Funeral for Mama Oya

Funeral for Mama Oya

###Chapter 42 ###
###Funeral for Mama Oya###

(Adelina’s POV)

I used to think the forest would always protect us.

But that night, under the red-tinted moon, the trees became witnesses instead silent sentinels to our pain.

Mama Oya died defending the Hollow Den. Her blood stained the earth that had once blessed her visions. And I couldn’t save her.

It began with smoke. Always smoke.

The scent of burning pine hit before the alarms, before the howls. I’d just finished checking the wounded when the first explosion rocked the ridge. The den trembled, shaking loose dust and stone. My wolves were already rushing toward the entrance when I heard Oya’s voice from her hut.

“Child,” she said, her voice rough but clear. “They come again. And this time, they bring the moon’s shadow with them.”

I ran toward her. She stood outside, her old staff glowing faintly blue in the firelight, her eyes already white with power.

“Oya, get inside!” I shouted.

But she only smiled, ancient and knowing. “No, my Alpha. The moon calls for payment.”

Before I could argue, the treeline erupted. Figures cloaked in silver armor burst from the dark — hunters. Not just assassins this time. An entire squadron, sanctioned by the Council.

They came with silver arrows, wolfsbane bombs, and something else — a sound that made the hair on my neck rise. A low hum, mechanical, unnatural.

The Council had brought machines into the wild.

“Defensive line!” I roared. My wolves responded instantly. Mira and Brin flanked left, the young ones pulled back to protect the tunnels. But even as we fought, I could tell — this attack was different. It wasn’t meant to kill us.

It was meant to flush us out.

The silver gas they released burned the lungs. The air shimmered with toxins. I covered my mouth and shifted, my wolf howling in fury as I launched into the fray.

For every hunter we brought down, two more seemed to take his place. And in the chaos, I lost sight of Mama Oya.

Then came the scream.

It wasn’t fear. It was power.

When I turned, the clearing blazed with a blue flame — pure lunar fire. Mama Oya stood in the center, her frail body wreathed in light, her staff cracked in half but still burning.

The hunters nearest to her ignited where they stood. The scent of scorched flesh and wolfsbane filled the air.

She looked at me through the inferno and shouted, “Go! Protect the unborn! The line must not die here!”

I tried to reach her. I fought my way through, clawing, slashing, burning, but the air grew too hot. The light too bright.

And then she was gone.

The explosion sent me flying backward. When I woke, the battle had ended. The forest was quiet again. Too quiet.

Mira found me half-buried in ash.

“She’s gone,” she said softly. “Mama Oya’s gone.”

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t.

We found her body at dawn — or what was left of it. Her staff had fused into the ground, its blue flame dimmed to a faint silver ember. She’d burned herself out to protect us, sealing the tunnels with moonfire so the hunters couldn’t follow.

Her sacrifice saved Hollow Crescent.

Her death broke something inside me.

The funeral was held at dusk, when the first moonbeam touched the valley floor.

We laid her body at the heart of the grove she’d tended for years — a circle of white aspens that she said “remembered the beginning of things.” Every wolf stood in silence, heads bowed. Even the wind seemed to hush in reverence.

I stepped forward last. My hands trembled as I placed the Matron sigil on her chest — a small, moon-carved disc she had once worn around her neck.

It was warm to the touch.

“She believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself,” I said, my voice barely holding. “She saw something worth saving in a half-blood runaway who had nothing but a broken heart and a secret. She gave her life so that we could have one more sunrise.”

My voice cracked. I didn’t care.

“Mama Oya,” I whispered, “you said the moon never abandons her daughters. So I ask the moon tonight—watch over her. Guide her home.”

A soft wind swept through the clearing. The leaves shimmered silver, and for a moment, I swore I heard her voice again.

Do not mourn me, child. Rise.

The Matron’s symbol flared in my hand, then dissolved into light.

When I looked up, every wolf in the circle was watching me — not as a grieving daughter, but as their leader. Their Alpha. Their hope.

And I realized, with a deep ache, that grief had no place for weakness anymore.

After the funeral, I climbed the ridge overlooking the valley. The night sky stretched endless and black, the stars scattered like tears. I sat there alone until the moon rose high, thinking about all I’d lost — my mother, my mate, my peace.

Now Mama Oya.

I touched my stomach, feeling the faint pulse of Lux’s heartbeat beneath my palm.

“I don’t know how to do this,” I whispered. “I don’t know how to be what they need.”

The air shimmered faintly, and the Matron’s mark on my abdomen glowed, silver and steady.

You already are, a voice murmured. Not Oya’s, but something older. The same voice that had haunted my dreams. The Matron spirit.

My breath caught.

“Then why does it hurt?” I whispered.

Because birth and death share the same moonlight, it said. And both make leaders from the ashes of those who loved them.

Tears slipped down my cheeks.

For the first time, I didn’t try to stop them.

Below me, Hollow Crescent still burned faintly fires we hadn’t yet extinguished. Wolves moved through the ruins, rebuilding again, just as we had after the first attack. But this time, something had changed in them.

In all of us.

Loss had carved us sharper.

When Brin approached, his face was solemn. “The scouts found something,” he said. “A trail leading west. Toward Aspen.”

My pulse quickened. “Hunters?”

He shook his head. “Not exactly. A convoy. Council crest on the wagons.”

Aspen. Sylvia.

The Council had struck twice. They wouldn’t stop until we were erased.

I rose slowly, the grief in me settling into something harder. Colder.

“Then we follow it,” I said. “We find out what they were carrying—and why they risked coming so close again.”

Brin hesitated. “You just buried her. You should rest.”

“I can’t rest,” I said. “Not while she’s lying in the ground because of them.”

He looked at me for a long moment, then nodded. “Then I’ll assemble a team.”

When he left, I turned back toward the grove one last time.

The moonlight pooled around Mama Oya’s resting place, soft and luminous. For a fleeting second, I thought I saw her there — smiling at me through the glow, her eyes full of peace.

“I’ll make it matter,” I whispered. “Your death won’t be the end. It’ll be the reason I win.”

The wind stirred again, carrying her familiar scent — herbs and smoke and rain.

And then she was gone.

I stood there until the cold bit through my bones, until the night shifted and a distant howl echoed across the valley. Not a mourning song — a warning.

The convoy.

They were closer than I thought.

I wiped my tears, my jaw hardening.

For Mama Oya.
For Lux.
For every wolf buried in this cursed soil.

The war wasn’t coming.

It was already here.