Excerpt: Little Werewolf on the Prairie

The wind blew ripples across the wild grasslands. The wolves pressed through the bending prairie grass, their ruffs coming just above the drying grasses. Gusts of dry cold wind announced the arrival of winter and one lone wolf lifted his nose, he huffed in the air and then his muzzle shivered, as he moved. His eyes, larger and wider than the rest of the pack were full of an intelligence that marked him as different and strange. Perhaps stranger than the others, but certainly strange. He was the Alpha. Bigger, fiercer, his eyes roved over his pack and ended up at last at the empty place within it.

She was dead. Her missing space hurt his heart. It pained him. More painful than the gnashing teeth of the mountain lion that had claimed her. More painful than the angered meaning behind what he wanted to think. She was dead and gone and would never be back.

He howled a short, mournful yip which the rest of the pack lifted their noses above the grass and responded. So then she was gone forever. How could he survive if she was gone? How could he live on? He had the pack to worry about, the pack to consider as he lowered his head and ran through the grass. They followed suit, knowing that his heart still felt her missing presence and the missing presence of the one that was his child. Forever lost. Never retrievable.