Silver Creek People let me tell you 'bout my best friend

"I didn't know you had a twin." Heston said with surprise. "That'd be good to know before I mistake some random for my Brosmir, don't you think?" He shrugged his shoulders at Casmir's admission of not keeping in touch. "You're going to visit now, better than I can do. Hopefully you and your twin can make up, though, in all seriousness."

He smirked a little as Casmir commented on the tail, but the smirk fell quickly. He was ready to talk about it, but that didn't make it any easier. He sighed, focusing his own eyes to the distance. "So, before I came here to Silver Creek...to the Wilds at all, I was in another pack. I had left my parents, found this pack a decent distance away. Didn't want to fight over borders with my family, y'know? So I find this pack. Alpha seems like a stand-up dude. The other wolves seem nice, I start to make friends with them. I was with the pack for a while, enough to get used to things, to get attached." He paused, frowning. 

"There was a girl there that I liked. I was doing the usual shit, you know, giving her gifts and being my general charming self." Though he normally would have punctuated this sentence with a smile, he couldn't bring himself to do it. His frown deepened. "I liked her, a lot. I thought that we might have something. I know it sounds like a line, but I seriously wanted...want...my mate to be someone I spend my life with. I don't just...go at girls, you know? Weak, I know." He managed a half-hearted laugh here, but couldn't bear to look to Casmir to see his own reaction.

"So I courted her, got to know her. She was beautiful, and smart. I really thought..." His lip twitched, a hint of anger appearing in his eyes. "Anyway, so our pack entered into famine. Wasn't shit to eat. All the closest packs met together, our alphas reached an agreement. There would be no fighting, no war, no pack disputes in this time of need. We were supposed to help each other out if possible, but not shed blood. Enough of us were dying already...I lost friends to the famine. Well, one of the packs starts picking at us over borders. They start trying to take it. Our alpha stood his ground, we needed the land for hunting."

"One day, that girl I like...she comes to everyone and says she found a bear dead. It's fresh and it's fat. Lots of good meat, lots of fatty meat. We were starving, it sounded like heaven. We gather everyone, some of them had to carry others because they were so weak. Old ones, young ones, we all went so we could eat. We get to where she's telling us this bear is...but she's gone. We're confused and calling for her...and suddenly the other pack is there. They come from everywhere, bushes, shadows...I'd swear they even leapt from the fucking trees, man."

He fell silent again and nodded quietly. His lips twitched occasionally, but he did not speak. After many minutes he started again, his voice weaker, defeated. "It was a massacre. Our alpha was killed, they killed more than half of us...and then they gathered the rest of us, all of us too thin to fight, worn and bleeding. They told us to submit or die. Some of them joined him. Some of them died, too starved and too sick to run. Some did run. I don't know if they got away. She...the girl...she submit." His lip rose into a snarl, but he lowered it and clenched his jaw. "She had lead us there for that, to be murdered. She had betrayed all of us, all her friends. Barely any of us were left, and she was the reason. I took one look at all of them, her, the bastard who broke the agreement for selfishness and took off. I didn't care if they caught me, or if I died running away. I would not allow him to kill me, and I would never lower my head to him."

He inhaled deeply, then released his air in a slow sigh. "I almost died recovering from that, but I didn't. Eventually I stopped pitying myself for losing them, for running, and decided to make a new start. I found the Wilds not long after." He hadn't yet explained how that was biting him now, but he paused to turn to Casmir. It was a heavy story, a long story, but he looked at the male now, his sad past revealed.