140

140
Dante's POV

Three days after the battle, I was on a battlefield that had been hurriedly transformed into a cemetery. Hundreds of pyres, carefully lined up in rows with a fallen warrior enfolded in his pack’s ceremonial burial cloth lying on each one.

The sun was setting, turning everything to a golden-red hue. It should have been beautiful. Instead, it simply looked like blood to me.

“Alpha,” I heard Marcus next to me say softly. "The families are ready."

I nodded and headed to the heart of that field, where other grieving families had assembled. Mothers who had lost sons. Children who had lost fathers. Mates who were mismatched pairs.

And every single one of them looked to me for solace, for explanation, for some sense in their loss.

I coughed again before speaking through alpha command across the open field. “We are here today to pay tribute to our fallen. These warriors sacrificed everything so that we could remain free. They did not battle for glory or domination but to defend the ones they loved.”

I stopped to read the faces in front of me. So much pain, so much grief.

"Every pack has its customs of the dead. Today we will honor them all. They’ll be sent to the next life in the way they believe they should, with family and pack around them."

I waved in different parts of the field. "Northern Pack pyres are here. There are Eastern Pack burial grounds. There's the Southern Pack memorial stones. Take your time. Say your goodbyes. And understand those warriors will always be remembered.”

The households broke off to their locations. As I walked through the crowd, I paused at each group to give personal condolences.

An old woman reached out and grabbed me as I walked by. “My son, he just turned nineteen. He fought with you because he believed in the pact. Tell me it was worth it. Please don’t tell me that he died for nothing.”

I knelt before her and caught her eyes filled with tears. “Your son stood up to centuries of division and hate. For him and warriors like him, my children will live in a world where witch and werewolf stand side by side instead of against. His sacrifice mattered. I promise you that."

She bobbed her head, weeping. I sat with her for a few minutes, just being there in her grief before going to the next family.

When I was done talking to everyone, the moon had come up. The pyres were lit in unison, flames rising to the sky and traditional songs playing out through the air.

Standing apart from the crowds, I watched the fires rage. Marcus joined me.

“Two hundred and forty three warriors dead,” he said, softly. “Not including the injured who are not out of the woods.

"I know. I know every single number." I rubbed my face tiredly. “Two hundred and forty three families wrecked. Two hundred and forty three prematurely ended lives.”

“They died defending something bigger than themselves.

“That still doesn’t make it easier.”

There was a pause over the line. "No. It does not."

We stayed until the final pyre burned out and the last family left. Only after that did I succumb to what it was.
Two hundred and forty three fighting-men. Two hundred and forty-three souls over whose deaths I presided.

The following morning, I summoned all remaining alphas to a council. We all met at the great hall, more than twenty of us from across the territories.

Some of them were young, recently promoted to alpha after their predecessors fell in battle. Others were aged and scarred from decades at the helm. All of them looked exhausted.

“Thanks for coming,” I said. “I understand that everybody has to take time to mourn and build back up. But with all due respect, we have some urgent matters to attend to.”

I pointed at a table with a map spread across it. “A dozen packs lost their alphas in the fight. Seven others have alphas who are still leading but too injured to go on leading. We must quickly rehire new leadership, before power vacuums become anarchic chaos.

Alpha Fenris of the Mountain Pack said. “It’s typically the most dominant warrior of the pack \[who\] rises to alpha. That is our way."

I am not throwing tradition out the window,” I responded cautiously. “But we also want leaders who uphold the alliance with witches. The kind of leaders who can herd their packs into this new age, united.”

“You mean leaders who will follow you without question,” another alpha snapped.

"No. I mean leaders who know the old ways of isolation and paranoia came close to destroying us all. Leaders willing to look past centuries of prejudice.”

"And what if the alpha of a pack isn't in favor of an alliance? Fenris challenged. "We ignore pack tradition and choose someone weaker?"

That's the balancing act I had to walk. Reconcile tradition with not letting the alliance falter.

“I’ve got a compromise,” I said. "Every pack has a traditional rite of passage to decide who can best protect the pack. But from that group of best candidates, we choose the one who’s best suited to lead. They are not equally good alphas simply because of their strengths. We need wisdom, diplomacy and vision.”

The alphas murmured among themselves. Some nodded in agreement. Others looked skeptical.

“And who determines which candidate possesses these qualities?” Fenris asked. "You?"

"A council," I replied. "Composed of three elders leaders from werewolf territories and three representatives selected by Diana form the witch council. They will watch the trials and interview candidates before providing recommendations.”

“You’re letting witches decide who our alphas are?” someone protested.

“We are giving our allies a say in decisions that are being made on all of us,” I said. “They are in an alliance that only functions if there is a fully equal involvement of both parties.”

The debate continued for hours. Some alphas welcomed the new regime. Still others fought it, holding onto the old ways. But we did, through patience and compromise.

Trials and Sentences in Two Weeks. Submitting three of their best warriors from each pack. The council would observe, and make suggestions. Ultimately, decisions would be up to me and Diana.

It was not perfect. But it was progress.

I was wiped when we got out of the meeting! I went to my chambers hoping to get some sleep, but there was Diana.
"The children," she said. "They have been having nightmares. Bad ones."

Guilt washed over me. I had been so busy repairing things and reorganizing that I was guilty of not attending closely enough to how the battle affected our kids.

"Where are they now?"

"In their room. I have been trying to soothe them, but they call for you.”

I hurried to the kids' rooms, thinking that I would check on them as soon as I heard from him. They were all three of them in one bed, big-eyed and a little scared.

“Papa,” my daughter said, reaching for me.
I hugged all three of them at once. "I am here, little ones. You are safe."

“We were hearing like scary sounds,” my youngest said. "Loud noises and people screaming. We were so scared."

During the fighting, we had kept the children in a secure room well removed from what was going on. “But it seems the sounds of war still reached them.

"I know. It is scary from a distance, war. But it is over now. The bad man has been caged and can never hurt anyone again.”

"Promise?" my daughter asked.

"I promise."

I tucked them back into bed, lying next to them. "Let me tell you a story. A good one that my mom used to tell me when I was afraid.”

I started to sing a gray wolf lullaby, one that had been passed down through the years of my family. It was a tale of brave wolves defending their pack against danger, of bravery in the presence of fear, of love defeating darkness.

My mother would sing this to me when my parents died, when I used to have bad dreams. This is not, I sang it to my children so that it would bring them the comfort that it had once brought me.

Their breathing had leveled by the second verse. By the third, they had fallen asleep.

But I kept singing, soft and low. Not for them, but myself. It was a reminder of my mother, and of family, and why I’d fought so hard for what mattered to me.

Diana stepped out of the door, watching gently. I completed the song and gently peeled the children off me.

“Did you hear that?” Diana whispered to me as we walked out.

"My mother's song. I have not sung it in years."

"You should sing more often. You have a lovely voice."

"Only for our family. No one else deserves that sort of torment.

She chuckled, which released some of the weight that was sitting on my chest.

When I rose the next morning I went to Diana's mother in the infirmary. She was in remarkably good shape considering her years of captivity, but also prone to fatigue and nightmares of her own.

"Dante," she said with a smile as I walked in. "This is a pleasant surprise."

"I'd like to talk with you about where you're living. No one is expecting the Magic to file permanent residence in an infirmary. I've seen to a suite in the housing quarter, complete with twenty-four hour care and security."

Her eyes widened. "That is very kind, mom, but I don’t want to be an imposition."

"You are not a burden. You are family." I sat beside her bed. "The suite overlooks the garden, and there are chambers for your attendants as well as magical wards to protect you. You'll be comfortable and you'll be safe."

"Thank you, Dante. For everything. “For saving me, for looking after Diana; for protecting my grandchildren.

"It is what family does."

She took my hand. Diana mentioned your parents, that they died in the accident meant for you. I am sorry you lost them. But I want to tell you, you are the son in law I always wanted for Diana.

"I am honored you think so."

"You protect without controlling. You support without diminishing. I love you’ for who you are, not as an affirmation of context. That is rare and precious."

I could have cried but felt my throat tighten in emotion. "Diana makes it easy. The strongest, most amazing person I know.
"Yes, she is. And when she chose you, she chose well.”

We chatted for a few more minutes before I returned to supervise her stuff being moved to the new suite. As I worked, I considered family, and how we both form cumbersome adipocere bonds and cede ones too soon.

My parents were gone. But I had Diana, our kids, her mom. I had Marcus and my pack. I had found a family in the ashes of the old.

And I would fight for all of them ferociously.

That night, I stood on the balcony of our quarters and gazed out at the kingdom. Diana slipped into place beside me, her arms encircling my waist from the rear.

"Long day?" she asked.

"Very long. But productive. The appointments of the alphas are proceeding. Your mom is being put in her new cell. And I sang our children to sleep.”

You’re a great dad, Dante. A good alpha. A good mate."

"I am trying. There are days when I feel like all the balls that I’m juggling are hanging on by a thread.”

“That is exactly how I feel every day,” Diana confessed. “But then I just think ‘no, we are doing this together. And together, we can take on anything.”

I wheeled around to her, hugging her. "Together. Always."

We held each other in the darkness, needing our connection. Tomorrow was new problems, new responsibilities,and further battles.

But tonight, we had one another. And that was enough.