The world was cruel as well as it was kind. It gave, and it took. A heave and a push.
A true creature of tragedy. Life was a swirling vortex of emotion. There was pain in every aspect of life as well as there was joy. They came hand in hand, like old friends.
There was pain in growth but joy in accomplishment. Pain in death but joy at new life. A push and a pull that was as old as time.
There had been a lot of take in Adelaide's lifetime with hardly any give. She had experienced little joy since her adolescence. The Pack Wars had begun as she was young and her service as the Conduit had been vital throughout the wars that came. The Moon's Will had to constantly be reinforced.
But the pain. The pain and the grief that had centred into her very bones, it was crippling. Without the presence of the Goddess she was reverted back to her old self. The beast raged within her mind, pushed against the constraints of her mind to be set free. Clawing tooth and nail at the chance to wreak its bloodthirsty fangs on unsuspecting prey.
She felt the rippling stretches of her skin as she writhed on the ground in pain. Flat on her back she could see the blood on her hands, floods that flowed through her fingers. All of the lives taken and lost. She howled wails of pain that stretched high into the sky, stretching across miles, echoing off of the trees and mountains.
The Goddess had left her to the cataclysm of her own mind. There was nothing to find that was already lost. Instinct made her push everything to the side. Emotion spread weakness and there could be none in her world.
Warm hands touched her skin as she began to claw at her arms in an attempt to wash away the blood. Her red eyes could see nothing past the blurs of her memories. She missed the silver needle heading for her skin, clear liquid sloshing in its holder before it was plunged into her arm. She saw nothing but the disappearing image of her mother with open arms as she fell into darkness.
Her roar of pain had been heard far and wide. The Alpha's lifted their heads at the sound as panic seized their bodies. They felt the change in the valley, the loss of power. The change in dominant power.
Lady Adelaide had always been a force to reckoned with, even from a young age. The second born of a High Alpha. High Alpha children always carried the strength of their parents as well as their own, it was a rare trait within the werewolf community.
High Alpha Jonah was the only High Alpha to survive the Pack Wars but not without scars that would shape the rest of his life. The Alpha's respected him highly. The Moon Fang pack were the finest warriors of the world because of their following of the old ways.
The Alphas stood, forgetting about their morning meal as Jonah appeared from the depths of the forest. Alpha Norman stood amongst the Alphas, shoulders pushed back and eyes calculating the new scenario they were now in. His skin felt as if it was on fire under the surface, the acrid smell of decaying flesh constantly wafted to his nose from his neck. The pain he felt within his soul was held at bay by a thin piece of thread, he couldn't show any ounce of weakness to the pack of Alpha's around him. War spread greed and any of them would take a chance to end his reign.
He watched Jonah as he left the treeline and headed for Leonidas. He walked with such strength and power, no sign of the crippling pain that marked his own soul. Norman didn't understand how Jonah did it so well.
How he survived for so long?
He'd experienced so much loss, loss identical to his own but the only signs of weakness were the now greying lines along his temples.
Others had died from the loss of a life-mate, yet Jonah lived on, far longer than any other widowed werewolf in history. As an Alpha the bond forged between their life partner is unbreakable. To kill one is for the other to die. Two souls intertwined as one cannot live as a half but here he was. Almost twenty years and still as powerful as when they were children.
Norman was struggling. He felt it every morning and every evening as day by day he lived without his beloved Alura. Her death had been brutal, he'd felt every part of what those filth had done to her. He felt her slip away from him forever, his nerves still felt electrified from the brutal tearing of their souls. It was difficult to not slip away into the darkness that constantly called to him.
However, duty always came above life. Lady Adelaide and High Alpha Jonah knew that all too well. It was incredible that they were both still sane after what they had been through and it had been no surprise to Norman when they had retreated from the world after the end of the Pack Wars.
Norman could see the panic in Jonah's eyes as he approached the Moon Alter, concerned for his daughter. It had been easy to see that Adelaide was not the same wolf that had won the Pack Wars. She was not an innocent soul that followed the Moon's everlasting will. She was troubled, immensely so. He had seen the red, lusty eyes of the savage beast she kept at bay. He had witnessed her savagery first hand but now, now something was different about the woman. Her dominance was even more powerful than before, she held something far darker at bay.
"Where is my daughter?" Jonah asked.
He made sure to keep his voice calm, Norman noticed. Jonah would never show any weakness to others, especially with Michael around. Tension still clung in the air at their unfinished challenge. Adelaide's mercy to Adam meant that the challenge had not been completed which made Michael a threat to watch out for. Especially with his chequered history.
Jonah and Adelaide relied on each other heavily, Norman knew that well. Jonah kept Adelaide under control and Adelaide protected her father's reign, her only family left. Jonah now had to fight his own battles without his daughter, not that he couldn't.
"The Moon has taken her." Leonidas stated.
His words were ominous against the morning light. The absence of the Conduit was a sign from the moon. A grave one.
"We're on our own."
Jonah felt his heart constrict at his thoughts fled towards his missing daughter. Something grave was at play. The other Alpha's would be quick to believe that the Moon had abandoned them, they were lacking in their faith.
Jonah turned from the other Alpha's gaze's and looked out onto the Moon Valley, feeling Leonidas coming to stand beside him as they both pondered the new situation. There were so many reasons for the Moon to intervene in such a way. He only hoped that his daughter would return to him soon.
Many of the other Alpha's had returned to their morning meals while others had spread out to their packs. Preparing for what was to come, a war was coming. And all needed to be prepared if they were going to survive.
"She needs to heal before she can be the warrior we need her to be." Leonidas told him.
He felt slight comfort at his words, his daughter had suffered greatly. Far more than anyone ever deserved. It was never the life that he had wanted for her. As his second born she was bound for great things but he would have never imaged that she would have been moon-born.
Moon Fang had been constantly blessed and rewarded for their devotion to the Goddess. Their role as her warriors, her swords against the dark, had led to a bloody path through history. They were born and bred in the blood of their enemies, they bathed in the thrill of the fight and the feeling of claw against flesh. But his moon-born child had felt like a curse upon them, he felt the loss of his child the moment he looked upon her eyes in her first few minutes of breathing outside of her mother's womb.
Adelaide's childhood had been robbed of her because of the power she possessed, her young adulthood filled with the blood and pain of battle and loss. She had experienced a life far from what himself and his mate imaged for her when she was just a small heartbeat, protected from the rest of the dangerous world that surrounded them.
No father should have to bury their child. He had buried six.
His family had been decimated during the Pack Wars and it had been the breaking point of his daughter in the end. He never pondered too long on their deaths, the memories brought so much pain. He chose instead to focus on his daughter, his little girl.
He could see the pain that ate at her every day, saw her break at each connection that broke from their family line. She'd isolated herself after their exile from the rest of the world, the powerful beast within so difficult to control with all the loss.
She had returned to him in time, after he had come to terms with his own grief but had not returned the daughter he once knew. Once happy and friendly and now cold and feral. She protected him as a mother would protect her cubs. No one could challenge him. She had killed every one of his challengers along with any threat that ever came to their door.
"Jonah."
Leonidas's voice pulled him from his thoughts. He easily lost himself in his mind since they had returned to the Moon Valley, the peace that it brought was like a drug to his mind, it sent him off into a sea of nostalgia.
Jonah tore his gaze away from the lake before turning his head and meeting the ancient wolf's eyes. He could see the concern that shined within his eyes. They were all so quick to assume that he had grown weak, it had been so long since he had shown himself that they had all assumed he would be crippled with grief.
They thought wrong.
"The boy."
"What of him?" Jonah questioned, interested.
The boy was intriguing. A re-birth was controversial in the times they now found themselves in. It showed the moon had showed new favour upon an individual, the Conduit was not needed as she was before and something else was at play.
"He needs training. Adelaide's refusal and absence leaves us all vulnerable. The wolves will look to him to lead them." Leonidas explained.
"He is a boy and you expect him to take the world upon his shoulders." Jonah said.
Michaels son was in the middle of his adolescence. In human years he was in his mid-twenties but to a werewolf he was but a pup. They lived long lives, his daughter was now over one hundred years old, the boy was only twenty-five. He hated to see another life chained to the Goddess for eternal servitude again.
"Your daughter was his age."
"It will destroy him just as it has her."