By all views, they are mad. Mad: another word for anger; the feeling of intense or violent emotions. Mad. Crazy, not in one's right mind. Insane.
By all means, both are correct.
In the mind of a boy just deprived of parents, it is impossible to steal away the last remaining family. Family: the biological relations of a person. And so it is the same to the remaining family, the protective older cousin never wishing to leave one along in their agony.
There is more to family than biology in near every mind. How can a protector, confidant, and friend not be family? How can he be denied the right to say farewell to a lad of young strength whom came scurrying into life like a puppy off the streets? How can he be denied the right to say farewell to pack? A pack is a family in all but blood.
And yet the pack he had not protected well enough! Never again would he fail them! He was not to fail them again. He could not would not fail the family he had become part of. He had not been strong enough nor trained hard enough; he hadn't stayed at his side as they began their long hunt for a boy not deserving of death.
Alas, the still form of Macario, Ari, lies cold and stark beneath a sheet meant only to cover and hide the dead from those mourning for them and those hunting for them. Yet still the hunters knew they had succeeded in their task. "Nous chassons ceux qui nous chassent," they claimed. "We hunt those who hunt us." How could such be claimed when little Ari lay dead with his whole life disappearing into the cold blankets of death. His future, too, had been stolen from this world and away from both friends, pack and family. They who had groomed the boy for a bright future and pulled him into one-armed hugs after long training sessions were left with a beta less in their pack and atop that the youngest of the betas. The one with the least control on the full moon, the one that had the leadership skills of an alpha in the making.
No! Why kind and gentle Ari?! Why the shy, sweet teenaged boy with his entire life ahead of him? Could Fate not stand the death of the aging past the prime of their life who had lived it to the full? Could it only stand the death of the young and strong? No, perhaps it could not stand the death of the fulfilled. Yet was sweet Ari just another part of Fate's cruel plan?
He could not be. He was a little warrior, young Ari. One of such quiet strength and skill was not 'just part of a plan'. Never was he a puzzle piece.
And so he plans his vengeance against them, long claws spiralling through hot, sharp metal.