Chapter One: The Finding

"Axel."

He didn't respond. He didn't turn towards the small, bundled girl sitting in the passenger's seat. He didn't twitch his nose or even bat an eye in her direction. Nothing.

He simply kept his long fingers curled over the steering wheel and stared out at the slash of gray road that cut through the white.

"Axel, please."

He sighed. A gray puff of smoke slithered away from his lips and out of the open window. The freezing barrage of air outside destroyed the gray wisp, shredding it mercilessly. Axel didn't notice of course. The green eyes never stayed from the yawning white mouth before him. Nor from he gray tongue they hurtled down. He did, though, allow himself to speak.

"We're lycanthropes, Namine. Your Sister's heat should be more than enough to warm you."

To this response, he sensed the roll of her grey eyes. She slumped heavily in the mountain of jackets piled around herself. Like the acidic flavor of lemons, her helplessness drifted out of her pores to sting at his nostrils. With a small pursing of the lips, he added another tally to his mental list. He knew exactly how many times he had given the girl this piece of information. Eight times. Each time, she seemed to ignore him in a stubbornness that was testament to her still strong humanity.

She was not new to her powers. Her Sister, the wolf-half of her mind and body, had been on many a Hunt. And though the girl looked like a mere sixteen, her milky skin unblemished, her short tresses a pastel yellow- she was in reality over fifty years old. Old enough to be sent on Pack missions with senior packmates. Packmates like him.

Axel leaned a fraction of an inch to his left, sieving through the scents of the air like grains of sand. He smelled pure snow. This scent was a monopoly. Everything was coated in the frozen water as if it was a fur. A part of the skin. The trees, the ground, even the sky were all dipped in the thick paleness of last night's blizzard.

Then, under that, a thin piece of blanket under the mattress and comforter that was snow, was the cinnamon spice of pines and the rich sweetness of earth.

But he did not find a single scent of human or other.

Good. They were not being followed.

His female packmate shuffled in her seat, her soft voice sounding again. This time, just a coarse whisper.

"Axel we've been driving all day. I can't take this weather much longer.. Not if you don't close that window.."

He let loose another steamy exhalation. He couldn't close it. Not when he needed their immediate surroundings readily available to his Brother's sensitive nose. Her safety was important to him. As his subordinate, the fierce instinct to protect was a constant needle in this thoughts. But his fingers remained rigid. They dared not soften.

"We're only ten miles away Namine. Once we've delivered the money to Xemnas," his eyes flicked the three stacks of Benjamins tucked beneath his shirt. "-then, you can let your Sister out and enjoy Her fur."

He felt her eyes glaring at him. Digging like icepicks into the profile of his face.

"Orders first. Always orders first," she murmured. Rotund pink fingers came out to pull a cotton hood over her face. She turned so her back was to him, her front straining as far as it could from the frozen window's white-veined face.

"I miss the old you, Ax..."

He stifled a flinch her summoning of the archaic epithet. He was about to say something, a trivial thing about the past, when he smelled it.

It.

His eyes widened, muscles tightening into metal. The beast inside of him opened a crimson maw to let a black tongue loll.

He leaned heavily into the steering wheel, analyzing the white forest as it whizzed by with frenzied jerks of his irises. He saw nothing. Only the snow. Snow and snow and more snow. The weak line of road. The bleached sky above them with its sagging sun.

Axel did not relax. He couldn't. The scent in the air filled his nose like a unwanted perfume, saturated every breath he drew into his lungs.

HUMAN- it screamed. There was a human somewhere close. And the further the rusted truck hurtled down the empty road, the stronger it grew.

Minutes passed by and the girl stiffened.

She tore off her jackets and pressed her face against the window that had once so repulsed her. He watched from the nicks of his eyes as her chest lifted. Her yellow hair took on a silver glint, her cheeks flushing. Her Sister was close to the surface. About to break from her skin. Never before had Axel so valued his comrade's singular ability to snap her senses into razor sharpness.

She whirled to him, and he, for the first time, allowed his eyes to break from their mark on the windshield to meet the face of the girl.

"Stop!" she mouthed to him and, without hesitation, he slammed his foot on the breaks. The tires floundered, unable to grip onto the grit of the asphalt. It was slick with ice. The truck began to serpentine. Weaving madly across frozen road and chunky snow. Axel clenched his molars, willing with all his might for some spark of friction.

Distantly, he noted a new shivering of the wall of pines. Their needles writhed. The snow eddied and swirled as if caught in water...

The front of wind hit them like colliding car. Axel felt the metal frame jerk backwards. The truck began to slow and he almost could have smiled in triumph. Almost.

The truck crawled to a stop, a mess of white powder curtaining the windshield. Axel and Namine let out a collective breath. Only a hand-sized piece of the shield remained transparent. It was in this small glimpse of glass that he saw it.

Saw the thing that had dipped into his packmate's senses and DEMANDED a stop.

The human.

It was nearly as white as everything else. It moved like a wounded thing, dragging itself onto the road with slurred motions. It was hunched and blocky, resembling more a sickly bear than a man. But Axel felt the scent. Felt it as acutely as a fire pulsing inside of his mouth.

He turned sharply to the girl. "Stay here," he barked out. She nodded. Her hair had returned to its limpid yellow. Her shivers started back up and she burrowed into the seat's padding. He rolled up his window while he opened the door. He cast a small look at his passenger. The gray orbs were fixed upon him. Not angry, as they had been before. Or miserable. Only keenly alert. "Get him in here fast," came her muffled call.

He grimaced and shut the door behind him. The air was knife sharp and the snow numbingly cold. But he ignored both completely. With lupine lopes, he glided the human and wiped the snow from its face with ruddy thumbs.

Axel felt his heart do a flip at the sight he uncovered.

It was a boy. As old as, if not a little older than, the appearance of the female in the car. His skin was nearly colorless. His lips carried a blue tint and the eyes, dusted with snow, were closed in a mask of comatose.

Axel cursed under his breath. The boy was near death.

He didn't understand why this bothered him so. He didn't even know why they had stopped to witness the youngling human collapse in the first place. But his instincts had his arms wrapping themselves around the motionless form, hauling it against his chest. He did not argue or pause for thought. He had learned through the sharp discipline of fangs and claws to never question his instincts.

In a split-second he was back at the truck, wrenching open the backseat door. He batted away empty cans and trash and laid the boy across the length of the seat. With careful swipes, he cleared the snow from his body. From the blond spikes of his hair. From the puffy cotton of his coat. With that done, he tried to pull off his sweater. It caught the stacks of money at his waist. With a snarl, he impatiently grabbed the offending paper and- at loss of a safer place to put it- crammed it into the boy's jeans. In that location, he could keep a wary eye on them both. Freed, he tore the sweater over his head. It came over the boys a second later. Axel worked the limp arms through the sleeves and tucked the end of it over his waistband. The boy swam in the sweater and Axel was glad for it. The warmth that lingered in its woolen threads brought a drop of color back to the youth's cheek.

A moment later, Namine was offering up her own collection of outer-wear. Jackets, wind-breakers, coats were all pulled off her own person to drape around the small frame of the boy's. Axel did not thank her. He didn't even look at her. For another reason beyound his understanding, she too shared his primal need to see to the human's survival.

When the boy was sufficiently encumbered in fabric, Axel lent down and put his nose to the boy's neck. He smelled decay. But in the usual amounts. All humans smelled of decay, their bodies constantly aging. He also smelled a resurgence of blood. The heart was beating again. The blood was flowing again. Axel closed his eyes in a flood of relief. Then he frowned.

Why should he care?

Letting the youngling's blood scent swirl in his nose a little longer than necessary, Axel pulled back and lightly shut the truck's door.

He climbed into his own seat, and let the metal slam behind him with a satisfying "thump".

The green gaze he sent his packmate's way was laden with a myriad of emotions. Joy. Rage. Most potently of all: confusion.

She vibrated in her only remaining sweater, and the grin she sent his was fluttering like a white wing.

"I can't wait to see you explain this to Alpha."