Page 16

Dern

Many years ago on Pharenos

Everything burnt when I woke up in a strange place, my call for my dad still dying on my lips. From my toes to the roots of my hair ached. My lungs constricted as if someone filled them up with dirty cotton and rubbed my throat raw stuffing it all down there. My whole torso and groin burnt like someone had laid me out on a bed of hot coals and planned to cook me. What the hell had Doctor Jenkins done and where the hell had he left me?

The room was dark, lit up only by too many sets of glowing eyes to count and the whole place smelled like a feather pillow.

“Big cats?”

my wolf huffed. “Big cats in the hospital? Did they come to save me? Cats, though? So many cats! ”

Only big cats all had similar colored eyes when they glowed in the dark. All the sets of eyes were different colors from fiery to burning green forest. I sniffed the air but moving burnt my stomach and groin.

“Shhhh… Mate of Ormund, you are okay. You are with friends now. No harm shall come to you here,”

the owner of one of the sets of glowing eyes spoke.

“Huh?”

I grunted. “Mate of who?”

Who the fuck was Ormund? Someone else who Elke had made a promise too, probably. It was always about that fucker. Everything bad led back to Elke. Everything bad in our lives led back to the fact he was so fucking unhappy unless he was micromanaging us all. How the hell did he ever become leader? One of the glowing eyes had spoken but lost to the haze of surgical drugs I missed what was said.

“I think he is still full of their poison,”

another pair of eyes spoke. “We should get Ormund. Perhaps he can calm his mate.”

“Not yet,”

the first pair of eyes spoke. “He is too angry. He is best where he is now. We must keep Ormund busy while we work. He should gather all the bones of his mate’s enemies so that we might burn them when the moon dies and perhaps, he can bring the remains of the family so that----”

“DAD?! MOM!?”

I shouted, jarred to my very cells by their words. My throat ached as if my words raked over sandpaper instead of vocal cords.

My parents had never appeared in my visions of the future, but I had always assumed that was because my visions were many years in the future. I always felt like an old wolf in the visions. Remains of my family?

“Shhh.. Mate of Ormund. I cannot bring them back. This is not the best way to find out. In my anger, I have forgotten myself. For that, I will forever beg your forgiveness. I am Kaladar, head healer of our peck. A peck is a flight of phoenixes.”

“Where are---”

the world went blissfully black for a few moments.

“My parents?”

I finished the question moments later when I resurfaced. Only more than mere moments had passed. The burning in my belly had eased to a dull sting. My hands were bound to the sides of a soft bed that smelled like someone set a feather pillow on fire but in the best possible way.

“I am sorry. I did not get there in time,”

another pair of glowing eyes spoke.

Only this time there was only one set of fiery glowing eyes and they were breathtaking. I breathed in to gather my wits. Glowing eyes weren’t exactly the sexiest thing on Pharenos but then again, maybe they were. The speaker’s scent wrapped around me like a warm blanket, and I almost drifted back off to sleep. The draw of sleep was strong. When I was asleep, I didn’t know how dead my parents were, my stomach was whole, and my own pack hadn’t turned on me and left me to the monstrous birds who lived in the mountains above the clouds.

Because that was the only answer to where I was. I was trapped up in one of the mountain side villages of the bird people. Everyone knew to avoid them. They ate wolves whole. They were supposedly barbarians. Only, that didn’t make sense to my foggy brain. They were doing their best to heal me. At least, it felt that way.

“I did not understand what was happening. I have since interrogated Elke. I know what happened and I am full of rage and apologies but none of them will bring back your parents. None of them will right your life again. I was only flying over for a break from my responsibilities. It was only by chance that I heard the shriek of your mother and found you open on the table. I am sorry. We did not know how monstrous the other wolves were. They meant to cut out your womb. They meant to sterilize you to prevent the alpha/omega gene from spreading. They did not succeed in doing so.”

“Huh?”

I blinked.

It would be weeks before I was fully healed. Even being under Kaladar’s watchful eyes my body and soul would take time to heal what had been torn and to adjust to my new life above the clouds. Every morning and evening small groups of phoenixes gathered up oxygen to bring to me. To this day, I never really understood what sort of magic allowed them to perform such a feat but slowly they trained me and my wolf to live on less oxygen until I understood what happened.

What the phoenixes called the alpha/omega gene had once been in my line. Probably generations ago and I was a throwback to my ancestors. I was a man, one hundred percent man, but I could carry the next generation in my body. Elke and the pack had never heard of such a thing and seemingly wanted nothing to do with me. When my parents tried to rescue me from the unneeded operation they were cut down. My parents for all their faults and flaws had fought for me to the bitter end. I’d never be sure if they ever understood what was going on with me, but it didn’t matter. In the end, they had only wanted to save me. That was the way of the wolf. At least, that’s how the way of the wolf was supposed to work.

During my weeks’ long recovery, Ormund hardly left my side unless Kaladar made him. While they all spoke of a council of phoenixes who decided the laws of the peck, it seemed to me that the head healer had more pull than all of them put together. No one told Kaladar no. Then again, in the few years I would know him, he never made an unreasonable request.

Let’s not get too far ahead of the story, though. Maybe it’s best that Ormund fills you in on what he did during those weeks that I barely remember.