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But no. Almost as soon as I step back out the door and listen, I can smell him and hear his lumbering movements through the forest.
The first thing that surprises me is that it sounds like he’s laughing.
Kian, laughing? When there’s nobody to impress with his wit and calm?
I bend down and creep my way closer. Whatever is making Kian this happy, I’m not giving him the chance to hide it away or pretend he just picked it up. I need to see this for myself.
That’s when I come across him playing with Alfa.
Alfa is chasing Kian around the clearing. Alfa pounces and Kian falls to the ground, rolling with the small wolf and laughing. Alfa licks him on the face and then Kian gets up and starts running again. Every time Alfa bounds after him, he’s as happy and excited as I’ve ever seen him, his mouth wide and his tongue hanging out. Kian looks almost as goofy himself, with his wide smile and low, rolling laugh.
It’s not surprising that Alfa would be open to playing with Kian. Alfa’s possibly the friendliest pup I’ve ever met. I’ve spent time doing the exact same thing that Kian’s doing. No, it’s Kian who surprises me.
There’s simply no other explanation for it. Kian… knows how to be fun!
I step into the clearing. Kian is so focused on play-wrestling with Alfa that he doesn’t immediately notice me.
I clear my throat.
Immediately, Kian stands up and nods to me. To my surprise, he doesn’t make any effort to hide his good mood. “Amara! I’m so glad to see you! I was just enjoying a few practice fights with this little fella here.”
Alfa bounds around his legs, panting. The two have obviously worked up something of a bond in the time I was out gathering salt and herbs.
“That’s Alfa,” I tell him. “She’s almost old enough to join in his first hunt soon. You seem to be getting along pretty well.”
“I’ll say!” Kian says. “I tell you, that little pup has warrior’s blood in him. She’ll take down an elephant, you see if she doesn’t.”
Alfa sees that Kian is paying attention to me, so she runs over to me and starts yipping and starting to run away from me. She wants me to chase her, probably because Kian hasn’t learned how to go through the forest fast yet.
I give a few quick barks back to indicate that I need to talk to Kian for a little bit, but I’ll catch up with her as soon as I’m done and I’ll chase her then. She whines but takes off back towards the rest of the pack.
There’s something I still need to understand, and I’m not sure how exactly to raise it.
“So I assume that Alfa approached you?”
“That’s right,” Kian says. “I remembered you saying something about wanting to get as many mushrooms as you could. I know a little something about foraging for food, so I figured I could give it a try. Then, while I was trying to decide whether those over there were poison or not, Alfa ran up to me, and, well… it went from there.”
I follow his gesture to the cluster of mushrooms in the shadow of one of the larger trees. “Not poison technically, but you’ve never tasted anything worse in your life. For the record.”
He nods. “Thanks for the tip.”
“What I’m trying to get at is…” I trail off, struggling to put it in words that won’t offend him. “Were you playing with her in order to make friends in the pack? Or were you just playing with her?”
I’m not totally sure which answer I want from him. If he started to make friends among the other wolves, it would certainly help with the tension around me. It would also tell me that he was reconsidering leaving as soon as he was well enough to do so, and there are few things I’d be happier to hear than that.
On the other hand, the sheer joy I saw in him while he was rolling around on the ground with Alfa was so good and so pure. I don’t want him to taint that with another motive. I want the wolves to bring that side of him out because I’m so excited by the few glimpses I’ve gotten to see of it myself.
I want to see more of the natural, unrestrained side of this handsome orc. I want to see him as he really is, underneath any pretense. I want to see into his soul, his spirit. It resonates so strongly with my own that I can’t wait to uncover more about him.
He shrugs, looking a little confused. “I don’t know. I didn’t really think about it. Do you think it will help me make friends in the pack?”
I smile. “I think it’s great that you’re doing it.”
Kian runs his hand through my short hair and rests it on my back, pulling me closer to him. “You know, Alfa’s not the only one I enjoy playing with…”
At that moment, I hear a growl. I look over and I see the harsh green eyes of Tavor staring at us from the shadows. Behind him are several other adult wolves. All of them are watching us disapprovingly. There’s no way to know how long they’ve been there.
Tavor is a large wolf with black fur and scars on his side that he doesn’t talk about. He joined our pack several years ago, and the whole time, I could tell that he didn’t trust me. Thanks to some fights and some well-chosen alliances, he’s made his way up the hierarchy of the pack since his arrival and managed to become one of the more important wolves among those I don’t regularly run with.
