Chapter 9: The Wounded Warrior

“Humphrey!” Kate shouted.

As soon as he felt the excruciating pain in his side, Humphrey’s jaw relaxed and the man crawled out from under him, cradling his injured arm. Humphrey staggered, but remained standing. His face showed an expression of surprise rather than pain.

He turned his head and looked at Kate who just stood in the cage, horrified par what she saw. They held each other’s gaze for a moment and then Humphrey collapsed onto the ground.

“NO!”

Kenya heard the gunshot from inside the animal control car that she had been put in. As she watched her brother collapse into a heap on the ground, her eyes filled with rage and she crashed through the side car window.

She stood up and attacked the human with the gun, grabbing it par the barrel and pulling it from the man's grip and pulling him down to the ground as well. par this time, Kate got out of the cage and went to one of the pickup trucks to get Stinky and Claudette off of the back and Marcel and Paddy went to rescue Garth, Lilly, and Daria. It wasn't long before the humans got in their trucks and left.

As everyone caught their breath, they heard incredibly labored wheezing behind them. They turned around to see Humphrey laying on the ground, struggling to breathe.

"Kate," he said.

Kate ran over to him.

"Are toi okay?" he asked.

Kate laughed, fighting back tears. "Says the guy that got shot," she said, smiling.

Humphrey tried to get up, but fell over as soon as he stood up.

"Humphrey," Kate said. "You're really hurt. Stop trying to be the tough guy."

"I'm not trying to be the tough guy," Humphrey denied.

Kate looked around. "Uh, yeah toi are," she said. "I don't mean to be rude but, you're an omega, Humphrey. You're not supposed to be the tough guy. Garth, is supposed to be the guy."

"That," Humphrey said. "That argument is both academically fit and logically sound."

"Do toi even know what that means?" Kenya asked.

"Not a clue."

The group stood around their injured friend, thinking about how to déplacer him when Kenya suddenly had an idea.

"I've got an idea," she said. "I'll be right back. Don't move."

"Oh yeah, that's real funny." Humphrey a dit sarcastically as Kenya ran off.

About ten minutes later, Kenya returned with the logboard.

"Wait a minute," Humphrey said, finally succeeding in sitting up on his stomach. "Let me get this straight: toi went all the way back, down the hill, back to the people that tried to kill us, risked your life in doing so, grabbed the logboard, pushed it all the way back up the hill, through the forest, while I'm laying here, dying. Did I miss anything?"

"No, I think toi pretty much covered it all," Kenya replied.

"Why?" Humphrey asked. "This is not the time for fun. toi know that, right? If I'm saying it's not the time, then it's not the time?"

"I know," Kenya said, casually.

"Then what was your endgame, here?"

"We can use the logboard to safely déplacer toi so we can get back to your pack and toi don't have to put anymore stress on your body," she explained.

"Oh," he said. "That...that is actually a good idea."

It didn't take too much time to get Humphrey onto the logboard but it did take a lot of pain and effort on his part. Humphrey lay down on his good side with the bullet wound facing up.

They moved along slowly, covering very little ground. In about a half an heure they came across something very disturbing. They were only about a mile ou so from the area where Humphrey had been shot, but all around them were dens. But these dens were caved in, broken, and utterly destroyed, no doubt par humans. This is what remained of Humphrey's pack.

Humphrey struggled to sit up on his stomach to look around, but immediately regretted it. Strewn about the ground, covered in moss, were the Bones of dead wolves, still in their exact positions from when they died nearly 20 years ago. It was absolute carnage. A great struggle, no doubt took place here.

"Oh no," he said.

"What?" Kate asked. "What is it?"

"This was my pack," Humphrey explained.

"What happened here?" Lily asked.

"I don't know," he replied.

"We should keep going," Garth said.

They slowly and carefully pushed the logboard around the dead wolves' remains but then, Humphrey suddenly asked them to stop. He sat up again to get a better look, and soon, everyone else saw what he was looking at.

Just ahead of where the logboard was sitting, where the skeletons of two loups that were set side-by-side, facing each other. Their bodies were almost a mirror image of each other in the way they were positioned. Backs slightly arched, tails down, back legs close to each other, one front leg pointing down, the others were touching, and heads tilted slightly downward towards the other. One skull was smaller than the other, yet the spine was just as long as the other, inferring that one loup had been female, and the other male. And one last thing Humphrey noticed, was that the heads were very close together. This apparent husband and wife had, no doubt, been rubbing noses during their final moments. Humphrey had no idea that these were his parents.

It was a very heartbreaking sight to see and the group did remain for a short time to give a moment of silence for these two loups that clearly loved each other. Kate even began to think that this might be Humphrey soon. And that reminded her to keep moving.

But when the group started to déplacer on again, they stopped when they noticed that they were missing someone. Stinky was still standing in the middle of the destroyed dens, sniffing the ground near one of them.

"Stinky," Kate said. "Come on. The quest is over. There's no point in searching any longer."

"But I smell wolves," he protested.

"Yes, there were loups here, but now they're gone."

"No, I smell tracks leading into the forest, that way," Stinky said, pointing into the woods.

"Wait," Humphrey said, sitting up immediately, but painfully. "You mean there's survivors?"

"Yes."

"Kate, please," Humphrey said. "Let's follow the trail."

Kate didn't respond right away, but then she said, "Alright. But if we don't find anything par tomorrow, we're going home."

"Deal," Humphrey eagerly agreed.

The group turned the logboard and began following Stinky into the woods. They traveled very slowly, taking many hours to go a short distance. par the time evening started rolling around, they came to a sandstone cliff that had dens carved out in the side. This was where the survivors of Humphrey's pack built their new dens.

"What do toi smell, Stinky?" Humphrey asked.

"I smell a pack, Dad. Your pack," Stinky said.

"Do toi smell any survivors?" Kate asked.

"No, just the remnants of the pack," Stinky answered.

A feeling of disappointment and sadness passed over the whole group.

"Well then," Kate said. "I'm sorry Humphrey. There's nothing left for it. We should go accueil now."

As the group began to turn back around, away from the cliff, Humphrey felt a new sense of determination. He gathered as much of his strength as he could and stood up and slowly moved off of the logboard.

"Humphrey!" Kate asked. "What are toi doing?"

Humphrey, for the third time, a dit nothing, but slowly continued back towards the cliff.

"Humphrey," Kate called, but to no avail. He just kept going.

Humphrey eventually reached the entrance of the biggest cave that was carved out into the sandstone cliff, but as soon as he reached the entrance, Humphrey collapsed onto the ground again.

A loup appeared from inside the den. He had a pitch-black mane that was short and laid back smoothly against his head. He had a dark grey manteau of fourrure and a wide, broad snout, his eyes were a deep, golden color, and he looked to be in his early thirties. But his most noticeable features were two scars in the shape of claw marks. There was a small one running down his left shoulder and an even bigger one that ran vertically from the haut, retour au début side of his neck in back, all the way down across his neck to his chest, clearly from a fairly récent loup fight that took place around ten years before, as the fourrure still hadn't quite grown back.

He looked at Humphrey with surprise in his eyes as he recognized him immediately. Humphrey looked up at the loup and noticed his scar. It was apparent he had been through a lot. Humphrey then looked down at the side of his left thigh. He couldn't see it because the fourrure had long since covered it up, but the scar was there. He had gotten it when he and Kenya were taken from their parents.
And although he couldn't see them, Humphrey also thought about the many small scars on the back of his neck in the shape of a bite mark, which his unkempt mane of fourrure covered up very well. He had gotten those sometime during the two months he spent living in the woods par himself when he had an encounter with another animal. He also looked down at his tail, which didn’t seem like it had been crushed par a arbre and swung on twice par another wolf, but Humphrey knew the trauma his poor tail had endured and it reminded him of all that he had also been through.

"I can't believe it," the loup said. "I thought I'd never see toi again."

Humphrey looked up at him with a look of confusion in his eyes.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I don't think I know you."

"I thought toi were dead," the loup told Humphrey.

"Yeah, well I might be anyway, so," Humphrey struggled to explain, growing weaker par the second, his body threatening to fail him.

The loup turned into the darkness of the cave and called out. "Get him inside."

A group of alphas appeared and carefully moved Humphrey into the cave with the others following.

Once everyone was inside, the loup that addressed Humphrey now addressed Kate and the group that had come in with her.

"Who are you?" he asked Kate.

"I'm Humphrey's wife," she answered. "But plus importantly, who are you?"

"He married an alpha?" the loup laughed. "I should've known. He always was the rebellious one." The loup chuckled a little. "Well, then, if you're his wife, I guess that makes me your brother-in-law."

"Wait a minute," Kate said. "You're his brother? He never told me he had a brother."

"He never told toi he had sister, either," Garth said.

Humphrey a dit nothing, mainly because he simply was not strong enough to do so. But then, very slowly and with much effort, Humphrey answered her.

"Yes," he said. "I remember now. Adam, my alpha brother. He stayed behind for training with our grandparents the jour our parents went missing."

"Humphrey," Adam said. "They didn't go missing."

"You mean they're alive?" Humphrey asked.

Adam paused and looked around the cave. "Look Humphrey," he said. "You need to rest and then I'll tell all of toi what happened in the morning."

Morning came and with it, the réponses that everyone had been so desperately searching for. Everyone gathered around Humphrey and Adam to hear the last part of the great mystery they had all been chasing.

"The jour began like any other," Adam began. "The sun rose, the birds were singing, everything seemed like it was going to be fine. About an heure ou so after we all were up, Mom and Dad decided to take toi and Kenya out for an early morning walk. I stayed behind with Grandma and Grandpa for alpha training. It was about an heure later when they came running back without toi two."

"They told us that they were ambushed par humans and that they somehow fell asleep while the humans took toi and Kenya. When they woke with up, they saw a truck driving away with the two of toi in cages in the back."

"That's what happened to us yesterday," Humphrey said.

Adam continued.

"Just as we heard all this, several human trucks came and with them came dozens of humans."

"They came out of the trucks with pistolets and began shooting around and destroying the dens. We had some of our alphas cover the omega's escape while the rest of the alphas protected the pups. But Mom and Dad insisted upon helping cover the others even though they were omegas, too. Every tanière, den was destroyed and most of our alphas that covered the escape were killed," Adam paused, a look of sorrow in his eyes.

"Mom and Dad, too. I'm sorry, Humphrey."

Humphrey suddenly found it exceedingly difficult to breathe as the weight of this news began to crush his already damaged body. Kate looked over at him and immediately rushed to his side.

"Humphrey!" she shouted. "Humphrey!"

Humphrey, finding it plus and plus difficult to stay awake, a dit nothing.

Kate laid down suivant to her husband, tears soaking her fur.

"No. No, no, no, no," Kate cried. "No, Humphrey please, don't do this to me. toi can't do this. Don't leave me, please. You're all I have."

But the attempt was futile. Humphrey couldn't stay awake any longer, the weight of everything that just happened, too much for his body to bear. And as Kate lay there, tears streaming down her face and soaking his fur, Humphrey's mind slowly passed off and all became black.