Akela is the leader of the Seeonee pack of Indian wolves and presides over the pack's council meetings. It is at such a meeting that the pack adopts the lost child Mowgli and Akela becomes one of Mowgli's mentors. "Akela, the great gray Lone Wolf, who led all the Pack by strength and cunning, lay out at full length on his rock, and below him sat forty or more wolves of every size and color."
Nine or ten years after Mowgli's adoption, his enemy Shere Khan the tiger, with the aid of some young wolves he has persuaded to support him, plans to depose Akela so that he will no longer be able to defend Mowgli. A wolf who becomes too old to hunt is traditionally driven out or killed by his pack. Akela is far from decrepit, but the young wolves deliberately drive a young, healthy buck deer toward him, knowing that he will not be able to catch it. When the council meets to depose Akela, Mowgli defends him with a blazing branch and drives Shere Khan and his allies away.
After Shere Khan's departure the remaining wolves beg Akela to stay, but he refuses to remain pack leader and decides to hunt alone. Phao becomes the new pack leader, Mowgli returns to humanity, at least for a time, and Akela hunts alone. During this period Akela helps Mowgli to kill Shere Khan with the aid of the human village's water buffalo herd.
Some years later, when Mowgli has been rejected by humanity and the pack is threatened with extinction by a rampaging pack of dhole, Akela joins the battle and fights to the death, finally dying in Mowgli's company ("Red Dog", in The Second Jungle Book). Mowgli did this for the love of Akela and his death is a major factor in Mowgli's decision to finally return to human society at the age of 17.