Finding the Wolf Within

Chapter 40

Recap

I could hear howls in the near distance, which quickly changed into human voices. One voice was my dad’s and I said a silent thank you. I didn’t know what he was saying though. My eyes closed by themselves and I could feel myself getting dragged under. I needed to rest. My whole body called out for it. I had used too many abilities, had worn out my mind, which was just short of being static fuzz. But I needed to do one last thing first.

I forced my eyes to open so that I could look across the now blood-soaked and body-ridden lawn. Matt’s prone form was less than fifteen feet from me. I strained my ears, trying to block out all of the commotion so that I could hear the one thing I needed to hear before I let sleep take me. It was really faint, but it was there.

I didn’t hear anything else after that.

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Chapter 40

Ninety-seven pack members had fought in the battle. Ninety-seven male and female weres – all of them proud, loyal, courageous.

Only sixty-eight came home.

Twenty-nine had been lost. Everyone in the pack had been affected somehow. Females, and several males, had lost their mates; children had lost their parents; parents had lost their kids; and some, like me, had lost their best friends.

Matt was dead. My best friend since kindergarten. My first boyfriend. My first kiss. The guy who always fixed my computer when I broke it, who always understood how I was feeling, who always knew how to lighten the mood, who always put our friendship first. He was gone. Taken from me, from his family, all due to the selfish desires of a power-hungry were.

I didn’t wake up until mid-afternoon on Monday, so I didn’t find out that he had died for a full thirty hours. They told me that he had lost too much blood. My dad and the other fighter had tried to staunch the blood flow, but it had been too late. A were’s healing abilities couldn’t work magic. When they were finished explaining everything, they had looked at me expectantly, concern written on their faces, tears brimming in their eyes. They wanted me to say something, anything, but I just nodded and went back to bed.

My parents kept a watchful eye on me the entire rest of the week, as did Eddie’s. Eddie was also extremely worried about my almost catatonic state. I couldn’t really believe he was gone. I didn’t cry, didn’t scream, didn’t react at all except to sit on Eddie’s bed and stare at the wall in front of me. It didn’t seem real. Amber’s death made sense to me, and I had accepted it. I could even make sense of the other deaths from the battle, because the weres who had died were older, had lived their lives. Matt hadn’t. He hadn’t graduated from high school, gone to prom, found his mate. He hadn’t had the chance to experience life. Instead, it had been stolen from him. I didn’t know how to accept that.

He and Lindy had been there for me my entire life and I had imagined the three of us raising our families together, growing old together. But now it would only be Lindy and me. I just couldn’t wrap my head around that fact. I couldn’t remember a time when Matt hadn’t been in my life. I couldn’t imagine a time without him there.

The tears hadn’t fallen yet. I knew they would, eventually. But right now, I couldn’t cry. I couldn’t, because crying would finally be admitting that he was gone forever. And I couldn’t do that yet. I couldn’t let him go.

I also couldn’t look our human friends in the eye for more than a week after he died. How could I, knowing that they didn’t know the real reason for his death? How could I, knowing that it was partly my fault that he had died?