“I bit her!” Pixie yelped within the bond. “We can catch her!”
A chime sounded in Ethan’s mind, and translucent text flickered into place.
[Combat Victory!]
[Defeated Wild Forest Wolf Pack – 4/5]
[1 Enemy Escaped]
[Bonus EXP awarded for defeating opponents above your level]
[Level Up!]
[Level 3]
[1 Stat Point Available]
Similar notifications flared for the Pack through the bond, then faded.
Ethan shoved the prompts aside. He could deal with menus later. Right now they had a blood trail and one wounded wolf that hadn’t stopped being dangerous.
“We’re following,” he said. “Carefully. She’s hurt, and she’s still dangerous.”
Pixie darted ahead anyway, nose down, then looked back like she was trying to act responsible while her entire body buzzed with excitement.
The trail was there, but it wasn’t dramatic. A drop on a leaf. A smear on bark. A dark spot on a stone. Enough to track if you knew to look, and Moose and Buster knew.
“She’s bleeding,” Moose observed within the bond as he limped alongside Ethan. Guardian Stance had protected him from the worst of the wolf fight, but the cuts across his shoulders were still there, and Ethan could see the bite mark darkening the fur at Moose’s neck.
Ethan glanced at him and felt that familiar shove of worry. “We’re cleaning you up when we get back,” he said. “I don’t know how this world handles wounds, and I’m not guessing.”
Moose’s reply carried calm with a stubborn edge. “I’m functional.”
“Functional is not the same as fine,” Ethan muttered, mostly to himself.
“Your Quick Strike did more damage than I thought,” Ethan told Pixie. He could feel her pride flare through the bond like she’d been handed a trophy.
“I hit her REALLY hard!” Pixie agreed, bouncing despite her heavy breathing. “Right in the leg where all the important blood parts are!”
“Arteries,” Buster supplied within the bond, sniffing at a thick splatter on a fallen log. “That’s what they’re called. Not ‘important blood parts.’”
“THAT’S WHAT I SAID!” Pixie insisted.
Ethan’s mind kept looping back to the bodies in the clearing. Four wolves down. One limping escape. And the smaller female he’d noticed after the fight.
“That nursing female,” he said quietly. “The one with the swollen belly and teats. She was nursing.”
Moose’s ears tilted back. “Then there are cubs.”
“And if she’s dead,” Ethan said, throat tight, “they won’t last long.”
Moose didn’t soften it. “They won’t.”
Ethan nodded once. “Then we keep following.”
The forest thickened around them as they went, morning light thinning into green shadow under the canopy. Ethan’s calf tugged with every step, the torn linen rubbing raw where the wolf had grazed him. He kept his face forward, eyes flicking to the sides more than he liked, because he could not shake the feeling that anything watching them had learned they were worth watching.
“The blood’s getting fresher,” Moose said within the bond. His posture tightened despite the limp. “We’re close.”
Pixie slowed for the first time since the fight, nose working hard. “Right here,” she whispered, and for Pixie, that was urgency.
The trail ended at the base of a rocky outcropping. Stone rose out of the hillside in broken slabs, roots clawing through cracks like the earth had tried to stitch the rock back together and failed.
A narrow opening sat between two boulders, just wide enough for a wolf to squeeze through.
Fresh blood stained the dirt at the entrance.
“She went inside,” Moose said within the bond, sniffing once. He paused, nostrils flaring again. “And I smell… a cub.”
Pixie went rigid with excitement. “BABY.”
A thin sound drifted out of the opening.
It was not a growl.
It was a cub’s scream.
Buster’s posture changed instantly. “Something else is in there,” he said within the bond, low and certain.
Ethan crouched at the entrance, tusk in one hand, the strange metal tool heavy in the other.
“Cover me,” he said.
Moose shifted close enough to block the opening if something came out. Buster stayed wide, guarding their backs. Pixie hovered near Ethan’s shoulder like she wanted to crawl in with him.
Ethan crawled into the narrow gap.
Stone scraped his shoulders. The air inside hit him with sour musk and damp earth layered under blood.
The passage opened into a low den pocket under the outcropping. Rock formed the roof and walls, packed dirt made the floor, and roots hung in places like tangled wire. Ethan could crouch, but he couldn’t stand.
The den was torn up—bedding churned, fur clinging to dirt, dark smears on stone—but Ethan barely processed any of it because the movement in front of him stole his attention.
The wounded female wolf was on her feet, braced over something small: a cub. The pup was pressed against the stone behind her, trembling so hard its little body looked like it might rattle apart.
The female was hurt from the earlier fight—cuts, a torn ear, blood along one shoulder—but she was still standing because she was spending everything she had to hold a line.
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Something shifted in front of her.
A stocky shape moved in the den’s shadows, low and broad-shouldered, claws hooked into the dirt. Its muzzle was wet and dark. It snapped at the wolf’s face.
She lunged back, teeth flashing, and took the bite on her shoulder instead of letting it reach the cub.
Ethan’s chest went tight. He forced his hands steady.
The creature surged again. The female met it head-on.
Claws raked across her side. It was not a warning scratch. It tore, and the den filled with the sharp stink of fresh blood. The wolf staggered, but she stayed upright.
The cub screamed again.
Ethan moved.
He wasn’t going to fight in a cramped den with the cub in the blast zone. He went for the only thing that mattered. He set the tusk down fast and carefully, then scooped the cub up in one smooth motion and pulled it against his chest.
The cub was so small it barely had weight, and it shook so hard Ethan felt it through his shirt.
“It’s okay,” he murmured, and he didn’t know if he was talking to the cub or himself.
The creature’s head snapped toward him.
Ethan backed toward the entrance, turning his body so his forearm and chest shielded the cub. The wolf forced herself between them again, snarling as if she could make up for blood with volume.
Ethan squeezed back out into daylight with the cub held tight.
The creature shoved forward after him, half emerging from the den mouth, claws gouging dirt. Ethan’s brain grabbed the closest label it had.
“It looks like a wolverine,” he said, and then his eyes caught the differences—the shoulders too thick, the claws too long, the proportions wrong in a way that made it feel like the world had copied the idea and changed it.
Above its head, faint glowing text appeared:
[Woveren – Level 5] [Status: Aggressive]
Ethan’s stomach dropped. The system didn’t even spell it right.
The Woveren charged.
Pixie darted aside as claws raked the ground, and she snapped at its flank before bouncing back out of reach. Her movement had that Evade slickness to it, last-second angles that kept her alive.
Buster barreled into the Woveren’s side with a grunt of effort. The impact should have shifted it.
The Woveren barely moved. It twisted and threw Buster off with sheer weight, sending him skidding through leaves and dirt. Buster scrambled up fast, but his right front leg hit the ground wrong, and his stride changed.
Moose slammed forward to meet the Woveren head-on, braced and grounded. The clash shuddered through the ground. Claws scraped stone. Moose dug in, refusing to give ground even while injured.
Ethan backed against the rock face, cub protected behind his forearm and torso. He kept the crowbar-hammer-whatever thing ready, but he didn’t swing wildly. A bad swing was how you hit your own dog.
Pixie went in again, faster this time.
“Quick Strike!” she shouted within the bond, and she hit the Woveren’s flank like a thrown stone—straight, sharp, and harder than her size should have allowed.
The Woveren snarled and whirled, claws flashing through the space Pixie had occupied a heartbeat earlier. Pixie was already gone, skimming over leaves as Evade carried her out of the path, then cutting back in at a new angle to keep its attention split.
Moose held the center, braced and grounded, refusing to give it the clean line it wanted.
The Woveren dropped its head and shifted toward Moose’s shoulder, trying to slip under him and get leverage where Guardian Stance couldn’t blunt the damage. Ethan saw the angle forming through the bond before it fully committed. He stepped in on Moose’s flank and drove a compact strike into its ribs with the hammer end of the metal tool—short swing, controlled follow-through, nothing that would risk the cub pressed tight against his chest.
The hit landed with a dull, ugly thud. The Woveren recoiled half a step, more irritated than hurt, and its eyes flicked to Ethan with a sharp, assessing look.
It didn’t like the situation. Three dogs closing, the human holding steady, and no clean path to the cub.
The Woveren made its decision. It planted its claws, tore into the earth, and dropped out from under them. Soil and stone burst upward as it ripped a tunnel beneath itself and vanished in a rush of dirt.
Ethan stared at the churned ground, trying to make it make sense. A normal animal didn’t disappear like that. This thing did it like it had help—earth magic, or something close to it—part wolverine, part badger, part mole, and it moved through the earth like it was almost water, diving through it and vanishing.
The hole collapsed almost immediately, leaving churned ground and the sharp stink of fresh earth.
Pixie lunged at the collapse, furious. “COME BACK AND FIGHT!” She started kicking up dirt, digging like she could reach it somehow even though the ground had already packed itself tight again.
Buster dragged himself closer, ribs heaving. “We hurt it,” he said within the bond. “Maybe that’s why it ran.”
Moose stayed braced a moment longer, then eased back, breathing tight. “It can dig,” he said within the bond. “Standing here won’t stop it from choosing a different angle.”
Ethan’s heart still hammered. He looked down at the cub. The cub whimpered once and buried its nose against Ethan’s chest.
Ethan swallowed hard, then looked back at the den entrance.
The female wolf was out of the opening now, collapsed near the dirt. Her breathing was shallow and uneven. The wound along her ribs was torn wide, and every breath looked like it cost her something she didn’t have.
Ethan crouched a few feet away, not close enough to get bitten if instinct flared, close enough to read what was happening.
“She saved it,” Ethan said quietly.
Moose’s reply came soft through the bond, and Ethan could hear the respect in it. “She did.”
Pixie hovered, still shaking with fury and shock. “Is there only one?” she asked within the bond, voice smaller than usual.
Ethan didn’t answer yet.
He handed the cub to Moose for a second. Moose took it carefully, holding it close with steady, protective calm.
Ethan ducked back into the den, fast but controlled. His eyes adjusted, and this time he forced himself to look.
The back of the den told the rest of the story. Tiny bodies—at least two—twisted wrong and still. Blood soaked into the earth. Fur clumped in handfuls where something had grabbed and dragged. There were places in the bedding that looked like nests, and they were empty now.
A torn patch of dirt near the back wall showed where something had forced its way in and out from below.
Ethan backed out, jaw clenched hard.
Pixie took one look at his face and then at the den entrance, and the sound she made was a sharp gagging choke.
“MONSTER!” Pixie snarled within the bond, and the word came out like she wanted to tear it apart with her teeth.
Buster didn’t come closer, but Ethan felt the grief hit the bond anyway, heavy and sudden. “They didn’t even get a chance to live,” Buster said quietly.
Ethan took the cub back from Moose and held it tighter.
“One left,” he said, voice low. “Only one.”
The female wolf’s eyes tracked the cub in Ethan’s arms. Her body tried to move. It didn’t cooperate. She let out a low sound that might’ve been a growl on a better day. Now it came out thin and tired.
Ethan didn’t touch her. He stayed still and let her see the cub was alive.
Her breathing hitched, then slowed.
Ethan stayed there until she didn’t pull air back in again. He didn’t feel triumph. He felt the weight of a pack that had tried to protect its young and had come up short.
Pixie crept closer, still trembling. “What will you name it?” she asked.
“I don’t know yet,” Ethan said. “We’ll figure it out when we’re safe.”
The cub yawned, needle-sharp milk teeth flashing, then pressed closer to Ethan’s warmth.
Ethan made the call.
“We’re leaving,” he said. “Now.”
They started back toward Virestead.
Every step reminded them of the fights. Pixie’s ear was nicked, tacky with blood, and the cut above her eye kept threatening to drip again. Moose’s shoulders were matted with dried blood along his neck and back, and he still limped, even if he tried to hide it. Buster favored his right front leg slightly, breathing rough but refusing to slow down.
Ethan’s calf pulled with every step, linen torn and stiff with dried blood. He kept the cub tucked close, one hand steadying it whenever it shifted.
The Pack moved on in a sore, careful silence, bloodied and shaken but together, with one cub alive in Ethan’s arms and the Woveren somewhere under the forest behind them.
