Wolf RPG

It felt more like October than August this morning, as Peregrine slipped furtively through the misty morning wood. The air was cool and the sky was a washed-out color somewhere between white and gray. He enjoyed the respite from the heat, as it was particularly conducive to vigorous activities, like lovemaking—which was how he'd welcomed the day with his fleabitten wife—and hunting, which he was doing now in order to fetch breakfast for Atticus.

So far, he hadn't struck a trail. He moved closer to the territory's rear, where the plateau met the mountains. There were a few game trails back here that were not used quite as much as those nearer to the land's heart. He found the head of one and dropped his nose as he walked, combing for the scent of prey.

Fox had swiftly fallen asleep immediately after her morning ~activities~ with Peregrine were complete (and by that, I mean the lovemaking). Such things were tiresome, and they often left the girl feeling so pleasantly sleepy that she could stay awake for no longer. Besides, she'd often been a late riser and there was no need for her to change her sleeping schedule. But when she finally did rise, she found the air still retained the same coolness that it had earlier that morning, leaving her feeling invigorated and adventurous. There was still plenty of the plateau that she had yet to cover, and when she picked up on Peregrine's scent headed toward the mountain, she followed it easily.

Several times, she stopped to scratch, knowing that the culprit was those nasty little bugs that had been plaguing her for the past few days. Eventually, the grey-eyed girl found her beau sniffing out some game. Trotting up to him with a bounce in her step, she nipped him on the shoulder to greet him. “Want a hunting buddy, Mister Redleaf?” she asked.

He didn't expect company this deep into the territory, yet someone approached anyway. Peregrine lifted his head and paused, listening to the footfalls and recognizing them as Fox's. He turned to receive her. He was always happy to see her, even if she was ridden with fleas. When she strode into view, his tail broke into a wag and he reached out to nuzzle the soft patch of fur beneath her throat.

"Hello, Mrs. Redleaf," he greeted fondly, his gaze catching hers. "Mm, I'd love one. But only because it's you," he added, growling playfully as he nipped her cheek. Much to his amused disgust, he actually saw a flea jump off her forehead to land who knew where. "Did I tell you that taking a mud bath might help with those?" Peregrine rumbled in a bemused tone.

Fox grinned when he nipped at her cheek, and rolled her eyes when he mentioned the mudbath. “Wouldn’t matter even if I’d done it,” she replied, “Damn near everybody in the whole pack’s got ‘em now. I daresay we’ll have to wait until winter and freeze the buggers dead.” As if to prove her point, Fox abruptly fell onto her bottom and began scratching at her shoulder. She wondered how and when exactly she had contracted them. Or if she had even been the first victim. Maybe she could blame it on Bazi. That would make life easier.

Getting back to their primary directive, she switched the subject. “What did you have in mind for eats?” she asked. Had he been tracking something out here? Was he just hankering for a certain kind of meat? Lasher meat? Whatever the case was, Fox was happy to help. She wanted to prove her place here, even to Peregrine. It was important that he know that she could be useful... if she wanted to. Granted, her skills lay more in the way of fighting and recalling her own stories, but she wasn't exactly a piss-poor hunter.

"I dunno," he replied doubtfully, "it worked for me..." Even as he spoke, he felt one of the little buggers burrowing in his rump. He arched around to nip at the spot. "Kinda," he amended sheepishly before breaking into a chortle. "And winter? Really? I'll rip off my skin before then... though I guess I have you to pick them off me," he rambled, knowing his wife had probably tuned him out about twenty words ago.

Fox redirected his attention to the task at hand: hunting. "Whatever presents itself," he answered. "I'm feeding Atticus," he explained, taking a breath. "If we catch something larger—like a fawn, for example—you and I could have a romantic little lunch and then take the rest to him and Willow," he suggested in an upbeat voice.

When he mentioned a fawn, Fox thought back to a time when she had been sitting next to Tuwawi. The older female had been seeking out the herds, watching their patterns and determining whether or not they would be good for hunting. Fox had implied that the young shouldn't be eaten, because, given time, they would grow bigger and stronger and feed more of the pack. Tuwawi had rebuked that idea, saying that the weak should be killed as soon as it was obvious that they were weak. If there were young deer straggling off to the side, it was the way of nature for them to be eaten by predators.

Fox blinked, trying to put herself back in the present. “Fawn… yeah. Let’s see if we can find that.” She wondered what Tuwawi was doing now. And the children... Fox had only ever interacted with them in passing. She had been too caught up in her own affairs to give them any proper attention. A shame, that was. But there was no use in dwelling on it.

Peregrine merely nodded in response, giving his mate a decidedly affectionate look and twitch of his lips before facing forward and refocusing on his more feral instincts. His nostrils flared and his whiskers twitched as he began to walk again. His ears cupped forward to catch any sounds made by woodland creatures, be they fawns or something else. They could aim high and still land smaller prey if the opportunity arose.

Every so often, he would turn his head to regard his smaller, red-furred mate. He loved looking at her. He wanted her. The only reason he didn't stop and take her now was because they'd just made love that morning... and he had a handicapped brother to feed. That sobering thought was enough to break his bone.

Nonetheless, just gazing at Fox kept his heart warm and he found himself musing playfully, "Have you ever eaten a fox, Fox?" He kept his voice low to avoid scaring off any nearby prey. Without skipping a beat, he added in a soft, almost singsong voice, "Have you ever eaten a lil' weenie, Lil' Weenie?"

Fox returned each of his gazes with one of her own. Peregrine was, in every sense of the word, a fine specimen. Considering the fiery yearling had been given ample males to choose from back at the creek, she thought she had chosen well. Granted, she hadn't really had much of a choice in the end, because she couldn't exactly dip into the creek's territory without getting ambushed (or so she thought) if she had wanted to snatch up one of the eligible bachelors there. Even if Peregrine had been a part of the creek when she had ruled there, he would have been at the top of her shortlist.

“Nope,” she replied, “It would just be weird. Have you ever eaten a peregrine? Has Osprey eaten an osprey? Has Hawkeye—” Fox stopped abruptly, remembering Perry's relation to the woman whom Fox had pissed off. That, in turn, had led to a rather nasty encounter with Blue Willow. “Eh, I’ll leave that one alone.” Fox had only heard the negative aspects of their relationship, and she didn't wish to delve any deeper than that... at least not now.

A rustling to their left gave Fox a good enough reason to shush him (whether or not he was saying anything), and her eyes widened as she looked for whatever had made the noise.

Fox's Freudian slip made Peregrine cock his head and quirk a brow at her, albeit in a sort of silly way. He knew his former mate resented him, yet the feeling just wasn't mutual. He was ambivalent if anything, though he wondered how Fox felt about the subject. It was rather evident when she said she'd rather leave it alone. He smiled to himself, thinking that Fox sure as hell didn't have anything to worry about there.

"I'd like to eat you," he said very softly, eyebrows waggling, when a noise in the brush distracted them both. Peregrine's pupils dilated and he faced the direction of the sound, creeping slowly toward the disturbed brush. His nostrils flared again, searching for a scent.

There would be plenty of time for that after they had managed to snag some breakfast for Perry's brother. Idly, Fox wondered if the relationship her parents had was anything like her relationship with Peregrine. Did her father have a male lover that he had just never spoken about? Did her parents do it all day long? She wasn't sure she wanted to know the answer to the latter question, but she couldn't help but be curious. And what of the other mateships she had seen? Njal and Tuwawi were close... but she couldn't fathom the two of them acting anything like Peregrine and her.

Once Perry moved forward, Fox followed closely behind, eager to eat, but also knowing that there was a time to run and a time to wait. For now, she did the latter, allowing Peregrine to decide when their time to run was here. She took note of the way his chest heaved in and out as he sought out the scent of the creature. It looked so... primal.

Finally, he was able to capture it. Slyly, he turned to catch his mate's gaze. "Imagine that," he whispered, wondering if the scent had struck her olfactory tissues yet. It was none other than the pungent, skunk-like odor of her namesake. "You down?" he questioned her, wanting to make sure she didn't have some moral disinclination toward eating fellow gingers or something like that. It might be weird but food was food, right?

You are what you eat, Peregrine mused as he began to slip furtively through the forest's underbrush, making surprisingly little noise despite his size. He moved like a shadow, pausing every few seconds to reevaluate the scent and the fox's likely position, before prowling forth.

Fox curled her lip to indicate that she would not likely take part in the meal, but she was willing to help. It was one of the few things that was terribly illogical on her part, but she just couldn't get past it. It would be like a human eating a dog. It probably wasn't all that bad, but something about eating a fox felt so terribly wrong. She'd sooner eat a wolf. Still, she would help because it was her duty to do as much. And somebody else would eat it if she did not. Fox very much doubted the fox would go to waste.

She settled for a route that veered away from Perry's own, though she could still see flashes of his dark coat from time to time through the underbrush. Fox stopped mid-step when she heard the tiniest, faintest mewling. She paused, sniffing the air and furrowing her brow. It sounded off again, but this time it was louder. With a burst of speed, Fox darted toward the sound and discovered a helpless, tiny little thing poking its head out of a hole-in-the-ground den. The yearling stood there, regarding the creature with soft eyes as it continued to mewl.

Fox answered him with a faint scowl, which Peregrine found adorable. Smirking slightly to himself, he proceeded, blinking in his mate's direction when she broke away but not letting it distract him. Eventually, he picked up on the faint mewling too and arrived just in time to see Fox facing off with a runty fox kit.

He liked to think he dismissed it as viable prey not because of the way Fox gazed at it nor because of its inherent cuteness—what was he, some sort of softy?—but because it couldn't possibly satisfy a wolfish appetite. Nudging his mate, he turned away, motioning for her to do the same. His tail brushed her hip.

"Okay, let's cross foxes off the menu. I saw the maternal look in your eye," Peregrine teased, glancing sideways at his pretty wife. "You were about to start cooing when I walked up, weren't you?" He chuckled and gave her a sloppy kiss. "You should save that stuff for our babies," he murmured, wiggling his eyebrows at her.

Fox broke her gaze with the thing when she sensed Peregrine was near. For a second, she worried that he might scarf it down right in front of her. Now that would have been traumatizing. When he relented, she breathed a sigh of relief, and glanced back at the mewling kit with a stupid grin. Fox had never been the maternal sort, and yet... she felt more parental now than she ever had. Peregrine's gesture had not gone unnoticed either, and she was glad that he understood (even if he followed it up with teasing). "Love" was not a word currently in Fox's vocabulary, but somehow it was planting roots in her brain... whether she liked it or not.

She moved away from the kit and followed Perry, happy to be the object of his affection. Maybe some ladies would have been shocked to hear him say "our babies," but it was one of the prime reasons Fox had been seeking a mate in the first place. She wanted to have an heir, a successor, a child of her own. The yearling had never been close with Tuwawi's children, and she had always been mildly jealous of them in the first place.

“All twelve of them!” she chirped with a devilish grin.

They were still very much in the honeymoon stage of their relationship, so when Fox crowed something about a dozen puppies, Peregrine didn't even feel remotely alarmed. "Only twelve?" he quipped spiritedly in reply. Abruptly, he thrust his snout beneath his mate's rib cage, quite likely tickling her with his chiseled brow. "I don't think you have enough nipples, dear..."

Cackling, he withdrew. "I can't wait for you to have my babies," he told her in a sticky sweet voice. "In the meantime, though," he added, reluctantly tearing his eyes from her face, "we really need to stay focused. Consider it practice. Atti is about as helpless as a newborn," he mused a bit dryly.

Tossing Fox a small smile, the Alpha male dropped his nose to the ground again. Quickly, he discovered a variety of spoor, most of it old. One of the fresher scents belonged to a groundhog. He wove through the underbrush, tracking it, and the scent trail eventually led to a small burrow. The Alpha male paused at its entrance, then waited for Fox to catch up to him.

"Any bright ideas, wifey?" he wondered aloud to her, eyeballing her as if wondering whether Fox might be able to squeeze into the warren.

“They can take turns,” she assured him with a silly grin. But her grin quickly morphed into a frown when he mentioned Atticus. The poor dude was pretty helpless (and possibly hopeless), and while she would never admit it, Fox had hoped that he would just die and get it over with. He was a leech in the pack, and the practical side of her wanted to abandon him... or put him out of his misery. She could not imagine what it must be like to be him, nor did she want to. If anything like that ever happened to her, she would rather be dead than a zombie.

When he spoke again, she drew herself up beside him and peered into the burrow. “Just how small do you think I am?” she asked, tossing him a sideways glance. “I think we can dig it out, don’t you?” Sure, there was the chance that the critter would get away, but that was always a risk they had to take. All part of the process.

Fox picked up on his scrutiny and Peregrine chortled. "You're small but mighty," he replied. "You're sexily petite. Is 'sexily' a word...?" Turning from her (reluctantly), he eyeballed the burrow's entrance again and added, "How about you station yourself at this end and I'll go find his back door. Then we can both dig. And if the fucker won't come out, you can go in after him. Sound like a plan?"

Peregrine agreed (in so many words), and she nodded to his suggestion. She waited for him to get into position, and then she began frantically digging at the earth, making a total mess of herself all the while. What little spots of white had once covered her underbelly and front paws were now a dark shade of brown, compliments of the soil. Fox could "feel" the scent getting stronger, and she knew that the critters couldn't be too far off now.

If Perry was doing his job (something she did not doubt in the least), their food would soon come out one end or the other. And then it would be off to feed his mentally-absent brother. For now, though, the yearling focused on the task at hand.

He halfway expected a teasing retort in reply to his use of back door, yet Fox said nothing. Peregrine smiled at her, then turned and began nosing the ground, searching for any sign of the burrow's rear entrance. He found it with relative ease and began clawing clumps of earth away from it.

He paused when he heard scurrying, chattering noises from within the little den. Peregrine suddenly thrust his muzzle into the hole and snarled savagely, hoping to scare the groundhog so badly that it instinctively darted out the front entry and right into his mate's waiting jaws.

Now completely covered in a fine coat of damp dust, Fox watched her end of the burrow with anticipation as her front paws continued in a flurry. She heard Peregrine's snarl, and she braced herself for the critter that would surely come darting out. Fox blinked, nearly missing the moment when the groundhog tried to slip past her. Thankfully, she was quick enough to pounce on it with her feet, delivering a forceful bite on the creatures neck as soon as she had it secured.

Sneezing, due to the upturned earth, she picked up their catch and shook it around, as if to wave it at Peregrine. Without a word, she slipped to his side and bumped his shoulder with her own. Then, she turned toward the place where Atticus had been staying. This was his meal, after all.

Their plan worked like a charm. Peregrine heard the unmistakable noises as his mate dispatched their prey as he loped back to the burrow's entrance. He smiled at her, licking her cheek and waving his tail. He fell into step behind her when she motioned that they carry the carcass to Atticus.

"This may be a hokey cliché but... we make a fucking fabulous team," he purred in her ear as they disappeared in the direction of Blue Willow's den.