Waning Unity

Chapter Thirty-one

Burning pain came and went in excruciating waves, numbing his limbs and weighing down his eyelids, weakening him to the point of paralysis. He knew he had to get up, had to think, had to protect his pack mates, had to save them. Wasn’t that what he had wanted since he was young? To become their savior?

…but the darkness was so close, and he knew that it would taste so, so good to just succumb into the dark. The dark.

Get up.

The dark.

Get up. They need you.

…the dark…

GET UP.

Fraser’s eyes snapped open and the feigning unconsciousness retreated to the back of his mind. He hadn’t noticed the furious and guttural screaming until it was gone, and now the following silence was unnerving enough to pluck him out of the slowly-growing pit of darkness.

On shaking limbs, Fraser pushed himself to his feet. It took him less than a moment to process that he was bleeding, scarlet liquid sliding through the bleakness of his pelt and soaking into the dusty ground below his paws. He only managed to lift his head a bit before his neck was shot through with pain, the nerves along his vertebrae pinching in resistance to movement. He grimaced in pain, keeping his head somewhat low as he tested each of his paws in turn, swallowing in pain as his side began to ache where Lume had thrown him into the ground.

It took one glance around to spot Harrier and Mushroom limp in the dirt with a bloodied Boa leaning over them, her nose nudging them gently as she tried to coax them awake, holding one paw off the ground as she moved.

A second glance landed on the shape that made his heart stop; Milkweed standing over the motionless form of Lume, the she-wolf pinned beneath a small set of crumbled trees. Lume- or what had been her before she turned monstrous- had her head low, and when Fraser trained his senses on the pair, he heard something that made his heart quicken. Sobbing.

On unsteady feet, Fraser began staggering over to them, tripping over himself. He didn’t make it far before his foot snagged in the sand and he fell, landing with a heavy thud and falling still as sand puffed up in a faint cloud around him. The temptation to stay there was heavy, a weighted blanket of potential peace if he would just close his eyes, succumb to the dark and the pain and let himself drift away…

Get up, Fraser.

Get up.

Lume needs you.

This time, the voice that urged Fraser slowly back to his feet wasn’t his own. As he forced his head up, wincing against the pinching pain that delved down his spine, a warm and rippling strength was right at his side, supporting him. Through his vision he could see that no one was there, but on the shivering breeze was carried a scent that was all too familiar and that he had lost all too recently.

Fraser sucked in a painstaking breath, training his gaze on Lume’s blurry and motionless form ahead of him. Each staggering step he took in her direction was accompanied by what felt like an ethereal push from behind, the faintest scent of Wildflower following him through the wind. The she-wolf wasn’t truly there, but Fraser was certain he could hear her voice whispering incoherent words to him as he went, and that kept his feet moving and stopped him from collapsing again.

By the time Fraser reached the pair of wolves Milkweed had sat down and Lume’s sobbing had tapered out. Coming closer, his partially blurred vision made out something that he nearly did a double-take on, fearing his leery imagination was converting his sight to something untrustworthy. Amongst Lume’s pale red fur speared a blade of white, the band of colorless glow stretching from her jawline down across her shoulder and ending where her heart was located inside of her.

“You’re okay,” Milkweed’s exhausted voice said close to Fraser’s ear. He swayed loosely on his feet, unable to give a response to his sister as she brushed herself up against him, urging him to sit down, to which he complied willingly. He leaned slightly into her side as he looked down at Lume, blinking in attempt to clear his vision.

The ethereal wolf lifted pale eyes, still watery from tears, up to Fraser’s face. She met his gaze almost hesitantly, seeming to fear his reaction of what she had done. But the only thing Fraser could do was let out a relieved breath, feeling a smile tug the corners of his lips upward slightly. “Lume,” he whispered in a shaky voice, head sinking lightly when the stabbing pain in his neck grew too much.

“Fraser,” came a shaky response from the she-wolf. No longer did her voice tremble with a tone that wasn’t hers and no longer did the several new mouths along her throat open with temptation of flesh. Her voice, her gaze, her face, all of it was purely her.

All of it was Lume. His Lume.

- President Loki =)