Forever Hoping: The Wolves of Mercy Falls

Forever Hoping

The woods held so many memories. It was my home; the place where I felt almost whole again.

The fragile warmth of spring had arrived. The trees seemed to grow taller and as a wolf, this meant fur glinting in the sun, the frost slowly melting from our lupine pelts as we sensed the beginnings of new life. For me, it meant the exhausting relief of shifting back to my human form again and the accompanying guilt as I left my family behind, human eyes in wolf skulls. Their gazes haunted me.

That was always the hardest thing for me- leaving Beck behind. He kept me whole when I was a boy smashed into pieces. And now, here I was again in my old home, searching for the one who made me Sam when Beck was no longer himself.

Grace.

I remembered back to the peninsula, how we said goodbye. Neither of us knowing how this would end. "What will you do while I'm gone?" she asked. I thought of everything we'd been through and everything I wanted to go through; to marry this amazing girl and write endless songs for her and knowing that our days together wouldn't be bound by the fear of winter. Tying a bright yellow leaf around her left ring finger, I hoped that for all the paper cranes I'd made I'd finally get my one wish. "I will miss you," I was left hoping that the miracle cure had worked for her like it did for me. I guess that's all I had left now. I clung to hope like a fragile leaf clinging to a tree in autumn.

And then I remembered the pain.

I spent months in the woods praying to die as the meningitis inflamed my brain and shattered my senses entirely. I hated that she had to go though the same. Picturing her curled up on the forest floor, knees to her chest as sharp pains shot through her temple and heat exploded through her cheekbones. The riotous sensations: worse than the rollercoaster of fire and ice that was shifting for the first time. That would be a breeze compared to the hell Grace was suffering. And it killed me.

It had been two months since I saw her. The goodbye was bathed in uncertainty and the science of Cole St Clair determined our future together; whether or not we would even have one. Once again, my happiness rested in the hands of a brilliant yet self-destructive rock star. Grace had left me without a trace.