Light that stretches on for eternity.
Light that encompasses everything.
Light that connects us all.
THE AFTERMATH
“Max!”
Jasper’s voice pulls me back.
I blink as the light leaves my vision and I find myself back in human form, lying on the forest floor in Jasper’s human arms. The night sky is peeking through the tops of the trees, stars blinking, the moon casting her silver glow from some hidden place beyond the foliage.
“What’s happening?” I croak.
I’m beyond exhausted, barely able to lift my head without Jasper’s help.
His face comes into view, bruised and bloodied, but alive with concern.
My arm feels like lead as I lift it so I can place my hand on the cheek that isn’t swollen.
“You’re ... I thought you were.”
“I’m here,” he says. “I’m here.”
His lip is busted, one eye looks to be already swelling shut, there are deep scratch marks on his neck and lower down on his chest. Blood splatters across his shoulders.
“Whatever you did, I think it brought me back.”
I shake my head ever so slightly, though even that much movement makes the world spin. It’s hard to figure out what’s happening. The little of the forest I can see isn’t giving much away. The air is still thick with the scent of torn-up dirt and wolf sweat. But the forest is quiet.
“Did we win? Is it over?”
“Yes,” Jasper says with wonder in his voice. “You did it, Max. You did it.”
With a sigh of relief, I let my head fall back, darkness closes in on all sides.
“Max?”
“So sleepy,” I mumble, barely able to move my lips.
“It’s okay,” he says, stroking my hair. “Sleep. I’ve got you.”
Time moves strangely from then on. I seem to drift in and out of waking but can never quite figure out if I’m really awake or just dreaming. If the visions of the blood-wolf plane and light are memories or real. I feel spread thin as if my own consciousness has been pulled in a million different directions, but at the same time I feel at peace, like I could sleep forever.
Sometimes I open my eyes, and daylight is streaming through a window, a burgundy curtain pulled back halfway. Sometimes it’s dark and the curtain is drawn.
I relive the moment during the battle where I took control of the Axis Pack wolves, only this time I see it like a bird soaring above the battlefield. I swoop and dart from wolf to wolf, watching as they writhe in agonizing pain, unable to move their limbs, then just as they seem like they’re about to reach their breaking point, a line of billowing light whips through the crowd, knocking the Axis wolves out and leaving them unconscious in the mud.
Is this what happened? Is this what I did?
It’s almost as if I can remember it happening, like I was there and not somewhere else chatting with blood wolves from the past.
When I finally do wake up, for real this time, Jasper is sitting at the side of the bed. Yellow morning light is streaming through the open curtains.
“Hey,” he says. “How are you feeling?”
His wounds have already started healing. The swelling around his eye and jaw is gone, the cuts on his neck and lip are smaller and on the way to vanishing completely. His face looks clean, his freckles more pronounced, his eyes the greenest I think I’ve ever seen them.
