Read Online The Dog Master by W. Bruce Cameron - Free Book Online

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    The day after being fed by the man, the large she-wolf and her two lanky male companions followed their noses back to the pack and were instantly beset upon by the four pups who had been born that past spring. Clumsy and playful, the young pups tripped over themselves as they rushed to greet the returning hunters. When the pups sat and licked at the large she-wolf’s mouth, she quietly regurgitated a meal for them, the taste reminding her of the human who had given her the meat. The males who had hunted and fed with her also obliged the wolf cubs. She watched approvingly as the little ones ate. She nosed the largest of the cubs, a male, and he responded with an uncoordinated lunge at her ears, pulling at her fur with his tiny teeth.
    What she felt toward these pups, who were not hers, was not so much love, but a sense of prideful responsibility. The pack was strong, now. These new members added to that strength. They were healthy and were eating well. That was good.
    She thought again of the source of the meat, the human. She had smelled the fear coming from him, but there had been something else underlying it, something oddly compelling. And his face: when it came to other species, wolves had no experience outside of prey and predator. Prey was always implacable—even a charging bull elk had cold, expressionless eyes behind his lowered antlers. Predators were more revealing, but wolves knew little from bear or lion other than aggression or fear. The human’s face, however, throbbed with his strong emotions and the she-wolf actually felt them, even though she didn’t understand them. When suddenly the meat came flying at them it carried, for the wolf, the same sense she had as when she just now brought up a meal for the pups. The human had been providing.
    The mother of the pups, the pack’s dominant bitch, her teats now dry but still slightly distended, was approaching. The big she-wolf watched her, sensing an odd tension rippling through the wolves of the pack.
    This was this particular wolf’s first litter. The large she-wolf thought of the dominant female as Smoke, an association not built of words but of smell and taste. When the she-wolf and her siblings, as puppies, had been fed a regurgitated meal a year ago by this dominant wolf, it carried with it a tinge of the smoke that sometimes floated on the air near where humans gathered. Smoke had obviously eaten something burned, because the smell lingered on her breath and oozed from the pads of her feet for many days.
    Smoke’s approach alerted the rest of the pack because it was direct, her unwavering eyes focused on the large she-wolf, who knew she should grovel before the dominant bitch, but something stopped her. She held herself rigidly, tail slightly aloft, as Smoke sniffed her. She was risking punishment, but something compelled her not to yield. The rest of the pack grew even more agitated when Smoke put her head on the large she-wolf’s shoulder, an aggressive move just shy of an attack.
    As if her youth and unreadiness suddenly occurred to her, the she-wolf cringed instead of continuing her insolence. She dropped her tail until the tip of it brushed her own stomach, she whimpered and blinked her eyes rapidly, she licked Smoke’s mouth.
    Smoke’s low growl and unwinking stare was all the punishment the dominant bitch chose to administer, this time. But the she-wolf’s insulting lack of submission had been observed by all the wolves in the pack. Yes, she was young and inexperienced, but she was also huge, bigger than even the dominant male. She was healthy and strong.
    A fight was coming, and the pack knew it.

 
    SEVEN
    Coco was waiting with her arms crossed for Calli and Bellu as the two young women returned with their arms full of new grass. “Where have you been?” she hissed furiously.
    Coco was, in many ways, an older version of her daughter Calli. Both were slightly