Prologue
There’s a shared phenomenon many people experience at one time or another in their lives thanks to natural human experience. It pops into your mind unprovoked like you have unlocked a hidden quest during your main story line. Whatever actions or choices you were facing just a moment before seem to suddenly seem so vital, the world narrowing its focus to what you do next. Time slows, your breath catches, blood pounds in your ears, and even your bones hum with this single universal truth…
This is finally the moment the path you’ve walked comes to a head, with the promise of sweet rewards or brutal consequences.
This moment, though shared across time and space, is different for everyone. For some it’s a moment of great success and for others a moment of great triumph. Maybe it’s a moment of survival or sacrifice. For me, it had been a moment of radical acceptance and misplaced sacrifice.
The concrete of the alley I found myself in tonight seems content to let its cold seep into me as it lays unyielding beneath me. The ability to move my limbs has fled from me as my mind and body stopped communicating with each other. Without the added effort of making my body function, my mind found the unwelcome ability to replay every moment of my life like movie cuts mashed together for maximum effect. As the black abyss creeps into my vision with the threat of consuming my very existence, the universe screams its choice, sending charges and quakes through my soul. This was my moment, pulsing with its finality, as my breaths became further apart and my heart grew weary.
I could lie and say I hadn’t imagined my death before, but there seemed to be no reason to deny the morbid thoughts anymore. Most of the time, I imagined a warrior's death, fighting for the safety of my pack fiercely until a foe got the better of me. Occasionally, I pictured my demise in more peaceful ways, like falling asleep by my waterfall and just never waking up. If I was truly being honest with myself, the thought had occurred to me over the last few months that my death would happen just like it was at the moment.
Alone in some dank alley or lot, with wolf’s bane and alcohol coursing through my veins in quantities no longer compatible with life, quietly fading out of a world long content with my presence no longer there. It wasn’t the worst fate I had imagined for myself. I suppose I was even a bit thankful for it at that moment.
Finding one’s mate was usually a wolf’s purpose for breathing, their hope that kept them moving through this life, but for some it was their biggest fear. If I had ever met my mate, his rejection surely would have been the most painful moment I would ever experience, leading to a much worse death. There was never a doubt my mate would reject me, not even the feral rouges would accept someone as damaged as I had become in the last four years.
Even my own father, my own pack, was growing tired of dealing with the lingering effects of my experience. Their patience and acceptance waned and they silently prayed for the day they no longer needed to cater to Alpha’s broken daughter. Many of them, including my father, had initially been so relieved I returned unharmed months later when I had all but been assumed lost to them. It was so palpable in the very atmosphere of the pack I couldn’t bring myself to ruin it with the truth. The betrayal I had so bitterly experienced would have torn the pack apart, assuming anyone even believed me. I made a choice then that they would never hear what had truly happened, and it became my burden to bear the pain of it alone.
It wasn’t so much that I regretted that choice in the end, but I wondered if it had been the right one. Had I somehow robbed them in this life through my silence? They all mourn him as a hero, a martyr even, with nothing to show for his death, but should they be able to mourn him as a traitor instead? He will be forever remembered in the history of the pack, immortalized amongst the list of the Black Bay Moon warriors taken from their goddess given duty to protect the pack. It was too late to change that now, but I found myself breathing a silent prayer of apology to the ones before and after him. I wasn’t sure I deserved it, but I asked their forgiveness nonetheless for tainting their memories through my silence.
I wouldn’t be mourned as a warrior lost in battle, if I was mourned at all. Had I met my end four years ago, I would have been mourned as their princess, the light and joy of the pack. My mother would have tenderly placed the navy shroud adorned with Sapphires over me as the women sung for my soul to unite with my wolf under the watchful eye of Selene, the Mother Goddess of us all. My father would lead the men through the packlands, asking them to help announce his grief with their sorrowful howls joined on the wind.
With a strained exhale, I realized they would never mourn me that way now. They might mourn what I could have been to them, but they would never mourn me as I was. There has been so much destruction and chaos since I returned. My disappearance took its toll on them surely, but my return had been even harder. A gentle feeling of peace washed over me as I realized I may not be mourned and immortalized in love, but my love for them would spare them from so much more pain than I had caused.
My final thought before the darkness finally brought the end of my suffering shifted from my pack back to my mate, whoever they were destined to be. In my death the suffering that would have been theirs will forever be silenced with me, and to that end I would gladly accept it on the damp concrete of that alley.
I had made my choice now, with the promise of sweet relief from my torment, to stop fighting for this existence. The question was, would others make the choice to stop fighting for me as well?
