Page 15 of The Alpha's Pregnant Mate

He knew now, far too late, that it was he who was the failure. Not only had he failed to avert this calamity, just as Rhietta had, he had also failed to heed what he now saw could have been a valuable warning. If he’d only believed her account, they could have spent the last several months investigating the strange quality of that fire, the unlikely alliance that seemed to have formed between the flames and their ancient demonic enemies. If he hadn’t been so eager to attribute the disaster that had befallen Rhietta’s pack to her youth and inexperience as a leader, they might have stood some chance of saving their home.

“What do we do?”

He felt a hand on his shoulder, uncertain, tremulous. Laurent swayed, realizing in that moment that it had been weeks since he’d made physical contact with anyone. It felt good, that hand on his shoulder. He looked down through his smoke-bleary eyes to see Seff looking up at him. The young man’s face was smudged with soot, his arms bandaged in half a dozen places where he’d gotten too close to the flames. It was a reasonable question, Laurent thought remotely. A terrible shame that he had absolutely no answer for him.

“I don’t know,” he said, surprised by his own candor. “I don’t know where we can go. I don’t know what we can do.” He was speaking softly, but his pack had gathered close enough to hear, and he felt the shared wave of their grief roll out through the crowd. Strange, what a comfort it was to be close to them, even in their darkest hour. When he looked up to see the horde of demons gathered in the tree line beyond the smoldering ruin of his home, he felt not a flicker of surprise. Of course, he thought faintly, feeling his pack shift around him and knowing without looking that they were readying their weapons. Of course the demons would wait until the very last building had fallen before they attacked. It only made sense for them to savor every last second of despair they could, like a hungry wolf gnawing every last scrap of meat from the bone before he cracked it open to gnaw out the marrow.

An eerie calm fell over Laurent as he acknowledged, perhaps for the first time, that he was going to die here. With that piece of information in place, everything felt suddenly simple. He strode forward, his pack dropping back instinctively to stand behind him, and he heard a few whispers of surprise as he reached for his oldest weapon. Not his longsword, though that was ready at his hip for when the demons drew close enough. This was an older artifact still. For the last year, he’d kept it in the top drawer of his desk in his office—he’d have called it a letter opener, if anyone had ever seen it, but he had rarely had cause to open a letter.

Besides, it was a dagger, not a letter opener. Every lorekeeper was gifted a ceremonial object when they earned their robes, something that would channel their power as well as functioning as a kind of badge of office. Laurent had left his robes behind years ago, having always found all that pomp and ritual grating. Nor did he carry the dagger with him, seeing no purpose in reminding everyone constantly of his power. But he was glad to have it now, here with his frightened pack behind him, at what was likely the end of their lives.

He allowed himself to reflect, just for a moment, on just how badly he wished he could see Rhietta one last time. Not to beg forgiveness—he knew he deserved none. But just to tell her how right she’d been, about the packs, about him, about everything.

Laurent closed his eyes and whispered a few of the ancient words he’d learned all those years ago, the language rusty on his tongue but still alive with power. Around him, he heard his pack gasp, and when he opened his eyes, the blade was glowing with a fierce white light, brighter even than the flames that were finishing off his home. He began to walk toward the row of demons in the trees, who he saw with no small satisfaction looked suddenly uneasy. Behind him, he heard a ragged battle cry go up among his wolves.

And just like that, the demons were on top of them.

They were doomed, he knew that. The choice he’d made had been no choice at all…stand and watch as death crept closer, or go out fighting. The bright, searing light of his dagger did a prodigious amount of damage before he felt that particular power source begin to run dry, and when the blade began to dim, he sheathed it again and drew his longsword. He could feel the growing terror of his pack as the demons kept pouring out of the trees in impossible numbers, even vaster than the enormous army they’d dispatched with the help of Rhietta’s pack all those months ago. He could feel wound after wound beginning to add up, taking their toll on his flagging strength, his speed and power seeping away even as his blood dripped steadily from his body. He knew that sooner or later, the blow would come that he wasn’t fast enough to dodge. His whole existence came down to one burning point—the next strike, and the next one, and the next one. One more demon, before he let his fading consciousness go entirely. One more blow. One more. One more…and soon, his blurry mind was giving way to dream logic entirely.

Maybe that was why, as he fell to his knees in the midst of the battle, he could have sworn he heard a chorus of howls that were at once brand-new and strangely familiar. His dying mind, furnishing him with a comforting vision in his last moments—the vision of more than a dozen new wolves, charging into the fray and scattering the demons before them. And as he finally lost the battle for consciousness, Laurent felt a smile curve his lips. There she was. Just as he’d wished. How wonderful, to see Rhietta one last time before the end.

Even if it was only the last fevered effort of a dying mind, she was still the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

Chapter 11 - Rhietta

They were almost too late, in the end. It had been sheer luck that Rhietta’s curiosity had been piqued, making her send a patrol to see what could be causing the smoke they had noticed rising over the trees in the distance, thicker than what would have been created by a campfire. They’d imagined the other pack was having a bonfire, some kind of celebration—they’d even joked that they should throw their own to compete. With all the rain they’d been having, Rhietta hadn’t given any serious consideration to the idea that it could be anything like the wildfires that had claimed their old home. Even now, those memories felt too distant to be real. So when the patrol had come sprinting back into camp just after sunset, almost too out of breath to speak coherently, she’d had trouble believing the description they choked out between gasps of breath.

It hardly sounded real—but what reason would her wolves have to lie to her? Almost the whole village gone, they said; so many neatly placed cottages burned to ash, even the arrow-straight paths between houses all but scorched away. And the other pack, covered in soot and dirt, fighting the approaching flames for all they were worth, the defeated expressions on their faces making it clear just how successful their efforts had been. The gathered wolves exchanged looks, a solemn silence falling over the camp. Nobody needed to say it out loud; they were all remembering the last days of their own settlement, how hard they’d worked to try to turn back the fire, how useless their efforts proved.

“But the rain,” Silea said finally, her voice full of a mixture of wonder and fear. “How could there be more fires in the middle of the rainy season? There’s a stream running through the middle of their town! They shouldn’t—this shouldn’t—they should be safe.”

Rhietta had glanced around at her wolves, their drawn expressions, the way each one was nodding sullen agreement. As angry as they all were with their treatment at the hands of the other pack, she knew in that moment that they were on the same page. No wolf deserved to go through what they’d gone through. No wolf pack should lose its home. And when she asked if anyone would volunteer to go to the other pack’s aid, a forest of willing hands shot up immediately.

And so they’d left as soon as possible, packing light, carrying little more than their weapons. They knew from grim experience how likely it was that there would be a demonic threat to overcome in addition to the fires. Rhietta knew that it was risky, going to the other pack’s aid like this—it was likely Laurent would put the pieces together, realize where they’d been staying. But she’d just have to deal with that argument when they came to it. She didn’t exactly relish the idea of seeing him again, but the alternative, leaving his pack to their fate, simply wasn’t worth considering.

Despite the speed of their response, it was nearly not enough. As they emerged from the trees, Rhietta was horrified to see the smoldering wreckage of what had once been a thriving little town. Grief moved through her afresh, an echo of the time they’d lost their own home, magnified by the senselessness of it. By the look of things, the fires had been raging for days on end. If relations between the packs had been different—if Laurent hadn’t been so damned stubborn and foolish about everything—they could have sent for aid, could have come to their rescue earlier…but she forced that thought firmly out of her mind as she led her wolves into battle. There would be time for regret later. Right now, they had to make the most of what opportunity they had to intervene.

The sudden appearance of her wolves seemed to bolster the spirits of Laurent’s pack considerably, despite their exhaustion and the considerable collection of injuries that was distributed among them. Demons kept pouring out of the trees, impossibly numerous, and Rhietta didn’t miss the fact that several of them appeared to be burning from within with dark, ugly flames—fire that didn’t destroy them, but instead seemed to fuel their strength. Her revulsion at this new mutation of their ancient enemy only made her blade move faster as she dispatched demon after demon, fighting not only for her own pack, but for Laurent’s, too. By the time the last of the demons were turning tail to flee into the trees, she realized with a jolt that she’d completely forgotten that they were two packs, not one.

And in the dull gray light that preceded dawn, the exhausted wolves looked around at the ruins of their home. Not one building remained standing—there wasn’t so much as a wall left to shelter against. The beleaguered pack had managed to save a few of their possessions from the flames, but that was all that remained to be salvaged.

“You can’t stay here,” Rhietta said to the huddled group. Even as she spoke, she didn’t know why it was necessary; there was clearly only one option. “Come with us. Rest where it’s safe—we’ll help you carry the wounded.” She’d been trying to avoid glancing over at where she knew the unconscious form of Laurent was lying. She’d ascertained that he still lived, but she knew she couldn’t afford to get any more distracted. Still, she knew he wasn’t awake to hear this part, and she felt a flicker of a smile pass across her face despite her weariness. “I suspect most of you know the way?”

She was met with a few weak smiles, including from Seff, who was swaying on his feet with exhaustion but still stepped forward eagerly to help lead the way. And so with the breaking of dawn began yet another journey from ruin to refuge. Rhietta only hoped, looking around at the tired faces of the travelers, that it would be the last one.

As she’d predicted, there was little surprise from Laurent’s pack regarding the location of their new settlement—it seemed news from the patrols had spread quickly, with an unspoken agreement to keep the Alpha in the dark. He was still unconscious, being carried on a makeshift stretcher by a few of his wolves, and Rhietta was trying to hold back her growing worry about the severity of his wounds. By all accounts, he’d fought with everything he had to protect his pack—trust Laurent to take the lion’s share of the injuries for himself, she thought, not sure whether to laugh or cry and in the end settling for a mixture of both. He’d saved a lot of lives, fighting the way he had. She only hoped they could get him to Dasha in time to ensure he didn’t lose his own in the exchange.

The wolves who’d stayed behind at the settlement to mind the children didn’t seem like they’d gotten much sleep, which didn’t surprise her. Though she’d made no mention of any intention to bring wounded wolves back with them, Dasha had nevertheless made preparations to treat a whole army’s worth of wounds. Fiercely grateful for the old healer’s foresight, Rhietta helped her triage the wounded wolves. Dasha was always a different woman entirely when there was work to be done; gone was the slow-paced, twinkly old woman who’d spent much of the last few weeks planting flowers alongside the tents, replaced by a ruthlessly efficient, steely-eyed healer who gave orders without hesitation to any wolf in the pack, Rhietta included.

“Where’s the lorekeeper?” she asked sharply before the new arrivals had even finished filing out of the trees. “He can do something useful with all that training for once.” Dasha had never been especially impressed with what Laurent’s lorekeeper training had taught him about dealing with wounds and sickness—her own healing skills were almost entirely self-taught and clashed in many ways with official lorekeeper protocols. Practicality always outweighed minor differences in approach, though, and there were a lot of injured wolves to see. Rhietta shook her head.

“I’m afraid he’ll be a patient rather than a helper for quite some time.”

Dasha clicked her tongue in disapproval, then turned away. But when Laurent’s unconscious form was brought to the hospital tent, Rhietta was quietly glad to see how quickly Dasha moved to his side.

The rest of the day passed in a blur. There wasn’t a spare moment to rest, or even to gather her thoughts—every single spare pair of hands was needed. Most of the demand came from the hospital tent, which quickly spilled into a second tent, then a third—there were dozens of injuries, ranging from mild to severe, with the still-unconscious Laurent on the furthermost end of the spectrum. Anyone with any kind of healing experience was conscripted by Dasha, in a tone that brooked no disagreement, and assigned to assist with cleaning or dressing wounds. Others were on bandage duty, repurposing any scrap of spare fabric for the purpose, cleaning and disinfecting old clothing so that the wounded wolves ended up sporting an almost comical range of multicolored wound dressings. By mid-afternoon, with Dasha’s supplies running low, there were even groups heading out into the jungle around them under strict instruction to fetch herbs with medicinal properties to salve the countless burns and battle wounds that remained.

As for the wolves who’d miraculously escaped serious injury, there was plenty of extra work to be done. When she could tear herself away from Dasha’s side, Rhietta did her best to oversee the setting up of tents for the other pack, fiercely grateful that they’d thought to bring more than they’d thought they’d need for their own purposes. Still, it was clear they were going to be cramped for a while—she was grateful that construction had started, at least, on a few more permanent buildings. Once the day’s chaos had settled a little, she’d give some thought to speeding up that construction work. She had a feeling that Laurent’s wolves would be staying with them for a while.

---