He waited, and waited, and waited. The drone of curious flies was maddening, and he flashed his chipped tooth at them, swatting one of the insects with his tail. It shouldn’t be much longer. He knew that coyotes would pass by here sooner or later, and then he’d jump out and rip them up like they’d done to the Boreas wolves. The thought almost brought an anxious whine from the runty secui, and the cross grew heavy at the dip of his collarbone.
And then—voices, and scents barely discernible over his own stench, especially as his pores began to leak the acrid tang of fear. His green eyes, which clashed with his mottled ginger pelt in an ugly way, widened as his ears swiveled forward to hear them. A patrol was coming his way, and the coyotes would pass close enough to his hiding place in the vegetation to possibly detect him. He had to decide if he wanted to come out brazen and screaming, a scruffy angel of vengeance, or like the unwanted coward he was, waiting for their backs to turn. He wasn’t glad there were two, but coyotes had to be small, smaller than him even.
Reagan quivered, his tail lashing against the dry brush before he clamped it between his thighs and silenced his whimpering. He peered, hidden, through the tangled brambles to see them, two smallish luperci on a stroll. Eventually they stopped, and he wondered if they could hear his hammering heart. At first, they didn’t jump or act like something was amiss, but the tension crept over them slowly, and the lupus-formed male whirled toward them.
His challenge made the scrawny halfling start, and he realized that he’d rattled the thirsty bushes with that motion. I can’t be a coward, I can’t be a coward, I have to be like the Boreas, I have to be like them so they’d want me. Any thoughts of their corpses strewn in the Dampwoods was erased from his mind; he was a cub again, doing his best to please his critical father. Go hunt for me, Runt. No, something larger. Do you expect anyone to like you if all you can catch are mice and squirrels?
Reagan sneered silently. I’ll hunt you a coyote, father, he whispered, and then the muddy-ginger wolf burst out of the bushes, rushing toward the small coyote male with a wordless scream and aiming to crack one of his legs in his secui jaws.