Chapter Text
It took months for Balto to be able to slip away from Rosie and Jenna. Decked in his own collar and sled dog attire, he was now an owned dog. He had done a small part for Jenna, but indoor living was not for him. It held an appear, cold nights spent by a warm heater was great, but he'd begun to miss Boris, Muk, Luk, all of the wild.
Luckily enough he'd learned how humans opened and shut doors and no longer had to break them any, he could pull on the knobs and come and go. Tonight was a calmer night, he'd still be missed if he left, Rosie was clingy, her parents ever grateful.
Even so, he needed a night to breathe.
The snow yielded under his paws, his breathe showed in great billowing puffs before his eyes. No one was on high alert, the only wolf they'd ever known had been him, and he was their hero now. Other sled dogs had been doted upon, credited for all their hard work, but nothing quite like Balto.
A hundred dogs easily had made their name, and would pass a legacy of status down, some had died in the mission, remembered but then honored.
Far from the houses, into the woods, he caught a smell on the wind. He knew that smell, it boiled his blood. Incensed him.
There were no tracks, and Boris warned him after they met and rejoiced, he could see where the smell was coming from.
Balto turned the heavy snowdrifts against trees to eye the malamute. Those ice blue eyes narrowed upon him as soon as Steele's nose twitched.
Sizing the male up, Balto took in the lack of a collar, chances were he'd been kicked out, or disowned. There were not many injuries, long healed over. It looked like the other dogs had chased him out.
“What?! Come to finally gloat, wolfdog?” He snarled.
“No.”
“Feels good to have her by your side, right?”
He shifted. “Not really.”
“What?”
“It was never about Jenna, it was about the kids.”
“Liar.” Steele rumbled out in vitriol, laying down with his head tilted to the side. “You did it all to impress that sweet piece of ass.”
“No. I'm not like you, Steele.”
“Mutt.”
“That's not it either.” Balto pushed past.
Rising to his paws, Steele took after him, posture low and close to the ground.
Boris shadowed both overhead, eyes narrowed. “He's after you, Balto!”
“I'm aware.”
“The brave Balto, a wolfdog mutt, runt abandoned by his parents. Saving human children.” The malamute's tongue clicked repeatedly. “All for a bitch like Jenna.” Becoming smug at the exasperated sigh, he drew closer, glibly chirping out, “Does she feel good, Ball-to?”
“No, actually.”
He pulled farther from the purebred again.
“Liar, I bet she feels real great- wait-” somewhere among his words he'd head what Balto had begun to say, it was hard to pick out now, his small ears craned forward and his pupils shrank. “What. Was. That?” Silence. The wolfdog kept walking. Steele lunged in front of him, a flurry of snow assaulting the mutt's eyes. Everything within him was bracing to kill the mutt here and now, he had everything Steele wanted, and he was aloof to it.
Balto pushed past him anew.
“I said,”
He spoke, not slowing down any.
“It's not a lie, Steele. I didn't do it for Jenna.”
His muscles trembled under the pressure of his clenched jaw. The words weren't what he'd heard.
Then he heard them again. Deadpan and clear.
“I don't like girls like that.”