Rhiannon crouched in the underbrush of her favourite forest clearing, waiting for prey to scare out of their wits. On this special occasion, her prey happened to be her mate Markus. The branches jabbed at her jet-black fur and the thought of scaring him brought a big grin on her wolf face. Up ahead, she saw Markus trotting about howling her name. He paused at the edge of the clearing right in front of her, facing away from her. Rhiannon mustered all of her energy and launched out of her hiding place and pounced on her unsuspecting mate. With perfect aim, she landed right on top of him. Startled, he let out a loud yelp. After they played wrestling for what seemed like hours, Rhiannon curled up in the fresh, white snow, right next to her mate, with her head resting on his back.

“You know, Rhiannon, one of these days I’m going to pay you back for scaring me to death all the time,” he said while she started licking the snow off of his reddish-brown fur.

“Ah come on! You know you like it,” she replied still licking his fur. His response was to play bite her ear. The rest of their pack came trotting up to the pair of wolves in the snow. Rhiannon gave Markus an exasperated look.

“You had the entire pack looking for me?” She asked in disbelief. Midnyght, one of the wolves, walked up to Rhiannon and laid down next to her and nuzzled the Alpha Female.

“Come on now, pup, don’t be so hard on him. He was worried about you,” she said as the rest of the pack sat down around the Alpha Male and Female. Rhiannon let it go and went back to licking Markus. She was a fairly large wolf and the Alpha female of the pack, which meant that she was in charge of all the female wolves and co-leader of the pack. She had shaggy black fur and sapphire blue eyes.

Markus, her mate, was the Alpha Male of the pack, the dominate leader. He had reddish-brown fur and green eyes. His fur was as shaggy as his mate’s.

Midnyght was a mid-ranking wolf and she had black fur, like Rhiannon, and had deep crimson eyes.

Lydia was another mid-ranking wolf and one of the rebels in the pack, though most of them WERE rebels. She also had black fur with purple streaks through it. Her eyes were grey-blue.

Lilith was the Beta wolf, which means that she was the second-in-command. She was the exact opposite of Rhiannon. She had silvery-white fur and brown eyes.

The Omega male and female were Charis and Armand, brother and sister of Rhiannon. Armand had grey fur and blue eyes and Charis had black fur, like her sister and green eyes.

They spent most of the winter morning in a lazy silence. None of them moved a muscle, until a loud roar caused Markus and the rest of the pack to raise their heads in union, with their ears pricked forward. From the opposite end of the clearing from where they were laying came two black bears chasing a zebra. I know, you are all wondering what a Zebra is doing in the Sawtooth Mountains up in Idaho. The explanation is simple: Zoo escapee. None of the wolves got up. They were used to the sudden outbursts of the two bears named Violet and Julius. They were constantly up to something.