Page 4 of Wild Born

“The wild wolves smell confused.”

“Do you think someone left a baby out here?” I asked, sniffing the air harder and discerning the shifter’s scent was that of a very small baby.

“A newborn?” I sped past Bane.

The crunching over the leaves set the wild wolves on edge. They’d calm down in their own time because I had to find the baby out in the woods. Who left their baby out here? No newborn that young could’ve made it this far by himself. Not even a shifter.

When the wild wolves finally came into sight, they were all gathered around a small den opening. The biggest one, a grey wolf, looked over his shoulder at me and then Bane following on my heels and relief washed over his scent. The wild wolves around Mage Street knew shifters meant them no harm, but I never smelled one relieved at the sight of us.

He nosed the other two wolves out of the way so I could peek inside the den. I sniffed first, blinking to clear the dirt from my eyes that fell when I shoved my head inside. There was definitely a shifter baby inside. When my eyes adjusted to the dim lighting inside the cave, I saw him suckling at the mother wolf along side two wolf pups.

“My pup,” the mother wolf whined.

My heart skipped a beat. It was rare – almost unheard of these days – for a wild wolf to give birth to a wolf shifter. It still happened. Well, we guessed it still happened since there wasn’t a reason for it to stop. Some folks theorized it was evolution. Others guessed it was reincarnation, but the soul got lost on the way to the womb.

The mother trembled nosing at the furless baby who clung to her. I could only imagine how scary it must’ve been for her to watch one of her pups lose his fur and grow into a human baby. I reached out and touched the baby’s foot. She growled low but didn’t snap at me. He was nice and warm against the pad of my paw.

“What do you want me to do, Mama?” I whined in wolf.

She lowered her eyes and gazed at the dirt floor of the den. Even if she’d never seen a wolf pup turn to a baby in the wild, she knew this pup was different. The guards outside the den probably had to chase away other wolves who would’ve made a snack of the strange pup they didn’t understand.

She licked the baby’s head and he cooed against her fur. My heart broke straight down the middle when I met her gaze. She knew the pup couldn’t stay with them. He’d grow up to be different and have needs that she couldn’t provide in the wild.

“You can visit him,” I yipped. “You’ll be able to find him.”

She licked the baby’s head while I tried to figure out how to drag the baby from the den without leaving bite marks. Then Bane’s long arm appeared beside me. The she-wolf growled and sniffed his hand. She lay against the back of the den licking her furless baby’s head until the baby was out of reach. She let out a howl that finished crushing my heart into pulp as I shimmied out of the den.

Bane sat against a nearby tree in his human form with the baby clutched to his chest all wrapped up in the shirt he hadn’t taken off before he shifted. The three guard wolves rushed forward. Two stopped, while the one who nosed them away stepped forward and sniffed the pup. He was the likely sire to the little shifter. He whined and wagged his tail even as the mother wolf howled her unavoidable grief. Part of me wanted to tuck the baby back into the den and leave them all be. He could shift into his wolf form and survive alongside his littermates. He could be more wolf than human and survive just fine. Only, that wasn’t true. Not entirely. Other wolves had been nearby and the guards wore scratch and bite marks. Leaving the little guy out here with his mother meant a harder life for the whole pack. Giving in to what had to be I tossed my head back and howled with the she-wolf. I couldn’t imagine nature forcing me to give up my baby.

“We need to get him to the clinic and look him over,” Bane said to me and the male wolf now licking the sleeping baby’s head. “And we should probably let Darian know too.”

“I’m not giving him to Darian. We found him. I told her we’d take care of him!” I said, the fur on my back bristling.

“And we will. I just think we’re going to have to explain where he came from before they think we’re out here stealing babies.”

“Well, we sort of are, but it can’t be helped,” I said over our mating link.

“This is hard. I don’t like the idea of taking any baby away from their parents, but the others are out there watching us. They’re watching the baby. They don’t understand the pup and well just look at these guys,” he nodded to the three wolves standing close by. “He isn’t safe out here. He makes the rest of their pack less safe too. I’m sorry, sweetheart. I really am.”

I gave in and shifted back to my human form. After a few deep breaths and knocking the leaves out of my hair, I said, “Maybe we can try to talk to the others.”

“Lee,” Bane met my gaze, “I’m not saying these wolves aren’t capable. I’m saying we can’t leave a shifter baby out here with no other humans. It’s unconscionable. We also can’t take him, his littermates, and his whole pack home with us. They’re our cousins on the evolutionary chain, but we’re not that similar. Not similar enough for them to live inside.”

“I know,” I hung my head.

I knew from the moment I peeped into the den and saw the baby that he was coming home with us and we’d leave behind a broken hearted she-wolf. The three male wolves said their goodbyes, but the shewolf didn’t peek out of the den. She’d miss the pup for a while, but she lived by the laws of the wild more than any of us did. She had two other pups to tend to and since they were still with her they took precedence over the soft, squishy cub we took away.

“Talk about a Wolf Day present,” Bane tried to tease me, but that line wouldn’t be funny until months from now.

Chapter Three

Bane

Sometimes being the Head Healer on campus had its perks. It meant you could be cryptic and make the pack Alpha travel across campus to see something and not tell him why over the phone or the pack link. It was less about being cryptic and more about not having every pack member who heard flood in to meet the new pup. His world had grown and changed enough for one day.

While Lee and I waited on Darian, we looked him over again. He was a healthy pup with a hearty appetite. It took him a few tries to latch onto the bottle, but he eventually got there. The bloodwork was out, and Lee bounced from foot to foot awaiting the results. Not many people knew about it but there was a gene-marker for those born from wild wolves. We all had at least one copy of it, but those born into the wild had the full set of twelve. If the pup was born from the wild she-wolf he’d boast the same. If he were somehow dropped off in the wolf den by someone else, he wouldn’t.

“Don’t even think that,” Lee stopped pacing and stared me down. “Who would do that?”

---