Sex: MaleAW - 1-2 others please. Dated for August 21. He was captured August 14.
It happened so quickly.
They had been following the lone mother and her cub for weeks; watching, waiting… They would detour along the way, reconnecting with the group briefly before pulling away to trail after the duo once more. The mother seldom strayed away from her child, which made their plan to isolate the two difficult. It was only when the boy had set his own course that the trio had been able to set their plan into motion. They had followed the boy south, through he forest. For most of the trek they maintained their distance, but they weren’t sure the boy was old enough to decipher the coyote stench from the rest of the forest. Which worked in their benefit. They only became scarce when the boy encountered a yellow-eyed wolf as the older of the two would certainly catch wind of their scent if they lingered too long. Fortunately, for the troublesome trio, the boy had ventured on his own once more. Fair game.
Before Orionis could react the trio had surrounded him and knocked him to the ground. They bounced around, circling him and nipping at his frail body despite his protests. Eventually he grew too tired to fight back and crumpled into a small ball and desperately wishing he could disappear. It did not take long for everything to go black.
They took turns carrying him across the mountain. The sky had grown dark and hazy, which made it difficult to breathe. He had stopped fighting back when he realized they weren’t going to kill him. Yet. He was already bruised and battered; he did not want to waste his remaining strength on trying to fend them off. He would have to be strong—for momma—and flee when they had their backs turned. Fortunately for little Orionis they weren’t the smartest bunch.
It was unusually dark when he awoke and for a fleeting moment he wondered if he had died. But as he lay, with his back pressed to the ground, he realized that his chest was still moving. His lungs still working. He was alive. He turned to the trio of coyotes—all three of them fallen victim to the moon. Wait—all three of them? He stiffened, his rusted gaze blinking furiously as he attempted to wake himself up. But he was already awake. And they were all asleep!
It did not take long for Orionis to jump into action. He was hesitant at first, each step carefully calculated as he inched further away from the slumbering group. It wasn’t until their scents left his nose that he broke out into a run, his little legs pumping furiously beneath him as he distanced himself from the mutts.
He ran and he ran and he ran. Until his legs felt as though they were going to break off and his pads were raw. Orionis crumpled to the ground, his chest heaving as he flopped to the side. He’d managed to tuck himself beneath a blackberry bush but he did not know how well the cover would last. The sun had begun to rise through the haze, a glowing, fiery orb in the sky. A sign that he had survived the night.
