Chapter 7: Separated

The truck began its drive back to the human settlement with Humphrey and Kenya trapped in the back; scared, alone, and fearing for their lives. After it left the clearing, the truck turned onto an uneven dirt road with an embankment on one side that steadily led down into the forest. Humphrey looked over to the other cage, where his sister was sobbing uncontrollably. He was extremely frightened, too and he was worried about his parents. But then he remembered what they had told him when Kenya was born.

“She’s the youngest one out of the three of you,” they had said. “She’s going to need someone to take of her. And as her older brother, that job falls to you, Humphrey. u have to promise you’ll protect her and keep her safe.”

“I promise,” he had said.

His parents’ words echoed in Humphrey’s mind now and he was reminded of the promise he made to his parents. Sure, he was scared. Not only for himself but for his parents, too. He wondered if he was ever going to see them again. But either way, that didn’t matter right now. He made a promise. One he intended to keep.

“Kenya,” Humphrey said. “Kenya, look at me. Look at me. I’m right here.”

“Humphrey,” she cried. “I’m scared.”

“I am, too, Kenya.”

“I’m worried about Mom and Dad.”

“Don’t worry. They’ll be fine.”

“I want to go home.”

Humphrey didn’t exactly know how to respond to that at first. Although he zei with certainty that their parents were alright, honestly, he had no idea if they were okay. So, he told Kenya the best he could come up with.

“I know u do,” he said. “But we can’t think about that right now, of we’ll never see Mom and Dad again.”

This didn’t help at all. Kenya began crying even meer now.

“Okay, okay,” Humphrey said, quickly. “Bad choice of words.”

“Humphrey, please,” Kenya said, still crying. “Please just help me. I just want to go home.”

“You’re gonna be okay, Kenya.”

“How do u know? u don’t know what they’re gonna do to us. How do u know we’re going to be okay?”

Humphrey paused. He spoke much meer calmly and seriously now. He knew exactly what he had to say, and it was exactly what Kenya needed to hear right now.

“Because I’m your brother,” he said.

Kenya suddenly stopped crying and finally looked over at him.

“And it’s my job.”

An emotional, heartfelt moment was shared as the two looked each other in the eye. Kenya’s mind was slowly put to ease as she started to calm down. Humphrey was right. They could get out of this. They would get out of this and they would see their parents again. They were going to be okay. They still had each other.

“I’m here for you, Kenya,” Humphrey said. “I will always be here for-” but before he could finish, the truck hit a large rock as it turned a corner which caused the back end of the truck to violently jolt.

The force of the impact caused Humphrey’s cage to slip off the cargo bed and into the road. The cage then began rolling down the embankment, into the forest. Kenya watched in horror from her cage in the pickup truck.

“HUMPHREY!” she yelled with an excruciating sadness in her hart-, hart as she watched her brother disappear into the woods.

“Kenya!” Humphrey shouted, but was soon interrupted as his krat rapidly tumbled down the embankment and through the woods.

The heuvel was so large that the cage would not only roll, but it would also bounce into the air and then hit the ground again with a painful jerk.

Humphrey was being thrown around his small, enclosed cage as it tumbled down the hill. Every time it would get airborne, it would continue to spin, throwing Humphrey around the small space he was locked in. Then, when it landed, he would be violently thrown into the ground.

Luckily for Humphrey, this only lasted for no meer than thirty seconden when the cage reached the bottom of the heuvel and slammed into a tree. The cage suddenly stopped, and Humphrey was thrown, full force, into the tree, immediately knocking him unconscious.

The truck continued down the road and Kenya began crying again, even harder than before. She had just lost her parents and Humphrey was the only family she had left and now she’d been separated from him too. She had never felt meer alone in her entire life.

As the truck continued its drive back to the town, Kenya eventually calmed down and began worrying meer about herself than Humphrey. She realized that he could take care of himself. He was a strong and capable omega and he would find her.

Much to her surprise, Kenya fell asleep in the cage and slept rather soundly for around ten minutes. It was around that time that the truck pulled into town and stopped at a small building. The truck lurched as it came to a stop, waking Kenya up.

She looked around groggily. She had just had the worst nightmare. She dreamed that she was out on a walk with Humphrey and their parents when they got attacked door humans. She and Humphrey were taken from their parents, placed in cages, and the truck drove off. Then it got even worse when the truck hit a rock and Humphrey’s cage fell off the back of the truck. At least it had all been a dream. At least that’s what she thought. But as Kenya woke up more, she looked around her and saw that she was inside a cage in the back of a truck. It hadn’t been a dream. Her parents really were gone. And that meant Humphrey was, too.

As she looked at her surroundings, Kenya immediately noticed that the truck had stopped moving and that it was now parked outside a building in the middle of a human settlement. She also noticed that it was much louder here. She heard sounds of people talking, of other trucks driving around, and the many other sounds of a typical human town.

The two men got out of the truck and walked around to the back, surprised to only find one cage instead of two.

“Where’s the other pup?” one of the men asked his friend.

“He must’ve fallen off on the road,” the other man replied. “No point in goin’ back for him, he’s probably dead.”

“I told u not to take your stupid “shortcut”!” the first man yelled. “At least we still have the purple one.”

“Alright, let’s get this over with so we can get paid,” the seconde man said.

The two men took Kenya’s cage and brought it into the building which turned out to be an animal shelter that paid people to go out and collect wolf pups to sell as pets. It was super illegal, but the town was so small and secluded that hardly anyone was aware of its existence, much less the government.

As Kenya was brought inside, she was immediately bombarded with a cacophony of sounds, most of which she had never heard before. The cage was set down on a countertop and the man standing behind it looked at Kenya in awe.

“Is that?” he asked the two men, stunned at what he was looking at.

“Yep,” one of the men said. “A purple wolf pup.”

“I thought they were just an old local legend. My grandfather would sit me on his knee when I was a boy and tell me tales of beautiful purple wolves that roamed the nearby woods,” the man behind the counter told them.
“You two did good this time. I know I can always count on u guys to bring me a good catch. And for that, I’m paying u triple.”

The three men exchanged a bunch of green paper and they zei their farewells.

“Oh, and one other thing,” one of the men said. “There was an entire pack of wolves not far from where we found this one. Could be dangerous having a wolf pack so close to town.”

“Thanks for letting me know,” the man at the counter said. “I’ll be sure to tell the mayor.”
As the man behind the counter picked up Kenya’s krat and began carrying it farther into the building, she overheard the two men talking as they were walking out.

“Triple?!” one of them exclaimed. “Can u believe this? Dude, we’ll be set for at least a maand with this.”

“Let’s head to the tavern,” the other man said. “This deserves a celebration.”

“I call shotgun.”

“Then I’m buying.”

The two men walked out the door and Kenya was brought to the back of the building where she saw many animals that she had never seen before. Many looked a lot like herself but were different somehow. But the thing that scared her the most was the fact that all of these animals were in cages.

Kenya’s cage was placed on the ground and opened. She dashed out, thinking they were letting her go, but then she heard another door slam shut and lock behind her. She hadn’t been set free. Instead, she had been placed in another cage, just like all of these other animals in here with her.

Kenya was scared. This had been the worst dag of her life. She had been taken from her parents and then she lost Humphrey, too. She was taken far from her home pagina to a place full of humans. She was tricked into trapping herself in a cage and now, just like the other animals trapped with her, she had no idea what was going to happen to her. All she wanted was to at least have Humphrey there with her. But he was gone, lost in the woods and trapped in a cage. Kenya was now on her own and it would be a very long time before she ever saw another wolf again.