Tawny had shifted into lupus form in the few hours since she’d run away from Fang. Her body had not moved from the spot it fell, though, and she was lying in a pool of bloody mud and grass. The girl hadn’t even bothered to lick her wounds or the spots he had dirtied. In her mind, she was a dirty all over, weak and simply worthless. There was no reason for her to go back to Ichika, to put a burden on Saul to clean her wounds, to cry on Jace’s shoulder about the scary male. She couldn’t take care of herself against anyone; her fighting skills were practically nonexistent. The only useful things she knew how to do was hunting, sewing and weaving… and even those skills were rusty and not so great.

Her mind was made up and would not be changed. She would not be going back to a pack and would have much rather just died right there lying in the field. Perhaps a bear or mountain lion would come along and decide that she’d make a good meal for their babies. That would have been a fast death, and at least her body would have been used for a good use. The sun had fallen already but the moon kept the entire area lit up like it was mid-morning. Tawny could see everything when she bothered to open her swollen eyes. After a while she started to feel an odd tingling sensation along the edges of the torn flesh on her stomach, shoulder and the smaller various cuts scattered about her body.

Fire ants. The scent of her blood seemed to be appealing and she was soon twitching around in pain as bites were administered all over her body. Grunts and growls, mixed with cries and whimpers lifted from her dry and raspy throat. Surely she’d be eaten alive soon.

Ants were like a steady stream of torture, the constant biting of her flesh was slowly flowing into one long line of pain, something that her body was getting used to…and now she wasn’t making any noise or twitching. There was no reason to struggle when no one would help her. Did she even want to be helped? Not at all. She just wanted to lie there, falling in and out of consciousness until she was dead. No one had to get near her, nobody needed to even know where she was or that she had died. The Ichikans would get over her disappearing pretty fast, she was sure, and she didn’t know anyone else. Nobody would care about her death after a while and soon all traces of her ever being in the territory would be washed away. She’d come to terms and embraced this, wishing death would take her already.

Her eyes were closed when she heard the soft shift of air, ears twitching and causing another onslaught of ant bites around her head and face. She’d found that as long as she stayed really still, the bites lessened and she could only feel them crawling around. Tawny’s eyes parted slightly and she looked around, finally zeroing in on the large albino crow that was about to land near her side. When the thing touched down, she just stared, looking it over as it tilted its head this was and that. After a few seconds of studying her form, the bird hopped closer and pecked at her side. Instead of bringing pain as she thought the first of the flesh eaters would, it picked something from her fur. Looking back up, she saw one of the fire ants wiggling in his beak before he crushed it. The girl moved again a little and yelped as a fresh wave of pain caused her limbs to spasm slightly.

The white grow made some sort of noise and brought its head down quickly, this time going for a sharp peck on her body instead of getting an ant. She presumed it was the little buggers’ way of telling her to stop moving, so she let herself lay there limply again. A soft scent blew in on the breeze and Tawny began to wonder if this was it, would she finally be killed and put out of this painful misery? The smell was of another canine, male, and dirty…like it hadn’t bathed in months. Despite the own disgusting scent of her own body, she wanted to sneeze and get his smell out of her nostrils, it was really rank. Once again her eyes opened and she tried to look around, wanting to know which direction her killer was coming from. There was a movement off to the right from the tall grass…and then there he was. Not a particularly big male, as he looked to be full coyote with longish legs and a smaller, compact body and big domed ears.

The crow cawed loudly and flapped its large white wings a few times, glaring at the male with beady bloody red eyes. If that thing had been coming at her in a threatening fashion, Tawny would have taken off with her tail between her legs. The male ignored the bird and kept stalking closer, shifting into his two legged for as he moved. When he was close enough, he leaned down, avoiding a peck from the bird, and took a deep breath of her scent. His fur was covered in what looked and smelled to be blood…of other creatures, and possibly even feces. It was disgusting and the stench was making her eyes water more than the pain or fear. The bird began throwing a fit when the male dropped his hand to drag a nail through the large bite wound on her shoulder, causing her to cry out and squirm as fresh blood pooled and spilled over her fur.


The male yelped and ducked as an air assault began to come at his head and shoulders, the damn white bird was flailing around in the air, making all kinds of noise and somehow avoiding being struck down. Tawny just watched in awe, eyes wide and jaw partially parted. Was this bird her angel?