Fading Howls (IN THE PROCESS OF MAJOR EDITING)

The Snow Was Red [Chapter 25]

SNOW:

I was jolted awake.

The bite of the cold aggravated my unshroud skin.

My recently lacerated flesh was still tantalizing me.

A chunk of fur from my once glossy pelt was missing.

I took a nonchalant look around.

The snow was red.

That's the first thing I noticed.

And the massive lump of grey fur lying near me.

I held back a startled whine but my one cry did slide past.

“Drake!?”

I scooted myself closer to his crumpled shape...

Fearing the worst.

But then my mate groaned.

Sputtering curses I couldn't even begin to comprehend.

He rolled over, with a puff of breath, to face me.

“Are you hurt?”

I shook my head...

Feeling dizzy with shock and tribulation.

Drake heaved himself to his feet.

His joints popping stiffly.

I staggered to the side...

The pain from my broken wounds causing me to lose my balance...

They oozed thick fluid.

Drake caught me.

We both gulped.

Turning our heads sorrowfully to the limp dark orange mass.

“She's dead.”

Drake announced...

Not a hint of emotion in his half-hearted tone...

Not even bothering to say her name...

But he did close Autumn's forever-frozen eyes with one shaky paw.

It was almost as if he had switched off his heart.

He hadn't have had to tell me.

The position her neck and head were lying in was proof enough.

I blinked away a tear of indistinct remorse.

“We did what we had to...

We did what we had to.”

I kept repeating silently to myself...

Trying to convince my inner conscience that we were in the right.

“We have to bury her.”

I didn't think before I gazed up at Drake.

He saw the tears that still remained.

But he did no more than give me a sharp nod...

And begin to dig a foot away from where the body lay.

DRAKE:

When you've been in as many hostile conflicts as I, most of them unfair and particularly tragic, sometimes you just have to develop a switch in your mind that allows you to disconnect from all of your weaknesses and fully embrace what you really are.

A heartless, soulless creature who would kill anyone to keep himself alive.

In this state, I could hardly believe what the fragile little she-wolf beside me was whimpering about.

We hadn't done a thing wrong.

We had kept ourselves alive.

That was the only thing that should've been on her mind now.

We should've been celebrating for crying out loud!

I would've rather crawled into the ground and buried myself than dig a crave for that loathsome, properly defeated insect but something in Snow's tears ignited the fire in my chest that I had so purposely burnt out.

And I had no choice but to accept her wishes and get my paws to work.