Chapter 33

The bias that Rori had developed was due entirely to the amount of work that went into wooing his adoptive mother.

Jed had a very direct approach with Mila. He had made his intentions clear before she had ever become a mother. He liked Mila singularly.

To Rori, Jed was in no way unkind. He simply wasn’t interested. From his perspective of living for so many decades, children didn’t remain children for long. Soon, they left the home, grew up, moved on.

According to Mila, Rori was to be a long-lived creature, but his adolescence would only extend a few more years. He may be with Mila for longer than a human child, maybe longer than a wolf child, but eventually, he was to grow up.

Jed would live forever, as would Mila. To him, caring for a child was little more than a faze. It would be past in such little time.

Rori could grasp this concept in the very broadest of terms. Forever wasn’t easy to process. As far as he could picture, he had been in the dark until Mila. What would he be without her again? Was the darkness coming to reclaim him inevitable?



Kody was the one that made the future seem less bleak to Rori’s childlike eyes. Kody had also liked Mila singularly before the arrival of a child in her care. But, unlike with Jed, the new maternal instinct that had arisen within her was something that made her even more appealing.

The wolf culture was challenging for Rori. They valued strength and, on the whole, worked as teams. They moved together as a unit, hunting to provide not just for themselves, but for everyone within their unit.

Rori’s hunger was nearly insatiable. He felt the hollowness within him every minute of the day, but he’d learned to curb his appetites so as to allow the prey to continue to grow.

He was aware that he was physically able. For years, he had hunted alone within the dark tunnels he’d called home, performing regular collings on the pest populations within. Had he wanted to, he could have possibly done a great deal of damage to the human population even before they’d changed. He was fast, agile, and fiercely strong. And they were warm, soft meat.

There had been several times when he’d been tempted. Tempted to leave his sewer home and hunt out in the open. Hunt the careless, oblivious meat that swarmed about the planet’s surface in untamed numbers.

What had stopped him was the life he saw. There had been so much life happening. In the sewers, the rats had many children and if the food wasn’t enough, the children became the food. Lizards, rats, and bugs were all raging a little war, fighting for the resources and for every fallen victim, they just made more of themselves.

Above, the humans were primarily at peace. They lived, worked, bred. Everything above and below had been built by them. It wasn’t always the cleanest, but they had made efforts to maintain while caring for children. They’d had homes, families, and pets.

Though sorely tempted by the scent of food, Rori had developed a conscience. Conscience told him not to eat the meat that was abundant on the surface. They were too alive to be food.

So these half-wolves were also not food.

Because he understood the ease with which he could hunt and kill these creatures, he was cautious. He didn’t want to hurt them. They already instinctively recoiled from his strangeness. What would they do if he gave up his tenuous control?

If he allowed himself to fight with his full strength, he had no doubt what he could do to them. The children that played so merrily around him would become nothing more than meat if he wasn’t careful. Once they were meat, he would just be a hunter. A very hungry hunter.

Mila, sweet though she was, might not forgive him if he ate the people that she had brought him to meet. Perhaps she would. Perhaps she and Jed would simply pick up and move Rori away from temptations and keep caring for them in their own way.

But Kody was the one that reached out a hand to Rori. Kody didn’t recoil from the child that Mila so clearly adored.

While all the other wolves avoided being alone with Rori, Kody willingly took Rori on hunts. Rori could have torn the alpha limb from limb in the quiet forests without anyone being the wiser. He could have eaten his fill of the massive wolf which was large enough to be ridden.

But Kody didn’t flinch when he saw the speed with which Rori could kill and consume a rabbit. He praised the child for his abilities. He took him out to hunt often and showed him what creatures would be most beneficial and taught him how to hunt for more than just himself.

As an alpha, it was Kody’s job to provide for his pack. He showed Rori how he could be accepted into the pack more easily by being a good provider himself. He could be well-liked among the wolves and still feed the nagging hunger within him and it was considered good.

Rori didn’t love killing creatures that were like dogs. It felt uncomfortable to tear into a deer or an actual, true wolf or coyote. But he loved the welcome he got when he came home with food that he could pass on to the lower tiered wolves like Winnie who took it with a warm, motherly smile like Mila.

With Jed, he felt that he could be accepted in his entirety. Jed smelled nothing like food and offered no temptation at all. He was safe to be around like Mila.

But Kody was more. Kody wasn’t just a male that liked Mila. He was a bridge to being a part of that bustling life of the surface world. If he could just learn to be like the alpha, he could be someone that was deserving of the light and kindness Mila had gifted him.