Greykin Mountain

| 9 | The Grey Blood Pack

⥐ ⋞ ☽ ⋟ ⥐

The sound of crunching snow and chatting voices woke Jackson from his sleep.

          He lifted his head, his eyeballs stinging as they adjusted to the morning light. Where he expected to see wolves moving around, he instead saw people. Most of the pack were no longer wolves.  and those that were sat in the far distance watching the treeline.

          Jackson's eyes wandered down to see his paws were hands again. His body was no longer furred, and as he had been the morning after turning into a wolf for the first time, he was utterly naked.

          With an embarrassed frown, he quickly sat up, crossed his legs, and rested his hands in his lap to hide his crotch. He glanced around to see if anyone had seen, and he didn't find a single pair of eyes on him...until he located Damon. He tensed up when his sights met those of the Alpha, who sat with his family over by a fire in only a pair of shorts. His two sons—who looked a lot like Damon—bickered over what appeared to be a cooked rabbit.

          His sons seemed like teenagers, which made Jackson wonder...how old was Damon? If he had teenage sons, then he had to be at least thirty, right?

          What did it matter? He was doing it again, letting himself become ensnared in the thought that Damon meant something. He didn't. He was just the wolf that had saved him.

          Jackson sighed and took his eyes off Damon. When he looked behind him though, he saw a pair of trousers sitting atop the tree stump beside him. Obviously, they were meant for him, so he hastily snatched them and pulled them on.

          "You sleep all right?" came Tokala's voice.

          Buttoning the trousers, Jackson watched the orange-haired man as he made his way over with a charred lump of meat in his hand.

          "Uh...yeah," Jackson answered with a nod. It appeared Tokala was back on guard duty.

          The man handed him the meat. "Breakfast."

          He took it and then stared down at it. Unable to make out what it was, he stared over at Tokala, who sat on the tree stump. "What is it?"

          "Either rat or rabbit. Kappas found a bunch of them down by the lake."

          "Kappas?"

          "Pack hunters."

          "Oh." He thought that was someone's name.

          With a conflicted frown, he took his gaze off Tokala and stared down at the meat. He was fine with eating a rabbit, but a rat? Did he really want to take a bite and risk it being a rodent?

          "They don't taste much different," Tokala told him. "Rat's just a little chewier."

          Jackson wanted to tell him he wasn't hungry...but his gut rumbled, urging him to shove the whole thing into his mouth. He wasn't going to do that, though—he wasn't a pig. So, he slowly moved the food closer to his mouth and took a reasonable bite. It was tough but tasty, so he didn't bother wondering which of the two it was.

          While he ate, his eyes wandered over to one of the wolves sitting by the tree line.

          "She's an Eta," Tokala said. "They usually keep watch at night, but we've got them alternating out between day and night since the cadejo started moving in much faster than usual."