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lordragoon
I woke up to the sound of my stomach growling, empty from the last meal, too long ago. The last shreds of a human dream I no longer understood or cared about dissolved from my mind. I pulled myself up from the dirty floor of the cave, a few motes of dust pouring off my fur. Next to me lay my mate, curled up on the rock. She scratched at her side, still asleep. I looked at her for a few moments, then padded out. I didn't wake her for a short hunt.
A half moon hung in the sky. It was early morning, but I might be able to get something before the sun rose. I padded out of the cave into my territory. A deep breath gave me a good target. The scent of a wild animal... rabbit... nearby. I loped into a slow run, my paws thudding against the desert dust. Close... close... I was near my prey. I shuffled into a crouch and crawled up behind a short bush. A jackrabbit was upwind from me. I saw him through the foliage. Then another smell... human.
The loud retort of a shotgun brought me out of the hunt fugue. The rabbit fell, buckshot shattering the bones in its shoulder. The danger flooded my mind with adrenaline as a second shot shredded the animal. A human hunting on my land... where was she? I dropped back behind the bush.
A tall woman walked up from the distance. She held a shotgun in one hand, reloading it. One shell went in. A knife was brought out of a sheath and placed in her other hand. She wore a gray - at least to my eyes - camo shirt and pants. The woman dropped down to her knees next to what was left of my prey's body. She poked it with the knife several times, but left the whole thing on the ground. My mouth watered. Food was so close... Why was this human so wasteful? The beast was dead after the first shot. Why wouldn't she eat the meat? An animal that size could save a wolf at starvation's brink. The woman shouldered her gun and walked away. I began to hate her. Wasteful and dangerous, she had gone on what was clearly my land, a hunter who did not eat her kill. To a wolf, wasting food is the worst crime.
Once she was out of sight, I ran out from my cover. The rabbit's sad carcass lay on the ground. Most of it was a bloody smear across the desert. I ate what was left of the animal. It wasn't much of a meal. I decided to follow the human. Her waste was my gain.
The thick stench of the human's washed skin and the scent of gun smoke made the trail easy to follow. I stayed downwind, away from the woman, following her out of my territory. A quarter mile later, the woman stopped. I stalked around her until I could see her. She was sighting her shotgun again. I closed my eyes, trying to smell what she was aiming at. I didn't trust my sight at that distance.
It was a wolf, a nearby pack's alpha. The woman was ready to fire. The click - click of the shotgun being pumped echoed in my ears. The alpha didn't know he was being hunted. The remains of the rabbit spread across the surface of my mind. I had no reason to let the alpha be killed. It was a death I did not want another to feel. I opened my eyes.
I dropped onto my haunches and let a low howl echo from my lips. Hunted. The woman turned toward the sound of my howl, pulling the trigger as she did so. The whir of metal smashed against clay. The alpha glanced at us, then ran out of my sight. The woman pointed her gun at me. I froze and stared at the dual barrels of the gun in fear.
Click click... The sound made me drop onto my belly as the woman pulled at her gun. A rush of metal filled the air. I yipped in pain at the sound of metal ripping through flesh, then crushing bone. The burning blaze of agony rushed up my spine as I struggled to pick myself up and run away.
I couldn't. I fell flat onto the earth, knocking a thin cloud of dust into the air. Blood pooled under my foreleg, mixing with the dirt into a thick black mud. My leg felt like it was cut off. I looked up through the haze of pain to see the hunter woman holding her gun to my face.
I tried to lift myself with my left foreleg. I couldn't run away. I couldn't even walk. Bone had been shattered, muscle cut. I looked into her eyes and saw the joy of a hunter who has caught the rarest of prey. (Kill me,) I growled at her, but my growl was not alone. "Leave," the alpha said, in a voice that was not wolf. It scared what parts of me were wolf and what part of me was human.