Hideaway Strath [M] When it's over we can say well done

Charles didn't have a clue that any of this was going on. Yeah, he'd noticed a weird scent in the air lately. Not just from Nyra, the woman who'd recruited him into this dark and scary place, but also from the woman who pounced him, and in general, there'd been a lot of... weird scents going around. It was ominous and it filled Charles with anticipation, but not really the good kind. His body didn't respond to it like most men did, not in the all-consuming kind of way anyway.

The coywolf vaguely remembered his mother smelling this way in the year past; he remembered getting beat up by her when he asked her about it. Only when he rolled to his back she had left him alone. He didn't remember the details, since it was a year ago now, but he remembered feeling like a dumb kid for not knowing what was going on.

His mind drifted to Osiris regularly still, even though he didn't want it to. Because when he thought of Osiris — of how beautiful he had been, of how powerful an air he had about him, of how much he desired to have those teeth set into his flesh — he inevitably thought of a bear mauling him in front of his eyes, of the bear mauling Leta in front of his eyes. That was too much to swallow, and he quickly pushed it away.

Completely unaware of the danger ahead of him, Charles wandered a road through the Strath. He felt like he was suffocating — in this blocked-off one-way-exit territory, with these strange and unpredictable wolves, with this strange scent that screamed danger and reminded him of his mother who he never wanted to see again wafting his way, closer and closer...