Feral

23

Here it is my lovely readers, the chapter you all have been waiting for!

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Her whole body ached and itched relentlessly. She couldn't move her neck, her legs and arms were stiff, but movable. She stumbled off of what she lay on, her legs didn't want to work properly. The place she was in swayed as she stood. Scents assaulted her nose, most were unfamiliar to her and it left her dazed. She smelled a twoleg, a female she knew.

She was in this twoleg's den.

Her body was covered by something, too, one she knew as a shirt. It was similar to what Damien had given her except the color, it was much darker, and it covered the entirety of her arms. Her legs were clad in something that felt similar, a bit scratchier, she didn't like whatever it was on her legs, they restricted her movement. She pulled at the item to remove it from her body, but her fingers could not procure a proper hold onto whatever it was.

She extended her claws, ripping at it, finally it complied and she tore it of of her body. Cold air rushed at her legs and for a small moment she almost regretted tearing the thing from them, but the notion quickly passed.

The echoes of footsteps had her on high alert.

"Damn, those were expensive pants," it was the female she had smelled. She spoke in the same tongue as Damien, her voice was higher than Damien's and more musical, but she could not understand what was being said.

"You shouldn't be up, your body is still healing. I did my best to bandage your throat, you've been in and out for a week," she cocked her head sideways before walking up to the female. She was smaller than herself, rounder too.

She grabbed the female by the arm and pulled her in, "what have you done to me? How am alive?" She growled. The female's eyes widened in fear and it rolled off of her in waves of sourness. She could however, see the confusion among the fear and let the female go.

She gestured to her throat, hoping that the female would understand she was wanting to know what it was.

"It's a bandage," the female said.

"Bandage" the word was funny on her lips, but it was another word she could say in their tongue now.

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Three months later.

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Learning their language was difficult, words did not readily roll off her tongue like they did Kathrine's, the female's name, and she would frequently use wrong words or say things out of order, but she was still learning. She was called Shae, as she was given no name in their tongue and possesed no knowledge of how to properly name oneself.

She missed her pack, she missed the pups and their energy, she missed the hunts and keeping the skins of her kills in the cold moons. She missed the wind running across her skin and the scents it brought. She missed being wild. Now there was nowhere for her to go, no pack to lead. But she was, in a sense, free. Free to do as she pleased, move around as she pleased, but lost.

She wasn't meant to have a pack, losing the first to he naivety helped her grow, and after losing the second to a muderous bastard, new words courtesy of Katherine, she didn't have the desire to lead another.

She was healing better than she was in the forest, but Katherine explained that because she didn't have proper healing before the limp ahe had developed would be permanent. Katherine had found shae while she was on a hike and brought her back to stitch her up. It was a shock when Shae shifted the first time in front of Katherine, who screamed before she got over the initial reaction. And afterwards, her leg had to be stitched again And she was on bed rest for a week.

She understood more than she could speak, Katherine had a child, similar to pups, but were the offspring of twolegs, not wolves. He was a small squirming thing, although older than the pups of her pack he could not run and play like them. He was called Charlie. It made her wonder if her pup would be like this, a helpless thing for a long time. She didn't know when her first memory was and didn't know how to care for a child like this, but she was eager to learn. They fed similar to wolf pups, at the nipple of their mother, and complained when hungry. Beyond that, their needs differed. Unlike a wolf pup, the child relieved themselves in what was called a diaper, to which they were cleaned up and the diaper disposed of. They couldn't speak, but made gurgling noises and such. Shae wanted to teach him her native tongue, but it would have to wait until he could understand more.

The concept of meal times was still foreign to her, and the food the oneshapes ate was even more so. It was a flavor explosion as Katherine had said when she took her first bite.

Shae still prefered her wild animal over the food Katherine ate, but between her inability to hunt every day, and katherine's worry about her diet meant she had to eat what Katherine ate. Steak was her favorite, because as was explained to her, it didn't have to be cooked all the way through, whuch meant it could still have a bloody flavor, which she enjoyed.

The food that went along with the steak was never her favorite, they were bitter and slimy, but Shae begrudgingly choked them down.

Another foreign concept had been the toilet, sink, and bathtub. The most strange of the three was the toilet. The oneshapes didn't relieve themselves outside to mark their territory, but instead in a seat of some sort that washed their waste away.

Katherine also had a pet, which was explained to be an animal kept for company. Shae then understood that the hunter's dogs, were pets. Katherine had a cat, similar to the mountain lions she'd encountered before, but extremely tiny in comparison, and didn't want to rip her throat out. In fact, Shae got along very well with Katherine's cat, called Lily.

Katherine told Shae that she helped oneshapes heal, in a sense, called it being a surgeon, which is how she knew to stitch up Shae's leg wound and treat her neck. It had been a rough moon adjusting to everything, and learning everything, but the two had become close, and Shae would protect Katherine and her child as if they were her pack.