I Have to Save Them

I Have to Save Them
Ayla

I woke with grass beneath my hands.
For several seconds I stayed exactly where I was, fingers buried in something soft and cool while I waited for the stone to return. I expected the weight across my back, the pressure crushing the air from my lungs, the blood and pain and falling mountain.
None of it came.
The air smelled of rain and warm earth.
I opened my eyes.
Grass stretched around me beneath the soft gold light of late afternoon, moving lazily in a breeze I could barely feel. Water ran somewhere beyond the rise ahead of me.
I knew this place.
The meadow had come to me before, years ago, when Aramana and I were still learning how to exist together, and I understood almost nothing about the power waking inside me. I had never known whether it was a dream, somewhere my wolf carried me, or something stranger.
I still didn’t.
That bothered me considerably less than the fact that I was here now.
I pushed myself upright.
Nothing hurt.
My hands were clean. My body felt strangely light despite the weight of my stomach, and the moment I looked down and found it still round beneath my hands, I nearly folded over it.
The pups were still with me.
“I’m not dead.”
“You are not.”
Aramana stood several yards away.
Her white fur moved gently in the breeze, and her teal eyes held mine as she crossed the grass toward me. Seeing her here had always been different from feeling her inside me. There was so much of her when she had a body of her own.
I put both hands around my stomach.
“Then where am I?”
“With me.”
That was not remotely enough of an answer.
“Aramana.”
She stopped in front of me.
“What happened to my body?”
“You are still beneath the mountain.”
The peace of the meadow disappeared without anything around us changing.
I stared at her.
“The pups?”
“They are still with you.”
“Are they safe?”
Aramana hesitated.
I hated that more than anything she might have said.
“Your body has been hurt,” she told me. “They are fighting with you.”
I looked down at my stomach again.
“Take me back.”
“You are not ready.”
“I don’t care.”
“I do.”
My head snapped up. Aramana held my stare without apology. “The pain was pulling you away from your body. I brought you here long enough for you to hear me.”
“You could have warned me before making me think I died.”
Her ears twitched. I almost laughed, which felt wrong enough that it came out closer to a broken breath. Then the grass moved behind her.
I looked past Aramana and saw two small wolves come through the tall green blades.
Everything else stopped mattering.
They were tiny, moving with the awkward determination of pups still learning what their paws were for. One was black from nose to tail, her fur thick and dark against the bright grass. She came toward me without hesitation, planted her paws wide when she stopped, and looked straight at me as though I were the one who needed explaining.
The other pup stayed half a step behind her.
He was white, pure white. I knew what that meant before Aramana said anything.
“Oh.”
I sank onto my knees. The black pup came first. She pushed her nose firmly against my leg, sniffed once, then climbed directly into my lap as though there had never been any possibility that she belonged anywhere else.
A laugh broke through my tears.
“Well. Hello to you too.”
The white pup watched us for another second before approaching. He leaned against my side, much quieter than his sister, and the moment I touched him, a faint familiar hum moved beneath my palm.
I froze. “My babies.”
The words barely came out.
I ran my fingers through the black pup’s fur, then over the white pup curled against my thigh. They were warm. Solid. Their little bodies moved beneath my hands with breath and heartbeat.
“I’ve never even seen you.”
The black pup made a tiny impatient sound and shoved her head under my hand until I started petting her again.
That made me cry harder. Aramana came closer and settled in the grass beside us.
“They know you.”
“How?”
“They have known you longer than you have known them.”
I looked down at the white pup. His coat almost glowed against the darker fabric covering my legs.
“He’s a White Wolf.”
“Yes.”
My fingers paused behind his ear. The truth shouldn't have frightened me, but it did anyway. White hair meant more than appearance among my people. It meant the old blood had carried forward strongly enough to show itself again.
A faint pulse answered beneath my palm. I looked at Aramana.
“He has power.”
“Yes.”
“What kind?”
“He has not lived yet, Ayla.”
That stunned me. Aramana’s gaze moved to the pup.
“What he becomes belongs to him.”
I pondered that. It was a far better answer than having his entire future handed to me before he had taken his first breath.
The black pup shifted higher in my lap and shoved one paw across her brother’s back. I looked at her next.
“And her?”
Aramana regarded her for a long moment.v“Your daughter carries something old from her father.”
My hand tightened gently in the pup’s fur. “Alpha blood.”
“More than she-wolves have traditionally been allowed to carry openly.”
The little black wolf stared up at me with an expression that was probably meaningless in a pup and still managed to remind me of Thane.
I snorted through my tears. “Of course.”
Aramana’s ears tipped forward. “She has not even been born, and you are already blaming him.”
“I know what his face looks like when he thinks everyone should listen to him.”
The black pup huffed. I watched her with amusement.
“Oh, don’t you start.”
For the first time since I woke in the meadow, Aramana looked relieved.
I gathered both pups closer.
One dark.
One white.
Thane and I threaded through them in ways neither of us could have planned.
I didn’t need to know who they would become.
I suddenly hated that I had ever thought I did.
They were my pups.
Pain ripped through my abdomen. I folded instinctively around the pups, but nothing had touched them. The meadow remained warm beneath my knees while the pain came from somewhere much farther away.
My body.
Aramana stood. “You cannot stay here.”
“I know.”
Another wave followed quickly enough to make me grip the grass. The pups crowded against me. I looked at them and understood what Aramana had been trying to tell me.
They were here because they were with me. Which meant if I wanted to keep them, I had to go back.
“I’m scared.”
Aramana lowered her head until her forehead rested against mine. “I know.”
There was no lesson after it. No reminder of every terrible thing I had survived. She simply stayed there with me while the pain eased enough for me to breathe again.
Then I heard it.
At first it was only a vibration somewhere beyond the meadow. Stone grinding against stone.
Another sound followed.
A voice.
My name.
I lifted my head.
“Thane.”
The bond pulled.
Weak at first, then hard enough that I felt it through everything.
He was close.
“He found me.”
“He never stopped looking.”
I closed my eyes.
There he was.
Not clearly enough to describe, but the bond was no longer empty. Ronan was there too, wrapped so tightly through Thane that I could barely separate one from the other.
The force of them reached for me through the stone.
My throat closed. “He’s digging.”
“Yes.”
Another pulse came through the bond.
Closer.
Desperate.
I looked down at the pups.
The black one had settled firmly across my lap. Her brother leaned against her side, his white muzzle tucked close to my stomach.
“I don’t want to leave them.”
Aramana looked at me as though I had said something ridiculous. “You are not leaving them.”
I knew that. I still bent down and touched my forehead first to the black pup’s head, then the white. “I’m coming back for you.”
The black pup licked my chin. I laughed despite myself. Her brother pressed his nose against my cheek.
Pain tore through me again. This time the meadow flickered in my vision. Thane’s voice reached me through the bond, broken by distance and stone but unmistakable.
Little wolf. I’m here.
I closed my eyes.
“I know.”
Another pulse followed.
Stay with me.
I held the pups tighter.
“I’m trying.”
Aramana stepped away. The grass beneath my knees began losing its warmth as sensation returned somewhere else—pressure across my body, cold stone, pain waiting just beyond the edge of what I could tolerate.
I looked at Aramana. “Come with me.”
Her expression softened.
Always.
The meadow slipped away.
No shattering sky or world was tearing itself apart. The grass simply stopped being grass beneath my hands.
Cold returned first. Then weight.
Then pain.
I held onto the bond while my body came back around me.
Thane was above me.
My pups were still inside me.
Aramana was with me.
I had somewhere to go.
So I went back.