His daughter

Chapter 3

Casper released another growl, one loud enough to be heard above the deafening noise of battle. 

At once, he felt the pack's mental connection click into one thought:

Alpha.

Their collective relief and newfound determination to destroy the threat that was influenced by the appearance of their leader caused warmth to bloom in Casper's chest. 

A warmth that wasn't simply the wolf stored inside of him. 

He ran over his pack and the humans, honing in on a particularly loud group of humans surrounding three cannons. 

One man spotted the diving wolf and screamed. 

That was the last noise he made before he was engulfed in the mouth of Casper .

 The smell of flesh permeated the immediate area as he walk through the scattered body and it gave him petty satisfaction that humans smelled like nothing other than food when they were eaten alive.

 He wasn't sure if they had lost any pack lives, but he wasn't willing to take that chance by lingering.

 So what if the humans would win by driving them from their home; the cowards had attacked in the middle of the night.

 They knew that if they attacked when the pack was ready, they would have lost without so much as a soul to tell their story.

 They would have been erased from the world, only a pile of dirty remaining to walk in the surface of the earth, but never tell of what happened on the battlefield that day.

The pack responded to his signal immediately, abandoning whatever fight they had been involved in, running enough to be out of range of the human weapons as they ran west.

As the pack retreated, Casper lingered so that he could keep bring up the rear. 

He looked around at the various puffs of light as the cannons went off, trying to catch the tails of retreating wolves.

 The twangs of arrows as they left the soldiers' bows reached his sensitive ears and he growled, but remained where the soldiers couldn't reach him. 

As much as he wanted to tear them apart, he knew that he needed to stay out of harm's way, now that the pack was out of immediate danger. 

As he was staring down at the enemies, wanting to tear them apart with no mercy, an agonized bellow echoed off the rock beside him. 

The guttural scream was that of a wolf.

 The familiar roar hit Casper like a blast from one of the cannons below.

Morgana.

Daughter.

No, no, no, he growled in terror, running around.

 His night vision lit up the world around him and he watched Morgana as she fell down.

 The cannonball had collided with her side and one of her legs was crumpled against her bloodied fur.

 A small brigade of the king's soldiers had circled the mountain and were approaching the other side to encircle the mountain.

 What if they had caught Xavier and Evelyn? 

The thought pushed him faster and faster forward, fueled by the sliver of hope that he could save his sister and daughter.

 Why was Morgana still anywhere near the mountain?

 She should have been long gone.

 And why had she been running slow enough for their cannons to reach her in the first place? 

It didn't matter, all that mattered was that Casper reached them before Morgana finally hit the ground. 

She appeared to be frozen; 

she wasn't struggling or trying to right herself up.

 Damn!

he hoped his daughter was safe.

 Her large form fell below the treeline and he lost sight of her, but he could hear the soldiers' hoots of success as the ground shook when the heavy beast plummeted into it.

Morgana! 

He called to her with their mental connection.

 All wolves shared it, as it allowed them to speak when they were in their wolf form.

 There was no reply from his little sister.

 He dive into the forest, right where he had watched her fall with his infant daughter clutched in her paws. 

As he dive over the heads of the humans, he snapped one up in his jaws and before the man could react, bit him cleanly in two. Blood, bones, and the tender innards of the man spurted into Casper's  mouth with the act, but he paid no mind to that.

 He tossed the pieces back into the small army of two dozen men. 

They had been busy in their attempts at stabbing spears into Morgana's side, where she fought weakly, baring her teeth and growling and batting at them with one large paw, but the soldiers had backed off abruptly when Casper had killed their comrade. 

Blood and gore dripped from his mouth as he stood protectively over Morgana's form and a steady, menacing growl leaked from between his glistening teeth.

Casper... Your daughter, Morgana whispered weakly through their mental connection.

 She is okay. 

And yet, the baby was silent. 

Casper didn't dare take his glare off of the soldiers, who were slowly regaining their confidence. 

Every parental instinct wanted him to check on his daughter himself, but all of his instincts as an Alpha forced him to take on these challengers to protect his family.

The leader of the men, a tall, bulky soldier with an eye patch over his right eye and a deep scar peeking out from above and below the patch, stepped forward. 

His voice did not waver, but rang confidently above the continuous growls emanating from deep within Casper.

 The man raised his sword and pointed it directly between Casper's s eyes, though his head rose high above the humans.

 "I will slay thee, monster, in the name of the king."

A sharp growl ripped from Casper at his words, startling the soldiers. 

 Casper risked a glance downward as he heard her intake of breath right before she began to wail in a way that only a frightened infant can.

 Her face was red with the effort of her screams, and she shook her clenched fists angrily from where she had pulled them free of the swaddle. 

His daughter had never cried like she did right then; Casper was shocked at the amount of power in her tiny lungs.

"It has a human child!" the leader shouted.

 Casper's stomach dropped as he recalled that the humans were unaware that the wolves were also men and women; 

they would never suspect that his daughter was one of them.

"Casper! Take her and go! I can't run, but I can hold them off long enough for you to get away" Morgana began to rise to her feet.

His daughter still tucked in one of her paws. 

The humans charged them then.

 All of their fear was gone, replaced by the determination to save the child they thought had been kidnapped by monsters. 

Casper roared and leaped between Morgana and the charging men, taking out four of them with his muscular tail.

 This didn't even slow down the humans. 

His daughter screamed even louder as the noise and commotion rose.

 Tbc