Protector
A few weeks had passed and Imyasel got used to the company of the big black wolf by now. Even though Demon never uttered another word after his first introduction, Imyasel learned to understand the subtle signs of her older companion and his intend.

In the first week she still only followed him, around and waited for him at their resting place to bring food, but today it was different. After a short rest, Demon stayed with her this time, he nudged her to get up and Imyasel was surprised, because the first light of the morning was dawning between the treetops.

When she got up, Demon walked a few steps and she understood that she should follow him. At first she thought they would just look for another place to rest, but then Demon stopped and put his nose into the air and sniffed.

Imyasel first just watched him but a gaze from him, before he put his nose up again, showed her that he expected her to imitate him. She took the smell in with a deep breath and felt the air gush into her lungs. It took a while before she realized a faint smell in the air, that she smelled before. It was the smell of a bunny.

When Demon realized that she noticed the smell from her nervously twitching ears, he turned his head upwind and lowered his body. He waited until Imyasel understood and imitated him again. 
Demon took even more careful steps now and even running right behind him, Imyasel could not hear his steps in the softy wind anymore. She tried her best to move as silent as he was, imitating the way he put down his paws and lifted his legs, but she could clearly hear her own noises with each step.

Every few steps Demon put his nose up and tasted the smell and Imyasel tried to imitate him. She understood that the direction of the wind was an indicator for the location of their prey. From the way Demon acted, she was sure that he was on the hunt and for some reason he decided to take Imyasel with him and wanted her to imitate all that he did.

The smell in the air got stronger and Imyasel noticed that her steps were more silent now, even though she was unsure if this was just her ears getting numb from the whistling of the wind or if she really managed to lighten her steps.

Suddenly Demon stopped and Imyasel hit her head against his left leg and barely suppressed a moan of surprise.

The next moment, she felt his paw softly scratch along her ear, when Demon jumped and the big shadow in front of her vanished. She saw him land quite some distance away and bite down on something. Imyasel hurried to follow him and saw, that he had a bunny grabbed by the scruff when he turned around to her. The leg of the bunny showed clear bite marks.

He closed in to Imyasel and set the bunny on the ground. The little creature tried to hop away, but with the injured leg it could not move very fast. Demon crouched down, showing Imyasel how he built up the tension in his hind legs and used the front legs to adjust the angle and aim. Then he flung forward like a spring, as silent as he was when walking, and landed right where the bunny was and his muzzle closed over the neck of the bunny but did not bite.

He grabbed the bunny again and put it in front of Imyasel, then he put a paw on the hind of the girl and pushed it down. She took a second to understand that he told her to get into jumping position just like he demonstrated before.

Her muscles trembled from the tension that she built in her body when she imitated the posture of Demon. She concentrated too much on her hind legs and did not regard the posture of her front legs, which caused her to land one step behind to the bunny and a bit too much right, when she finally pushed her body forward.

The training of the older wolf was much different than any lesson she had have with her mother. He did not ask her or pester her with instructions but expected her to find the right way to do it herself. He only showed her once more how he did it and then let her try a few times, with the same result as before. She managed to get enough power behind her jump to get a few steps away, but her jump was neither as high, nor as far as Demon’s and in addition she still had problems with aiming.

Demon seemed to not mind her failing so much. The sun was already fully out, when he finally ended the lesson by killing the bunny with a bite into the neck and padding back to the resting place, where he shared the food with Imyasel and then lay down to rest.

After this day of sleep, Demon never brought her food like before anymore but every time he went for a hunt, in the morning after sleep and in the evening before laying down for sleep, he had the young wolfess accompany him and after he incapacitated the prey to slow it down, he had the girl train her skills on it.

While Imyasel got better at prowling and soon her steps became just as silent as the steps of her big protector, she still had a lot of trouble with aiming and controlling her jumps. She got stronger and could jump higher and further now, but this only increased her difficulty to control it correctly. Often, she landed far behind the prey or a few steps to the side.

She had never paid much attention to her mother when she had taught the girl about hunting, but had always been daydreaming, but now she watched every move of her big companion during the hunt. Every day she discovered something new and tried to imitate it when it was her turn to show her improvements.

The slight twitches of the ears, the position of his head, how he shuffled his hind before jumping and how he positioned his front legs, the bending of his back and the movement of his tail were only a few details that she noticed. Each time she observed him hunt, with as much concentration as she could muster to not miss a hint for improvement, she detected something new. This day she had concentrated on his tail and how he spun it midair and made small adjustments to the direction of his jump to adjust for the sudden movements of the prey when they noticed too late that they were in the eye of the predator.

She had never managed to do the adjustments right with her tail, but she had trained and this day she managed to get much closer to the prey than in the days before. He even managed to hit it with her paw and when she turned around to Demon, who observed every of her moves, she could not help but grin in pride of her achievement.

Demon closed on to her. All he gave her as a price for her new gain was a nudge against her back before he picked up the prey and placed it a few meters away from Imyasel again. In the past, Imyasel would not have taken any encouragement if her mother or someone else of her pack would have just nudged her like that, but for Demon it was a very rare show of affection and Imyasel glowed inside, and her eyes gleamed from her sense of accomplishment.

At her next try, Demon stood next to her and when she crouched down, he put a paw on her pack, preventing her from jumping, and with the other paw pushed her front legs a bit apart and more into the direction of the bunny.

When the big wolf let go of her and Imyasel aimed and jumped, she landed right on the bunny and sunk her teeth into the neck of the animal. She looked up to Demon, who had followed her, and he pressed his yaws on each other. She understood that she had to kill the bunny and she bit as hard as she could.

The bunny tried to fight to get free from her grip, but from the training and the wound on it’s shoulder, which Demon still inflicted to the prey to make them slower for the girl, it was already exhausted and did not have enough energy left to overpower the little wolfess.
It took Imyasel all her remaining power and three powerful bites until she managed to break the neck of the bunny and it stopped moving.

There was no word of praise, no additional nudge or other sign by Demon other than laying down and waiting for Imyasel to start eating. It was the first prey she killed herself. To be more precise she just did the killing blow after the training, because she was sure she would not have caught it alone, but it was a major step for the little wolfess and it seemed that Demon let her have the first bite of her prey to celebrate it.

The big black wolf watched the girl starting the eat. She had learned in the last weeks already how to skin and fillet a bunny to get to the best meat. She took out a big part of the flank and then scuffled a few steps away with her price and lay down to eat. She saw how Demon took the rest of the bunny for himself while she slowly chewed the meat. It tasted better than any bunny before.

This day she fell asleep fast, just after snuggling up with the big black wolf in a bush that they used as a cover this time. Her dreams were all about chasing and hunting bunnies and she felt proud and grown up, like a big girl.

The next week she improved with every day. Demon did not would the prey anymore, but he started with smaller prey like mice. At the end of the week Imyasel was able to catch a mouse that he placed in front of her without it being wounded or otherwise prepared for her training. It was still a step away from hunting a mouse all on her own, taken that the mouse had to start right in front of her, but she learned how to control the midair flight of her jump and how to adjust her jump just before letting the tension of her legs go.

The following week, the animals got bigger and trickier. Bunnies, weasels, even a bird were on her training menu. By the end of the week, she only managed to catch one bunny this way, but weasels and birds were still to fast and tricky as a prey for her. But she improved and every time she watched Demon do the hunting, she learned something new.

The girl grew up from the pup that was daydreaming and never paid attention to the lections of her mother. Now she was attentive, curious, and obedient, following the unspoken subtle instructions of her unique trainer.

It took her a few more weeks, before she could catch birds and weasels and bunnies on her own and then Demon finished the training of her hunting techniques by having her do the hunting on her own while he only followed her.

Imyasel learned how to tell the direction and distance from the smell, how the current of the wind could help her mask her own smell and how she could circle the prey to get the best angle and the least options of flight for the victim.

It still took her days before she managed to catch first mice and then even bigger prey on her own like this, but finally the training went to the next stage.

While he showed her the techniques, she also learned to read all the subtle hints of the older wolf that were indicators for her on how to act. His ears, tail and posture were one thing, his gesture and facial expression another, but even his smell could tell her now more about Demon.

When he caught a trial, his smell changed and Imyasel reacted instinctively by starting to prowl and heighten her concentration. The same happened when he sensed any danger. Imyasel could not say if it was just his smell or if his aura also changed, but she noticed it now and her body reacted without her having to think about it.

The next level of her hunting training was group hunting. She had seen a group hunt of her pack once in the past, when she had sneaked out into the forest once, but now she experienced it for the first time as part of the hunting party.

She felt her hormones rush through her body and pump blood through her vessels from the excitement of the hunt when she ran next to Demon. A bliss filled her when they followed a trial of a prey. She did not need to look at him anymore. She could feel and smell him next to her and she knew his every movement.

It was as if they were communicating without words during the hunt and she was so used to the older wolf’s movement, that she moved in sync with him. She also knew by now what her job was, especially when they went after larger prey like small deer. She always took the left side, while Demon circled right around the prey. It was her job to softly get into the upwind stream to make the prey wary of her and then push the prey towards Demon, who would give it the final bite to kill it.

It was always demon killing the bigger prey, because Imyasel still did not have the power to kill bigger prey with one bite and she learned, from one failure, that it could hurt a lot to fail to bring down a bigger prey.

During their nightly travels, after they had eaten their fill after a hunt, Demon now picked up the speed and they climbed uphill more. At the start, Imyasel had trouble following him, but her muscles got stronger and her lungs wider and her body gained endurance, balance, speed and strength and soon she followed him the whole night without even getting out of breath and even finishing the hunt at the end of the night without trembling legs.

She also noticed that Demon trusted her more on her own now. In the evening, he let her go on hunts alone. At first, he followed her in some distance, but soon he knew that she was skilled enough to not hurt herself when hunting for prey that was no bigger than bunnies and to be aware of her surrounding to not steer herself into any danger.

In exchange, Demon took over the hunt in the morning, after their long nightly travels, and let her rest. Imyasel felt proud to contribute to their lives this way and that Demon trusted her enough to let her go hunting alone.

He still was her protector, and when they encountered wild boars or other dangerous animals, he always stepped in front of her, shielding her from any potential harm, but he was not overprotective of her and she felt the deep trust he felt for her, which was equally returned by her towards him.

In the few months that she traveled with him, she grew older, even though she did not grow much in size. She was still even much smaller than her mother had been, even though the features of her pup-hood and her long journey alone slowly vanished.

Her fur got soft and silky, covering all the old scars in her skin that also got smooth and durable. Where his eyes gleamed red, hers sparkled silver like the moon.

Imyasel did not notice how she depended on and grew close to Demon. He still did not say any word to her, but she had to interpret his actions and gestures, but Imyasel felt closer to this wolf than she had felt to her own father. He had become something like a new father for her.

She still did not know why he saved her or why he had cared for her afterwards. The only thing she knew was, that Demon was a strange one and showed strange behavior for a wolf. The few things that Imyasel remembered from the lectures of her mother were, that wolves always lived in packs and that a wolf would not care for a pup of a stranger pack, if not even attack it. Wolf packs were rivals for food and often the rivalry even resulted in open hostility.

Imyasel sometimes asked herself why Demon ran around alone and why he took her under his wings. She did not regret him do so, as she realized that she would be dead by now, even if he had rescued her and then left her alone, but still it was strange for her that Demon showed so atypical behavior for a wolf.

‘Maybe,’ she thought by herself, ‘maybe he is also the only survivor of a pack?’
But why he then burdened himself with caring and educating a pup was beyond her imagination. Thinking back to it, she realized that he took a big risk in providing protection and even food for the pup. Imyasel also wondered what might have happened to his pack, if he really was the last survivor, and if they had all been as big as he was.

Demon was by far the biggest wolf she had ever seen. Even with growing a few centimeters, she still was barely half as big as he was.

Thinking about it did not give her any results. Even though she pondered about this during quite some nightly runs, she never came to a conclusion, and she knew that asking him would not give her any answers. She was also afraid that he might get angry when she started to pry to his affairs.

Even though it intrigued her, it wasn’t important what his past was. She liked the big wolf and his direct but caring way of dealing with her. She had even gotten used to his wordless way of communicating. Sometimes she still talked with him and asked him a question, but the most he did as a reaction to it was nodding or shaking his head. He did not reply with words, even though he seemed to listen to her intensely whenever she let her sweat and soft voice hover over to his ears.

Imyasel noticed that they moved up for a few weeks now and the air around them got colder. She sometimes wondered where they were going, but the one time she had asked for the goal of their journey, he had just pointed his nose uphill and did not explain any more. But somehow the young girl got the feeling, that they were close to their destination, because Demon picked up the pace in the last days and she could feel some kind of excitement in his steps.