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.
