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He felt no physical pain, numb with the atrocity he’d just committed. Tears made their way down his cheeks as he reverently lowered the wolf to the forest floor, his hands running over Benny’s fur in apology.
“Forgive me,” he whispered. “Benny, forgive me.”
His mind, aching with the loss, thrust an eerily similar memory into his consciousness.
“Forgive me, mother,” he whimpered, clutching her bloodied arm. “Forgive me.”
He’d been left to gather his mother’s broken body in his arms and return to his family alone. The wolf had left its mark on Riaz’s flesh too before leaving, an imprint of his teeth, only deep enough to draw blood. It hadn’t torn or mauled him like he did with the woman in his arms. She looked so different from the one who’d given him life and nurtured him through his childhood, a cooling empty vessel that had once been full of love and smiles.
Riaz didn’t move when Cortana approached. He shivered in shock, unable to process that Benny was truly gone and incapable of leaving him behind.
Soft, feminine hands cupped his cheek, and he leaned into the contact with a sob. With a start, he realized her faint cries mirrored his own. The woman he’d thought an ice queen echoed his sadness at the loss and called him back from his darkness. The tenderness of her touch was something he desperately needed as his world shifted, and he used it to anchor himself. They sat alone together, with Riaz drawing strength from her, until the whimpering cries of his betas drew near.
The faint sounds of Ava’s paws reached his ears, her wolf breaking into the clearing first, followed swiftly by Gadriel. The majority of his people would stay away until he or his betas deemed it safe. Two wet noses sought out his face, a mourning whine from Ava while Gadriel shifted.
“Alpha.”
There was such pain in the single word, and Riaz felt it to the core. Reverently, he placed his hands on Benny’s limp form in apology, trying in vain to stem the guilt radiating from him. As seconds stretched to minutes, he reached out to gently grip Gadriel’s shoulder and brush his fingers through Ava’s coat as she leaned against him, offering them what support he could. Through it all, Cortana never left his side, her presence and light touch keeping him grounded.
When his duty toward the pack could be put off no longer, he gently raised Benny into his arms. He propelled himself to his feet and wiped his face clean of despair. He owed it to his wolves to see them through the trying path ahead.
“Gadriel, Ava, we’re returning to the den. We will give him the honor of a funeral.”
Gadriel, reading between the lines, shifted to his red wolf. Both animals looked at him through sorrowful eyes, waiting for his lead.
As the adrenaline of the fight receded, pain bloomed. Only then did he realize how much blood he’d lost, the weakness translating to his limbs. Every gouge, bite, and laceration seemed to leech strength from him, compounding the unrelenting ache of his heart.
Riaz moved slowly, letting his body adjust to the weight of the wolf in his arms while combating the agony that tore through his flesh. Fresh blood rained anew as his wounds shifted, coating his skin once more.
But he was the alpha, and Benny’s death was his burden to carry.
Though each step brought greater and greater physical pain, the grief that circled his mind eclipsed all. By the time they reached the den, Riaz had reached his breaking point—something he showed no one.
Each whimper from his packmates, every cry, ripped open the bleeding ache that was his soul. They needed his touch, his strength, to reinforce their balance. It was his shoulders that needed to bear the brunt of their torment. As their alpha, it was his privilege and compulsion to meet their needs. Benny was a son of the pack, had been ever since his family had lost their lives, and everyone felt the loss keenly as if they’d lost a child of their own flesh.
Midnight black faded to morning grey. The den healers carefully extracted the pup from his arms to prepare him for the funeral pyre during the following moon, but when they went to heal him, his deep growl stalled them in their tracks.
No one would take his pain from him.
Chapter Nineteen
One by one, wolves left the great hall where Riaz and a handful of pack members remained. Cortana lingered, stricken by the same agony that shrouded the room. A pulsating thread connected her to Riaz, his unending misery a knife in her gut.
Somewhere, deep within, her soul had recognized his.
She didn’t question how she keyed into his emotions, focusing instead on how to help him. The savage growl that prickled through the air when the healers attempted to see to his wounds demonstrated just how deeply Riaz had been affected by Benny’s death.
Her feet were moving before she’d even formed the thought. Cortana didn’t stop until she stood before him, her fingers cinching around his.
Vaguely, she was aware that Ava had intercepted Renata on her way to Riaz, but Cortana’s attention fully centered on the alpha male. She’d seen him give of himself to the pack, soothing and embracing, responding to crisis, and calming down their extreme emotions and panic for hours.
Now, Riaz looked like a blank slate wiped clean of emotion, staring down at her with no expectation. No words were exchanged as she studied the broken wolf that peered through his eyes.
It undid her.
Neither consciously decided they’d leave together, but when she found herself outside of Riaz’s quarters, there was no hesitation before entering through the creaking door.
Covered in crimson red blood, the wolf she’d accompanied into his personal territory stripped out of his soiled shirt, the saturated material falling to the floor. Gasping, Cortana realized the extent of his injuries in the next moment.
