Kelly's life was good. She, her parents, and her grandfather lived on a small moon purchased by her great-great-grandfather and passed down through the generations. He did this so the family could pursue their passion for breeding dogs. Since the third world war of 2237 on Earth, dogs of all kinds have been driven nearly to extinction; from usage as food to bioweapons, dogs have been nearly eradicated.

The Melbourn family had always loved dogs. After leaving Earth with a pack of dogs rescued from various places around the world, the family sold everything they had and purchased a moon. The moon had an Earth-like atmosphere and gravity, adjusted to match Earth's norm. Over the last three generations, the moon has become a wonderland of doggy goodness.

That had all changed four days ago. When Kelly had gone off to her hiding place where she went when she needed to be alone, a strange sound had echoed through the air. And before she had even known what was happening, the house dogs, those who were older, or bred specifically for domestication, had come running through the forest and found her.

As Kelly ran back to the house, she watched a ship emblazoned with the insignia of the First Watch, a Jarvinian military organization that was known for being more of an officially sanctioned pirate group than a military unit, shoot off from the small cluster of buildings where she and her family lived. She stopped at the edge of the forest. And looked out over the buildings that were on fire.

Several Jarvinians still moved through the buildings; one dragged Kelly's mother by her hair from the main house. 

"Mom," Kelly said quietly to herself, and Ruffus, a dog as close to a purebred golden retriever as could be found today, nuzzled up to her. She petted him, and the other dogs whined quietly around her, being quiet as they picked up on her fear.

The Jarvinians talked with her mother as three others dragged out the unconscious form of her father, his insane bulk causing them to move slowly. Suddenly a howl that sent shivers down Kelly's spine echoed through the air, and the entire forest, Dogs, Humans, and Javinians, all immediately went silent.

"Oh no," Kelly whispered to herself and then heard a growl behind her.

Her father's latest project had been the recreation of the Direwolves of ancient Earth. The DNA samples he had purchased and then cloned had resulted in dogs far larger than anyone expected. The Direwolves were believed to be about the size of a large wolf, but apparently, given enough food, dire wolves could regularly grow to the size of a horse. Kelly looked behind her to find three horse-sized dogs snarling at her. She recognized them.

"Kenny, Lupine, Mortis," Kelly said, trying to use the same tone her father used when dealing with the huge animals, "No." She held up her hand and made the gesture that her father trained every dog to know meant sit. Her father was the Alpha dog of every pack on the moon, standing at almost seven foot two inches tall and weighing in at almost four hundred pounds of pure muscle; not even the dire wolves tried to test him more than once. And he and Kelly were the ones who always took them their food.

Kelly knew all this but fully expected to be attacked and shut her eyes; she was surprised when instead of biting her hand off, She felt the cool nose almost as large as her hand press into her palm. She opened her eyes and saw all three of the huge animals sitting, and several more came out from the woods and sat with the rest of the dogs.

The one touching her hand, Lupine, was the leader of the pack, and when he had been a puppy, Kelly had spent more than one night snuggled up to the dog. Kelly felt she could hear her father's voice in her head then. 

"If you are nice to them and give them food, even these big brutes will remember who you are and treat you like family." 

Kelly smiled at the huge dog sitting and waiting for something; she reached into her pocket of treats she always carried and began handing out treats to every dog.

After a few moments, she had given every dog a treat and knew then that she had to act. The ship bearing the First Watch symbol came back down, and Kelly decided it was time. She moved forward. The older dog Ruffus and Lupine walked next to her, and the other dogs followed behind. She remembered her father's training and knew what she had to do. When she cleared the tree line, she realized how many Dire Wolves there really were and why her father had been ordering more and more food, saying that it wasn't enough.

Nearly a hundred and fifty horse-sized dogs walked out of the woods at Kelly's back. The young girl, leading Lupine and hundreds of other dogs of all breeds, also came out. When the Jardinians saw this, they leveled weapons at her. Kelly saw the Jardinians loading puppies into their ship, several of them were large dire wolf puppies, and what little she knew of the galaxy, she knew that those dogs would become food once they grew up.

The Jardinians were yelling, and the dire wolves were growling. Kelly raised her hand, and every dog her father had trained stopped watching the arm as they had been trained to do. Kelly made a fist, and almost in unison, the dogs lowered their heads and took on feral snarls. "Kresh'Na Tor!" Kelly yelled a command word from the language that her father used to train the dogs, and a veritable tidal wave of angry fur and teeth, cascaded forth, following the command of the attack.

The resulting battle took four and a half minutes and resulted in total losses for the Jardinians. The dogs lost four Dire wolves and twenty or so of the smaller breeds. Kelly found that her mother and father were in good health other than the forty or so stun bolts her father had been hit with.

---

Later that year, when Kelly left the moon for schooling, attending an interracial academy, and taking a dire wolf puppy, Lint, with her, she learned from a Jardinian classmate that a single message had come from the moon. It had become a legend of the Jardinian people almost overnight.

"The story goes that daemons rose from the moon with a goddess at their head, and she rained down a wrath of anger upon the First Watch," Kil'Kesh said to Kelly, who was trying to figure out what she should or should not say. "But it is a good thing. The First watch were bastards."

"So you are not mad at what happened?" Kelly asked.

"No, not at all; the first watch was a leftover from a previous war. So the fact that they were finally eradicated is, frankly, a good thing." Kil'Kesh said and then gave Kelly a look. "Why? Do you know something about that moon?"

Kelly nodded her head. "That moon is my home. And the demons that you spoke of are my family pets."

"Wait, so then the Goddess that was spoken of, was you?!" Kil'Kesh said, stopping in their walk back to Kelly's room to work on an assignment for class.

"Um, yeah," Kelly said, then smiled. "Hey, do you want to meet one?"

"A demon? Not likely."

"No, not a demon," Kelly said, grabbing Kil'Kesh by the grasper and pulling him through the door they had just arrived at. "This is Lint." Kelly bent down and scooped up the fifty-pound puppy, who was fuzzier than he had any right to be. "His dad was Lupine; he died when the First Watch attacked my home."

The Fuzzball in her arms began licking her face. "Kelly, be careful! It's trying to predigest you!" Kil'Kesh said, trying to shy back from the dog who had just noticed him.

"No, he is not; that is how he shows love." She set Lint down, and the puppy walked over to the Jardinian and sniffed the hard exoskeleton that covered the boy. "You can pet him." She grabbed the grasper of Kil'Kesh and gently guided it down to pet the fluffy animal. "When he grows fully, you can probably ride him." She explained and then showed Kil'Kesh pictures of herself standing next to full-grown dire wolves.

Kil'Kesh decided then that Kelly was wrong, the dire wolves were indeed demons, and humans who would tame such a thing were as close to divinity as he would ever see. When Kelly left to get food for them both, Kil'Kesh squatted down to be on eye level with Lint. 

"I am sorry that your father was killed by some of my kind. I hope that you do not hold that against me." Lint responded by licking the face of the Jardinian and settling down to take a nap at his feet. "I will accept your love and return it when the opportunity presents itself."

Kil'Kesh would go on to become the first Jardinian to own a pet, and Kelly's husband, living on the moon with his very own Goddess and a horde of demons that loved to lick his face.