Four Months Earlier:
Ryder
I did not stay to watch my father’s pyre burn. That might have been his final resting place, but it held nothing of him. I returned to our home, and collapsed on the floor, pulling an old blanket from a nearby chair and drawing it over my body.
Despite how often his Beta duties pulled him away from here, his presence was everywhere. He had built this home for my mother with his own hands. The furniture that filled each room was crafted in his woodshop, his scent heavy in every room, built up over the years.
I do not know how long I laid there, memorizing my father’s scent, soaking in the silence of the world in his absence. I faded in and out of sleep, the restless kind- dreams filled with blood-soaked hands and fire and my father’s last, shuddering exhale a
