It was cold. Too cold for him to sleep outside this night. He was hungry. Too hungry to survive another week without food. He was tired. And he wanted to sleep and wished to eat. There was no true hope for him. Hope did not belong in the wolf’s vocabulary and in truth he believed very little in the future. Right this moment. It was all he knew. He was cold, he was hungry.

The white male traipsed through fresh snow, his fur blending nicely with the powder that had fallen just hours prior. Yellow eyes searched the wooded landscape and black nose shifted across the ground with a hurried desperation. There were many things to examine, though of course he was propelled forward into lands unknown by his two most dire factors. The scent of wolves, all with a common cause, rose to his nostrils. A place that did not, and could not belong to him. Ears moved backwards, was he being followed? His head rose so suddenly that his entire body jolted with the surprise and the wolf looked around.

Nose feel deeply into the snow, and a growl of frustration and pain of the sudden chill rumbled in his throat. They were everywhere, their border so very close he could feel it in his bones. Again the canine picked his paws up one at a time and ventured further in to the saturated smell. It became obvious that there was a pack was just beyond his next footfalls, and the alabaster creature lifted his leg against a tree in response to the nervousness and tension the intimately-close proximity the pack had become brought him.

Then, with the notion of freezing in winter’s hold and starving the lean and ragged wolf walked smoothly and silently into a world that belonged to another.

His form was low, sunken into the snow and if he could have managed it the frozen ground itself. His mind had changed, no longer dwelling on the wolves that now surrounded him but the prospect of meat and the warm blood of something freshly killed. Why come here? In the past days there had been nothing that passed beneath his nose, leaving him desperate.

The wolf froze, the noise of a feral call rushing sharply to his ears. Yellow eyes remained forward, a single paw raised up and forward as if tempted to take another forbidden step. With the sound of the male’s body propelling forward, the trespasser stole a glance at the beast that roam towards in a weary arch.

Paw fell, and the males felt his body lean backwards slightly as if the strange creature was too close for his own comfort. His eyes narrowed, looking down and away from the creature. He looked scarred, angry at the sight of the trespassers presence, and brutal. His scent was nothing more then anger milled with testosterone and it stung his nose and made the pale wolf the picture perfect scene of submission.

His voice explained if his body did not,

“I am not a threat”

Bright yellow eyes looked upward, finally gaining the courage to steal more then just a glance at the overbearing beast. The wolf was heads taller then the starving beast, his ribs easily felt beneath the shaggy white pelt, while the packwolf was round with muscle. Lines cut across his form, again and again. The number beyond those he could count to. Blue eyes stared into him, and he refused to focus on them. His question came, and the male could not answer it.

Paws shifted in the snow, and he thought of fleeing. Perhaps he was faster the large bones creature. The massive canine was unlike any beast he had ever seen, and fear came to his chest. Low hanging head wondered what he was, if not a threat. He was lowly, he was nothing. He was below the snow and below the dead grass underneath it. He was the single whine and the snappy cry that came from his throat when he shifted to the right nervously.

“Minos”

This was what he was, what else did he need to explain. He was the hungry wolf that bowed his head and averted his eyes. While the other was stature, rank and strength. His nose twitched, sniffing once more and searching for the next answer to the dominant wolf’s next question. His thoughts wavered, and hat the chocolate alpha was capable of briefly passed though his mind, the carnage that would ensue if the wrong words were said or the wrong move made. It would be his blood that would be spilled and pain riddling his body. It made him uneasy to be alone with the creature, perhaps if there was another it would be them that would take the brunt of the brutes anger when it rose. Yet, the question was his and the white Minos found no lies, no trickery on his tongue.

“Food, shelter.” Another single answer where a story was perhaps expected. Minos had few stories, far to absorbed in the moment to look backwards into memories. What the giant beast thought of him in an intellectual sense did not cross the male’s mind. It was the low stance and the adverted glance that he hoped would please. The follower had nothing more then obedience and his wolfish behaviors as payment for his acceptance into these lands. But, at this moment he simply wished to live. His mind could not encompass much more then that.

Nothing in life was free. A truth Minos was all too aware of. He hated that nothing given without effort. It was his mission to find those things he couldn’t live without and extending the smallest amount out that necessary effort. Working hard was not something the white wolf was eager to do, leaving him to likely never venture high among any sort of ranking system. The alpha’s question made Minos step backwards. His eyes darted once from left to right and then centered back at the face of the large male. What? There was nothing that he had been asked to do at this moment, and then when the options were given Minos agreed. “Yes. I can follow.” His voice was higher, more eager then before. He wanted to be given a job, and he would do it knowing his life depended on it. His new alpha was not the forgiving kind, that fact was laced through the blue gaze that made Minos nervous and insecure. Painful punishment would leave him cold and hungry once again.

“You will tell me?” Minos asked, looking away as his lips twitched. He hadn’t asked any questions yet, only giving answers as a trespasser should. His body did not loose its low stance of unsure tension, and stood ready if the male was not happy being questioned.

What a simple task, Minos had never known something so easy before. To think, he had worried where his meal would come, and now just a moment later the answer was given and the problem solved. Shelter too, provided by the blue eyes that burned against his thin skin and the hard voce was made his ear fall backwards in submission. Still, Mino figured it was be easy to follow the large male, who’s size would make it easy to catch among the wood and hard to loose in the thick trees. Paws began to move forward, head tilted and low. With the new found acceptance the white furred male came forth with the stance that any follower would be wise to learn and perfect. Hind legs were spread wide to offer his belly to the shit snow and his tail hook between them. His nose rose only so that his tongue might graze across the chin of the alpha. Acceptance, it was the one things he wished for now, masking the chill in his bones and the hunger that had settled deeply into his stomach.

Minos had a past; long ago where things happened to make him the omega. Or perhaps it was simply his birthright. Maybe he had been born without the ability to perceive the future, or to learn from the past. What ever the problem was with the newest member of the pack that yet to be named in his mind, and was led by a male that knew more of him (simply by being given the name Minos) then the yellow eyes wolf understood of his alpha. Yet, Minos saw no folly in the lack of things to call places and wolves. He would know then my smell, like the musky metallic that he found rolling off the form of his alpha, and the area that smelt of him and the mixture of female and male wolf. As was all of his kind, right beside the lowly genes that created his low ranking being the instincts of pack policy had been threaded into each fiber of his form.

It would be simple.