Chapter 7: Fractures and Firelight
852 Words
Chapter 7: Fractures and Firelight
The funeral pyre burned for three days.
Micah’s body had been laid atop the highest cliff, wrapped in silver-lined cloth, his blade placed beside him, and the Alpha mark drawn in blood across his chest. Every pack member came to bow their head, touch the earth, whisper goodbye.
Tristan watched it all from a distance.
He never approached the fire. Not once.
He couldn’t.
Not because he didn’t care.
Because if he got too close, he knew he wouldn’t walk away.
His brother had survived the battlefield.
Barely.
The healer had said he might not wake up.
But Tristan had believed he would.
Micah always came back.
Until he didn’t.
The bleeding had started again on the second night. Internally. Quietly. He’d gone still before anyone could notice.
By the time they realized, it was too late.
The golden son, the future Alpha, the pack’s certainty — gone.
And Tristan was left holding the ashes.
The council didn’t wait.
Within hours of Micah’s death, the elders gathered with grim expressions and ceremonial robes. Alpha Garrett sat at the center, paler than Tristan had ever seen him, lungs rattling with every breath.
He didn’t even argue.
He simply looked at Tristan and said, “You’ll take the mark.”
The branding happened under moonlight. A sacred rite. Only instead of awe, the pack watched in hushed, uncertain silence. Tristan knelt before the flame, shirt stripped from his back, and felt the iron touch his skin like lightning. He didn’t cry out.
He wouldn’t give them the satisfaction.
When it was over, he stood as Alpha.
But no one cheered.
Not even his father.
The days that followed blurred together in a haze of responsibility.
Tristan met with the scouts, approved defense rotations, held daily check-ins with the council. His voice never cracked. His hands never trembled in public. But in private, he barely slept. Barely ate.
The pressure was unrelenting.
Every decision felt like walking on broken glass.
He'd give an order — and someone would glance sideways like they were waiting for him to change his mind.
He’d speak in council — and one of the elders would quietly glance at an empty chair that used to belong to Micah.
They didn’t trust him.
Not yet.
Maybe not ever.
His father didn’t help.
Garrett was fading fast, coughing up blood when he thought no one could see. His once-commanding voice had thinned into gravel, and his walks through the village turned into brief appearances with a cane.
But still, he watched.
And when Tristan faltered — hesitated before issuing a command, forgot a name, spoke too emotionally — Garrett's disapproval flared behind his tired eyes.
"You’re not thinking like an Alpha," he told Tristan one night after council.
"I'm trying."
"Trying doesn’t save packs. Instinct does. Strategy does. Micah had both."
“I’m not Micah.”
“No. You’re not.”
Garrett didn’t say it with bitterness. Just weary truth.
But it still felt like a blade to the chest.
At home, things were worse.
Empty cradles. Cold floors. Silence.
The scent of Rae had faded, but he swore he could still feel her in the walls.
He sometimes thought about shifting and running out of the territory to find her. Leaving it all behind — the mark, the pack, the weight of being Alpha.
But every time he opened the door, someone was waiting with a problem.
Missing supplies. Border tensions. Sick children.
His people needed him.
Even if they didn’t want him.
His mother came to visit one afternoon.
She brought soup and sharp eyes, the way she always did. Sat on the edge of the hearth like she owned the room.
“You look like s**t,” she said.
“Thanks.”
“You haven’t slept.”
“I’m fine.”
She stared at him a long time, then reached over and touched his chest — just above the fresh Alpha mark.
“It doesn’t feel right, does it?”
Tristan shook his head.
“I keep thinking he’s going to walk in and take it back.”
She nodded. “So do I.”
They sat in silence for a while.
Finally, she said, “Your father’s afraid. Not just of dying. Of losing everything he built.”
Tristan’s jaw tightened. “He thinks I’ll ruin it.”
“He doesn’t know if you’ll survive it.”
“That’s not better.”
“No,” she said. “But it’s honest.”
She stood, pulling her cloak tight.
“You don’t have to be Micah,” she said at the door. “But you do have to stop running from the weight. If you’re going to lead, Tristan, lead.”
Then she was gone.
That night, he sat at the old table in the war room, maps spread before him. Candles burned low, their wax pooling over old notches left by Micah’s blades.
He closed his eyes.
Breathed in.
And let the ache settle.
He wasn’t the golden son.
He wasn’t ready.
But no one else was coming.
And the fire still burned.
- Writer
