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You lunge forward, attempting to bat the handgun from Tiva's hand as she pulls the trigger. You make contact with the weapon fractions of a second too late, knocking her arm to the side just after the shot is fired, sending the weapon flying.

You hear a yelp of pain from the soldier and spare a second to glance over at him. He's been shot in the leg, and he's still limping away, supported by one of his comrades.

Before you can stop her, Tiva dashes away from you, shifting the second gun into her right hand.

Tiva's finger tenses on the trigger and she steadies her hand, firing at the back of the retreating soldier. The first shot goes wide, and the man looks back, almost tripping in his panic.

The next two shots don't miss, sending him careening face-first into the asphalt with a short gurgling scream. The other two soldiers, not wanting to be Tiva's next targets, take cover behind a concrete barrier and return fire. You pull Tiva to the ground as bullets whiz through the air where she was standing.

"We've got to get out of here," you say over the whipcracks of gunfire. "They have training and better weapons. Fear of the wolf put the scare into them, but they aren't just going to turn tail again after you shot at their backs."

Tiva spits and tries to rise. You pull her back down again in the nick of time. "I can't let them see me run," she says. "Not after what they did to me."

"You'll get your vengeance," you say, more calmly than you feel. "But if we stay here, we'll die for nothing. If the humans really mean to come down on us hard, we're going to need every fighter we can get. We need you."

She looks back in the direction of the soldiers, uncertainty in her eyes. Finally she winces and starts to crawl away toward cover, shooting blindly behind her to give you time to maneuver.

The other wolves have already scattered, taking the rifle, by the time you and Tiva finally reach the safety of the alley. You peek around the corner, but the humans don't appear to have followed you.

The two of you run toward home in silence. You want to tell her that everything will be all right. But you know that would be a lie.

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Chapter 4 Pacification

"Our kind is no stranger to adversity. What little we know of our history is a testament to struggle and resiliency. We'll always find a way to endure and come out stronger on the other side." — Haken, shop foreman and self-declared warmaster

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A period of newfound turmoil is a duplicitous thief, the hours you feed into it simultaneously expanding and contracting; time seems to slow, every choice an agony of indecision while the world moves all too fast around you, giving the impression of a slow-motion crawl within a whirlwind of otherwise frenetic activity.

The days immediately following the declaration of martial law seemed as unreal then as they do to you now, standing atop your favorite perch a block removed from the pack's town square, two months after your world turned upside down. A pacification squad patrols the darkened street below, intercepting any werewolves they encounter, verbally assaulting them with a standard litany of questions: "Name? Identification number? Business and destination?"

It was child's play to evade the human soldiers, but the pack quickly learned the advantage of being seen and recorded on a regular basis after squads started breaking into the homes of wolves they hadn't seen in several days, accusing them of secrecy and sedition.

Daily lessons and workplace hours are strictly enforced, not only by the humans, but by the Haven Assembly as well. The adult wolves make little effort to hide the fact that they are being pressured to keep workplace production up and running despite constant interference from military patrols.

It was only a matter of time before the pack decided to push back. The secret meeting taking place in the building below your lookout is where the revolution begins.

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Your weekdays are tightly regimented, every lesson and work-evening watched by a military overseer, making regular outside training an impossibility. You use the weekends to evade the squads, training your body and mind, skills needed now more than ever before.

Who do you spend the majority of your limited time training with during the military occupation?

The weekends when you're able to slip away unnoticed are one of the only things that have kept you sane over the last few months.

You watch the squads patrol beneath you as your mind drifts back to one lesson in particular, not long after the occupation….

Ahote arches an eyebrow as he reads through the answers on your written test.

Lessons with the sage have been few and far between since the pacification squads began to sweep the streets of Haven, but Ahote's teaching has grown in scope and fervor. Topics ranging from mathematics, to biology, to law have been thrown at you with bewildering speed, and you're just intelligent enough to pick out the most important concepts from each of them. Your retention isn't perfect, but it seems to satisfy your mentor.

"This is good, Decaarr, very good." Ahote stands up behind his desk and paces back and forth, hands clasped behind his back. The wooden floor is starting to show signs that this activity is repeated quite often, its varnish flaked and worn off, the wood scuffed. "I was afraid that we wouldn't have enough time, but I'm confident that you're ready for anything the pack or the humans can throw at you. No education is ever complete, but yours has reached a level of sufficiency. We must talk of more important matters now.

"We are on the brink of a crisis. The Alpha Assembly and Human Relations Council have done nothing to prevent the humans' occupation of our home, and I have it on good authority that some on the Assembly have been colluding with the military, offering them places to base their activities closer to our homes and families."

Ahote throws on a red cloak and opens the door leading out to street. "Attend me. We're going to pay one of our corrupt politicians a visit. Maybe we'll see if you've learned something. Consider it a trial by fire. I have sufficient evidence that this wolf has been providing the military with a location to secretly torture packmembers thought guilty of sedition against the human government. We're going to shut him down."

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