Adrift from the Pack (Old prompt)

She was tired. The wolf didn’t feel pain anymore from the wounds that had killed her, but she could feel fatigue. After days of wandering, things were no clearer than before.

The alpha had sent her to find something, but she didn’t really understand the mission.

She wanted to rest. She had earned it, but the alpha had other plans for her. There was no going against the alpha. Her search went on without need for food or water to rejuvenate her body. Something else held her together, keeping her dirty, matted fur and decaying muscles in the shape needed to run, to hunt. It didn’t seal the bite marks on her flanks and throat, but filled the old, stinking flesh with vigor.

Scents carried on the wind, subtle things that brought her no clues to her goal. Nothing in the rustling of the leaves brought news of the search being over at last. The alpha wanted something, needed it. And she was to find it for him.

The hunt was still on. She had to continue.

It had been a long time since she felt the call of the alpha in her head. She had wandered out of range of the raspy, gurgling howls of the rest of the pack. They were all tired, but they couldn’t go against the alpha.

She panted as she loped across an open field, body tucked low in the waves of grass and dragging a stiff back leg. Part of her wondered if she had misinterpreted the instructions the alpha gave her last. The woods were thinning out and the small of human filled her nose more and more.

Grass and moss, and mud between her toes. A gentle breeze that offered no comfort to her, a wolf awake when she shouldn’t be. Lost from her pack, her new alpha. Had to keep looking.

The small creatures the alpha wanted weren’t out here. She knew as well as any wolf that they were hard to find. More often than not, they weren’t even worth hunting, with small bodies little more than a mouthful.

Maybe they’d be good fare for a fox, but a wolf?! Never. It wasn’t smart, not when the little things could fight back as fiercely as they did.

The weary, wretched she-wolf reached the other end of the field at last and paused to look back. She was far away from the last place she ever planned to lie down and sleep. Her forever rest was well behind her, the alpha’s mission ever ahead. Even if she couldn’t feel him anymore.

The hunt went on and on and on.