by Chris Savage
There he was, breathing heavily and humble as the earth. William.
Chapter 16
William remembered the degree of joy he felt when Casper broke the news of his pregnancy to him, and realized that it was nothing compared to what he felt in the room, as he held his baby and raised him. The baby was covered slimy liquid accompanied with little blood. Before handing the baby back to the medic as the little creature cried, he looked it in the eye and said, “Henry. That’s what you’ll be called. Henry.” He looked at Casper. who was dizzy and tired from the process of childbirth. He knelt down by the bed and placed his hand on Casper’s forehead, wiping the sweat.
“You’ll heal in no time, my love. You’ll be perfectly fine.”
Casper was too tired to force a smile, so he placed his hand on William’s hand and managed to smile by widening one side of his lips faintly.
“His name’s Henry,” William continued, still smiling at Casper, “What do you think?”
Casper repeated the routine and gave a faint nod.
“It’s a great name, William,” Mark said, as he stared at William with a mixture of admiration and pride. William looked at him from where he knelt and immediately stood up to hug him, embracing him heartily.
“Thank you,” he whispered, “Thank you.”
“Oh William, come on, you’d have done the same thing for me and more, despite being the alpha. I’ll do it all over again in a heartbeat.”
The medic stepped back in and handed Henry over to William, who handed him over to Casper where he lay healing. After he kissed the baby’s forehead twice, he handed him back to William, who continued to admire him.
In no time, Shane stepped in and marveled at what he saw.
“Holy smokes he’s live! He’s up and running!” he exclaimed. He hugged William immediately. “How’re you healing?” he asked Casper.
“Fine, thank you, Shane,” Casper said, finally mustering up the strength to speak. “But he’s not a machine, he can’t be up and running just immediately!” he jokingly said, breaking everyone into a round of laughter. He was happy and he knew it. He tried to show it but could not. He did not have enough strength yet. But he was happy, beyond any form of happiness he’d ever experienced in his life. He looked at William again and smiled, in a way that spoke to William, telling him to be as proud as him, for making something, someone, so beautiful. William smiled back, then looked into Henry’s eyes and smiled too.
Shane’s expression suddenly became serious. He looked at William and gestured him to come over, as though he wanted to whisper something to him.
“Oh come on, Shane, you can just say it here, there’s no outsider in the room,” William said, still in the joyous mood.
“Yes, Shane, share it. Or who’re you protecting this time?” Mark asked, still pained about the mission from which he was excluded previously. Shane shrugged. He breathed heavily, before finally speaking.
“There’s been an attack, William, a serious one. A lot of dead this time,” he regretfully said.
“Where? What pack?” William asked, equally affected by the news. Casper’s face began to take up a suspicious and worried look.
“The other side of the city, some thirty miles from here. The entire pack was murdered, save for three,” Shane explained, shaking his head.
“Their alpha?” William asked, hoping that he would be part of three.
“Missing.”
“Damn it!” William clenched his fists as he expressed his pain. The room became tensed immediately. He did not want to continue discussing such bad news in the room where his son was just born.
“Let’s take this outside, Shane, not in here. It’s unsuitable for this moment.”
“No,” Casper said. “Stay. Discuss everything here. Let me know if you’ll be running off again. I’m tired of having to hear it from Gary or you having Mark tell me that you’re gone already. So just say it to my fucking face for once okay?”
He was beginning to lose it. He did not mind using up the little energy he’d gained so far from healing. He was tired of being left alone, and refused to let it happen again particularly when he just had his baby. According to him, William had an equal responsibility to Henry, apart from the one he had to the pack. He had the choice to choose one, and the pack would understand if he picked his son at least for a while. William looked at Casper, who was already crying as he spoke to him. Tears began to form in his own eyes as well, as they both knew that even if it was true that he indeed had a choice, there was only one he was going to make at that point in time.
“Casper,” he said with tears in his eyes.
“No, I don’t want to hear it, William. You know what, you can go ahead and save the whole world for all I care! But you won’t meet me back here if you get back alive. Drop Henry as you leave!” he yelled, as he turned away from everyone, crying. The medic silently walked out of the room. William knew that offering any explanation was going to fall on deaf ears, so he gave Henry over to Mark, and tears in his eyes, took Shane’s hand and dragged him out of the room.
“You know you can sit this one out, right?” Shane said to William out of concern, although he knew it was impossible. William would never ignore such a situation, knowing his son was in good hands. He felt pity for Casper, and tried to salvage the situation the best he could.
“Let’s go, Shane,” was all William could say, as he was too pained to say anything else. He was apparently heartbroken by the fact that his son came to the world at such a crucial time. He was filled with rage and swore to himself to make Damion suffer to the brink of death over and over again before finally killing him.
They both set out to the location where the massacre had been reported after assembling just enough members of the pack to fend off an attack.
“Where’s Raymond?” William asked Shane.
“In the city, unfortunately. Jasper’s around. But I suppose you need him to remain here to handle things with Mark.”
“Yes. Get Gary. Let’s go.”
The trio set out to the village that had just been massacred by members of the Hagen Pack. William was boiling with rage for different reasons. As they moved through the woods, he said to his two companions, “We need to kill Damion.” He said nothing else after that. After a few seconds of waiting for him to explain, Shane finally spoke.
“What do you mean, of course we need to kill him, and we will. We will kill him and win this goddamned war. And you will happily get back to your family.”
“We need to kill him now, Shane, now.”
Shane was beginning to get confused as to what William was saying. They were on their way to save the supposed three members of the massacred pack, and hunt down the Hagen Pack members in the process. Suddenly William got to talking about killing Damion.
“We’ve been on the defensive foot for too long. He’s killing every pack little by little. How long will it take for him to get to us, Shane? We need to find him and kill him.”
“When he gets to us he’s going to get the worst of it. We both know that. And besides, it was the plan to be partially defensive for a while, before we go all out and attack him, right? That plan has not changed has it? Has it, Will?”
Shane was talking to him like a father now. He knew that the source of all the determination to kill Damion was his inability to be with his family, and he understood what that meant for William. Family values were something William never took lightly, and that was why the pack had always been everything to him, being the only family he had. Now he had Casper and Henry, and right at the beginning of it all, Damion was preventing that from being in happy existence. Shane knew that the fatherly approach was the only way to get him to see reason.
As they ran through the woods. Gary remained silent, listening to Shane and William talk to each other.
“What’s the matter, Gary? You’re awfully quiet?” William, who was feeling better than he felt when their journey began, asked the lanky young man with blond hair, wh
o had been included in most of their recent missions, due to Mark’s unavailability.
“He’s always awfully quiet,” Shane added with a mild chuckle.
Gary smiled and replied to his two mentors, “I try to learn as much as I can by listening. I never stop listening. To your arguments, your decisions, the ones made by careful considerations and the ones made out of pure instinct, and your ability to listen too, I listen to everything. And that’s why I’m usually quiet.”
Gary surprised them, but not enough to prevent Shane from adding, “His listening ability will actually be nonexistent if I wasn’t in the picture, you know, since he’s too stubborn to listen to anyone and only listens to me when I remind him of the day he was born. For that brief moment he forgets he’s the alpha.” They all burst out laughing.
As they closed in on their intended location, the smell of fresh corpses greeted them from five miles to the village. They looked at each other as they moved more cautiously, reducing their speed and being on higher alert than they had been, in case of any presence of the perpetrators. Gary had never experienced anything like this before, and the fact that he could only smell the corpses rather than see them only freaked him out more. He was trying to keep it together as they advanced forward. He would not want to be the wolf that threw up on a mission with the alpha. Shane noticed his discomfort and smiled.
“Hold!” Gary whispered sharply, bringing the three of them to a halt. William was surprised at the fact that Gary had noticed something which he and Shane had not. He was further amazed by the confidence with which he’d duly cautioned the team. Indeed he listens. Shane noticed the surprise in William’s eyes. “He’s a tracker,” he silently said.
“He’s quite the tracker,” William whispered back.
“We’re being followed,” Gary whispered.
Like a lightning bolt, a sudden thud landed on Gary’s back.
“Watch out!” Shane screamed, but it was too late. Hagen Pack members had been hiding within the trees, waiting for them to arrive. One of them had jumped down and attacked Gary as he landed. The others immediately landed from the trees above. They were unbelievably many for just three opponents. William did a quick count and estimated them at thirty in number. He immediately grabbed Gary and threw him far out of sight into the woods to give him time to heal. The landing from William’s throw would probably injure him a bit, but his back was practically slashed in half by the initial attack. He will heal fast and hopefully won’t get noticed before then. The thirty wolves surrounded both William and Shane. They all recognized them, so no one dared to approach yet. They began to take slow steps, advancing carefully. They were all in their human-wolf form. William and Shane turned immediately, and backed each other, ready for a fight. Considering the level of skill and experience embedded in just the both of them, it was almost a fair fight, and so they were ready to see it to the end. One of the wolves tried to go after Gary in order to finish him off, but in a twinkle of an eye, William was in front of him, grabbing his shoulder with one hand and swiftly pulling his head off with the other.
One down, twenty-nine to go.
Chapter 17
Shane was surprised when he heard William’s heart skip a beat. That showed fear. Since the day William was born, Shane had never seen him scared of anything. But the narrative was different now, he had a son. He had something and someone to live for, and most particularly, he had something to fear in case he died. He was scared to die, leaving Henry in the unsafe world. Shane remembered how William’s father was before William was born, and the similarities were spot on. He was the alpha, strong, almost as fearless as William—which could actually not be matched due to its ‘out of the world’ intensity—and cared deeply about the pack as well. He became a bit softer when William was born, and Shane totally understood, just as he understood William at that moment.
How in the hell did we miss their heartbeats? Shane wondered. He was totally caught by surprise when the first of the wolves attacked Gary. Gary had only noticed the fact that they were being watched for a second before they were attacked. As Shane wondered, he realized there were a lot of chirping birds in the trees in that particular area of the woods.
Damn it, the birds, the bloody birds. They masked their scent and their heartbeats using the continuous chirping of the birds and we caught it too late. He was absolutely livid and cursed at the situation, but he soon realized there was no time to blame but himself for a setback. They were surrounded by thirty—now twenty-nine wolves.
“Who else wants to go after Gary? Who else? Come on!” The wolves failed to attack. They continued to close in carefully on the two of them. William decided to assess the situation more carefully. Why were they not attacking? Something was wrong somewhere. William suddenly roared, and a lot of them trembled, moving back in fear. He followed it with a swift attack as he began to fight the lot of them. Shane immediately did the same, and attacked the wolves right after. The fight was intense. Whatever they were planning, William thought, they were going to destabilize it by attacking them. William continued to attack, as he noticed that not all of the wolves were as weak as the one whose head he pulled off moments earlier. In no time, one of the wolves slashed Shane with his claws in the leg, bringing him down to one knee. While on his knees, he grabbed the wolf by his legs and pulled them off his waist. Using both legs as a weapon, he knocked out four wolves and immediately leaped on them to finish them off, quick as a flash, at least from the perspective of his victims.
In an instant, the wolves stopped fighting and they all fell back. William and Shane were both surprised. They were covered in blood, breathing heavily, all their wolf features apparent, and they looked angry, hungry for more of the wolves. They were about sixteen in number now, and in a horizontal file, they stood facing William and Shane.
Like a revelation, it dawned on Shane! The wolves before them were not supposed to attack them at all. They were supposed to be decoys. That was why they were not attacking at all. But what did they want? They were certainly not attacking the Naltice Settlement, as it was totally secured, and they would have been chased down by a pack member to inform them of the emergency. Damn it! Shane opened his eyes wide as it occurred to him.
“William!” he shouted, which surprised William as he was standing just next to him. He was almost panicking as he said to William in a loud whisper, “William. William, they need a hostage. They were stalling. Some of the other ones would have grabbed Gary or they’re trying to at the moment!” To their surprise, the other wolves immediately retreated and disappeared into the woods.
Both of them immediately ran towards Gary’s direction, and found him half dead, opened up in his gut, with a lot of blood still gurgling out of his mouth. He was coughing out more and more blood, and grabbed on to William’s hand as they got to the location. There were a lot of claw marks on the other parts of his body and he was bleeding all over.
“Gary!” William shouted as they got to him, “Gary, hey, hey, take my hand, okay, take it, take my hand.” He knelt by the omega and placed the back of his head on his lap. Shane tried to take off after Gary’s attackers but William gestured that he stay.
“He needs us here, Shane,” he said, as tears rolled down his cheek. He felt the life leave Gary’s body. There were two dead wolf-men close to Gary, and William could smell their blood on Gary’s body.
“He gave them a good fight. They could not take him hostage,” Shane added, as they watched him finally close his eyes. William held his hand one last time and absorbed his pain so as to reduce the pain he felt as he died. He stood up in anger and looked away, leaving Shane to bury the wolf.
They were both silent as they walked back to the settlement slowly and dejectedly. They had been outsmarted by Damion’s forces and Shane realized that they had indeed been playing defense for too long.
“We need to go back to the table,” he said to William as they headed back.
“Yes, Shane, we need to,” he said in agreeme
nt. “We have been losing for too long now. We need to start winning. Whether we like it or not, other packs depend on us to win this war, and the earlier we get on the offense the more that is a possibility. Unless we want to keep deceiving ourselves Shane, we need to admit, that lunatic is having his way, and we need to stop him.”
“We still need to find the surviving members of that pack,” Shane said.
“Yeah, yeah we will. Immediately we announce Gary’s death to the pack. We’ll set out tonight to search for them. We need to know what they know.”
Casper and Mark were still in the same room where they both left them, as well as the silence they left in the room. William already announced to the entire pack that Gary was dead, and explained the circumstances surrounding his death to everyone already. He called all the generals to the meeting room and instructed them to prepare for a change of plans, as he briefed them on everything he’d discussed with Shane. He also informed them that he would return to the woods that night with Shane just to conduct a brief search for the missing survivors of the attack against the pack on the other side of the city.
Upon getting to the room where he left Casper and Mark, William stood there in the familiar silence, with Casper turning away from him. He was properly healed now, and had no interest in listening to anything that William had to say. He was utterly disappointed that William was willing to leave his own newborn son for a matter which he could have sat out.
“Casper, today has been a bad day. A very bad one for a lot of us, for all of us in fact. Including you. Gary was your trainer, and I’m sure you’re not happy about his death as well.”
“Is that what you came here to talk to me about? About Gary and how I should feel bad about his death? Is that it? You’re trying to make me feel remorseful and run back to you like I always do, so that you’d console me and make me forget that just today you abandoned your own son only to get the same Gary killed?” He was apparently not having any of it from William. The death of Gary had really affected William, and he felt deeply offended immediately Casper decided to spin it around and make it his fault.