Mount Apikuni and i'm feeling like everyone's feeling alone

It was night, again.
 
They were in the mountains, again, alone together.
 
But not quite.
 
He could smell the other wolves in the air. Not just the scent of something cold but the scent of something—someone—strange and foreign and othering covering it. It set his teeth on edge. Made his hackles bristle along his shoulders, back, and neck. He lingered—hovered—just out of view. Observing. And when he couldn’t any longer?
 
“Frosty.”
 
The bare minimum of acknowledgement, nothing more and nothing less.
 
He could feel the phantom sting of claws across his face. The edges of broken skin now collagen sewed.