A Daughter of Silvaris

Chapter 10 - Life After Death

OLENA

Many lupens chose to die if they lost their true mate, their hearts filled with nothing but a pain simply too unbearable to live with. Those who decided to live on—whether it be for their families or simple vengeance—lived a half life, never able to be whole again. Without extraordinary strength and support from those around them, the grief drove many of the broken to insanity. Everyone knew that, and my concern for Papa grew dove to new depths with each passing day.

Two weeks had passed since the attack, and the only time I had seen my dear Papa was at Mama’s funeral. What I imagined must have been a large proportion of the population of the Northlands had attended and stood by, dressed in mourning black, grieving her loss as Papa, my brother, Beta Thornton, and General Payton carried her ivory pearlescent coffin into the pack cemetery. Mama’s service was as beautiful as she had been. Wreaths of wildflowers had decorated her coffin, and the same had since been planted all around her gravesite, which had been marked with a delicate, white marble statue of her. Rhett had held me close, caressed my back and whispered soft words into my hair as I sobbed into his formal black tunic, embroidered at the shoulders with howling wolves of gleaming copper and emerald thread. He was the only thing that had kept me from breaking.

The spring equinox was not a simple thing that could be cancelled. It came and went, but the Gathering did not. The packs had received the message by the early afternoon—their High Alpha’s mate, their Luna, was dead and Orion had been taken, his fate unknown. There would be no celebrations in Ferratonin this year, but we were sent well wishes, sympathies and given pledges of allegiance anyway.

Papa hid away in his office, seeing and speaking to know one other than General Peyton, Beta Thornton and Oberon—once. Whilst Oberon, Rhett and my friends had done their best to be there for me, I was sick. I was truly ill with grief.

I had pushed Mayli and Ema away, not having the energy or even the desire to see them. They had come to my chambers with love in their hearts, but I couldn’t stand the silence that ultimately fell over us once our five minutes of small talk had expired. Neither of them really knew what to say to me. I understood, somewhat. What do you say to the broken, the unreachable, when no words will ever be enough.

The days passed by slowly; plagued by scattered, paralysing flashbacks of running through the forest, chased by snapping bloodied jaws, roots seemingly appearing from thin air to trip me and assure my death.

My nights were equally as tormenting, haunted by nightmares filled with Mama’s screams and my cruel mind’s imagined image of her fractured body.

So many nights Oberon had woken me from them, bursting into my room and finding me sat upright in bed, head in my hands and shrieking in a pool of my own sweat.

So many nights he had held my hair back from my sticky face whilst I vomited into the bathroom toilet before sinking back against the cold tiles, and crying into his lap or chest until my eyes burned and throat ran dry. Oberon was a leader—the only leader most of this pack saw at the moment, with Papa and the other senior forces of the pack holed up in his office doing Gods knew what.

Oberon tried his best to be strong for me and to take care of us both, always wearing a mask of strength… but he was stretched thin, and I could feel that he was broken too.

Broken, but also filled with an unfathomable rage—rage I had yet to muster, if I had it in me at all. It oozed from his skin like poison at times. Those times seemed to be when I was at my most inconsolable, so I had begun trying to dampen that, to hide it from him, after a week or so. That was exhausting in and of itself.

There had been no word of Orion. Our warriors had tracked the attackers south for miles before they eventually lost the scent. It had been another gutting blow, and as time went on, fear that we may never see him again infested its way further and further into our hearts and minds.

Rhett spent as much time with me as he could, bringing me food—knowing that the only times I ate were when he would sit and wait for me to finish—and trying to coax me into playing a game of chess. His company had become the only thing I found any sort of relief in. Since I’d conceded and agreed to play the first game—for his benefit more than my own—we’d played again and again. I won twice as many games as I lost, but I was absolutely certain that was more to do with his sympathy than my skills.

Beta Elizebett was recovering well with our accelerated healing and skilled healers, and for one so small, Gretta had proved herself to be strong. Rhett told me she stayed in the infirmary with their mother, helping the healers with preparing light meals, cleaning minor cuts and changing dressings. Rhett said she seemed to enjoy it as much as seeing their mother’s health improve.

“Have you seen my father at all?” I asked Rhett when he arrived at my room with a plate of dinner. It smelled delicious by all accounts, meat and vegetables and a gravy made from the liquids of both. Aunt B had been the glue that kept this household from collapsing entirely.

“No, Lena.” His face formed the same sympathetic frown I had seen so much of since the attack. It seemed to be a universal mask that was placed upon anyone’s face the moment they laid eyes on me. I had come to hate it.

“He’s been in his office. The only people he sees are my father and General Payton.” His eyes studied me closely, carefully reading my face, judging my reactions to his words. He’d been doing that a lot, I’d noticed. Everyone had.

“Oh...” I lowered my gaze to my lap where I twisted my interlaced fingers. I had nothing anything else to say. It wasn’t the news I was hoping for, but nothing ever was recently. It felt like an age since I’d seen my only remaining parent.

My Papa.

“He’s not alone, Lena. And it’s only temporary… Things will get better,” he said, reading the thoughts plainly plastered across my face. “I know it’s easy for me to tell you to try not to worry, but… please try. My father is with him every day. He’s... he’s okay.” Rhett did his best to sound positive, even willed his features into a small, comforting smile. But he had never been a good liar, not with me at least.

Rhett and I sat on the three-seater lounger in the living area of my room for a while, never saying much, just existing there together. This room had become my home, my prison, and my sanatorium.

It wasn’t a bad place to be, it was my room after all, and I had always loved it when Mama was alive. But as I looked around it now, all I could see were remnants of my mother. The shaggy rugs next to my bed and in front of the lounger to relieve my feet from the cold of the hard wood floors; my bedding of white or silver or lilac—she’d picked them all, always making sure I both remembered and was proud of my colours, proud to be different.

To be a Silvaris.

The family photos on my walls stung every time I spared them a glance, each of us, all of us, together… happy. Even my clothes—Mama had picked out so many of them that they were impossible to escape.

I didn’t want to avoid hers or Orion’s presence, to forget... In fact, I wanted to hold on to it all, but the memories of each and every separate thing evoked a pain so sharp and cutting, it threatened to c***k my chest with every glance.

My eyes stung and vision blurred with tears as the thoughts drifted through my mostly empty head. The now familiar heaviness began to settle into my limbs again, the weight that kept me mostly idle, sedentary on either my bed or this lounger for hours on end. Rhett noticed almost immediately, like he was constantly aware of me, always watching.

“Hey, hey. Lena don’t do that,” he soothed, reaching for me. His voice was one of the only things that could break through the panic and pain. “Talk to me. Don’t keep it in.” His hands clutched mine tightly.

I met his green gaze and found his brows creased in the middle with concern.

“I just miss them, Rhett.” Those few words had scarcely left my lips before I broke into full tears, letting them fall at will, not bothering to stifle them. Not so many fell these days anyway, the well all but dried out.

He opened his arms and beckoned me to him.

“Come here,” he said softly. I didn’t think he pitied me, which was welcome, he just... cared. I accepted the invitation, scooting across the lounger I buried my head in the crook of his shoulder. He wrapped his arms around me gently and we both sighed in near unison. We stayed like that for a while, and I closed my eyes softly as he stroked my hair, the heaviness lightening a little with each breath.

My breathing fell into step with his, slow and steady. His soothing strokes through my hair, lacklustre from the recent neglect, paused when he eventually spoke. “Lena, you know that I will always be here for you, right? As whatever you need me to be.”

I nodded my head against his chest and squeezed an arm around him, the other pinned between our bodies.

I sighed through my nose. “I know, and I am grateful. Truly.”

And I was. Another episode of crushing sadness had been eased into something tolerable by his company. “Thank you, Rhett... for everything. I don’t know what I would do without you,” I said with complete sincerity.

He didn’t respond, but we sat for a while longer a comfortable silence before he cleared his throat and gave me a gentle pat on the shoulder.

“I should let you get some rest, it’s late.”

“It’s barely past nine,” I stated, but he started to lift me anyway and gave a breathy laugh.

“I know, but you haven’t been sleeping, and I could carry a whole week's food shop home from Ferratonin in the bags under your eyes,” he jested. I looked up to find playful, lopsided smirk on his face, revealing that dimpled cheek.

“Hey!” I sat back, putting on a pretend pouty face. He smiled wider, and it reached his eyes this time. He had a perfect, gleaming smile of straight white teeth, save for our naturally slightly elongated canines.

“There she is,” he said, running a knuckle over my cheek. His smile softened as he studied my face, and as his emerald eyes bore into mine, they seemed to sparkle with a genuine sort of affection. I couldn’t help but smile back.

“Come on. Rest,” he demanded playfully, getting up off the couch and offering a hand to pull me up after him. I yielded and took it because, in fairness, he was right. I wasn’t sleeping well at all, and the purple, puffy rings under my eyes had truly become quite impressive these last few days.

Once he was sure I had conceded, he turned to leave.

I showed him out and told bid him goodnight, before climbing into the comfort of my too-large, soft bed. I hadn’t realised how tired I was until I turned off my side light and my room drowned in darkness.

I thought of Rhett’s smile as I let my mind rest, of that dimple in his cheek and his hands as they had gently stroked my hair. Both the actions and thoughts comforted me enough that, finally, I fell into my first deep sleep in fourteen days.