“Alurian’s case came at an unusual time. I was convinced I had witnessed one of the Zaranal Sorea – beasts of shadow – in the woods surrounding the agency. Despite the memory reads, the experts were convinced it had to be something else. The Zara were, after all, believed to be extinct.”

~ Bek Trent, M.A.S.O

Cool and inviting, twilight descends slowly. The earth comes alive with the flurried motion of the day’s end, insects rising on the still air in swirling black clouds that dissipate quickly beneath the rain. Slowly, the air cools and settles closer to the earth. All of this, the wolf observes even as she eyes the beast before her.

This is her alpha, leader of the pack that found her years ago, and accepted her as one of their own. In many ways, they are not alike. This pack is composed of beasts as much cat as wolf, with the slender strength and grace of her kind, but the greater musculature and sloping shoulders of the great cats. Narrow jaws, broad skulls, a prehensile tail split midway in two... Even their ears are strange, startlingly mobile, tall, and narrow. But they howl like wolves. Though they hunt from the trees, they hunt as a pack, and they eat as a pack. To the wolf, they are wolf enough.

“Why this human?” The alpha’s question is clear in the tilt of her ears and the faint rise of her lip. Where the moonlight strikes, the alpha’s fur is the purple of a lavender flower, and her glowing violet eyes like luminous disks. The wolf’s ears slide back and she dips her head. These are the words of the beasts, and the alpha understands.

“The shadows walk among us, wolf, and the chaos spreads. We do not know why now, why so suddenly. You pick a strange time to find this human. And you have no idea why it draws you?”

Silence passes between them, and the alpha seems to consider. For a moment, her sickle fangs flash, and she abruptly rises.

“Cea and Pelorin will continue to observe the humans to see if they are able to retrieve the eggs, but I give you leave from that duty. The rest of the pack will remain close, in case the shadows come for us. Take Itoru. Do not stray far, wolf, and tell me what you find. A human may well be the key to all of this. No single creature has spread more heartache through this world than man.”

The wolf stands, tail low with dismissal, and moves away, treading well-known paths back through the trees. Here the woods are inviting, thick, enveloping in the way that a mother’s embrace would be. There is no sense of enclosure, rather the feeling of sanctuary. Her ears are strained to their utmost, but she hears only the rhythmic background sway of leaves in the wind, the wingbeats of birds as they dart from tree to tree, the scrape of a squirrel’s tiny claws, even the hiss of icy snow on the ground - the slow exhalation of winter as it gives way to spring.

This truly is her domain.

Yet this path leads her back to mankind. Always. Through the long night, the snow falls, turning from ice to rain, and it finds her at the edge of the bone-white roads, staring into a world she does not understand. There is an entire life there, beyond her comprehension. Kindness and cruelty. All the machinations of humanity.

She watches it unfold as the beasts must, powerless before it, but unable to escape.