It Had To Be Her

4: "Our Love Can Never Die.."

The battlefield is smoky with the smoke of over a thousand flaming catapults that destroyed parts of the vampire Imperial City Sumatra. Bodies of both his wolves and the bloody fiends themselves are piled up, and he is dying. He knows it deep in his bones, and yet he needs to see Ellara just once before his spirit goes into The Hunting Grounds until a worthy host can be found for him to live once more. Would his host be a mage? Another elf like his current host is? Or a human wizard? Only the gods knew for certain.

His Captain and best friend Devlin catches him, and he hates that Ellara now has to live without him. "Kael, speak to me," Devlin says in Quenya, "What can I get you?"

"El..Lara. Please, Dev. Needs...to know."

"Understood," The blonde elf murmurs, barely holding his emotions in check, yet his gray eyes are filling with tears.

He feels himself being carried inside what remains of their makeshift outpost, and there she is: his slender, proud Luna with hair like chestnut and eyes as soulful and as brown as a doe's. Her dress is stained with blood from attending to the wounded, and now he is no exception but merely one in the many wounded soldiers in this war with the vampires. He vaguely hears Devlin and her speak rapidly to one another before she is left alone with him.

"Oh, Kael, my love," She weeps, holding his hand, and kissing it. "When they said you were struck down and.."

"Shhh, beloved... I..Need you."

She nods and gingerly touches her stomach. He knew she was with child before the battle began, and yet she would not leave his side, even when many of the other Lunas were leaving for safety. "You can't die! I won't let you, damn it, not when I am finally carrying the heir I was all but pressured by the clan to carry."

He soothes her by cupping her cheek, and saying softly, "Then bond. Do..the Carry Vow."

She sniffles. "The magic used alone for that will kill you, Kaelin. Are you certain it will work?"

He manages a smile, and regains the strength to speak more clearly, despite his many wounds. "It has to, my Queen. For a love.." He winces in pain, "As strong as ours our love can never die. Devlin will..bond to you."

"He will never be you even if I bore him a hundred sons, you know that."

He coughs up blood, and he feels himself fading further. "I know, beloved...Do it now. Our souls will find one another again in another life."

She cuts their wrists and puts them both together. The magic between them forms the bond between them eternally. "Blood of my blood, of my bone and soul. I bond to thee forever in eternity. Reunite us in our destined time."

Kaelin repeats the vow, using the last of his strength, and on the final word "time," he expells his final breath, and upon the bite of the beta Remus Lupin, his soul travels to the dark wizard Severus Snape as soon as Ellara's reincarnated self kisses the host Snape's hand establishing the mate bond between them once more...