All part of the plan I just made up

Dominus' studious blue eyes remained locked on the image of the coyote disappearing over the closest ridge of the Maw. He remained silent, but he had doubts that she would ever return. He had his suspicions this whole time that she might have only proposed this hunting team idea as means to buy his trust for as long as it took until an opportunity arose where she could slip away... and this seemed like just the perfect opportunity to do so. His forelimbs could be seen shaking as he wanted to move them, to follow in the echo of her trail and see if she actually began tracking or whether she tried to run away from him and hide her trail. He wanted to move, to follow, but he knew she would catch him from a mile away even if he tried.. so instead, the behemoth turned his square body around and began his descent back into the thicker pines. Plus, he was hungry. His hopes that their plan would actually work outweighed his distrust in her, and he decided... for now, the best thing was to give her the benefit of the doubt.

The evening sky barely offered any light after only a short time. What light it did offer seemed heavily shrouded in the pines, but such was the perfect atmosphere for dark-colored giants to disappear in when they did not want to be seen. Dominus quickly found himself growing less anxious, comforted now that he did not feel so exposed but the forest smelled wet and confused his nose with watered-down scents. He grew up on this mountain, so most only took a bit more time to decipher before he recognized them as scents native to it. Trying to piece unknown scents of the trees and plants back to the ones he remembered when he was a pup here was like trying to pull just the hide away from a dead rabbit and leaving only the meat- it didn't always happen that way. Sometimes, what he pulled out of his memory had attachments and these memories came with small snippets of his childhood. He began to recall memories with his siblings and the other pack members and his mind just took him away to a different place. He missed it. Even with the seasons that had passed so far, he was still scared of the evils in wolves, that evil he had seen in his own father. His father had been an alpha, did that evil trickle down to the other wolves? Were they really created by demons? There were so many questions that he had that made him afraid of other wolves, but was it worth it to live in a state of fear when he felt so alone? His thoughts drifted back to the coyote as he recalled the skittish way she moved and he wondered how she managed to get by living as wild as she did.

He tried to let the thoughts on his mind rest as he found a fallen, rotting pine. The pine's branches had long been dead though were still attached, and the scent was thick enough that the teen felt he could get away with resting beside it. The titan wasn't picky about his placement in the soil, he simply plopped behind what branches seemed the thickest and were closest to the other trees. Sitting around and waiting did nothing to help him keep his unstable mind quiet, and after not long at all, it went right back to playing tricks on him.

'You are never alone, Dominus.' whispered indiscernible voices played by the titan's own mind. There were so many that it frightened him. At first, his muscles froze as his body considered reactively springing up to defend himself against the apparent army of voices that he had just heard- but it seemed he was familiar with these voices. As eerie as they were to hear, he did not react. He had already done enough reacting, he knew his best course of action was to ignore. They weren't real... at least, he never saw anyone attached to the voices... so they couldn't hurt him... right?

The black snake that had been silent throughout his travels, loyally wrapped around the teen's neck finally reminded him firmly of its presence with a gentle squeeze. Dominus ignored the snake at first, though it seemed to grow more and more persistant.. constricting until finally Dominus let out a growl and snapped his giant head up from his paws. His thick fangs were bared as he rolled to sit as upright as possible and outstretch his neck, threatening to throw the snake off as the snarl was clearly meant for it.

The snake began to uncoil, leaving the teen's neck as he protested against the snake's actions. It was not through with its plan, however. The black, oil-slick looking Kingsnake pooled down the behemoth's neck and coiled right at the base of the wolf's chest in the damp soil, between its forelimbs. It made itself a comfortable bed beneath the wolf's heavy neck and chest and Dominus questioned what it was doing. Had it sensed what he was focused on, what he was afraid of... or only that he was afraid? As the storm of rage that had been within him calmed to a slight drizzle, he began to admire how calmly the snake seemed to be looking up at him. When he was a child, he had wanted a companion of his own just like this after witnessing his brother with a cobra; he had one of his own now, didn't he? This snake appeared to be staying, and it even appeared to be... in tune with him, somewhat. His heavy, inky lips smiled when the sound of the screeching coyote pulled him from this bonding moment with his companion and he glared out up the mountain and over the fallen pine. He could not see anything from where they were, and she still seemed distant.. but he wanted to wait to leave until the snake climbed back around his neck again.

The wolf titan stood finally, waiting for the snake to coil up his forelimbs as it usually did when he heard the sound of something else rustling through the branches of the pines further to the west behind him. It was certainly something heavy as he heard the crunching of the autumn forest bed beneath a massive weight. There weren't many things bigger than Dominus, and hearing these sounds made his heart race. This he knew was real, this he knew he had a right to begin panicking over this unlike over the voices... but surprisingly, the boy remained absolutely calm as he thought this over the route he was going to take to get out of the forest undetected. It seemed to be moving in the same direction as he was, toward the screech of the coyote, and that posed to be the biggest problem of getting out.

Dominus held his breath as he attempted to move to the south, which unfortunately led to the end of the forest.. but he would have to come to her call from a different angle and retrace her trail. Hopefully, he could do it at a much quicker speed than whatever it was lumbering through the forest actually managed to make it out of the pines. The animal seemed to be moving rather slow, and that gave him hope- Dominus broke out in a full sprint and began breathing again, focusing hard on his lungs and his limbs as he pushed his body to devour the space between he and the coyote as quickly as possible. He had to be careful, descending the mountain first with incredible speed only until it led him out of the pines, and then he would begin climbing up to the barren parts of the mountainside where the rams lived. Climbing slowed him down, climbing hurt his paws and made his legs burn, climbing absolutely sucked to try and do at a quick rate- but he pushed himself on in the direction that he knew her trail had to be based on where he could remember hearing that screech. He had to focus on keeping his breathing calm, struggling to take in scents on his way upward.. but he did so, and he did it enough that he, fortunately, did manage to catch her scent and the scent of the ram.

A deep breath left him as he refocused his new task now on actually following that scent and catching up to her before whatever was in the forest did. He stopped for a moment to study it and the exact direction she went, his head hanging low and the snake dangling from his outstretched neck. The snake managed to uncoil through the wolf's thick fur and slip to the ground during this moment, then began traveling behind him the wolf but Dominus didn't have time to stop. The snake had already made him hesitate it enough, so he shot it one quick glare before he continued, wondering why it had to abandon him now after what had just happened in the forest. It was probably running in fear from the possibility of getting caught by what was in the pines, and that sort of cowardice made Dominus' lip quiver. Had he really considered that thing his companion? He took off running until the snake was no longer in his sight.

Meanwhile, the snake took larger sweeps than normal across the mountainside.. the ribbons in the soil that its weight left nearly completely hiding the footprints that had once been there. The evident trail of the wolf, the ram, and the coyote were slowly becoming mixed with dead leaves and other autumn forest rubble as the snake continued along their path. It knew something that Dominus did not, that the bear had seen Dominus leave the forest and was instead following the teen's trail, and not aiming for the coyote at all. The snake intended to slow the process as much as possible by hiding which way they went if it could.

Dominus ran along the mountainside through the sparse outer pines of the forest, now able to gauge what direction the coyote and the ram had gone and speed himself and still follow it somewhat accurately. It took him time, but eventually, he did catch up to them. He could see the tailless coyote only somewhat before it disappeared over another ridge of the mountain, but he could see the ass of the ram and the outline of its horns quite well still on his side of the ridge. Dominus did not have time to fully figure out what was going on and whether or not Exxon was ready to turn around and help him attack the ram, but he initiated a fight anyway in a rush. He came up behind the ram quickly, barrelling across the ground with his jowls agape and ready to snap together on the ram's back right leg, just above the knee where it sloped into the ram's thigh. The downhill slope was to Dominus' left and he would force the ram's right leg to cross over it's left as the wolf swung its weight in alliance with gravity. He aimed to completely bring down the ram, to make it lose its footing and tumble down into Dominus' waiting jaws. As he felt the ram struggle while being pulled with the wolf's jaws, he knew it would do exactly that and let go just in time to avoid the ram's first good kick. Dominus slid with his momentum with less control than he would have liked to have, but he did manage to keep himself upright haphazardly and waited as the ram slid down, its back legs still not upright beneath it with one of them injured. Dominus wanted to attack higher this time, at the ram's thighs and focused on the injured right leg as it came closer to him. Jaws latched onto the leg and this time he thrashed, but the ram had his footing and his awareness now, immediately doing its best to assault the wolf with its good back leg and keep itself upright with its forehooves.

Dominus felt the ram kick at his chest as his teeth remained securely set in the ram's thigh, the wolf's breath leaving him for a couple of those hits but he sought his canines deeper and deeper into the ram's hind until he could feel the pressure of blood on his teeth that he was searching for. He'd ruptured the artery that seemed to work for knocking his prey down and knew it would be over for the ram soon. Not soon enough to avoid some good bruising, though. Damn it.