by D. Brumbley
Nick nodded as he got back to his home, but he didn’t go inside. Zara had made the house hers almost as much as it was his, and he couldn’t go back in there where her presence still lingered. Instead he went to sit on a steel chair on his porch as the crowd dispersed for the moment, each pack to see to its own. “Someday you can explain to me how that’s a comfort. It was because of my trust that she gained anyone else’s.”
“It’s what they do. They live off of twisting everything until you can’t recognize it anymore.” She sighed and looked at the house that he sat in front of, and then she looked at her Alpha again. “Come stay in my house. I’ve got plenty of room. You’ll go crazy staying here, thinking about everything.”
“I won’t be staying in any house for some time, Lea.” Nick said with a sigh, still looking at the ground. When he finally took a breath and looked back at her, he was no longer the boy she had guarded for most of his childhood, but an Alpha who she thought very well might never actually smile again. “See to William and oversee those who are working to reestablish the fences. I am going to meet with the other Alphas one by one. By nightfall, we need to have an understanding of our casualties and of those we still have with us.”
Lea nodded as she backed away slowly. “Yes, Alpha.”
As Lea moved away and everyone set about their tasks, Nick raked his fingers back through his hair and heaved a shuddering sigh. He had his eyes closed for a long moment, trying without success to gather himself together from the broken pieces left of him, but even that moment’s peace was shattered by the sound of footsteps on the steps leading up to his porch.
He flinched at the sound and looked up to see Veronica escorting Candra, both of them limping somewhat as they got up onto the porch, but they seemed mostly unharmed. Veronica nodded toward Nick and looked back at Candra with a gentle expression that Fireborn were not known for. “She wanted to see you.”
Nick composed his face and nodded at Candra. “I’m glad to see you’re safe.” He looked past her at Veronica with the same gentle nod. “Both of you.”
Veronica nodded and started to step away even more, to allow Candra to speak with Nick in privacy, more or less. Candra sighed sadly as she looked over at Nick, genuine sadness in her expression. “I wanted to tell you that I’m grateful for all you’ve done to keep me safe. And that I’ll help in any way I can.”
The events that started the day came back to him in vivid and painful detail, having been eclipsed by the rest of what had happened. “We’re going to find him.”
She nodded, just a little at first, and then much more forcefully. “I want to help. I want to help look for him, I want to be out there.” Candra then stepped up closer to him and she touched his shoulder very lightly. “You still have people who love you.”
He couldn’t help the shiver at the power that ran through her into him, and he took her hand as he nodded. “We’ll need your help. And I’m glad you’re with us.” He let go of her hand and looked at Veronica. “I asked Lea to take you to her because of all of us, she has the greatest capacity for power. She cannot replace Orlando, I know, but I hope she can help for the moment.”
Candra nodded and she looked over at Veronica as well. “We helped each other today.” She looked up at the darkening sky, shivering at the realization that this would be her first night as a free wolf without Orlando. “Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Just help wherever you can. It’s the wounded and the dying that need your help right now. Help tend to them, and we’ll all be more than grateful.”
“I…” She didn’t want to bring up the topic, but before anyone else, Aura had been her friend. “Is Aura okay?”
He nodded, but it was in uncertainty. “She was as well as can be expected an hour or so ago when I saw her last. It was her husband, Ziem, who took down Coren, but he didn’t survive the duel.”
Candra shook her head as she looked around at the shattered world that had not so long ago been a place of celebration and smiles, especially between her and Orlando. Aura had stayed, she knew, because of the home it would provide her new family. Now it was hardly even livable. “None of this is fair.”
Nick didn’t answer that for a long time. “Did you expect it to be?”
“I didn’t know what to expect.” She sighed and looked back at Veronica, since she didn’t want to take up much of Nick’s time. “Those puppies are a promise, though, you know.”
“What do you mean?” He asked with an exhausted sigh.
“They were spared by your gods. Ironborn puppies.” She knew that there had to be some, with the parents that those puppies had. “The future.”
He had a hard time thinking about the future at the moment, but with her words, he was forced to. “Whatever offences we’ve committed against the gods, we’ve paid for them. I hope they are kinder to us in whatever future those puppies are going to have.”
“They will be,” Candra said with almost regal certainty in her voice, “I just feel it.”
He stood up and walked over with Candra to Veronica where she was waiting nearby. “We have a lot of work to do.”
XV
Alina paced outside of the underground stone cell in complete darkness other than the slight flicker of a candle she carried with her. When she looked inside, she couldn’t see her prisoner, but she knew that he could hear her and talk to her. Only days after they’d taken him, he’d been weak enough that he was always in his human form, and by a few weeks later, he was turning into quite the sickly thing. They sustained him just enough with force-fed jolts so that he wouldn’t die.
It had been almost a month since she’d received the news about Coren’s death, and every day she became more and more eager to exact her revenge. Fortunately, she was the new Speaker of the Council, and the authority to take that revenge was entirely hers, along with the authority to deal with all those who had been a part of what had happened to her Speaker lover. Once Alina got even the tiniest bit of proof that Teresa had contributed to Coren’s death, she had grandiose plans for killing the pathetic bitch.
“So. Feel like telling me anything today, Demon?”
Orlando made no move to answer, and didn’t even look up to make eye contact with her from where he was hanging in the cell. When they took him, they had wrapped him head to toe in a thick rubber casing and had grounded him thoroughly for the entire drive to his final unknown destination. Now he had electrical cords wrapped around his arms and legs like chains, holding him spread-eagled in his cell, which was entirely lined with the same rubber casing. There was thick glass between him and the new Speaker of the Council, and he had tried too often to breach it in his early days in captivity. He knew it was no good. He couldn’t even tell what day it was anymore.
“Actually yes. You’ve gotten uglier since I saw you last.”
She smirked at his comment, since the fact that he said anything about her at all meant that he still wasn’t giving up. He was still fighting somewhere on the inside, and she needed that. “Well, I have news for you. News you’ll be very excited to hear.”
He answered in the driest voice possible, which was easy, since they didn’t give him much to drink. “I’m on the edge of my seat. Please, the tension is killing me.”
“It seems that a pack of Fireborn have your girlfriend.” She leaned in against the glass. “And we have some big plans for you. Today is just a wonderful day filled with good news.”
He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of hearing his worry at the news of Candra, and so he focused on the last of what she’d said. “You didn’t have to throw a party for my birthday. I’ve had just about enough of those, I think.”
“Don’t worry. The party will come later but it won’t be for you, I’m afraid.” Just as she finished speaking he could feel that he was being taken down by hulking wolves who had their arms covered in rubber gloves. They made sure to drop him a few times and to hit the wall on their way out of the cell before they dropped him in front of her,
still wrapped up.
“We’ve got a new home for you. Once we get you all nice and situated, we’ve got places to be, people to kill. You know the drill.” She bent down to hover over him, her dark grey eyes trying to meet his. “Also, I forgot to mention…congratulations. I hear that you’re going to be a father any day now.”
That finally did break his nonchalance as he looked up at her, but then he started laughing and just rolled on his side. “Okay, unless you had me in some kind of sedated coma for a while there, that’s not likely. Candra’s a hell of a wolf, but even a goddess can’t bake ‘em quite that quick.”
Alina just grinned even brighter. “I wasn’t talking about your Lightborn lover.”
It took her comeback a moment to sink in, but when it finally did, the smile on his face died and he just shook his head. “You’re getting desperate for material now, Pebbles. Maybe next you’ll tell me she birthed six Lightborn puppies and they all came out asking for me by name. And that they’re actually bears. That’d be a good story.”
She shrugged and then nodded for the guards to pick him up again to take him to his newly constructed prison. “You were the last one to give it to her right, it seems. Zara told us.” Alina had used the truth of Zara’s treachery relentlessly over the last few weeks. “All Aura could ever think about whenever she saw you was the truth.”
“The truth.” Orlando laughed once as he said it, then started coughing for a few minutes before he managed to stop again. “That would be the subject you failed in the one year of primary school you actually attended, right?”
“How does it feel?” She continued on as they started to carry him away. She walked just in front of the guards, leading the way with Orlando bound behind her. “Knowing that you left her, you left your puppies, all for a slave girl?” A few stones shifted overhead as they walked through the tunnels and pelted only Orlando as they fell. “Not to mention your disappearance started a war that left your rusted heap of an ex-girlfriend all alone. So alone that we may just have to go check on your puppies for you. Maybe we’ll even bring a couple home for you. How does that sound?”
He managed to sigh, but he hoped they didn’t have any Heartborn around to know how he really felt about what she’d said. “Are you gonna kill me soon? Because I have an afterlife on the power grid to get to, during which I won’t have to listen to the exceptionally annoying sound of your voice.”
“I’ll make sure that Aura knows you felt like she was unfit, and therefore we had to bring a few back for you. No problem.” She continued on, obviously having a different conversation with him than he was having with her. “Like I said. We need to get going, can’t miss the blessed occasion, but you’ll have plenty of people watching over you. Don’t worry.”
He let them carry him for a while, then finally lifted his head and looked at her. “Don’t you ever get tired?”
“No,” she said with the first genuine response to anything he’d said all night, “but I know you do.”
He just hung his head again, letting them carry him, since he had no way of getting out of the hold of the Earthborn carrying him. After a moment or two, though, he looked up at Alina again and opened his mouth, sticking out his tongue at her, and a single jolt of electricity shot out at Alina, catching her in the neck, though it wasn’t very powerful.
She winced and twitched as it tingled down her spine, but then she only glared at him. “You know, maybe I’m more interested in bringing back your puppies as gloves and a hat than alive.”
He sighed at the fact that he hadn’t gotten much out of himself, and closed his eyes, letting them do whatever they wanted with him without reaction.
Alina stopped and the guards moved past her to take Orlando away while she turned the other direction. She had a lot of work to do.
As Orlando was finally thrown in the back of another heavily-lined van, he couldn’t even struggle to look out the front windows to see where he was. What good would the knowledge do him anyway? They had taken him, and taken Candra the same way. He knew they wouldn’t kill her, just as he knew they wouldn’t kill him. He was too useful. So was she. But Aura…that was something else altogether.
And if her pups were actually his…
“I’m sorry, Aura.” He whispered into the floor of the van with his eyes closed, just as the drivers gunned it into motion and slammed him against the doors he’d been shoved through. It didn’t matter where he was being taken. It wasn’t back to the ones he belonged with.
* * * * *
Stuck in her wolf form, Aura wasn’t able help in the rebuilding of the compound, but she did everything that she could. Her house had been more or less restored, though it was shaped differently so that she wouldn’t constantly be reminded of what she had lost. Several houses had gone up quickly, and she helped with the building of the monument that was over all the buried bodies of the lost Ironborn.
Ziem was among them, as he would have wanted to be. He didn’t think himself special, and even in death he wouldn’t have wanted to be set apart from the rest who died. Every pack had their own monument that they were building, even the Stoneborn packs and Earthborn packs that formed from the remaining wolves of Osvald and Sedovin, those few that had turned out to be more trustworthy than their Alphas had been.
Nick was near her most of the time, though they very rarely spoke directly. He was in his human form almost all the time, working on the monument and the rebuilding effort. He still walked with a limp as he made his way around the monument and smoothed the edges of all the metal so that the walls were of one seamless piece. The power of an Ironborn was better than any welding job.
Aura watched Nick as he did his particular aspect of the job, mainly because she missed the touch of metal more than she missed almost anything else about being human. Soon, though, very soon, she would have it back. She would also have a bunch of fatherless puppies, which was hard for her to think about.
She paced back and forth for a little while not far from Nick before she went up to sit down next to him as he stood back to look at what he had accomplished so far that day.
So that he wasn’t so far above her, he crouched down, apparently to look at the lower part of the wall to inspect it for blemishes. He didn’t look at her beside him, but he put out a hand and laid it in the fur on her shoulder, letting his considerable power flow out of him and into her. In the last month of her pregnancy, she would need all she could get. There was a lot of talk about her and about Ziem, and about the fact that she was putting herself under too much strain by trying to help with the monument, even though no one moved to stop her.
It felt good to have the fresh power run through her, even though it made the puppies stir inside of her wildly, some of them reacting to the feel of the Ironborn energy. She didn’t know if the puppies were his, but she was glad that he was at least acknowledging the fact that she was alive. She licked the top of his hand to thank him for the boost, and then she looked back at the monument. It was a beautiful thing, the way it was shaping out to be.
He didn’t speak to her but patted her fur a few times before he got back up and walked around to the entrance of the crypt itself, completely disregarding what he’d done beforehand. The Ironborn within the monument, hundreds of them, were perfectly sealed in steel that had been shaped around their bodies by those that loved them in a likeness of themselves. Their every feature was preserved, down to the last curl of their hair. The mausoleum was a solemn place, with hundreds of wolves still moving about within, tending to their dead.
Nick went to Ziem’s portion of the tomb, which had gathered quite a bit of ornamentation despite the fact that it was one among hundreds, offerings from all the gathered packs piling around him, gold and precious jewels encrusting his arms and legs. His gold wedding ring had been replaced around one of his steel fingers, and the knife he had used to kill Coren was held in one hand over his chest.
Aura found herself also going in to look at Ziem’s place, but she could only s
tay so long before it was too painful for her to linger. Nick didn’t even notice her come in until she was almost out, and she fell to the ground with a loud yelp.
Her yelp drew attention from everyone in the area, and Nick took only a moment to pull off the vest he wore before he shifted and ran over to her. Aura?
She looked as though she was fine to get up, which she managed to do, just barely. I’m sorry. That was so strange…and so painful.
What happened? He got out of the monument to stand in front of her, a few wolves in the area listening in on their conversation.
Aura shook her head, trying to rationalize what had happened. I was standing here, looking at Ziem’s…she couldn’t bring herself to fully acknowledge that he was dead, so she didn’t continue on that particular thought. Then I turned to leave and this pain shot right through me.
You should get home. You shouldn’t be walking about anyway, you know that.
I can’t just sit there and do nothing. The silence is…painful.
You can’t be out here working. You’re going to bring those pups on too soon. There were several who had told her that already, a few mothers now without children, who had taken her somewhat under their collective wings. Her own mother and father had died in the fighting, as had her half-brother. The only family she had left was the family still waiting to be born inside her.
They’ll be fine, they’re becoming too wild in there anyway…She fell again when another blindingly painful ripple of power ran through her body.
Since he was a wolf as well, he and everyone around her could feel the echoes of what she was experiencing, and Nick was instantly an Alpha barking orders at other wolves to pick her up on a metal stretcher and get her back to her home. Several of the women that had been checking in on her were in the area, and they rushed after her to help her get there.
Nick followed at a distance, but stayed behind, outside the house and on the path off the porch, in human form, knowing he had no right to be there in the first place, but he wanted to know she was alright.