Darkness swirls around me, tentatively brushing against me with feather-light strokes that feel like the wind teasing my hair and bare skin.

I shake with the emotions battering my soul and rending me apart, piece by broken piece. I thought I had already broken. I thought I had already lost everything.

That was nothing compared to the pain before me now.

I promised the boys I would take them to see their father. How could I have broken my promise? How could I have thought I could juggle so much, so many lives, without Death coming to take its due?

I bow my head to the ground, accepting the pain radiating from my side and slowly poisoning my blood from the inside out. It feels real. Grounds me. Physical pain is a part of my life.

But the pain suffocating my chest makes me want to die.

I crawl over to the place where I had last seen my father.

There are bodies. So many bodies.

Broken, bloody, and burned. Half turned to ash, bodily fluids leaking into the bloodstained dirt, vapor rising from the still-warm bodies into the biting cold air as if their souls were being released to what comes next.

The smell is worse. Burnt flesh, vomit, bile, and the odd smell of steel and bone fill my nose and make me swallow against the bile burning the back of my throat.

My ears try to point into tufts, but they cannot with the silver threading its coldness through my core. My body tries to fight, but I feel my lung slowly filling with fluid and collapsing.

Death comes for me, and I haven’t the energy to care.

My ears perk at the sound of a cough. I push a body over, then another, and at the bottom… “Roland?” he whispers in a hoarse and broken voice. Alive.

“I’m h-here, Pa,” I say, grabbing his hand.

His eyes blink, one almost swollen completely shut as blood still flows from it. His one good eye rolls until it rests on me.

He coughs, and red froth bubbles from his lips.

I feel down his dirty and ripped robe, and I find a knife imbedded into his sternum. Blood seeps from around the steel. I stare at the red, oily substance on my hands as if I'd never seen lifeblood before.

I don’t know how he still lives.

My tongue feels too large for my mouth and my arms and legs go numb as tears sting the back of my eyes.

Beast keens, and if I didn’t know better I would say it was riddled with guilt and sorrow—as if it had tried to shield him, but failed.

Pa blinks up at me, his eyes unfocused. Unseeing.

“My son,” he says.

“I’m sorry, Pa. I’m so sorry. I failed you.” My voice is but a hoarse and broken whisper through a throat too tight for words.

A smile comes to his lips, but it leaves as his body spasms in pain.

He cries out, and my entire body flinches.

He calms in another moment, using strength he doesn’t have to cup his hand so my hand is sandwiched between both of his.

“My son. Do you remember what I… said, when first we met?”

“You said, ‘what’s good for the goose is good for the gander’,” I say, and he chuckles, wincing when that causes his body to convulse.

It’s another moment before he can drag in enough breath to continue, and I dare not look away from him in fear of his soul departing.

I know what death looks like.

“No, after, when you said… you were… unworthy to have a home.” He coughs again, his voice breathy and sparse. Were I not a wolf, I could not have heard his words.

I close my eyes, thinking back to when I saved him from the mother bear so long ago and he offered me a home. “Should you come with me, you will know the meaning of love. Yet do not be so hard-hearted as to miss the Gift. Expect not the betrayal, leave behind your past, and you may just find you are not so unworthy after all,” I quote, word for word.

“Roland, look up.”

My lips tremble and I fear turning my eyes from him that he may leave when I am not looking, but I cannot deny his request. I do as he says.

“What do you see, my son?”

My mouth turns into a sad smile.

“I see light and dark, Pa.”

He nods, a sigh passing his lips.

“Just as the stars remain, even behind the clouds, so I will remain with you until we meet again. Remember... who you are, my son, for you are so much more than… the sum total of your pain. Shine for me, Roland. Shine for me in a world of darkness. Shine without the clouds of sorrow. Be free." He pauses to take a breath, squeezing my hand. "Roland, I ask one thing of you," he whispers, his voice broken with pain but strong in love as he grips my hands with a desperation that says he knows what's coming but is trying to hold on for a moment more.

"What, Pa?" Tears stream down my face to mingle with his blood.

"Let not the tides of change return you to the shore. You are free, my son. Free in the Allfather from all guilt. Never give up, never return to your previous life. For you... are not that man any longer. You are free. Be the unfettered soul the Allfather made you to be, and know you are never alone.” His voice fades, and his lips part for words that are a mere whisper of breath. “Tell my boys and Frida I love them. Tell them... never… alone—“ His voice leaves as his soul departs, his final breath escaping in a sigh.

His hands go limp and his eyes… his eyes will never see on this world again.

I close his eyes with trembling fingers, caring not that I leave streaks of my own blood on his eyelids. I kiss his forehead.

“As you will, so will it be. Rest in peace Father, Alpha, King.”

Words fail me. Words cannot tell the world all this man is to me. Cannot touch what he left behind. So I lift my head. And I howl.

I tell the story of a lone wolf through the long notes of low sound. A wolf raised in pain and shown only sorrow. A wolf who built walls around his heart and let no one penetrate.

I shorten my voice, make it slightly higher, and tell of a man who was selfless. Wise. Kind. One who broke through that shell with patience and unconditional love. I change to a somber, yet sweet note to tell of a Wolf-Heart who made me who I am and took a young man destined for death and placed him on the path of life.

A man who changed the world for one lonely wolf without a home.

Qui salvat a vita, salvator mundi, in tempus.

A simple saying with a tentative translation of — He who saves a life, saves the world in time.

I end with a simple, but meaningful note of farewell, one that promises we will meet again.

When I end, my body is spent, and my forehead falls against his chest that will never rise again. Against a heart that has ceased to beat.

Howls rise from all around me. Voices I know, like the deep and lilting voice of Sir Rey and the high-pitched and cracking yip of some of the younger pups.

And voices I do not know, but feel I should. Voices I Commanded and who are now free and shower gratitude for such freedom on me as they share in my grief.

Cats lift their voices to the air, screams like that of crying babes and shrieking jackals making my hair stand on end… but somehow, I feel what they mean by those sounds, how they support my grief and how they join in my sorrow because I am one of them. I am Pride.

My eyes close, sorrow and pain mixing with a bitter-sweet breath of belonging. My birth father gave me blood, but my true father gave me life.

I have a pack because of him. I have found love, joy, and the courage to fight for what is right.

All because of one man who took a risk to love me despite the many reasons he shouldn’t have.

Against all odds, he gave me love and helped me love in turn.

He was the unsung hero of many lives. A catalyst who changed my life. A leader who strove to right the wrongs of his time.

And he showed by example what it truly means to live and die by the Allfather’s Will.

I will uphold his legacy by doing the same for others, no matter how much it hurts like a knife twisting in my soul.

What he started, I will end.

The Empire’s evil will die, even if it takes my last breath.