You return from the memory with a sharp shiver, a bitter wind rising up through the alley beside your perch. The wind brings with it the ripe scent of decay as bags of rubbish and waste slowly rot, tucked away in far corners and heaped within the confines of uninhabitable buildings.
The elders have often referred to Haven as the rotting corpse of a city, and now it smells the part. You can't be sure, but the last time the sanitation crew swept through the streets has to have been weeks ago; every adult wolf is now forced into one step of production or another, cogs in the gears of the human machine.
At first the Builders, wolves of manufacturing and metal, were grateful for the extra help in their labors, but as egos clashed and the wolves of the Alpha Assembly slowly accustomed themselves to working with their hands, production of the humans' goods barely peaked over the old standard.
It's whispered that the consolidation of the pack's workforce actually has less to do with productivity and more to do with control and cataloguing the location of each adult at all times. The days are for working, and the nights strictly for recovering for the next day's work.
Despite the military's curfew, the pack's youth chafed at being confined indoors during the late evening, and many risked reprisal by sneaking out to secret gatherings. There was a certain thrill to skulking about beneath the military's proverbial nose, and it almost felt like a game until one of your classmates was caught trying to steal a soldier's dagger.
The boy was rushed to the pack's doctor after being shot twice in the chest. The elders said he might never recover. The games stopped after that; reality finally sank in. The meetings continue, but there is a solemn quality to them now, absent the muffled laughter and merriment of the earlier gatherings.
Like most of your friends, you couldn't stay cooped up in your apartment for long, and soon you were breaking curfew with the rest of them. Who do you spend most of your time with during these secretive nights out?