Chapter Text
The territory dispute goes—badly.
Wolfsbane bullets to the side, silver dagger to the throat, he dies fast—but not so slow he’s not able to tear the throat out of the person who landed the killing blow, making it a pyrrhic victory … at least for that hunter.
Then his vision blurs, and blurs, and blurs, and Haru thinks this is what death feels like, what death is, but then everything gets brighter and brighter until it hurts—
He flinches away from the light.
He falls to his hands and knees.
He’s covered in blood, some of it his own, most of it not—especially what he can feel flaking around his mouth and on his cheeks, gasping for air like he just breached the water’s surface.
Control.
He steadies his breathing. One breath in. One breath out.
Control.
He sheathes his claws. He puts away his fangs.
Control.
The rest of the partial shift is easy to suppress. His brow smooths to human standard. His ears round from their sharp points.
Control.
He exhales. The wolf is pressed back beneath his skin, but he’s still uneasy.
Why?
A cursory look at his surroundings answers that question. It’s clear that he’s somehow survived the territorial dispute, but that doesn’t explain where the fuck he is. Why, if he wasn’t waking up in a hospital bed, he wasn’t still in that field, he wasn’t at home, he wasn’t somewhere familiar.
And it’s highly possible he still is in Washington. The forest he’s found himself in is certainly lush enough to support that theory.
But nothing smells right.
This realization leads to increasingly panicked scenting of the air, trying to find at least one familiar thread, when a sudden breeze comes from behind him, the cold air briefly calming him down from his alarm.
Then, further north, a twig snaps. In this unfamiliar forest, that sound seems amplified. Echoed.
Haru’s head snaps to the direction of the sound, growl beginning to rumble in his chest—
It’s a puppy.
Gray hair, face obscured by … a mask or a turtleneck pulled up to their nose, scarf that’s as long as they are tall, little tiny fingers, knobby knees, and wide, dark eyes that just get wider the longer they stare at Haru.
And it really is a puppy—their head lifting in an unpracticed motion that Haru would recognize anywhere.
They’re scenting the air.
Haru blinks, confused, when this just deepens the pup’s stress. Teeny hands are clenched in their shirt, kneading in an attempt to self-soothe. They yank their mask down and sniff the air again and again, hyperventilating. Finally, they let out a desperate, desolate: “Kaa-san?”
Haru has a large extended pack. More often than not, puppies are running afoot, wreaking havoc, causing mischief. Sometimes they lose sight of their sire or dam and they get upset. Sometimes they even mistake Haru for one or the other. Haru is used to this. In fact, a puppy mistaking Haru for their parent is the only familiar thing about this overgrown, almost too green forest, and the only thing that he knows how to fix. He can’t fix almost dying and waking some place strange, covered in blood, and no pack in sight, but he can fix this.
Matching puppy to parent is simple. Puppies should be scent-marked to high heaven. Smell the air, bring the pup to the corresponding parent.
Easy.
In an effort to do the one thing he could do in this strange place, Haru sets out to do just that. He tilts his head up, inhales—
—Everything sharpens. Sound and light and color dims.
All he can see is the puppy.
Without conscious thought, he’s darting forward and snatching up the pup to clutch the pup to his chest as tight as possible, nuzzling the crown of their head, their cheeks, their neck—because this is his pup. Nevermind that he’s never given birth or even had one long-term partner. Haru smelled him and something clicked into place, a puzzle piece finding its way home that he’d never even known he was missing.
His pup. His pup. His pup.
Haru blankets his pup in his scent, overriding the weak mark and baby fresh smell with ease. Eyes closed from the endorphin rush, Haru doesn’t notice his puppy reaching for his face until gentle, baby-soft hands are on his cheeks, trying to rub the flaking blood away.
Haru chuffs and nudges the fingers away from his face. Half-lidded eyes stare down his puppy, and of course they comply like a proper, well-behaved pup, moving hands off of his cheeks to Haru’s shoulder.
Good. Pups shouldn’t dirty themselves with hunter blood. God only knows where they’ve been.
The pup squirms, as if to be let down, but thinks better of it and presses their head to Haru’s chest, relaxing even further when they can hear his heartbeat.
Haru palms the back of the pup’s head and scritches behind their ears with his claws, sweeping his hand down the nape of the pup’s neck to rub their back. Anyone who would even take a whiff of his pup would know they’re his—Haru’s scent is almost oppressive now, in its intensity.
Puppy doesn’t seem to mind, burrowing further into his chest. “Kaa-san,” they eventually say, half smooshed to Haru’s chest. “Kaa-san, we have to go tell Tou-san that you’re back.”
Haru twitches hearing that sentence, but doesn’t respond. He noses at the crown of his pup’s head and breathes deeply, smelling the faint fresh, clean smell of pup mixing with his own.
They smell like pack. Like home.
When Haru doesn’t reply, pup sighs and pushes away from his chest to stare at Haru. “Kaa-san, we have to go tell Tou-san that you’re back,” they repeat, more exasperated this time.
Still riding the instinctual tide of imprinting on a pup and a parental bond sliding into place, words escape Haru. He tilts his head at pup. Pup pouts back at him.
When Haru still doesn’t answer him, his pup starts squirm and doesn’t stop, tapping Haru’s arms and chest to be let down.
Haru lets him down, but firmly grabs one of the pup’s hands the moment they touch the ground. He’s looked after enough puppies to know that they were fast and slippery when they wanted to be. Haru wasn’t taking any chances.
Using their point of contact, puppy starts to lead Haru somewhere. He lets them. Regardless of where pup led the two of them, Haru was confident in his abilities to protect his pup. He was one of the few in his pack to achieve a non-alpha full shift, his auto-healing abilities were second to none, and when he had something to protect, he was downright vicious. That’s why he’d been on the frontlines of the territorial dispute in the first place.
As his pup leads him through a wooded area and along a river, they keep looking at him like he’ll disappear any second, squeezing his hand tight like Haru would ever let them go. Haru smiles back with sharp teeth and squeezes his pup’s hand in turn. Comforted, his pup continues to confidently lead the two of them forward. Eventually, they hit a dead-end, to which his pup deftly navigates and suddenly, they’ve returned to civilization.
Haru hadn’t thought the two of them were that close to this many other people. People who, when spotting Haru and his pup, begin to stare and whisper.
“Isn’t that—”
“... covered in blood.”
“But I thought …”
“—dead?”
“I went to the funeral—”
The attention of passersby starts to grate. Haru tugs pup closer and stares down the annoyances with lupine eyes. A few scramble, a few avoid eye-contact.
Haru and his pup continue walking.
—Someone tries to take Haru’s pup from him, grab their arm and drag them away.
Haru lunges at the offending hand, claws first, and meets air. He quickly regroups to fold his puppy into his arms, who grabs him back just as fast. Haru snarls at the forming crowd, the sound reverberating in his chest.
The softer-looking strangers startle at the sound. Some of them leave. Others grimly try to approach, inching closer in tiny increments. Others call for help—though to who or to what, Haru doesn’t know, nor does he care.
Haru stares back.
He growls.
He waits.