't come unnaturally fast. The wolves' behavior, especially Snow and the twins, seemed more dog-like than I would have thought of the first tame wolves. At the very least, their quick shrug-off of fire was suspicious.

Nek was dead. Good Nek!

"You don't eat turd, Beo," I said when he sniffed the body. I didn't have a shovel so shithead would have to be happy with becoming scavenger shit.

I headed into the tree-line to wait for Tribe idiots who needed their asses handed to them. I doubted any would come; even an idiot would have to willfully ignore the bruises I left behind on the prior night's set of morons.

Beo must have instinctively understood my purpose. He stalked, in a puppy amateurish way, in front of me when we walked and sat quietly if I stood post. Being a puppy, he needed naps through the night. After the first couple of hours with no one to pound on, I kept the patrols close enough to the camp that I could let Beo rest and hear the girls if someone got by.

I looked down at Beo. He opened an eye to stare back at me.

"I got a plan, buddy," I said. "It's a good plan too! You're going to have to be at your wolfiest, but I think you and the sibs could have fun with it."

He closed the eye and went back to sleep.

The girls stopped asking after the thousandth time I ignored the question. It wasn't hard to figure out so the girls only wanted to have their hopes confirmed.

Pandemonium ensued when the wolves broke through the trees. I kicked in the face of the only soul brave enough to grab a spear and face the wolves in a manly fashion. Snow showed him how pretty her teeth looked up close and personal. The twins were in hog heaven, chasing Tribe people out of the clearing, into the cave, and up trees.

"What is wrong with you people?" I asked, turning to look at the Anue women "They're puppies!"

Caryn gave me her best 'I accept anything you say as the law of my life, Master and God' look. Els got an ecstatic glee in her eyes, like she wanted to spend the rest of her days feeding Beo tidbits of deer innards. The gray treed Pek and Lant; unlike the twins, he sat at the base, waiting to see if the Piece-of-Shit and Lump-of-Shit would come down.

Naris' face was telling. My improvements and knowledge were, at their core, something Naris could understand; some required required incredible leaps of intelligence, but she could, even if only subconsciously, see the path from where she stood to where I did. Wolves were wolves, not members of a Tribe; Naris could not find a path from N to A on that one. Her eyes tracked me as the wheels spun.

"Don't try it with bears," I told her. "It does work with small cats, though I don't know if you have any, probably only saber-tooths. Anyway, kitties tend to be remain independent even when they're a member of the tribe."

Her face did not change expression.

I rushed to the guy Snow was playing with and put the tip of the lance on his throat. I leaned down until the skin broke.

"If you think about putting a hand on my wolf, I will send you to Earth Mother in pieces!" He had recovered from my kick and reached up to throw the wolf off. Snow looked at me and back to her playmate. She sat on his chest, waiting politely for me to finish. Being mostly unconscious made it difficult for him to appreciate her teeth, so she would have to show them to him again.

I smiled at Reia who stood in the middle of the clearing watching the twins run themselves into exhaustion. She caught my smile and returned it.

"Stay there!" I ordered. She raised an eyebrow.

I walked to Beo and stared at inhabitants of his tree. The blond and her boy sat on the highest branches that would hold their weight. The kid gave Beo the same look which had been on my face when I pressed it against pet store windows.

"Nek's dead, Pek," I said loudly. "Nek's dead."

He did not look happy about the news. The blond almost lost her seat, trying to clap. Lant was not a happy boy either. I gave up on him, clearly the man suffered from sort of hormonal imbalance towards unhappy.

"If you want to do something about it, Pek, you come on down." Pek tried to look at everything not named Achilles or Beo or Max and Dax or Snow or could be classified as an Anue female.

"It's the wolves, isn't it? Maybe I could do something about it." I whistled loudly. The wolves perked up their ears before running towards me to investigate.

"Girls, could you..." I pointed to the wolves. "Thank you."

Being his favorite, Naris took Beo. Els grabbed a twin under each arm while Caryn nuzzled Snow. The girls took the puppies to say goodbye to Reia.

"Well, Pek," I said up into the tree. "You gonna come down so I can kill you?"

"He's down there," buff blond told Pek after the silence stretched out for too long.

"What is up with you, Pek?" I asked. "Every woman I meet hates your guts."

"I will... you," Pek yelled up at the blond.

"I like her," I said. "If you do anything to her, Earth-Mother will tell me, and I'll feed you to my wolves."

I tossed the lance up so to poke Pek. He screeched, almost falling out of the tree. The blond's laughter cut through the clearing.

"We need to talk, Lant," I said after giving up on Pek doing the suicide thing. "Well, actually, WE don't need to talk. I need to tell you something."

I twisted my lip, trying to figure out how to put it into words. The right words seemed so crass, and it's never good to admit you're doing something wrong. Plus I didn't think I was doing anything wrong... not really!

"I'm keeping Reia." I told him. He gave me the poo-poo unhappy face. "I know what you want to accuse me of, and though the accusation might not be wholly unfair, if you say it, I will fucking kill you!"

I stared into his eyes waiting to see what he would do. "I know she's a hottie. Let's be honest though, she's unmated, so me keeping her means you have one less mouth to hunt for."

I looked back at the Anue females to make sure they hadn't heard me. I stepped closer to tree and spoke only loud enough for its inhabitants to hear me, "It has nothing to with getting Leader's rights on a mother and daughter set. Okay, that's not true, it has a lot to do with it. Mostly though, Caryn is very close to her mother. My girls older need an older woman as a stabilizing influence. Ah fuck it! I want to bend mom and daughter over and hear them scream as I nail them both. Maybe I'll stack'em up, one on top of other, and switch from low pussy to high pussy. That would be the best!"

Buff-Blondie almost fell out of the tree.

I lowered my voice even more, "So I'm not taking Reia, I'm keeping her. I thought about buying or trading for her, but there's nothing I want to give you, so fuck you."

"By the way, if anyone of you comes near the Anue with thoughts of taking what's mine or hurting my women and me, I will kill every man in the Tribe." I used the voice I reserved for rookies who needed to understand either they did what I said or I would kill them myself to prevent them from getting anyone else killed.