Forgotten

-29-

Even though there was no official healer at the pack, Sansa was beginning to get the impression of just how large Esmond's pack was.

She usually visited small to medium packs and avoided large packs because of their ability to acquire medical help when needed.

However, when Alphas began to come there, instead of the other way around...Sansa couldn't understand the full size of the pack. The pack house did seem slightly larger than what she was used to, but again, Sansa did not have much to compare it by.

She avoided the majority of the Alpha's who came. She felt guilty at her slight unease at wanting to avoid the other pack members and Esmond also. Sansa couldn't fully process the events that had taken place during the previous week. It had been her first pack take down- the first she had ever witnessed.

She had seen challenges and she had seen death before...But Sansa sat within her cabin, thinking through her medical journey with Doctor Nox, and her traveling experiences. She tried to come up with a rational reason for why power should be handed in such a cruel way. Why son must fight father. Why father must hate their own child for the eventual destruction they would bring.

Why children would turn against each other, sibling hating one another for a power that came with a single word that they all wanted – Alpha.

Sansa wanted to leave. She had stayed here the longest besides Nova's and she wanted to suddenly leave the suffocating atmosphere of power and politics and dynamics. Of whom to talk to and what to say. She had healed Esmond and his men, but she had also healed some of the males who had gone against Esmond. Those who had fought for his father.

The brief encounter she had had with the male still haunted her that that was her first and only time speaking with him.

Death.

Death and life.

Both so fragile.

As a healer, she always had to come to grips with the reality of mortality. With the thinness of what it meant to breathe air and see the living and have senses and feel.

Sansa was still a healer. She had thought her and Esmond were the same, but her thinking was starting to sway. They were not. They could have been- but experiences and choices in life made them different.

"You are mad at me."

Esmond and she sat outside the small cabin, looking into the woods. Sansa was about to broach the topic of her eventual departure from this pack, but Esmond's sudden words had her turning to look at him.

"I'm not."

His eyes held sorrow as he looked ahead. "You are. You've been avoiding me."

"I..."

Sansa sighed and looked up, taking in the fading sun.

"I don't know."

Esmond leaned down and put his head within his hands, furiously running his fingers through to make the hair stand up.

Sansa couldn't help but laugh.

"I'm sorry." She fixed the haphazard stands, shaking her head at him. The thought hit her again at how young he was.

He watched her closely, his eyes meeting hers as they made contact.

"He wasn't my father. Not anymore."

"You don't have to explain."

Esmond hesitated before shaking his head, "I don't want you to hate me. And I...I don't like this feeling...of maybe...maybe I shouldn't have..."