Silver Claws

12. A wolf is a man

Agony.

Not just my shoulder and rump, though they still bled, but my chest. An internal injury I hadn't accounted for during the battle. Or maybe not. I hadn't felt it until Logan said he didn't want me to touch him, as if I were an infection. A contagious virus that he wanted no part of.

He ran from the clearing a man. Until today I had thought of the pack as wolves in every way. My kind was animal, wild. It hadn't occurred to me that for wolves this was not the case. They still had the hearts of humans, they did not just take their shape.

The wild always roared around me, flowed through me, the web of life always crossing and intersecting. Logan couldn't see it, feel it thrumming through the ground and entangling his insides. It was the exact force my father taught me to harness, to engulf me. How to see the weakness inside those against me. Logan acted like this was wrong. Was it?

I laid down and pressed my ear to the soil, so I could listen and inhale the earth. I felt like a fledgling, a kit leaving it's mother for the last time before facing a world alone. I was alone again. Though I never felt as lonely as this, I knew this solidarity well. I could live this way as I had before. Though it burned me, I would not fail in Logan's absence. He may think me evil, but I could prove this false. I could cling to that hope.

But for now I would allow myself to mourn. I lay until the sun fell, the bond whipped my spine as I felt Logan grow far from me. It burned enough that I checked for blood spotting my back, only to find nothing. He left the pack, left me. I ground my teeth and tried to calm my breathing. A pesky bond would not break me.

It took great strength to rise, the moon cast light upon me in a shower, far brighter than it should have been. I looked upward. The moon was not full, but shown almost like the sun, my hair casting a reflection upon the trees. All the area around me was illuminated, the shadows were barely present. I stared upward at white orb; my eyes burned as though it were the sun.

"What do you want Fate-Weaver?" I whispered, trying to understand. I waited for some guidance, enlightenment maybe.

I recieved no answer.

▪︎○▪︎○▪︎○▪︎○

Reed stood in front of the pack house like a vanguard awaiting my assault, a few feet from the side door that led to the kitchen. I had hoped to see no one on my way to my room. I suppose my stunt had given him something to worry about. He looked weary of me now, unsure of this version Akela he had not known. He had thought me soft, a survivor of chance. He had believed the veil I had pulled inadvertently over their eyes, even Saturn hadn't foreseen the depths of my ferocity. I could see it in his face, the suprise, wheels turning over new ideas for his heir's mate...

He crossed his huge arms, a display of aggression waiting for my reaction. "You decided to come back. I thought for sure you would be out of here."

I said nothing outloud, only with my raised brows.

He didn't know me so well to see what I meant as Logan did. He looked uncomfortable under my sight, the quiet way I preferred to speak. Body language was the speech of the wild, something I think the wolves must have forgotten to teach their young over the years.

"Logan doesn't want you here." He said it softly, the way you tell someone that their relative was dead. The bond ripped it's way up the back of neck, burning a path. "But I know its because he's upset, he'll change his mind. I told him that his mate would have to be strong in ways he wasn't."

I tried to soften. I gave my best half smile, a thank you. That was... kind of him. He seemed to understand this. He pat my shoulder awkwardly and we went inside. Reed was not the only one waiting for me.