Chapter 70 Moon touched
Moon touched
I rush towards Kendric, crouching but almost falling on my ass as I get a look at his gruesome wound.
The blood is in a pool around him, splattered like a painting, stark red in this grey and blue world.
The alpha’s throat has been torn out, and beside him, lying in a decaying pile, is the Ravage Wolf.
I glare at it before reaching out and taking Kendric’s hand.
He’s still warm. It feels weird to be holding it, so I carefully lay it on his chest.
I glance around, searching for Cadel. Where is he? He won, so where is he?
“Hurry home, my friend,” I murmur to Kendric, hating myself for the relief I feel that he’s the corpse I’m bidding farewell to.
As soon as I turn away from him, the anxiety overwhelms me as if it was waiting for me to finally acknowledge it.
Where is Cadel? I dart glances around, taking in everything, but when I can’t see him, I move towards a street that is almost entirely in shadow.
I’m halfway there when I turn my head and spot a couple of drops of blood.
My heart stutters in my chest, and I get dizzy, which is chased by a rapid crash as adrenaline floods my poor body. I bolt towards the drops, scanning around for more, my legs barely holding me up. The smell of blood is heavy in the chill of the air on my skin. I take it all in, but I don’t care.
“Kendric’s blood,” I say, but I don’t believe it.
I’m terrified I won’t find any more blood but scared I will.
There are a few drops on some tall grass, and when I go over, it's dark red but wet. It is Cadel’s blood; it has to be. A tiny part of me had been hoping that it would be Kendric’s, but the other alpha slips from my mind, vanishing like he never existed.
I see another splatter, but beyond that is a small puddle.
I move from one to the other, stumbling and searching as quickly as I can as I jog in the direction that they go in.
A warmth builds on my chest, and I put my hand over the spot where my Winter Wolf placed the ice gem.
It shouldn’t be here; I should have lost it when I fell.
He said if I called he would come.
“Cadel!” I call out. Frantic. Desperate. “CADEL!” I scream.
He doesn’t answer me. But that ice inside me leads me on, growing colder and colder. I stop, pressing my hand to my heaving chest, feeling the ice throbbing in my chest.
“Breathe; he’s going to be fine. He’s going to be okay. Just breathe, Keres. You will find him.”
I’m a child watching my friends disappear, a teen coming home to find my family gone, an adult tracking my mother and arriving too late. Everyone disappearing and never seen again. Unanswered questions, just me alone, waiting forever, wondering why everyone leaves me.
I bite my bottom lip hard, trying to force those memories away.
The bond is silent, feeling heavy and empty, like something is wrong.
“Please,” I whisper. “If there is anyone out there, please don’t do this to me. Please.”
There’s a howling in my ears, a panic I can’t erase, I can’t silence.
I spot a hand print in red on the wall and jog towards it.
The smear is wet. I glance around, checking carefully before I get to the corner of the building.
He’s sitting upright against a wall, his chin on his chest, and his face impossibly white.
He’s just out of sight of the road like he was trying to hide.
For one horrible second, I can’t move. My world, this entire crappy existence, comes to a halt. A scream forces its way up my throat, but I swallow it ruthlessly and lunge towards him.
“No! No! No, no, no, no!”
My heart’s in my throat, I see Jarek and Mordecai fall again. Their life fading, and I know I’m going to see it again, but my stupid heart is hoping I’m wrong. I can’t lose him.
I skid on my knees beside him, feeling him all over, trying to find an answer that will let me save him. My hands come away dripping with hot blood.
The red is so dark, and there’s so much of it.
I let out a whimper, staring at my hands. I search for the wounds, and when I find them, I wish I hadn’t. He’s got chunks taken out of him.
He can’t survive this. There’s no way he can survive this. I stare at the wounds, my mind going painfully brittle and blank, and then I fix up his clothes, hiding them from sight.
“Cadel.” I bite my lip, trying to stop the tears from coming, but I just don’t know how to do this. Everyone I love is dead or dying.
To lose this alpha after we won, after all we’ve lost.
I’m going to be alone. How can I exist without them here? We said we’d be together.
“Cadel,” I murmur again and lean down, kissing him.
I feel suddenly stricken that I didn’t get to kiss Jarek and Mordecai. Cadel opens his eyes as if he can feel my distress. He smiles just slightly at me.
“You’re here with me again, my beautiful omega,” his words are low and pained, slurred, and I have to lean down to make them out.
“Where else would I be?” I say, trying to be happy but struggling.
“You’re like a ghost; you just disappear,” he teases. “Stay with me.”
He coughs weakly, and I have to swallow the lump in my throat.
“I’m not a ghost, and I’m staying here with you,” I murmur, brushing his hair back. “Cadel, please,” I whisper. “Oh, gods, please don’t do this.”
He blinks, but I don’t even know if he’s seeing me.
“Looked for you forever, you were never there,” he moans the words. “Don’t go, Kaida.”
“I’m not!” I say urgently. “I’m right here!”
Cadel moans, his head tilting back, a single tear running down his cheek. He’s not seeing this world anymore. He’s fading away from me.
I can’t fix this. I can’t.
I bury my face in his neck and let the tears run freely.
“Alpha. You’re dying. You’re leaving me,” I whisper. “I can’t go where you’re going.”
“No!” he protests weakly. “I wouldn’t leave you. We’ll stay together forever.”
I reach out, holding his hand, lacing our fingers together as if that could make him stay.
“No matter where you end up, you remember me and remember how happy I was to be with you. Don’t you forget.”
“I’m so tired, Kaida,” he whispers. “Where are Jarek and Mordecai? Have to tell them…they have to know how much I love them.”
“They know,” I say to him. “Oh, Cadel, they know.”
His eyes close, and his head rolls towards me. His black hair flops over his face so I can’t see him. I brush it back, cupping his cheek, terrified he’s gone, but he takes a breath, though it’s weak and shallow.
“Stay with me!” I plead, biting my lip until it bleeds. “Just a little bit longer.”
“Okay,” he murmurs. “Just a little bit longer.”
As his breathing slows, I hold on to his hand, willing him to live, willing his chest to rise.
“Please, Cadel. The moon is back, and the stars, you can look at it with me, just stay, please don’t leave me.” I’m begging now, and I don’t even care. I’m breaking, all of me; the only good parts of me left are breaking.
He doesn’t respond.
I lay there weeping through my teeth, trying to hold it together while he passes from this world into a place I can never go back to. It’s so peaceful I almost don’t notice his last breath; he just doesn’t inhale. He’s just gone.
Just like that.
“Cadel?”
Raw agony grips me like a blazing sun, and I pull him to me. The bond doesn’t burn away; it just disappears, leaving me lost in the dark.
“CADEL!” I scream.
There is no answer; there never will be again.
I am alone.
My alphas are dead.
I tilt my head back and scream as I hold my alpha’s dead body in my arms. I rock back and forth and scream again and again.
My screams turn to sobs, hoarse, ugly cries of someone so broken she’s lost words and will.
“I love you. I love you. Please, Cadel. Come back. Don’t go,” I whisper and kiss him. As if that could bring him back. He’s gone back to his world, and I will have to live in this one, never remembering him.
I don’t know how much time passes before I realise I can’t sit here in his pool of blood. I stand up and take a step back from him.
I’m dead inside.
“Goodbye, my Winter Wolf.”
I take one last look at him. His face is pale, and he looks the same, but there is something missing that makes him who he is. His body fades and disappears as he’s taken back to where he came from. Gods, after all, can’t die.
I walk out onto the street, stumbling in my pain. I pause and throw up before I look up and meet the eyes of someone smiling so brightly I want to stab them.
“We won!” the omega cries, jumping up and down.
Oh, that’s right. We won. It means nothing to me. I turn away from her smile and find more and more people.
My limbs are heavy and stiff as I stumble further out.
Resistance members line both sides of the street, and when they see me, they put their hands to their chests and bow. They cheer. Like I’m a hero.
I walk down the street crying because I’m not the hero; the heroes are dead. I don’t know what I am anymore.
I stumble and trip, dropping to my knees in front of them. Some rush forward offering me water, food, but I brush it all aside, forcing myself up again.
Faces I recognise, more I don’t in a sea surrounding me. Witnessing my agony, but no one cares. There’s not a single soul left to care about my dying heart.
I just want to get out of here, but at the same time, I don’t. Everyone I love has bled and died in Foreen. It’s only fitting I join them. I slow to a stop, staring at a plant that’s pushed up between the concrete. There’s nowhere I want to go.
I press a hand to my chest and double over, riding the wave of the bond amputation. It hurts so bad I know I’m not going to survive it.
My lip trembles as I walk, and I feel it suddenly, keenly. The wolf, she moves around, and I know if I embrace her, she will come out, and we will be one.
That’s something I don’t want to do. She just reminds me of what I lost.
I walk down the street, pausing as the orange of a dawn missing for seven hundred years returns. People cry out, they laugh, they hug, they sing.
I wish they could be here with me to hear it. I’ve never heard so many voices raised to create such a beautiful sound.
The stars and moon are gone. I want them back. Freeze time and let me live in the moment when they are alive.
I feel nothing about the stupid sun.
It takes me forever to hobble back to the gates that have now been pulled open. The stage is gone; the bodies dumped in a pile to the side. I can’t see Mordecai or Jarek; they’ve taken them away.
It hurts. I just want my alphas. I stand there helplessly, unsure what to do.
“Kaida Keres!”
My name being shouted draws my attention. Bear stands in the middle of the gates, framed by the rising sun. The hero and the leader these people deserve. A force of strength the world will need in these coming days.
He has a bow in one hand and an arrow in the other. I remember our conversation back when we first met, about living without bonds. Hope kindles in my chest, an icy ember that gives me one last purpose.
“I had a dream,” he shouts to me, “about a woman with silver hair.”
I close my eyes and press a hand to my heart, bowing slightly. For the first time since he died, the ember of hope unfurls into something raging.
“Keres!” His voice booms out. “Come again. We’ll welcome you home.”
A cheer goes out around me, the streets lined with alphas, omegas, and betas shouting my name. The grass is soft under my boots as I walk towards him. The blood scent has gone. I can smell peaches; they remind me of my mother.
Oh, thank you. I press my lips together and give myself a moment, preparing myself for this last task.
With a roar that turns into a howl, I shift into the form of a wolf.
The grey wolf that I was is gone; grief has turned my fur white.
I am moon-touched. I sit back on my haunches and sing my pain.
All around me, human voices howl with me.
Until the sound is like thunder spreading on the wind, a cry of defiance, pain, and joy.
A celebration of freedom that crosses this world and into Remmilow.
All my deaths flash through my mind. My task isn’t to live. It’s to die.
“Alpha save you, my sister. May you walk in strength, wisdom, and heart and return to us soon,” Bear shouts formally. “We will wait for you!”
I run at him, moving faster and faster. Until the omegas bless us and we meet again. Please, Alpha, send me away from here.
He lifts his bow and nocks the arrow.
“Goodbye, Kaida Keres.”
The arrow hits, and I go tumbling over and over until I collapse on the blood-soaked streets of the Culling Ground.
I let out a wild howl, filled with an agony that I can’t live with. My song echoes around the city, around the world, and in every person, it reaches into them and tethers their wolf to the moon.
The alpha raises his bow again.
Do it, I silently beg.
“Omega,” he whispers. “Goodbye.”
“The Luna Omega is no more!” It’s an echo from the past, words said thousands of years ago, but I hear them as clear as I did that day.
There’s pain, and then there’s nothing.