His pup.
He closed his eyes.
He lost his wife and his pup.
On his f**king wedding day.
Yes, he could take no more.
He turned, crouched and gave in, leaping to wolf in mid-air, he landed on his paws and bolted through the bodies. Out of the room, past the guards, through the onlookers held back at the mouth of the hall who stared and gasped as they saw their king race through them, stepping back to give him room, one opened the door to the building and he shot through.
And he ran.
He ran for miles, for hours through the wood, his heart pumping, his paws moving, the needles on the trees brushing his fur.
He felt nothing.
Nothing.
In a way he knew he’d never feel anything again.
Except the pain.
* * * * *
Callum sat as wolf, howling his agony through the trees to the full moon.
It didn’t help.
It couldn’t help.
Nothing would help.
This was his eternity.
An eternity of agony.
He thought he was prepared for it.
He f**king wasn’t.
Suddenly, he smelled it. He stopped howling, his head jerked down and around as he came up off his haunches.
There was a she-wolf out there.
He stared through the dark trees, his body tensed as the scent came closer. It was familiar but it was not his mother, who he would imagine would come looking for him. It was also not any she-wolf he knew.
But, f**k, it was familiar.
Then she appeared, stumbling through the trees, clumsy, as if she’d transformed while inebriated but as he watched he noted she moved not drunken but disoriented.
She crashed toward him, seeming, strangely, not at one with her wolf. In fact, her movements actually appeared frightened. Then her body suddenly jerked sideways and she stopped.
Her muzzle turned his way and the she-wolf went completely still.
Christ, even through his grief he registered she was a beautiful wolf. He’d never seen a she-wolf as beautiful.
Just as suddenly as she stopped, she charged straight at him, so fast, he barely had time to shift to the side to miss her. As she drove past, he bared his teeth and nipped her warningly but gently on a flank.
She whirled, moving toward him, whining.
He barked at her.
She came closer as he shifted away but she kept coming, trying to butt him with her head, her movements awkward, unpracticed, her wolf whine constant.
Fuck, she was a young wolf. So young, maybe it was one of her first transformations outside of pup. Young pups transformed constantly and with no control. Parents worked with them when they grew older to teach them how to manage the transformations to do it at will. It was likely she’d gotten away from her parents but what was clear was that she was terrified.
He barked at her again and reached out with his teeth to nip her flank. She pulled her hind end away after she received his careful bite, so awkward, she fell to her haunch in the needles.
Callum barked again but she seemed unable to understand the wolf communication. She righted herself and kept trying to nuzzle him with her snout, constantly whining.
The noise, seemingly desperate and trying to communicate something she hadn’t yet learned to convey as wolf, tore at his shredded heart.
He wanted peace to attempt what he knew would be futile, soothing his ravaged mind.
As a wolf, and king of the wolves, he had to get this terrified she-pup to safety.
He rounded her and began herding her, something she clearly didn’t understand and fought, keeping on her course of attempting to butt him with her nose, her head, as if she was trying to mark him with her temple.
Definitely a pup. Instinctively, pups marked sires, mothers, siblings and, sometimes, elders. She-wolves, as wolves and in human form, marked their mates and offspring. He sensed this pup attempting to mark him was an attempt to mark an elder.
He moved around her, continuing to steer her toward Canis and, it took some time but she finally seemed to understand what he was trying to do and began to run with him, falling to his flank and staying there as he led her to Canis.
Once they arrived, he’d turn her over to Regan to find her parents then he would lock himself in his study with a bottle of whisky (or five).
Or he’d transform again and spend the next year in the woods as wolf.
He was coming to the decision of doing the latter when he led them to the backdoor of the castle. Instead of transforming to man and in doing so maybe making himself incapable of controlling her, he pushed in through the tall, wide lower door set into it that was there to allow entry as wolf.
She followed.
He then crouched to make the transformation in order to latch the lower door so she couldn’t escape but her deep, brown eyes held his and suddenly she jerked around and started running through the castle.
Fuck, Callum thought before he darted after her.
Like she knew exactly where she was going, she raced to the steps and up them.
Fuck, Callum thought again as he raced after her.
Up she went, up, up and she dashed straight into his and Sonia’s goddamned room.
He skidded to a halt outside the door.
He didn’t want to be there. He could smell her scent from outside and that scent, her scent, all that was left of his Sonia, he couldn’t bear it.
He didn’t want to be there. He never wanted to enter that room again.
He heard the she-wolf howl.
Fuck, he thought yet again as he snarled and shot into the room then he skidded to another halt and stared.
She was jumping around, leaping, her body twisting this way and that. She abruptly stopped, whined, got down on her forepaws then leaped again, twisting her body in mid-air.
She was trying to transform.
Callum used his haunch to slam the door closed in order to contain her, crouched and leaped to man.
Quickly, he prowled to a wardrobe, yanked it open and pulled out a pair of jeans.
Tugging them on, he ordered, “Calm, wolf, focus and crouch. Do nothing more. Hold there and then listen to me.”
She didn’t listen. She got down to her forepaws again, jerking her mahogany-furred head this way and that then her wolf body stilled. Unexpectedly, she started digging under the couch, whining desperately, so frantic, she pushed the couch back with her body, her entire head shoved under the couch.
Then she backed out, lifted up and twirled to him, Sonia’s stuffed wolf in her jaw.
Callum’s heart lurched and it was pure, unadulterated agony.
That stuffed wolf, the symbol of him her parents gave her that she held close before she met him and continued to hold close even after she had him had disappeared around the time he found her rings in the fire. He had not questioned Sonia about it. Knowing she’d acted in anger with his rings, he suspected she’d done the same with her wolf.