Doon was born to Butte and Thistle in southern Arizona along with his sister, Loess, on October seventh, 2015. Their natal pack was a small one that necessitated a greater degree of responsibility placed on the young wolves and they rose to fulfill their duties admirably well, they certainly were the pride and joy of the entire pack. As near as Doon can recall, their youth was a normal one and one he remembers fondly, despite the amount of work that needed to be done. Between the time spent together on their tasks around the pack and their free time spent together, Doon and Loess grew close and could usually be found in each other's company. It would be shortly before their first year that things would begin taking a turn for the worst.

It all started between Thistle and Butte, Thistle felt that, since Doon and Loess were able to keep up with the adults and were nearing adulthood, they should return to her family pack in Texas. Butte obviously disagreed and felt that they should remain with his pack to strengthen them and be sure that some of the senior wolves had someone around that could ease their living in the harsh environment and through the coming winter. Butte tried to keep their fights between him and Thistle but they sometimes got quite heated, Doon and Loess knew that things were difficult but weren't sure what about it. Shortly after they passed their year Butte's health began to sharply decline, it put a strain not only on their family but the pack as well. It was difficult for Doon and Loess to see their father suffer, not only physically but mentally as well, Butte struggled daily with the burden he had become on his family and the pack. Thistle did her best to heal him and never left Butte in what would be his final, agonizing months. Doon and Loess were a year and half when Butte died. As was custom in the packs of the area, Butte was buried on the banks of a dried riverbed and Thistle announced that she and her pups would be leaving for Thistle's family pack a week later.

Doon, for very good reasons, claims that once Butte was buried that every situation in his life went from bad to worse. Thistle constantly claimed that her family would be so proud of her and her children when they reached the pack's territory, the way she went on you'd think that Doon and Loess were a newly mated pair of wolves. Poachers nearly claimed all their lives and Thistle convinced them to travel through a raging dust storm to keep themselves alive. Loess was lost in the dust storm and Doon's heart nearly broke under the weight of losing the two wolves he loved most in his life. Thistle too became sullen and quiet after losing her daughter, but for different reasons that became evident later on. For weeks mother and son traveled together in silence, the gap between them widening with every pawstep until their ragged and raw emotions came to a head.

Doon can't even be sure what started it all, maybe a comparison between Butte and Thistle as a slight to his mother, but it unleashed the most bitter and revelatory fight he'd ever been involved in up to that point in his life. Mother and son circled each other angrily as they snarled, yelled and growled at each other before Thistle revealed truths that threatened to shatter Doon's entire world. Grinning viciously through the lather gathering around her lips she admitted to not only poisoning Doon's father but also killing the brother and two other sisters he didn't know he'd had. Roaring her sins to the open desert around them, Thistle went on to claim that her pack had been raising the most successful alpha pairings through perverse incest and dark rites conducted on moonless nights and it had been her plan to raise Doon and Loess this way once they'd returned to Texas. Doon was rooted to the dried and cracked earth beneath his paws in stunned silence, everything made so much more sense now: they way Thistle had been treating him and Loess since leaving Leslie Canyon, Butte's death and Thistle's constant looming presence as she claimed to be giving him "medicinal herbs". Doon can't remember much after his mother's confession to him, but he does remember waking up to a constant stream of tears, an ache so deep in his chest that he worried it would never leave him and his mother's blood watering the baked earth. Doon never looked back and, determined to put as much distance between him and all the loss he'd experienced, he turned north and ran. Doon wouldn't stop running for several days, stopping only to sate his growing hunger and would only truly stop once he reached the Teekon wilds.