ALO Short Stories 2: Reika's Loss

Reika's Loss is the second short story released in the ALO Short Stories series. The cover art was drawn by Chylk. 
Read it here. 
== Summary ==
The story starts with Reika giving birth to her new pups. There's two females and a male, and they soon get their names. Blaze, her mate, however feels discust for the male pup, who is deformed, and later called Daniel.
The two females die after a sickness, but Daniel survives, and, since his father abandoned him, has an unusually strong bond with his mother. Reika loves him more than anything and raises him well. Daniel does face the hard side of beind deformed: being left out. But Reika always keeps his spirits up.
After a year, Reika and Blaze decided to bear another batch of pups, since new, non-deformed pups would maybe lighten the mood in the family for a bit. She bears two males and a female, but the males die quickly, and Blaze blames Daniel for it, while Reika sees him as innocent. 
Only the female, Laika, survives, and she and Daniel bond together quite nicely. One day, when Reika allows Daniel to take Laika on a small walk in their territory, Laika returns alone. The family looks for Daniel, but there's only a faint cougar scent and one eye in a pool of dried blood. Reika, who thinks her son is dead, goes crazy and runs away for hours, far beyond her own territory, until she howls her grief out into the world. She, however, howls near a human house, and gets shot mid-howl, after which she dies.
== Gallery ==
File:Reikasloss.png|Early cover art by Skylacine
File:Loss.jpeg|Early cover art by Keyace
Category:Short stories