Page 75 of Pack Captive

I glared at her, but the Elder Caller was immune to it.

"Eat," she instructed. "You can bury your dead today, and then we'll be doing a long meditation."

I narrowed my eyes, but she pushed a plate of eggs my way. “A long, long,longmeditation.”

I sighed and gave up.

They had a library. If they wouldn't tell me, I would find the answers for myself.

The necropolisbeneath the temple was dug down into the stone of the cliffs, with dark and winding passages lit only by my small lantern.

Yasemin led the way, her staff tapping the floor and echoing down the halls. A stonemason walked at my side, at ease with the crushing darkness around us.

He would be the one to inscribe my pack's name on the new vault, and from that point on, only Vesperan wolves would be laid to rest there.

I held the bundle of bloody clothes to my chest, trying to memorize the route, but for now it would be impossible.

The necropolis was simply too vast, hundreds of generations of the Lykosian wolves laid to rest here.

By the time we made it to the new vault, the air had dropped by nearly twenty degrees. I was shivering a little as we approached the stone door, one identical to the hundreds around it, but the plaque overhead was empty.

Yasemin handed me an unlit moon lantern. "Go on. This one is yours to consecrate as you see fit."

I smiled a little at the idea that something in Lykos would now indelibly have my touch all over it, and pushed the door open.

Like all the vaults, it was long and narrow, lined with empty shelves. One day they would hold jars of ashes and bones. A clean, new altar of stone rested in the middle of the room.

I brought the moon lantern to the very end of the vault, where an untouched brazier waited.

The door was so thick I couldn't hear Yasemin talking to the stonemason anymore. I hung the moon lantern on a hook above the brazier, lowered my normal lantern, and placed the bloody clothes in the brazier.

Then I blew out the normal flame, leaving myself in the black. It was so intense I could almost feel the darkness pushing on my eyes.

So I closed them, and drew in even breaths, focusing on my meditation state. The power flowed from me, sensing a ritual object nearby.

When I opened them again, the room was lit with pale blue light. The moonstone in the center of the moon lantern was gleaming brightly, and wouldn't go out again until I died and a new Caller took my place to tend this crypt.

Then I put my hands on the rags.

This was the part where I always felt lost.

What could I possibly say to make up for the fact that these wolves had died? Sometimes it felt like no words could be worthy of them.

"Trion, Ersen, and Nicu of Pack Vesper," I breathed, remembering the three Warriors whose bodies I'd stolen from the forest that day, right from under the noses of the shadow wolves. The Warriors had bled on me all the way back to the temple, but I'd carried each one of them, believing that just maybe I could save the next one.

I hadn’t saved a single one.

"We're a long way from home, but you won't be lonely for long. You were brave, and you believed in me..."

My throat tightened painfully. I'd once thought I'd cried out all my tears, then I'd discovered that there never really was an end to them, like we all contained a vast ocean of grief inside us waiting for its chance to break free.

I let the tears slip out now. I couldn't hold them back. "You believed in me, and I'm not done trying to make you proud and do right by the rest of our pack. Go to the moon and become its light."

My power flowed through me, reaching through my hands and towards the blood-soaked rags.

There was a blinding flash of light, and I pulled my hands away as cold blue flames consumed the cloth on the brazier. Then I blinked.

I could've sworn I saw three wolves on the other side of the brazier, made of the same ghostly light as the flames, watching me.

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