Free Spirit of the Wolves by Dorothy Hearst Page A

“She could mean the end of all wolfkind.”
    Navdru growled. “This is not the Wide Valley, Milsindra, and you do not rule here.”
    â€œShe does not rule in the Wide Valley, either,” Tlitoo quorked from his branch.
    Milsindra gave Navdru a long, measuring look and lowered one ear. I remembered her giving in just as easily to Zorindru back in the Wide Valley. I realized, then, that she was frightened of Navdru just as she’d been of Zorindru, but was standing up to him because she believed in what she was doing. She was convinced that only Greatwolves had the strength to control humans and that if we smallwolves tried, disaster would follow. She really thought my existence threatened wolfkind.
    â€œMy offer stands,” Navdru said to her. “If the youngwolf fails, leadership of the Wide Valley is yours, and we will have no more to do with the humans. For now, however, you will not disrupt my pack.”
    Milsindra lowered the other ear. She started to speak, but behind her another wolf growled a warning. I heard running pawsteps.
    A moment later, Neesa bolted into the clearing and hurled herself at Navdru. He was so much bigger than she was that she didn’t even make him stagger. She fell to the ground, got to her paws, and leapt again.
    â€œGet out of here, Kaala!” she gasped. “Why didn’t you escape when you could?”
    I could only stare at her, baffled. I’d thought she hated me. Now she’d trespassed into a Greatwolf gathering place to find me.
    Navdru swung his great head, knocking my mother across the copse and into the trunk of a pine. She fell, her legs splayed on the hard ground. I yelped, and before I knew what I was doing, I was standing in front of her. She had chased me away. She had told me to leave my home and then rejected me, but she was my mother and I wouldn’t let Navdru kill her. Ázzuen, Pell, and Marra burst through the line of Greatwolves guarding them and scrambled to my side. Pell bore a fresh wound on his neck. I heard a croaking above me and darted a glance up to see that Tlitoo had flown to a branch of the pine we now stood beneath.
    â€œYou should have run when I told you to, Kaala,” Neesa gasped, struggling to her paws. “They mean to use you like the humans use their tools.”
    Navdru strode forward, his backfur raised, his teeth bared. “You should not have told her to run, Neesa. It was a betrayal of the Sentinel pack.”
    â€œYou lied to me,” she retorted, as if a wolf half again her size were not glowering down at her. She lowered her head to whisper to me. “I came out of hiding because they promised you could come to me unharmed. They told me they neededyou. But they didn’t say you would be in danger. I tried to warn you before you left the valley but I was too late. I would never have called you in the first place if I’d known. You’re the only pup I have left.”
    I could only stare at her. I knew I could be killed at any moment by the Greatwolves surrounding me, but all I could think of was that my mother hadn’t chased me away because she didn’t want me. She’d been trying to save my life.
    â€œWe’re all in danger, Neesa, you know that,” Navdru snapped.
    He lowered his head and swung it back and forth, looking from Neesa to me, and then to Ázzuen, Pell, and Marra, anger rising off him like mist. Then he sighed, settled the fur along his back, and closed his eyes. Ruuqo did that, too, when he was trying to control his temper. When the Greatwolf leaderwolf opened his eyes, he seemed to be speaking to himself as much as to us.
    â€œI should have remembered the reckless courage of the Wide Valley wolves,” Navdru said. “It is, I suppose, the reason you have all survived.” He turned his gaze to me. “I need you to listen to me, youngwolf. Stop snarling at me and listen.”
    â€œThe drelwolf,” someone whispered.