Episode 1

A Pack in a desolate place, where half the year is a fierce winter and the other half just the opposite, had its members accustomed to the cold and the snow. The children loved to play sliding on the snow, and the elders looked after the younger ones.

On one of those days, everyone had returned home, but a daring little girl insisted to her brother:

"Just one more time," and he says no, turns around, and heads home without noticing that the little girl had slipped down the mountain. She was never seen again.

Years passed and the Pack suffered from a lack of food, someone was hunting in their territory and if they didn't find the hunter and stop him, they ran the risk of starving or having to move the Pack to another territory.

Chapter 1. The Hunt

A shadowy figure slips between the wide trunks of pine trees covering the mountain's descent, whitened by snow. It is a night of a full moon, so the shadows project, hiding the figure from the group of men in the center of a clearing.

There are four burly men, wrapped in thick bear fur coats. They wear heavy pants and boots suitable for walking in the snow. In the center of the clearing, on a fire, they roast the meat of an animal they have hunted. A pile of pelts, set apart, still stained with the blood of the animals they belonged to.

The watching figure is thin and dressed poorly, her clothes are not lined and on her feet, she wears a pair of worn sneakers. But she doesn't feel the sharp, biting cold of Alaska, having grown used to it, partly because she can't afford better.

She's a female, alone, but unafraid. She had been following the trail of those men for weeks and wouldn't cower now that she has found them. She watches their movements carefully, waiting for them to eat, maybe lie down, or for one to step away to relieve himself. It's clear she plans to take them one by one, as what they are doing is neither right nor legal.

She waits patiently, crouched behind a large pine tree, distant enough from the camp that they don't notice her, but close enough that she can hear them clearly. Her sense of smell is quite potent; she is a wolf shifter and, besides hearing them well, can also see well in the night.

She also has the advantage of being nocturnal, which means she remains alert during night hours. Time passes, they eat, drink vodka to warm up and prepare to sleep. They've pitched small snow-camouflaged tents with fur-lined sleeping bags inside, which the female sees through the tents' openings.

One of them wanders away to relieve himself, as she suspected. After he distances himself, standing by a tree and starts to unzip his pants, but he doesn't finish, as an arrow whooshes in and pierces his head, dropping him dead to the ground. The slim figure continues to maneuver through the trees and makes her way back to the camp.

Two have already entered their tents, and the third takes care to store things and extinguish the fire. But, as he bends down to throw snow over the small fire still burning, he falls atop it, also with an arrow crossing his head. But he emits a groan and his heavy body falling makes noise, drawing the attention of one of those getting ready to sleep.

The man rises slightly to exit his tent, asking what happened, but doesn't manage to see where the arrow came from, as he doesn't even raise his head before it pierces him, entering through the top and exiting through the back of his neck. His body also falls lifeless, leaving just one remaining.

The female races to the entrance of the fourth man's tent, and he emerges holding a shotgun, startled:

"Who are you?" he asks, raising the shotgun toward the figure before him.

"It doesn't matter…" the trigger of the crossbow is pulled.

The fourth man fails to completely raise his shotgun and falls with the arrow embedded between his eyes. The hunter of hunters looks around at the mess that spoiled the look of such a beautiful and serene place, with rotten bloodstains from men even more corrupt, greedy, and dishonorable. Just as they hunted and killed so many innocent lives, they were hunted and killed, only they were guilty of animal massacre.

She contemplates what to do with all this; she can't take some of the materials as it would be too much weight to carry back to her cabin, concealed high in the pine forest. She opts to enter one of the empty tents and grabs a sleeping bag, sees a fox fur coat, and a pair of snow boots, wraps everything up in a bundle, and leaves.

Moving to the other tent to see if there's any food, she hears a distant sound of wolves running on the snow. She quickly checks the tent, finding some chocolate bars. She rips the bottom of it, and exiting, runs across the hard snow, leaving the site before the wolves arrive.

She had learned to run on the snow from bears, who, despite their bulk, run without sinking into the thick snow. Thus she runs up through the forest, hiding in shadows and rubbing the items taken from the hunter against trees to mask her scent. The wolves, arriving at the camp, might still catch her scent but would identify it as one of the dead hunters'.

She arrives at her cabin, and before entering, removes all her clothes and, even naked, digs a hole in the snow behind the cabin and buries her clothes. She quickly enters, stores her crossbow, lights the fireplace, and hangs a cauldron of water over it to heat. She wears a thick robe to shield her body, takes a bar of chocolate, and eats.

Now she could relax. Mission accomplished.

***Download NovelToon to enjoy a better reading experience!***