ALPHA: Heir Of The Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

No whispers from the power of the four.

* * *

     I couldn't tell you exactly how long I had been sitting out in the woods. Keeping track of time would have only forced me to keep track of how long Ava-Rain had been unconscious. However, what I did know was that night had fallen a long time ago and, whether I wanted to acknowledge it or not, I knew that sunrise wasn't too far off.

     Instead of sitting in the exact spot where I had found her after the ambush, perhaps I should have been sitting by her side, holding her hand and whispering that everything was going to be okay. I should have been begging her to open her eyes, and if that didn't work—like it hadn't for nearly a day—then I should have toughened up and commanded Ava-Rain to put me out of my misery and come back to me. But I did not know if everything was going to be okay, nor if coming back to me was within either of our power.

     This time, there had been no voice from the power of the four, no whispers to lead and show me the way. There was just a house full of pack members doing their best to locate the pure bloods responsible, a hunter, who was probably waiting for my return so that she could shoot an arrow through my heart, and Angelie, who had been pestering my parents—more diligently than normal since the attack—into letting her go. Everyone was doing something by picking a role and playing their part to the best of their abilities. But my role, the most important one of all, I was beginning to doubt my ability to play it.

     And that doubt drove me from the den and out into a night that had never been as dark nor as cold as this one.

     Ask any wolf what the moon meant to them, and I guarantee that although every answer might differ in some way or another, one fact would remain the same: the moon was home. No matter how alone you were, no matter how lost you felt in a world governed by the sun—a world that could never truly be ours—the moon belonged to us. The night was ours.

     Its light was the closest we could ever come to feeling our Goddess' warmth. Night after night, it cascaded over us like a blanket, offered not for Her children to hide underneath but meant to wrap around us as the closest possible thing to an embrace. But, tonight, warmth was absent, and Luna's comforting touch I could not feel.

     Or, rather, I refused to feel. Refused to accept. Because as I stared up at the night sky, gazing at what I knew had been much for than just a gigantic rock full of craters, I did not feel as though it represented home to me at all.

     Home, for me, was a girl with big brown eyes and an even bigger heart. Home was being wrapped in her embrace, my head buried in her neck and my mouth pressed against that precise spot where I could feel her pulse beating against my lips. Home was her every touch. Her every kiss. Her laugh. It was even the pout she would give me when she disagreed with something I had said or done. Home was being wrapped in her love, the safest place I had ever been; the softest place I could ever hope to fall.

     And as a wolf who had lived a life full of stumbles, getting up had only been made possible by those that had laid down their lives—figuratively and literally—to break my fall. As a pup, I accepted it as something that was normal because I did not understand. Assumed it was just something that had been done without question for the son of an alpha pair. But when I finally became old enough to understand why they had done what they did—whether voluntarily or non-voluntarily—it was the first time I realized how thin of a line there was between gratitude and resentment.

     Every wolf who had raised me up by forcing me to walk upon a ground paved out of their many sacrifices took away my choice and my ability to rise from every fall with the power of my own strength. I did not want Ava-Rain to become just another sacrifice deemed necessary to raise me a little bit higher. How could I ever accept that? How could Luna ever expect me to be okay with that?