Hit the reset button

Finally, at rest and not wanting to be bothered, the sound of snow crunching snapped me out of slumber, suddenly hypersensitive to sounds outside of the occasional flutter of wings, wind, or ice drops hitting the ground. My jaws snapped a couple of times upwards and outwards into the air, scraping along the forest floor and scooping up dirt and snow along the way before coming up with the top half of my body. I swear my body was up before the light of the moon was able to hit my eyes. I was in defense mode before I was even fully conscious - my body opting to act defensively rather than wait to know what was happening. I looked around tensely, swaying subtly from the throbbing ache on my chest. The wound my father inflicted hadn't been touched since the day I left and now was a beating reminder of what I had worked to get away from. Even though I was miles away from that place, I was still suffering from it... still under his control.

My maw draped open slightly, breathing deeply from the abrupt surge of chemicals lighting up my veins. Reddish orbs settled on a large dark and white cat - I groaned. I honestly thought she left for good. But here she was in all of her glory. Oh? And lookie here... she brought a friend. Dark red ears swiveled backward and I sneered at the sight of another wolf. The last wolf I saw... Was it that girl from way back... "You." Air escaped my lungs and I blinked trying to see if it was really her. The girl from the pack fight? "You made it out alive." I said breathlessly, still tensed in form but genuinely curious. The little girl that was thrown in front of me was my one-way ticket to acceptance into the pack as an adult. Was this not her? I leaned forward and whined softly. "I thought they would have killed out by now..." I said, still processing what was going on.

That's when the laughter started, though, not from my own lungs. The crackling, distorted, gurgling kind that resounded within the walls of my own head.
"You little shit, she's come to bring you back. You never finished the job."
I shook my head slowly, only half believing what I heard.
"No. She can't." I spoke, still eyeing  her form up and down as if she were something being presented. Her? She looks like she weighs two, maybe three pounds. She was going to be me back with what army?
I felt a wave of cold wash over my legs at first, and then creep up my limbs and into my core. That's why the cat was here.
The rumbling laughter sounded like it was the beginning of an earthquake in my ears.
"Now you're getting it."
I motioned my head no again, remembering how scared she looked in that circle. The trembling in her body, the utter fear sprawled across her face. Why would she bring me back there? I lowered my head, evening out with my spine. It didn't make sense for her to want to coax me back to that place. Wouldn't she want to get away too?
"You're not scared of me?" I whispered to the smaller female, looking deep into her facial features. I saw what I looked like in her eyes back then... when all the wolves around me hooted and howled for me to make my initiatory kill. I saw what I was turning into. I wrinkled my nose in disgust at the memory. "You should be." I growled quietly, not out of anger... but out of repulsion of myself and what I had planned to do to her over and over again before the actual day of the ceremony. Oh, if only she knew! I remember that lusting intensity that congested my senses. The forceful hunger that wrung my stomach. I wanted to desecrate her body and then drive my mouth into her stomach - Oh, the kinds of things that would have poured out! I wanted to - Stop.

I felt the urge of wanting to keep dreaming about it, fantasizing about what it would have felt like. Was this really what I wanted?
"How nice that would feel..." There that voice was again. It responded as if it were reading my thoughts.

I rested my maw down in the snow, watching the pair before me. The cats' words ultimately fell on deaf ears for I was weighing out in my mind what was the reality of them being here versus what I wanted to believe. I opted to watch them intensely, pulling my limbs tighter against my body if only incrementally to keep the throbbing on my chest at bay.