A Daughter of Silvaris

Chapter 8 - Alive But Not Well

I lifted my weary head and gazed upon death as it paced down the trail to meet me. The leading lupen was the size of a horse. They hadn’t bothered to even run; they knew my body had given up. Low growls thick with menace rippled through the air, their maw’s curled at the corners into mocking grins. Thick, fresh blood dripped from their jowls. I leered into their soulless eyes, mostly black pupil but rimmed with slithers of deepest brown, with every shred of hatred I could muster. The animalistic sound of mocking laughter made my entire body shudder and my guts churned, filling my mouth with saliva—I could have vomited right there. One or both of these wolves had just murdered my mother, taken from me my safety, soiled my place of solace. So rather than give in to my nausea, I chose to use even it, and I spat on the ground in front of them instead.

Their chests rumbled, noses puckered, and lips rose as they bared their teeth—so many teeth, sharp, white and deadly. I did the same back with a hiss of my own. I stepped away from my resting tree, concentrating on my quivering legs and keeping them upright, and moved backwards, step for step with them as they approached. I raised my chin—the last show of strength and defiance and contempt I could throw at them before I would be ripped apart and my short life would end.

A distant scream filled with undiluted terror echoed along the trail behind me, towards home.

No. No!

Orion.

Gretta.

Moon Mother shade them all. It couldn’t be all for naught, they had to live. They were so young, so innocent—

I tripped over an unseen rock in my lapse of focus. The small breath I’d managed to suck in whooshed from me as my back hit the ground. When I opened my eyes the beasts towered before me, the fur on their chests matted with blood, paws and claws thick with it too. Saliva dripped onto my bare lower limbs, like a diluted red watercolour paint it brought home what I knew. In just a few moments that watercolour would be thick like oil, thick with fresh blood—my blood.

This was it.

I tried to be brave. Despite the all-consuming fear that turned my insides watery, I would be brave. Papa had told me once that there could be no bravery without fear. That bravery was not always innate, and that the fiercest form of bravery was found when faced with your mind’s deepest fears—I was sure certain death qualified here. So, I lifted my chin and held their stares with a hatred filled one of my own.

They were toying with me, feeding off my fear. I shoved it down. Tears burned in the back of my eyes even as I leered into theirs. Tears for Mama, for Orion, Gretta, Elizebett and Volive. Tears for myself. I shoved those down too.

The largest lupen’s jaws opened, and I couldn’t stop my treacherous eyes as they clamped shut, I couldn’t do it. I screamed as I lived my last seconds and waited for the pain and the nothingness that would follow.

But it didn’t come.

Gravity tugged at my body as I left the ground, as though the very earth wished to help me escape my fate. I wasn’t dead. I was being carried, hanging from the jaws of the largest wolf by my tattered clothing, his foul breath poisoning the air around me, my tunic and breeches wet with ruby saliva. I wretched. It’s answering growl stunned me to silence.

We turned on the trail, to head back to my clearing, and my body ached at every point my clothing tugged against my skin.

I wasn’t dead, but perhaps it would be better if I were because I knew then that they were going to take me with them. Take me back to whatever wretched place they came from. As they began padding down the trail my blood turned to ice in my veins. The thought of seeing my mother, whatever remained of her… I would not survive it. All the bravery in the world wouldn’t erase that horror from my mind if I saw it. Saw what they’d done to her, what she’d known they would do but accepted so that Orion, Gretta and I would stand a chance of seeing the new year.

I had nothing left. No energy, no spirit. I had failed Mama, failed my brother, failed Gretta. There was no use—

An enormous, luminous silver wolf erupted from the undergrowth with a thunderous roar, collided with the lupen not holding me, and ripped out its throat in a single mastered movement. Blood spurted from the gaping wound as it slumped to the floor, and my saviour faced my abductor. Lips peeled back in a ferocious snarl; the iron scent of fresh blood poured from its mouth as its glowing, violet eyes swirling with fury locked onto my own. And something reignited in my body. “Papa!”

My abductor stilled; his malice that had felt like a toxic gas suffocating my senses morphed into pure, undiluted fear. Fear had a tang to it which until now, coming from those I care for, had always felt stifling… but the fear coming from him?

It made me grin.

He took a few cautious steps backwards, away from Papa. How far could he run with me? I guessed he would get perhaps ten paces at the most before Papa’s jaws found his throat too. The lupen made no move to run, and I wondered if he’d made the same calculation. It would take him just a moment to close his crushing jaws around me and end my life, but he must have known he would forfeit his own in the process.

His last and seemingly wisest option, if any of this could be considered wise, would be to drop me and run as fast as he could in any direction. He was big—perhaps an Alpha or Beta himself. He stood a chance at escaping the same fate of his associate—for now.

My body was swung to the left as the lupen’s head turned. Three more snarling wolves, copper and grey and tan, stalked up the trail from the direction of Iron Ridge. He was surrounded, Papa at his front, and members of the Guard at his back. The tang of fear became more potent as he no doubt calculated his odds. It sparked something in me. What usually stifled now stimulated, so when Papa snapped his jaws at the murderous beast that held me and it flinched, I gathered every last kernel of energy I had remaining and threw a punch straight into its ruddy brown eye.

It yelped, spilling me from his maw I hit the ground with a thud, and opened my eyes in time to see Papa take its neck in a death grip. Curling into a ball I squeezed them shut again and covered my ears—it wasn’t enough to drown out the sickening c***k and the ravaging sounds of tearing flesh.

Olena, Papa’s voice broke in my mind.

I opened my eyes slowly and traced them up his strong front legs, to his bloody chest and maw. I did not let myself look at the shredded remains to my left. I drew to my knees and reached up, clutching the fur on his chest between my fingers, covered in cuts and grazes from my falls.

“Papa. I knew you would come,” I said through shuddering breaths.

His voice echoed back in my mind, and it was the very sound of sorrow, To the ends of the earth, sweetheart.

My broken heart ached with an intensity I never knew could be possible as he nuzzled me into his chest further, and finally, I sobbed.

“Papa… Mama…” The words were strangled by the lump in my throat as I wept, my face buried in his stained silver pelt.

Shh, shh. I know... he choked back his own sobs.

I know, he’d said. He knew she was gone, too. I could feel his heart breaking, and it shattered mine all over again.

Where is she? He asked gently, willing his voice steady.

I couldn’t speak the words. I was safe, and she was dead. I couldn’t look at him. All I could manage was to point back down the trail to where my world had crumbled to pieces.

“They tried their best—” I choked on my ragged breath. “All of them— they saved us.” He nuzzled me in close again.

I know, sweetheart. I know...

A great, shuddering breath rushed from his nostrils, fanning my hair. Then, Papa tugged me to my feet and he stood tall, every bit a High Alpha, even with the weight of the world crashing down upon him.

Rickon, Sam, and Kinga will escort you home. I… I have to find your mother.

More strangled sobs broke free from my throat, but I nodded weakly. He looked at the wolves behind me, no doubt giving them orders mind-to-mind, before his face became a mask of wrath once again. My new guard came to my side; Papa turned to leave but—

“Papa, did you get Orion and Gretta?”

Papa stilled; they all did. I’d said that aloud.

His great lupine head turned as he said so, so quietly, What...?

Whatever was left of my shattered heart fractured into impossibly smaller pieces, because that was answer enough. They should have found them before they reached me…

“Orion and Gretta... I sent them. I—I couldn’t carry them anymore,” I said weakly, fresh tears streaking down my still-damp cheeks.

Papa’s eyes went wild. Florescent orbs of purple darting between each of his warriors, his lips curling in a snarl as the three Guard’s each shot one another the same unknowing looks.

They hadn’t found them. And I’d heard them scream.

Which way? Papa barked into my mind.

“Down the trail, towards home...”

With a look from their High Alpha, Rickon and Sam roared as they pelted back down the path home. Papa looked at me one final time before launching into a gallop towards the clearing that had once been my favourite, but was now only the place where our lives had fallen apart.

Kinga crouched and gave me a gentle nudge, motioning with her snout for me to mount her back. Even in her beautiful grey beast form, her brows were knitted together in the same sorrow that I knew would be etched on my own face. It broke me all over again.

She trotted down the trodden path gently, and I was grateful—I had nothing left in me to hang on tight.

But it only took a few minutes. Minutes before the trail opened up again and we breached the treeline and emerged back into Iron Ridge. We had been so close.

So Gods damned close to home.

A voice loaded with pure anguish bellowed my name the moment I emerged from the treeline. Kinga stooped to let me slip off her back, and I barely had time to stand tall before he crashed into me—strong arms wrapping me in safety, his earthy, sweet essence enveloping me. “Moon above. Moon a-f*****g-bove, Lena,” Rhett breathed into my hair.

My mind finally registered—I was safe. I was home.

The dam burst, and whatever fluid remained in my body was forced from my eyes once more. I choked on my own breaths as I cried and cried and cried, saturating his tunic with my sorrow. He held me in a crushing embrace as I wept, one arm wrapped tightly around my shoulders, his other pinning my side, hand cradling my head. His chest shuddered against me as he squeezed me tighter.

“I thought I’d lost you,” he murmured into my hair with heart-breaking softness.

“Olena…”

Oberon called my name and any momentary reprieve I’d felt in Rhett’s arms was shattered as my chest burned with guilt. Rhett released me all too quickly, and I turned. There stood my big brother, his face contorted with utter desolation and despair.

My breathing hitched and I could barely look at him, but he came for me, and he held me. Unlike Rhett, I could sense my brother’s emotions—a suffocating mix of both mental and physical pain. Oh Moon Mother save us all, he would have felt her die too.

“I’m sorry Oberon. I’m so, so sorry,” I sobbed.

His quaking chest told me he had broken too. “It’s not your fault, sis,” he said gripping me tighter still, as though he thought I may shatter if he gave me half a moments chance. In truth didn’t know who was holding who together.

“But Mama. Orion.” I couldn’t say anymore, but he tensed around me, his grief-stricken soul pouring over me.

“We’ll be okay, sis,” he said, the sureness he’d no doubt intended to say the words with didn’t manifest. He was crumbling inside and I felt every devastating piece as it broke away from the whole. We held each other in shared heartbreak.

But then it hit me.

Letting go of my brother, I spun to face Rhett with wide, glistening eyes.

Barely above a whisper, I said “Rhett, your mother. Gretta.”

His face dropped like a stone. He hadn’t known. “They were with you?” he said quietly, throat bobbing once.

I nodded gently, and he was gone, sprinting towards the forest. And the only thing I could do was pray to the Moon Mother above that she had somehow kept his family safe.