The Clear Choice

{ Chapter 46 }

Issac's POV

I'm in between being awake and being in a deep sleep. Everything's been a heavy, loud blur and I haven't said a word. I'm on someone's bed but I don't know who's or where.

I don't dream, when I close my eyes my mind drifts only to darkness. I try and feel for the connection between Clary's mind and mine but it's like trying to grasp for a hand in pitch black darkness, only to find out it's not there anymore.

I roll over and slam my eyes shut tighter. I feel the presence of others around me but I don't make any attempt to get up and face reality.

It's a crushing feeling that I can't ignore if I wanted to. The sadness of her absence has become debilitating and all I can hear is my wolf howling and my mind screaming she's gone, Clary's gone.

*

My brother got me to get up. I had blacked-out on the ledge in the mountains and Lira and him half carried, half dragged my body to an empty house in the Purum pack village. It had stopped raining and but the atmosphere was wet with sorrow and silence.

Lira wouldn't stop crying but I didn't have to energy to yell at her to stop. We left the empty house adn began to walk back home.

Clary's, my father's and Kane's bodies had been taken to the Saltus pack house and I wanted nothing more then to stay far away from that place. The thought of seeing her body stunned my heart with misery. I couldn't look at the girl I loved only to have a pale corpse with unseeing eyes return the gaze.

The Purum pack mountains were quiet and every white wolf we passed didn't attack, they just stared. The three of us learned that after Kane went off the ledge, his most loyal followers began to burn down my pack's forest.

They didn't get far because the rain extinguished the angry flames but once they knew they had lost this war, they ran. They ran like cowards and the ones that had chosen to stay would now become part of the Saltus, Lactus or Patet pack. The rest would be rouges. Pureblooded rouges, that's something that I would never think possible.

I couldn't lift my head. I could barely get my feet to carry me down the paths that lead off this mountain I had came to hate. I felt the tears wanting to fill my eyes and the screams that wanted to leave my throat, but I stayed as silent and emotionless as a statue.

"Oh-" A sad noise left Lira's lips as we finally reached the border of the Saltus and Purum pack border. I looked up and had to bite my lip and clench my fists in order to not fall apart.

My home. My forest who's roots were practically the veins under my skin and who's paths and shadows I knew better then myself. It was smoking and had patches of scorched land, the pines black and still carrying small flames. They only destroyed small portions but it was like a stab in the heart seeing the beautiful forest blemished by the brutality of this war.

I wanted to keep fighting. I wanted to kill more purebloods and loose myself in the chaos of an attack, I wanted to feel something other than this painful, paralyzing sorrow and dread. 

But there was no one around but Tobias, Lira and I. I could smell others nearby but of course they had felt the dead of their Luna and knew not to approach me.

"We can replant them." My brother said after no one replied, his sad brown eyes gazing at the blackened pine trees. He came to stand beside me, his lips tight and eyebrows low. I didn't look him in the eyes, I just kept my silence.

Maybe I could run from this, be on my own. I could leave behind everything that would remind me of her and break away from what would become of this broken home. But my chest tightened at the thought of becoming someone who wouldn't remember her. I couldn't do it.