Or what’s left of her.
Time slows, stretching into something grotesque and unreal as my vision locks onto the shape on the ground, my mind refusing to accept what my eyes are seeing, my heart pounding violently as denial claws its way up my throat.
No.
No…
NO!
Her body lies broken on the ground, stained with her blood as it spreads like a pool beneath her. Ares is bending over her, and as I step forward, I realise her head is missing.
I stop in my tracks as I see her head, cradled in Renji’s arms, her hair matted with blood, her eyes wide and glassy, frozen in an expression of pain and sadness. It cuts through me.
How? How did I let this happen to her? How?!
I failed her after promising to always protect her.
A sound tears out of my chest that doesn’t sound human, a raw, broken howl that rips through the clearing as my legs finally give out beneath me and I hit the ground hard, crawling the last few feet towards her, hands shaking so violently I can barely touch her without sobbing.
“Dad…” one of my sons says, placing their hand on my shoulder.
Renji holds her head out, and it shatters me.
“No,” I choke, my fingers brushing her cheek, still her, even as my heart shatters with the knowledge that she is gone. “Please… don’t let this be real… Please don’t do this to me. Raven… I need you… Come back…”
I take her head and hold it to my chest, pressing my forehead to hers, breathing her in desperately. “Please…” I don’t know who I’m begging, I just want her back. My tears blind me, my wolf screams and claws at the inside of my skull.
“I’m sorry… I was too late,” I sob, rocking slightly as if she could hear me. “I should have been here…”
My gaze drops to what remains of her body, to the savage wounds punched through her chest and abdomen. Even in my pain, it doesn’t make sense. She is an incredible warrior. Did she get attacked from behind?
But it doesn’t matter… because I was too late.
The grief curdles inside of me as I clutch her tighter and scream her name again, the sound ripping through the pack territory.
I feel the pack around me, their horror, their sorrow, their fear, but it barely registers because all I can see is her, all I can feel is the empty void where her presence should be, the echo of a life ripped away far too brutally, far too soon.
My mate.
My Luna.
My heart.
How do I live on from here?
Raven, you weren’t meant to leave me.
A strangled cry escapes my throat as I scoop her body into my lap with my other arm. The tiny body that once contained a soul so generous and so big that no one could ever match up to it. She was the flame that kept me going.
And as I press my lips to her bloodied forehead, shaking and broken and utterly undone, I know my life will never be the same again, because she wasn’t just my world, she was the oxygen I needed to survive.
And she’s gone.
The Chaos of Battle
Heaven
Ihear Uncle Liam’s cry of agony cut through the battlefield, feel his power surge upward like a wound ripped open in the sky itself. I hear the howls of grief from the Blood Moon Pack wolves.
