The journey to the mountain was rugged. Though it hadn’t been snowing when the old man first climbed, he could still retrace his steps by instinct.

  ‘It is too slippery, and my knees are-’ but before he finished, he thought, he slipped off on top of a stone he was using as a stepping stone.

  “THUD!” he nded on his butt on soft ground. “Hahaha!” he ughed as he tried getting up, but then again failed as his knees twitched in pain. “Ow!” he nded back on the snow.

  ‘How far have I fallen…’ he thought, scooping up a handful of snow and pressing it against his aching knees. ‘I should have also asked for painkillers from the young girl,’ he recalled the sour face of the doctor’s apprentice.

  ‘Her name was Sierra? Kierra? Tierra?’ Then he stared at his knees before giving up remembering the girl’s name.

  “So, I’ll be here for a while then?” he muttered to himself, looking up at the sky.

  ‘I’ll walk again when I’m ready.’ He was old now—and he figured he'd earned the right to rest. At least, that’s what he told himself.

  After a few more hours of slipping, tripping, and resting, he finally found the hut he had built a long time ago; it was still there.

  “There you are!” he tapped his knees. There was a tinge of pain gnawing at it. He paused for a while to have a good look at it as he tried to recover his knees.

  It was now covered with vines, but it was well hidden. It was actually just a marker since the alcohol he buried was not inside the shack rather it was just around the shack. He didn’t want anyone to find the special liquor he crafted himself.

  He even left a rune carved in the wooden walls of the shack to ensure that monsters would evade it.

  But it was just the old man, overdoing it! ‘Like someone would go here in Moss Peak!’ It was the home of powerful beasts.

  He then approached the hut but immediately noticed that the door was open. He had his sword at his waist, and he id his hands over the handle of the bde.

  His senses heightened, he could tell that something was inside the hut.

  The old man’s steps didn’t stop as he kept his eyes on the door. Strangely, he didn’t sense any hostility, and in the frontier, these were the dangerous types of encounters.

  ‘Damn, it must be an intelligent one.’ Although the chance of danger was high, it just pced a smile on his face.

  A scent reached his nose—something like a dog.

  Still, he didn’t lower his guard, and upon reaching the open doors of the hut, a rge wolf y there. He immediately discerned the braided shapes on the wolf’s face. “A mother wolf!” he excimed, since it was a really rare type of wolf.

  “Mother Wolf—Children’s Shepherd,” he muttered. A northern legend, supposedly a giant wolf that watched over lost kids and guided them to a new home.

  ‘Wait, don’t tell me—’

  He looked around the shack and spotted it: a suspiciously quiet bundle of clothes on the floor just beside the mother wolf.

  “Ah, shit,” he muttered. So much for it being just a sack of potatoes. He let go of the sword’s handle and sighed like a man surrendering to fate.

  “Seriously? What do you expect me to do? I can’t feed a baby! I’m a man!” He groaned, pointing at his chest. He cked the required body parts to feed a baby.

  As if mocking him, the wolf curled up protectively around the baby like it had heard him and was just waiting for him to finish his compint.

  “What?” Alphecca could somehow understand what the mother wolf was doing.

  The wolf purposely moved its breast close to the baby, and the child automatically began sucking on the first nipple it sensed.

  His eyebrow misaligned when he saw what was happening. ‘Is that even safe?’ he questioned the scene of a wolf feeding a human child. Then the wolf rocked its head, getting the attention of the old man, and it licked its teeth.

  The old man needed some minutes before decoding the message.

  “Ah, you feed the baby, and I feed you? Is that what you are implying?” The old man was just guessing, but the wolf nodded like it understood what he was saying.

  Alphecca held his head by the temple and began thinking. He had taken care of children before, but mainly to train them how to fight. ‘And I’m supposed to be looking for a pce to die,’ he had never been this confused in his life, even in the face of all the dangers he had met during his adventuring years.

  ‘I could always just drop him off at an orphanage… maybe even in the vilge—’

  His shoulder jerked as a sudden bark cut through his thoughts.

  “Woof!” It was the first time the wolf had ever used its voice to snap the old man out of his reverie.

  “Okay! I accept!” he knelt, checking up on the baby that was sucking like its life depended on it. The wolf then used its snout to signal Alphecca to check the baby. He tried to slowly lift the baby, but it was locked into sucking.

  “Come on, baby, let go!” The old man compined, but the wolf warned him.

  “Grr!!” Both of them stared at each other before the mother wolf licked his face

  “Yuck!” He stepped back in disgust, and the baby finally let go of the breast he was feeding.

  He opened up the bundle of clothes. “A boy!” he muttered, but his eyes widened as he saw the boy’s eyes. He was not sure if it was a mutation or a sickness, but it looked fierce and beautiful at the same time.

  ‘This boy has clearly just been born…’ he thought, the girl who was cleaning the bloody clothes fshed in his mind. ‘Born in the vilge of Ahas… but was thrown out? Why? I could never imagine that those happy drunkards would do this.’ Questions kept piling on his mind, but then the baby stared at him eye to eye.

  “What are you looking at?” The old man gred back. It would scare babies and even animals, but the boy just had a steady look at him… This moment snapped something inside the old man. ‘There can only be light when there is dark.’ It was a phrase that came from his father.

  “Well, I would have to call him something,” The wolf looked at the old man as if trying to convey something.

  “I’m not enjoying this, dog! Don’t look at me like that!” The she-wolf clearly took offense and bared its teeth, but the old man didn’t back down and gred back. It was just a temporary rage, and the mother wolf returned to her usual self.

  “The morning sigh… and with an eye for a monster… Simon then.” He christened the name of the boy. “Sorry, but I can’t give you my surname; there will be complications.” Then followed by a hearty ugh.