I didn’t sleep that night, no matter how much I tried to do so and no matter how tired my body was from the destruction we’d reaped. At first I’d thought the problem had been position, my right side facing the room where I couldn’t see anything. Switching sides, the problem had remained and I thought it was now because I couldn’t look up and see the door to the outside. Even then, checking the door was locked and wedging it with a chair, I’d found no rest.

  In the end I went to the kitchen, found a tub of vanilla ice cream that no one had opened and a spoon, and went back down and put on a movie. One of the scores of movies Lord had pressured me to get, Heathers, it made for something rather light to watch at the moment.

  Probably something I should have been judged for thinking it was light, but who was judging?

  It was half done when the cat himself scratched at the outside door, and when I let him in he complained, watching this without me? Which made me restart it for him. It didn’t really matter, and I hadn’t been paying as much attention as I could have anyway.

  Scooping a big chunk of ice cream into a coffee mug Sigyn had left that looked relatively clean, I let the cat sit beside me and eat with me. When the movie finished I let him pick another, and not wanting a third I’d pretended I was just going up to throw away the empty carton.

  Heading outside instead, I walked to the freshly finished grave, marked as Samuel had told me with a wooden board. There I stood for a long moment, not fully sure what to do until I began a small prayer. Not a proper one, no offering, nothing much to it, I made the vaguest requests and whispers to the Wolf Gods I could think of and told them I’d offer something when I had the energy for it.

  Almost an insult to them I prayed as though Barbie had been a werewolf, as though she’d earned our afterlife. Like forests of eternal dusk, fields of waiting prey, Covenants filled with our games, anything of the Silver Moon’s country was what she’d want.

  She hadn’t even fucking known about my gods, what the fuck was I doing?

  Stepping away from the grave I walked to the back of the Covenant, stripping down as I folded the clothes I’d worn since last night and tossed them on the ground. Forcing along the change to a wolf I dealt with the normal agonizing pleasure of it all, still hurting my right eye too much. The process barely finished before I started a fevered sprint into the woods.

  I started on a simple path, a section I knew the trees were lighter and spaced a little farther apart. Not much help, I still stumbled regularly, brushed too close to trees, got my paws stuck in vines, brush, and holes. My jumps kept catching on the logs, sliding into trenches, landing wrong.

  Sprinting hard and fast, it all came to a head as I slipped on a simple jump crashing into a tree. A yelp escaped me, a nearby squirrel laughed at me, and I added insult to my own injury by missing my jump and bite towards it before it ran off.

  I let out a huff as I fell to my right side on the forest floor, ready to remain defeated for the night. Not moving until I heard a heavy rustling in the woods, and a large gray wolf came out I vaguely recognized as Samuel. Raising my head a moment I let out a noise to say I acknowledge him, and was laying back down when a pain shot from my tail.

  My body twisted and stumbled, biting at the air the wolf had occupied but a moment before as he jumped back. He kept back, body low to the ground, ready to run even as I took a wide stand, only wondering why he’d done it for a moment.

  He was being fucking ridiculous, this was a game Purists used to teach cubs how to be a wolf. Even Hunter and I had never played it while bored, it was fucking ridiculous, childish.

  It was what I needed.

  Lunging forward I sprinted after the now running wolf, twisting, turning through the woods, a full hunt. My heart raced, I panted in exertion and excitement, my teeth bit at the air, and each bump and trip no longer felt the same. There was a goal in mind, failure could not let me fail, I needed to hunt.

  He kept ahead of me, dodging each bite with skillful movement, and I had the suspicion he was still going easy on me. Samuel was a trained werewolf, an elder but not one who would begin slowing down any time soon. I had no doubt if he wanted he could have had me in the dust, done the dishonor of biting my tail twice in a row.

  He was treating me like a cub.

  It was as much an insult as biting my tail twice would have been, but I could at least understand the desire to do it. He thought I needed the pacing, needed the break, and perhaps he was right about that. For now he could play the mentor, and I could pretend this wasn’t ridiculous to do to me.

  Eventually my teeth found flesh, even if a part of me assumed he let me get the bite in, and I didn’t hesitate to spin around. I heard teeth snap on air, let out a noise that might have been a wolf’s laugh, and ran at my full sprint.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  More instinct than thought I tried to take a path I thought the man would be too large to popularly follow. Between trees he needed to go around, through bushes I thought he might have not been able to go through unhindered, and he proved me wrong each time.

  The crashing and biting never staying too far behind, I began to wonder if he was somehow cheating. Not really a game with room for such things, I nonetheless tilted my head to the left, trying to look back towards him. My vision of the path in front only blocked for a moment before I managed to swerve into a tree.

  I hit the tree hard enough to flip myself, twisting to try and land on my feet and managing to slam into my side. A yelp escaped my throat, and I’d barely touched the ground before my tail erupted in pain once more.

  Cheating bastard, it was a cheap move.

  Stumbling to my paws, I ran after him with a newfound determination, and noticed near immediately as the man started out of the forest. Onto the driveway, I realized he was trying to use some of his strength to his advantage and worked to prove him wrong. I might have lost some of my edge over the last year, but I still had plenty of power behind me.

  He sprinted towards the Covenant and as we were half across the yard the door opened. Sigyn held it open, Lord stepped out, and a second later they were both almost barreled over as Samuel and then I ran through.

  We ran through the living room, him jumping over the coffee table as I moved to cut him off, and he almost made it up the first flight of stairs before I bit his tail and swerved into the kitchen. He chased after, and as I circled the table he tried to cut under it, knocking the chairs around and getting himself rightfully stuck.

  A little smug on my part, I managed to get behind him once more, gave the insult of biting his tail a second time, and sprinted out where Sigyn still held the door open in confusion.

  I wasn’t far across the lawn when I heard Samuel trying to catch up, and I kept our game up as I cut back into the woods.

  We kept that up for a long time, exchanging bites and sprinting through paths in the woods. Eventually I started to even think he might have not been going easy on me, or perhaps I’d thoroughly annoyed him enough to push himself. A dance of sprinting, jumping, weaving, and all such things until eventually Samuel stopped at the backyard.

  There we transformed back to human, and I couldn’t stop laughing as my adrenaline wore off while we got dressed. Both of us panting, out of breath, thoroughly worked out from the exercise, I shook my head in disbelief and said, “I haven’t trained like that in a while.”

  “Good to return to basics sometimes,” Samuel agreed, grunting as he pulled on a white undershirt and stretched his muscles and rubbed one knee. Letting out a final low huff, he shook his head and told me, “you got better at guessing what you were doing towards the end there.”

  “I wasn’t fucking guessing!” I laughed, shaking my head as I went to grab my jacket and realized it wasn’t there. I’d lost it days ago and barely fucking noticed with everything going on. My dad probably had it now.

  “You were guessing,” Samuel countered, leaning against the wall with a small smirk, “you’re missing an eye, your depth perception is messed up and you can’t see on that side. Every time you choose where to bite, where to turn, how far you are from a goal, you’re guessing based on what you know. You’ll mess up a few times, you’ll get it wrong even once you’re good at it, but our goal is to help you guess right more than you guess wrong.”

  “Some good it does me, only helps when I’m fighting with four legs when I have the balance and bones to stumble and twist around without problem,” I muttered, a little disappointed about the fact as I turned my back on Samuel.

  I started to walk away, and a moment later I felt something soft but firm hit the top of my head with a small bounce. My body snapped around, and I saw Samuel now holding a stick about his size, the last two or so inches wrapped in blue foam and duct tape.

  Shaking my head, I pointed at the contraption and asked, “is that a walking stick with a pool noodle taped to it?”

  “No, it’s a walking stick with a part of it wrapped in a pool noodle,” Samuel corrected, bopping me on the top of the head once more.

  Yeah this was getting ridiculous.

  “When the fuck did you have time to make that?” I asked, shaking my head in disbelief at this all.

  “Before I tried going to bed. The idea came to me while I was trying to think of ways to help you. I raided the storage rooms, grabbed a walking stick I haven’t used in years, seemed like a good idea,” Samuel explained, as though that made it sound any better, “if you want to work on depth perception, practice fighting, all that, this is the perfect way.”

  “By hitting me with a pool noodle?”

  “Well, I can get a bag of baseballs and practice throwing them at you, but this seems more productive,” Samuel admitted with a shrug, bopping me on the left arm, a blow I failed to move away from.

  “This is Purist training, and the real version would be more productive,” I said with a roll of my eyes, “this borderline tickles, the sticks thin and fast, it’s nothing like a real fight.”

  “You’d have more cues for guessing how far away I was in a fist fight, this prepares you for these issues in general,” Samuel answered, this time hitting me on the right arm, which felt like cheating at this point. “And besides, this way I’m not leaving you bruised and broken at the end of that, we should at least train two or three times before I do that to you, much as Basil seems to disagree. I think you hit the man on the head one too many times, he was asking after you last night and seemed disappointed I offered to train him instead.”

  “Training’s supposed to hurt, it discourages you from getting hit again,” I said, getting hit on the forehead once more. I let out a growl, grabbed at the stick, and he pulled it away as I yelled, “can you please stop hitting me with a pool noodle?!”

  “Is the embarrassment of getting repeatedly hit with a pool noodle not enough discouragement?” Samuel asked, raising an eyebrow curiously.

  I sighed in defeat, knowing I wasn’t winning at this, and with a shake of my head asked, “what’re the rules?”

  “Same as usual, I try to hit you, you try to hit me,” the man answered, taking a few steps back, “since we’re trying to get you better at guessing where stuff is, we’ll add the rule that you can’t grab my weapon where the noodle is. Then you need to at least try for the thin part, and can’t just guess where I’ll hit.”

  “This is ridiculous,” I muttered, getting ready for the fight.

  “Oh, it is, but we still have a long while until your lunch with The Lady,” he agreed, not even hesitating to begin the bout.