and the chasm grows

by apocalyvse

The moonstone is destroyed in the powerplant explosion. The wolves are left to pick up the pieces. (sequel to If Only We Knew, post-Z2)

AND THE CHASM GROWS

He is running.

His eyes are bright, filled with the first light of the day, and his chest is full of the sharp air of a cold morning, his feet pounding at the ground. Dappled sunlight falls through the trees, roots and rocks and fallen branches dodging around his feet as he climbs the mountain, higher and higher, just as the den tunnels deeper and deeper somewhere under his feet.

He reaches the summit red-faced and gasping for breath, his legs unsteady beneath him and burning with a fire that will later turn to an ache. His sister hangs upside down from a low branch of a nearby tree, taunting him with the wild, toothy grin she knows he hates. "You're too slow," she laughs, her hair swaying in the wind like a long lock of hanging moss, face slowly turning red as the blood rushes to her head.

"Willa!" their father scolds, emerging from the trees, and tugs sharply at a strand of her hair.

"What?" she whines in reply, arrogant and fiendish. "It's true! He's the slowest out of everyone – Watcher says he'll never be fast enoughto pass the trial-"

"And everything Watcher says comes true, does it, pup?" their father asks pointedly. Willa's face darkens. "You're brother and sister. You should be helping each other, not turning against-"

As he speaks, Willa slips and falls off her branch, tumbling head-first into the dirt. Wyatt hides a laugh behind his hand as she tumbles end over end, coming to a stop in a tangle of limbs. Their father picks her up and sets her back on her feet, his expression one of faint amusement and wry acceptance of the things he cannot change.

"Come on, pups," he says and gestures towards the trees. "Only a little bit further."

They follow along in his tracks, ducking and weaving through the copse of narrow trees. The wind blows hard up here, at the top of the mountain, and the soil is shallow, and so everything that grows is small and shrubby, perfect for pups to play in. Willa chases Wyatt through the maze of trees and then Wyatt chases Willa and somewhere behind them, they hear their father laugh, the sound ringing bright and clear in the brilliant morning air.

On the other side of the trees there is open space, the wood that had once grown there cleared away to make room for eight stone cairns, loose slate from the mountainside piled together by hands who also have been long since buried. In their centre is a flat piece of stone, and many stones piled on top of it, up and up and up. Their father stops by this odd pillar and rests a hand against the topmost stone.

"Do you know what this is, pups?" he asks as they join him, each placing a hand of their own against the cold and weather-worn pillar of stone.

"It's our legacy," Willa answers, before Wyatt can so much as open his mouth. "Our history. One stone for every generation."

"Clever girl," their father says, and ruffles her hair. "And how many stones are there?"

Willa frowns at the pillar, like she is trying to count them. Wyatt almost laughs at her, because he knows she can't count past ten.

"Thirty six," he pipes up, a number he has memorised from the stories the elders tell them when the moon is high. His father's eyes turn away from Willa.

"You've been listening in your lessons," he says and smiles widely, the proud smile that means they have done something right.

"I know why the stones are here," Willa sniffs, because she always has to be better, because she's older, stronger, quicker than he is and he is just the spare, the twin that follows her around.

"And why is that, Willa?" their father indulges her. His gaze leaves Wyatt like a spotlight leaving a stage, casting him back into the shadows.

"So that we never forget anyone that came before us," she recites word-for-word, just as the elders had said it the day the pups were taught this.

"Do you know that the name of every wolf is written on the stones?" their father asks, and traces a finger along the edge of one of the thick slabs of rock, and the runes that are etched there.

"Really?" Willa replies and squints, her nose almost pressed to the stone as she tries to read them. "Where are our names?"

Their father laughs. "Your stone hasn't been lain yet, Willa," he tells her patiently. "It won't be lain for – for a very long time." There's a weird hitch in his voice, a moment where he wavers in his certainty, the ghost of a grimace passing over his face. It is gone before Wyatt can ask what is wrong.

"An Alpha will lay the stone one day," he presses on without pause, like he is eager to get away from whatever had caused him grief. "When you are old and you have your own pups to bring to see it."

"Is your name here, dad?" Wyatt asks, the first words he has spoken in a while.

His father circles around the stones wordlessly. He takes Wyatt's hand and raises it to a rune on the very top stone, fresh-hewn and stark in the morning light.

"Look up, little wolf," he advises, and then the warmth of his hand deserts Wyatt's cold fingers to the empty memory of the stone.

"Come on," he says and straightens, stretching lazily in the sunshine as a cold breeze stirs to life. "We came to see the stones, but there is something else I want to show you before we go." He winks, his eyes glittering with the sheer pleasure of being able to share with them a secret, and then he walks away between two cairns, heading for the far side of the mountain. They scramble to follow him, the stones forgotten as they zigzag between the broken teeth of the mountain, big pieces of jagged rock that stand taller than Wyatt does at the mountain's edge.

Their father waits for them on the flat of an outcropping of rock, the ground falling sharply downwards just a few feet from where he sits. They join him without question, one on either side, pressed against his shoulders like they might fall even when they are nowhere near the edge.

"Look," he says, and points to the distant mountains stretched out before them, the range of peaks reaching as far as the eye can see. They are hazy in the morning light, mist still sitting deep in the valleys between them. The river snakes its way through the land to their left, shining like a piece of golden thread as it reflects the sun back towards the sky.

Wyatt is mesmerised.

"What do we look at?" Willa asks, hot and impatient and without the peace of mind to stop and appreciate something so simple as a view.

"Everything," their father replies in a hushed voice and loops an arm around her, squeezing her shoulders. "The wild won't always be like this, Willa. You have to see it while it is still here."

Willa frowns, her eyes turned to their father rather than the empty mountains he wants her to see. "But the wild is forever," she tells him.

He smiles, soft and sad. "Nothing is forever," he replies, and the way he says it, gentle but inevitable, sets Wyatt's teeth on edge.

"The pack is forever," Wyatt says, sure he will be praised for this small wisdom.

The smile almost drops from their father's face. Nothing is forever, echo the words in Wyatt's mind, and just as he was sure he had spoken right, he suddenly has the feeling he is dreadfully wrong.

"You have a good heart, little wolf," is all his father says to him though, and then he falls silent, his attention far away in the misty mountains, where it cannot be caught by any of the questions that clamour uncertainly at the forefront of Wyatt's mind.

---

It rains two days after Prawn, pouring down so hard the den almost floods with the excess water that runs off the rocks. The river swells past the crossing where Wyatt usually goes fishing, breaking its banks in several places in an attempt to contain the water, to carry it all down to the sea.

It's good, though. It makes the digging easier.

They all take their turn at the task, all those who still feel well enough to go, to climb and dig and carry. Coughs and splutters follow them up the mountain and the digging is long and slow, draining them of energy they don't have. It makes Wyatt sick, the physical exertion, the dig and pull and throw of the shovel as he descends further and further into the soft ground. He is dizzy before he is even two feet deep, has to stop and lean against the shovel and remind himself to breathe, slow and calm. He coughs. He ignores the yellow light around his neck.

They carry their loads up at night, under a half-moon and a handful of scattered stars. The elders watch from the stars, they have always told the pups, when they are still young enough to believe in bedtime stories. Wyatt looks up as he climbs, the heavy weight of his load resting on his shoulders, Willa sharing it behind him, and wonders if it is not the ancients up there watching instead, waiting for everything they built to come to an end.

He doesn't say anything as they follow tradition over and over. Willa does it all – hard, emotionless Willa, capable of any strength even as the last of it drains from her. The lines she recites, the rituals she performs, are shaky and unsure, and he thinks she misses a few parts, but none of them know exactly how it is supposed to be done. This is a tradition for the eldest of the pack, not the youngest.

When they are done, they follow the path home in silence, down the mountain and into the den. They sit around the fire in each other's company, tend to their sick and eat their fill of a hot broth someone had thought to make.

They do not speak or sing or get up and dance like they usually would on a night like this, clear and calm, the pack gathered and the day's work done. They are too sombre, too sick to move, to do anything but sit by the fire and think. Wyatt is not the only one with a pounding head and stabbing stomach pains, his shoulders aching from digging for so many hours. They will all be feeling the same, all in slow decline.

Wolves can last a week at best without a moonstone. Is that what they have left? Five days? He looks around at the gathered wolves, the young lives that have been cut short. He wonders if any of them will make it that long, or if despair will only drag them down quicker.

Five days.

Outside, the rain begins again. The sound of water running down the rocks fills the den, and then the crackling of their fire as someone adds another log.

They wander away slowly as the hours drift by, one and then another and another, disappearing into the dark corners of the den or out into the forest. Willa climbs up to the lookout and stops just short of the water that drips from the overhang, staring at the foggy glow of Seabrook. Wyatt can see her up there, wrapped in a blanket of scratchy wool and staring at the place that had taken everything from them, the people that had refused to listen until it was too late.

He wonders if it would have been better or worse if he hadn't led them there, if that building had crumbled and crushed the moonstone to dust and they had never known.

There's a sniffle, and then a weight presses into his shoulder. Wanda. She's supposed to be asleep, in the warm rooms nearby with the other pups, but instead she comes to the fire with red eyes and tired, shuffling feet.

"Don't cry, little wolf," he tells her kindly and wraps an arm around her. She sobs anyway, shoulders shaking, tears soaking into his shirt. He doesn't like seeing her cry, but he doesn't have anything left to say, no comfort to give. He can't make the wracking cough go away, or the stomach ache, the feeling of being poisoned from the inside out. He can only hold her and wait until she runs out of tears.

"D-did you do it?" she asks him between sobs, the words whispered into his shoulder. "Mum and Wendi and the others?"

"Yeah," he breathes, and in his mind he sees the image of cloudy skies and well-trodden trails and mounds of fresh-turned earth, heavy and dark from the rain. "It's all done now."

That's a lie, but it's the easiest lie he has ever told. There will be more to do in the coming days, more earth to turn , more holes to fill. They had dug as many as they could, hadn't counted, just dug, over and over again. It had to be done while they still had the strength, a day of rotten work to buy themselves a week of peace. But he won't tell the pup about the rest of it. The graves lain out in wait.

"Tell me about the humans again," she requests and his eyes turn back to Willa, standing high above them.

"Their town is called Seabrook," he whispers obligingly, and then he tells her the adventures of the last two weeks, the people they'd met and the things they'd seen, all the strange inventions of humans. He leaves out the desperate hope he'd felt for those short, sweet days, the hope he'd let rise and rise until he forgot about everything else. He doesn't speak of the thrill of dancing with the Great Alpha, or the way he'd let himself forget for that one night that she wasn't theirs. That she never would be.

He doesn't tell her about the explosion, the death of the moonstone. Or sitting at Prawn for almost a full night, one last defiant act against the humans before they disappear into the forest to be forgotten.

It sounds so nice, the way he tells it, the dream he'd lived in for a brief moment of time. That life is so far away now, a light at the top of a well he cannot climb. It's hard to believe just days ago, they were sitting in a human high school, convinced they had reached the day they would find the moonstone.

When he stops talking, Wanda is asleep, curled into his side, and Willa is walking down the steps with her eyes fixed on him. "Nice bedtime story," she says, her voice loud in the empty room, almost loud enough to drown out the rain.

"She asked," is all he says in reply, and he would shrug but he doesn't want to disturb Wanda. Instead, he turns back to the fire, the dancing flames nestled in the same spot flames have crackled and bloomed for a thousand years. He doesn't let himself imagine the pit dark and cold and full of nothing but old ashes.

"You don't always have to give her what she wants, you know," Willa points out, like it's any other day, like she's in any other bad mood. Like Wynter is still standing at her shoulder, nodding along to her every declaration.

"I don't always give her what she wants." It's surprisingly easy to fall back into their old dynamic, to pick and prod at each other. "What's wrong with telling her about Seabrook, anyway?"

"You'll scare her, telling her about the moonstone and the humans and everything that happened."

"She's already scared, Willa," he insists. "We all are."

"You're always scared," she says, blowing him off.

He frowns. "What's that supposed to mean?" he asks, though he's not entirely sure he wants to know the answer.

For the first time in a long time, Willa hesitates. "Nothing," she says eventually, in a voice that makes it sound like it is anything but nothing.

"Tell me," he presses, and his voice is only soft so that he doesn't wake up Wanda.

"We have to be strong," she blurts out, and he can tell this isn't the way she wanted to say it, isn't the setting she would have had this conversation in if he hadn't asked for it. She blinks, surprised, like she wasn't sure she would be able to say it, and then forges ahead anyway. "For the pack. They all look up to us, we're the leaders – we can't be scared. You can't be scared. It won't help anything."

"I'm no more scared than you," Wyatt claims, not because it's true but because he does not appreciate being talked down to when they are on equal footing and always have been, two sides of a coin, flipping over and over.

"You're always more scared than me," Willa replies, cold and flippant. "Whatever. You're Beta, remember that."

"And you're Alpha." He wants to sigh, but he pushes it down, turning instead to the fire. His stomach cramps painfully, the ache in his head growing, but he ignores it. He is just tired from the day's work. He'll feel better in the morning.

"I know," Willa snaps, her voice far away, like he's hearing her through water. His free hand curls, unthinking, around his midriff, like he can hold himself together. A cough scrapes at the back of his throat, ricochets around his chest, begging to be let out, but he won't cough in front of Willa. Especially not while she's telling him to be strong. He holds it down, along with everything else.

Slowly, it passes.

"I'm going for a walk," Willa says without warning, her voice stiff. Wyatt looks up at her in surprise. She doesn't usually feel the need to inform him of her actions, to seek forgiveness or permission. She just goes, unapologetic for any hurt she might cause.

"Now?" he asks, mindful of the rain and the early hour of the morning, and the sharp pain that claws at his chest. "Alone?"

She shifts from foot to foot. "Do you want to come?" she asks after a pause.

He looks down at Wanda, tucked beneath his arm. "Give me five minutes?" he requests. Willa nods and circles around to the other side of the fire, dropping to the floor to watch him through the dying flames.

Carefully, wondering why he has agreed to go out in the dark and the cold and the pouring rain, when he could be here in the warm den with his little sister, he gathers Wanda in his arms, picking her up slowly so as not to wake her. At eleven years old, she is getting heavy, almost too tall to be carrying around like he had when she was a couple years younger. He manages it still, even though his head spins as he rises to his feet, the headache aggravated by the effort of the movement, this one last physical labour of the day. He pretends not to notice.

He takes her to Willa's room, a little alcove off the back of the main den, with a small cot and a table and one haphazard set of drawers. The room is dark but warmed by the fire, and Wanda doesn't stir as he tucks her into the bed and prays he will see her again tomorrow. Then, he tears himself away and returns to Willa, to the other piece of their family that still stands, the one they have been following all these years.

She is crouched by the fire still, watching the flames lick at the last of the dry logs, burning it steadily down into ashes. She's got that look on her face; the troubled, pinched expression that means she's likely to snap at him for any number of inconsequential things. He approaches with caution and wonders how scared she is of what is coming, beneath that mask of anger and detachment.

It's impossible for him to tell. She has always read him like a book, and he has never coaxed a secret from her that she doesn't want to share. He's wondered, every now and then, if they are broken or something. If they are the only set of twins in the world that sit perpetually in this grey no-man's-land between being perfectly in sync and utterly opposed to each other. And they've always been like this, from their days as pups running wild in the forest, to now, the end of all days. They're always arguing, always a little bit at odds even when they are working together.

Their father had always said they should be friendlier, should look after each other; and they do, in their own way. They always protect each other, they work together to lead the pack. Wyatt is the reason to Willa's fierce dominance over everyone that follows them. But there is always a divide, always a stronger and weaker. Willa always knows more than Wyatt, and Willa never lets anything slip when she can hold it close to her chest instead.

Wyatt half expects some scathing remark as soon as he returns, but Willa is silent as she rises to her feet and steps around the fire. "Ready?" is the only word she speaks, pulling her coat tighter around her shoulders.

He nods, and together they walk out to the forest.

It's quiet and cold outside, the only sound the loud pattering of the rain as it falls steadily through the overarching branches of the trees. A wild wind whips and eddies around them, turning skin and clothing to ice where the rain has already soaked them through.

Wyatt shivers and shoves down a cough, and wishes he'd brought a second jacket. Willa doesn't seem to notice the cold, or the depths of the shadows around them, deep and dark to their naked eyes. She forges on without pause, angling south towards where the forest sparsens and eventually gives way to undulated plains that the Seabrook settlers farm on. Wyatt follows a step behind, always happy to go where she leads and too sick in the stomach, too dizzy in the head, to care where they are going or how they will find their way home.

"Hey," Willa says, breaking the silence just as it stretches a little too thin. She stops to let him catch up. Her gaze is as angry as a forest fire, even in the downpour.

"What?" he asks as he draws up next to her and they walk, shoulder to shoulder. The wind hits them anew, a great gust rattling through the trees, and he shivers in its wake, drawing his jacket tighter around him.

"You'll tell me if you start to feel sick, right?" she asks him.

"I'm fine," he lies through his teeth, his stomach cramping in protest of the words. He doesn't know why he can't bring himself to tell her, why he's fighting the exhaustion, the struggle to remain on his feet – the depth of the cough and the pain in his abdomen. Maybe it is because he can't even tell himself what he knows it all means; that he will die, that there is nothing that can save him. That he will follow his sisters to the grave, or that they will follow him, and that is the only thing the future holds.

He feels like throwing up. Instead, he says, "Do you feel sick?"

Willa takes a breath that seems deep but doesn't really fill her lungs at all. "Yes," she admits, and the way she says it is cautious and guarded, like she doesn't trust him not to use this information against her, and maybe they really are broken.

He won't get a chance to fix things now.

He doesn't reply, just nods silently and follows her down a steep embankment. She eyes him sceptically as he slides down the last bit rather than leaping, light-footed, to the ground. "Are you sure you're okay?" she asks again, insistent. Suspicious.

"Yes," he replies, exasperated. "I'm tired, Willa. That's all."

"Alright." She's defensive and petty, now that he's put her on the back foot. "You just don't look so good, that's all."

It's cold and dark out here, he thinks, but bites back any attempt to say it. Deep down, he knows it is not normal for a wolf to be bothered by either, when they can go out walking in the snow in the dead of winter, or climb down into the deepest depths of the den and still see their way without a torch.

"I meant what I said earlier," Willa says, in lieu of any kind of barb from him. Her shoulders are set and her eyes are hard, her legs striding with the poise of the Alpha. His heart sinks a little bit – he'd half hoped she would soften if it were just them out here, that she would be Willa his sister, instead of Willa the Alpha. But she never once lets her guard down, not even here with him. Recently, Willa the Alpha is the only Willa he ever sees.

"I know," is all he says. He's not sure how to tell her that he doesn't have the strength to be Beta anymore, that he can't pretend he's not terrified of the things that are coming. That it feels like she is pulling away from him, and without her to follow he might not be anything at all.

"It's all up to us now," she continues, as if she hasn't heard him, and it sounds like she is talking more to herself than anyone else, thinking out loud to make sense of the thoughts in her head. "The elders are gone for real. It all ends with us."

"I know, Willa," he snaps, harsher than he intends to, his stomach twisting painfully with every word that she speaks. "You don't have to say it. I know."

She turns to look at him, her eyes jaded and judgemental. "We have to talk about it at some point," she reasons, loud and abrasive. "What else are you going to do, just sit around and say nothing at all?"

"What do you want me to say?" he asks. "That we're dying? That next week we'll all be gone, the den will just be an old cave?" He stops in his tracks, lightheaded, dizzy. "You want me to tell Wanda we're all going to die, just like that? Her friends are already dead, Willa. Wynter is already-" The words grind to a halt, his mouth unable to spit the rest of them out.

"You can't even say it!" Willa snaps, scathing. "You can't be brave, just for once in your life? You could die tomorrow, and you still want me to deal with all of this alone? I bet if mum was here, you still wouldn't even-"

Wyatt misses the rest of her angry spiel, his head spinning and his vision blurred. There's a rushing sound in his ears, like he's drowning in the river. He staggers backwards, his balance disrupted, his sense of direction upended. It happens so quickly, he doesn't even hear Willa call out his name, or see her step forward with one arm outstretched as if to catch him.

He falls to the ground, that much he knows. Everything after that is black, as dark and empty and meaningless as a clear night with no stars.

He sleeps.

---

The days pass in a series of glimpses through shuttered windows, opening and closing as he fades in and out of consciousness.

Most of his waking moments disappear from his memory as soon as he falls back to sleep, his body stretched to its receding limits, his mind a mess. He has several conversations with Willa that are inconsequential, conversations about how he feels, about how she feels, whispers to him in the night when she comes to tell him who she has buried. Soup and water tilted carefully to his lips, a hand on his back as he throws it all up again, the bile burning at his throat.

"I don't know what to do," she says beside him during the quiet hours, when she thinks he is still asleep. He doesn't respond, half-delirious with the fever that burns at his brow and sure that she wouldn't want him to hear her anyway. She puts her head in her arms and sobs into his sheets until he drifts off again, consciousness slipping like moonlight through his fingers.

The rest of the time he dreams, like he is asleep in the shade on a hot, dry afternoon in the summer, the sort of day where the forest crackles and groans and withers as the hours wear on, where the wolves rest and wait for night to fall and the cool of the moon to settle across their land.

The dreams flash past, fleeting like the moments in time they depict. He mostly reminisces on the past; he dreams of his mother, pale and sallow with the moonstone sickness, and his father, impossibly tall and looking down at him with eyes that crease at the edges when he smiles. He dreams of Willa, never afraid, never uncertain, always five steps ahead and looking back at him. He chases after her, but he can't quite ever catch up, and she fades far quicker than he could ever hope to hold on to her, leaving him alone in the dark again.

Wanda comes to him in flashes, in moments so real he's not sure if he's sleeping or awake. Sometimes, he sees her with the other pups, fast and savage in all the ways a pup can be. Other times, she is curled into his side, or crying nearby, but he's never awake enough to know if it is real or just a dream, to reach out and comfort her, and he forgets about it before he can struggle one way or another.

At the height of the fever, when a coherent thought cannot make its way to the forefront of his mind and there seems to be no escape from the depths of his exhaustion, he thinks he sees a head of white hair leaning over him, eyes as blue as a morning sky set into a pretty face. He's sure he is dreaming then, even if he is sure of nothing else, because he had told her to forget about the wolves, to stay away from the forest from now on.

His mind has a twisted sense of humour, bringing her to him now. Leaving him with half a dream of the girl he'd thought would save them when he is so close to-

She whispers his name, and her fingers brush the nape of his neck, warm at the hem of his shirt. The warmth spreads through his chest, soft and slow, and it almost feels like her very presence soothes the cough that hacks at his lungs, the wrenching of his gut and the shaking of his limbs.

Then she is gone, and the warmth is gone with her, whisked away with the wind that howls outside. He hears Willa's voice for a second, loud and angry, but the darkness creeps in and he is tired of all the dreaming. He lets her go without complaint, unaware that the voices outside are real, that the warmth Addison has brought is creeping through his veins even as he sleeps.

That the fever is broken, like so many other things scattered around him on the floor.

---

Just as he had slipped away, so does he awake; to raised voices.

They echo from the den, loud and insistent, several people shouting over each other, followed by the scuffle of feet and the scrape of claws against solid rock. It snaps him to awareness, faster than anything has in days – or weeks, even; perhaps he has been asleep on his feet since the bus crash, since the explosion and the draining of the moonstones and the loss of all their lives.

He struggles to sit up, coughs with a dry, rasping noise that is lost in the din from outside and turns, bleary-eyed, to find a cup of water waiting for him on the side table. He gulps it down gratefully, ignorant of its stale taste, its temperature closer to that of the room than the chill of the river outside.

It soothes his throat and eases his empty stomach but does little more. He is hungry still, and bone-tired, even after the blur of days he knows he has spent bedridden, an exhaustion that can't be moved settled deep in his bones. He is stiff all over, more like a tree than a wolf. He navigates his way out of the sheets slowly, one movement at a time, every lift of a limb an effort he barely has the strength for.

He stumbles across the room on wooden legs and pulls back the sheet that covers the door. There are precious few wolves in the den beyond. They cannot hope to fill the empty space that extends out around them, cold and dark.

A handful sit to one side, their heads in their hands or knees pressed to their chests, sprawled like they have been on a fruitless hunt in the deepest snows of winter. The others stand against each other in the centre of the den, eyes flashing and teeth bared, moonstones crimson red around their necks. Willa stands in the centre of it all, her face filled with pure frustration and something painful buried deep beneath her eyes.

"Enough," Warner roars to Willa's left, and they all freeze. He turns, a hand pressed to his face, and Wyatt realises he is cradling a broken nose, blood dripping from between his fingers.

"We're leaving," he announces once he is sure the room is silent, his eyes fixed on Willa. His voice is thick and nasally but hard, like he will not take no for an answer. "Fight us if you want, but you can't stop us. We're free to go where we like."

"You're part of this pack," Willa spits in response. "Sworn to protect us. You can't just leave."

"What pack? What are we supposed to protect?" Warner looks around the den pointedly, his eyes silently counting the assembled wolves. "The pack is gone, Willa. We're just a bunch of stray wolves now, and strays go where they like."

"You'll die out there," the Alpha reasons, cold and hard.

"We'll die in here," Warner replies just as quickly.

"Where all wolves live and die!"

Willa's voice rings against the rock, loud enough that it might draw out all of the memories held there, the ghosts of their ancestors slumbering within the stone. "You want to die out in the middle of nowhere, instead of being buried with your family? With your pack?"

"When we die, how many will be left that are well enough to bury us?" Warner is matter-of-fact, his voice detached and devoid of any emotion. The wolves around him are not so composed; some shuffle uncertainly and look away, while others are growing paler with every word he speaks. Across the den, Waverly sways and then sits down very hard, her chest heaving with ragged breaths. No one even turns to look at her, least of all Warner.

"I've had enough of funerals," he continues, the silence as damning as any words the others would have spoken in his favour. "Carrying my family up the mountain every night. I am still strong, and so are the other hunters – if there's something else out there that can recharge our moonstones, we'd rather spend our energy looking for it than carrying bodies and feeling miserable. You can't choose where we have to die, or why."

Willa stares at him, her bravery failing, the anger fading from her eyes. "I'm still the Alpha," she says, but it sounds more like a plea than a statement.

Someone behind Warner snorts in derision. "Barely," he says, much kinder than whoever is laughing at her. "None of us are even strong enough to call ourselves wolves, and you are alone, Willa. The pack is gone, and your Beta is dead, or dying…" He shrugs helplessly. "You led us as best you could, but its over now. No one is Alpha anymore."

Willa staggers, stepping backwards awkwardly with none of her usual grace. She sinks down onto the stone steps of the lookout, as helpless as Wyatt has ever seen her.

Warner nods to someone behind him and the hunters take their leave, filing out of the den in silence. Warner is the last to go, his eyes set on Willa until the very last moment. He looks like he has something more to say – but Willow interrupts him, a piece of rag wet down in ice water offered in her hand. He thanks her and presses it to his bleeding, swollen nose, and then takes one last look at Willa, who will not meet his eye.

He doesn't say anything. He leaves.

Slowly, Wyatt eases himself from the shadows he hides in, padding across the den with shuffling footsteps that only remain quiet because his feet are bare against the cold stone of the floor.

Willa looks up as he leans against the wall at the foot of the stairs, his legs aching just from this one simple effort. "Wyatt?" she says in alarm and shoots to her feet, one hand curling around his arm. "What are you-"

"What's going on, Willa?" he grinds out of a throat that is sore and rasping. "Where are they going?"

"They're going to find another moonstone," she tells him. The words are spoken softly, but there's an edge to her voice that is clearly unhappy. "It doesn't matter. You should be in bed, not out here-"

"I'm fine," he insists, though he's pretty sure he's not fine – he's tired, and he's not sure he can breathe properly, and his stomach won't stop its constant aching, or the stabbing pains that ripple through his abdomen. "Why would they go looking for a moonstone? There's only one. Everyone knows that."

"I don't know, Wyatt." Willa sighs irritably, and for a moment he expects to hear Wynter's voice echoing hers. A different kind of pain stabs at him, this one far more gut-wrenching. "I think they're just desperate. Come back to-"

She takes him by the arm, tries to tug him back across the den, but before the words are even out of her mouth, he rips his way out of her grip, struggling feebly against her until she gives up and lets him go. "I'm fine, Willa," he insists, and then he coughs, deep and hacking.

She stands with her arms crossed and glares at him. "No, you're not," she tells him when he is done, in a voice that brooks no argument. "You haven't been fine since the power plant exploded. Also, last time you said you were fine, you were lying to me, and then you fainted in the middle of the forest and I had to carry you home. Do you even remember that?"

He bites his tongue and shakes his head, because he remembers nothing except being out in the rain. From the grim satisfaction on her face, the quiet confidence in the way she'd asked, he suspects there are a few other conversations he can't remember.

"I don't need you here, Wyatt," she says, cold and hard and logical. "Go back to bed. Rest."

Someone clears their throat awkwardly behind them, and they turn. Two wolves stand there – Willow, and Winston, the latter leaning heavily on a wooden crutch.

"We're going to take Wylie up the mountain," she tells Willa, her eyes flicking uncertainly towards Wyatt, like she's not sure she needs to ask his permission anymore. "Winston will do the ceremony, unless-"

"Winston can do it," Willa agrees abruptly, and then softens a little at the look on Willow's face. "Wylie would like that, I think."

The other girl bites her lip and nods in agreement, and then helps Winston hobble his way out of the den, leaving them alone except for the last three wolves gathered around the fire pit in the far corner. "What happened to Winston?" Wyatt asks as he watches them leave, unable to ignore the white bandages that peek through a rip in the boy's pant-leg, and the awkward hop he does with the crutch to get out of the den.

Willa glances up for one last look before they disappear. "He and Wylie went to Seabrook looking for anything that was left of the moonstone," she says quietly, so that the others won't hear her. "They were digging, and…" She waves her hand towards the roof of the den, the packed and smoothed stone that soars above their heads, carved with runes and star maps and prophecies of old. "Wylie's dead," she spits bitterly. "The humans pulled Winston from the rubble, but Wylie-"

Wyatt nods in understanding, allowing her to fall silent. His eyes turn to the arch of the ceiling, and he imagines it cracking and collapsing in on them, the weight of the mountain pressing down upon his head. The effort of it all makes him dizzy and unsteady on his feet, the sudden sense of vertigo stronger than any he has ever felt before.

"Come on," Willa says and takes his arm again, trying to steer him towards the room he has just come from.

"No!" he snaps, harsher than he means to be, and stumbles away from her like he's been burnt. "No more rest. I'm Beta – it's my job to help you, I should be out here with-"

"I don't need your help, Wyatt!" Willa insists, unaware of the way such a sentiment splinters his heart into a million pieces.

"You always need my help," he replies, his voice rising. "You asked for my help just a few days ago!"

"And then you went and caught a fever, walking around in the rain!" Her words are hot and angry, cutting into him like a knife pressing into soft flesh. "I haven't needed you all week, Wyatt! And I don't need you now, when you're half dead!"

"All week?"

"Do you know how many burials I've done since we lost the moonstone?" she asks, louder than she should. "Have you even been keeping count? I've done every single one, and you've been too scared or too sick to do even one of them."

"If you'd asked-" he begins.

"How am I supposed to ask that?" she cuts across him, angry and aggressive. "Like, 'oh hey, Wyatt, I'm tired, could you do the next five funerals'? And you were lying to me the whole time about how sick you were! I did what had to be done, and I did it on my own."

"You didn't have to!" he presses. "You know I'd do anything you ask me to."

She stares at him, frustration creasing her brow and a deep-seated resentment crackling in her eyes. "It's too late now, anyway," she says, dismissive.

Wyatt frowns. "What do you mean?" he asks. "We're still a pack, there's still things to-"

"There is no pack, Wyatt," Willa snaps. "You heard Warner. There's not enough of us left to be a pack."

Wyatt looks around the den. He counts eight wolves in total, including those that have gone up the mountain. Eight. It's dizzying, the thought out it, the way to the number has declined so rapidly, how it would have been stupid a week or so ago to think he could count all of the pack on his fingers.

It's a slow, numb shock, the realisation that the number will never rise and that's the truth of this world now. The realisation is like ice water in his veins, trickling slow and cold down to his trembling fingers and then back up to his heart. He shivers at the sensation, at the fear that cuts into his chest. For a moment, he's sure he can't breathe, that his lungs have ceased all function…and then a raw cough bubbles up to his lips and forces him to draw a breath in, and the spell is broken.

"We'll always be a pack, Willa," he says, his voice uneasy but earnest, desperate to scrub out the dark stain that is spreading across her heart.

"Even when all of us are dead?" she replies and scoffs. "We're nothing, Wyatt, you know that. We weren't supposed to exist. Our names weren't listed in the prophecies, and now they aren't written on the stones at the top of the mountain either. We were never part of the pack – it's like we were never here at all."

"So we'll go lay a stone!" he insists. "Just because we aren't part of any prophecy, doesn't mean we didn't live. Aren't living."

Willa stares at him incredulously. "You think it's that easy? Just walk up the mountain and carve a stone?"

"It is that easy."

"No it's not!" Her voice rises again, almost to a shout. Wyatt shifts uncomfortably under the eyes of the wolves gathered by the fire. Willa notices them too; she turns sharply to glare at them, and just as quickly as they'd looked up, they turn back to their own conversation.

"I can't go up that mountain," she says, quieter again, conscious of listening ears. "I just…I can't do it. It's too far."

Wyatt shrugs. "Then I'll do it," he says and he almost, almost takes a step towards the den's exit, like he's going to go right now.

Her hand catches him in the centre of his chest before he can do it, pushing him back to the stairs. "No," she says firmly. "Only Alphas lay the stones."

So what, he almost says, but the idea of betraying their culture and their history stops him in his tracks, filling him with guilt at having even considered it.

He takes a breath, a long silence that stretches out between them like a string of elastic, and tries to centre himself with the feeling of the rough stone steps beneath his fingers. He almost wishes he could go back to sleep after all – but the longer he is awake, the stronger he feels, and he doubts he will be able to find slumber instead of fixing this like he had last time.

"Maybe," he says slowly, testing the air, "we don't need to lay a stone. Maybe it doesn't matter what's recorded where. We don't need a rock to tell us we're part of this pack."

Willa only huffs in frustration. "You don't get it," she says and waves him away, clearly annoyed at his insistence.

Wyatt snaps. He stands up straight, his hand sliding from the rock and shaking at his side. His eyes are wide, his gut churning with many things more than the moonstone sickness – betrayal, anger, hurt. "I don't get what?" he snarls. "That we're not supposed to live? I know that, Willa – I know that better than anyone!"

"You know that better than anyone?" Willa scoffs. "What, because you were sick when we were kids? Because of what dad did for you?" He nods angrily, aware that he is falling into a trap. His suspicions are confirmed when she rolls her eyes at him.

"That's stupid," she tells him, her voice leaving little room for argument. "That's come up like, once, in your whole life?"

"Has it?" Wyatt asks. "Or have you never let me forget that it's my fault he's gone?"

Willa's mouth snaps shut, her face turning red. Wyatt takes a breath, and reels himself back in. "I know that it was because of me," he says, calmer this time. "And I don't care if you blame me. But if you don't want me to lie to you, you need to stop lying to me too."

Willa stares at him, and then takes a fumbling half-step away from him, her body turning like she's going to run away. For the second time since he woke, he watches his sister break – Willa, the leader, the fearless, the unbreakable. His victory isn't a sweet one.

"Fine," she spits venomously, but it is weak and petty compared to what he knows she is capable of. "It's your fault. If you hadn't wasted your own moonstone trying to keep up with the rest of us, you wouldn't have run out of power so quickly."

"If I hadn't run out of power when I did, I wouldn't be alive right now," and it hurts him to say it, it splits him right down the middle and twists a knife into his core to think about it. Speaking it out loud brings back the memory of Winona and the story of her brother, the boy their father inexplicably killed so that Wyatt could live. It fills him with guilt all over again and leaves a bad taste in his mouth, even though he was not the one to commit the crime, even though it was far too late to rescind on the deed by the time he understood what had happened.

"I'm going up the mountain to help the others," Willa snaps, stiff and uncomfortable, her eyes shifting around like she wants to be anywhere but here with him. Wyatt has nothing to say in return; or he has too many things to say, so many he can't even find a place to begin. Instead, he just lets her go, watches her disappear from the den, quick on her feet and silent as the wind.

Once she is gone, he slumps back against the stairs, exhausted suddenly. His head is pounding, right behind his temples, and his whole body aches and shivers for no discernible reason. Maybe Willa was right to suggest that he should be resting – but he is loathe to listen to her now, when he has just made a point of reclaiming his own autonomy.

"Wyatt!" a voice calls from the fire, and he looks up to find Wynn beckoning to him from her seat by the roaring blaze. Waverly and Webb watch him from the other side of the flames, half-hidden by the light in his eyes.

He goes, trying his best not to drag his feet, and sits down in the space beside Wynn, completing their circle around the fire pit. "Are you okay?" she asks, prodding at the slow-burning logs at the centre of the fire with a long stick.

"Never been better," he bites back wearily, and ignores the look the other two share.

"You know, you probably would feel better if you listened to Willa," she suggests mildly.

Wyatt sighs irritably. "Don't start, Wynn."

"Okay." She holds up her free hand in surrender. "I'm not trying to tell you what to do, I just…I mean, you've been pretty out of it for the last couple days, that's all."

"'Pretty out of it'?" Webb snorts. "He was basically dead until-"

"Yeah, but we're not talking about that, Webb," Wynn interrupts before he can say anything more. Webb pulls a face and leans back.

"Are you guys okay?" Wyatt asks, to distract from the uncomfortable silence, the way that Webb glares into the fire and the flames that grow and grow.

Wynn looks around their small circle. "We're okay," she speaks for all of them, and Waverly nods along in agreement. "We're tired. Can't stop coughing. But…" Her eyes turn towards the entrance, the dark tunnel that leads them out into the daylight. "It's better than being out in the forest, I think," she says.

"I can't believe Warner actually went," Waverly speaks, her voice raw and hoarse. She tries to clear her throat before continuing. "I didn't think he was being serious the other night. How long do they think they're going to last out there?"

"You know he has the moonstone, right?" Webb interrupts.

Wynn frowns at him over the fire. "What do you mean?"

"The moonstone, the Great Alpha's," Webb says. "Warner stole it from Addison."

"Addison had the moonstone?" Wyatt asks in surprise; this is the first he's heard about that moonstone, since they took it back from Addison at the powerplant, at the destruction of everything that was keeping them alive. He'd figured Willa had put it back with all the other dead moonstones, that it would be drained of power just like theirs were when the building exploded.

"Willa gave it to her at the Prawn," Wynn explains; quietly, like someone might overhear her if she speaks too loudly. "I overhead them talking…she told her to keep it, or to hide it for her, or something."

"It still had charge," Webb says conspiratorially, leaning in. "That's why Warner took it. They're going to share it between them until it runs out of power."

"What do you mean, it still had charge?" Waverly asks in disbelief.

Webb shrugs. "I don't know," he admits. "I saw it though. He wasn't lying."

"It was made for the Great Alpha," Wyatt puts in, thinking aloud. "Maybe it was made differently to ours. Or maybe it's just because ours were almost empty anyway, and that one was fully charged. Maybe it takes longer for it to go away."

There's a lot of shrugs and shuffling around the circle; no one knows the answer, and they are too tired to sit and try to theorise, or to delve into their history in search of the answer. It's an art lost to time anyway, the making of the moonstones, just like the recording of the prophecies, or the moonstone itself, the one treasure they so desperately needed to find. It's almost overwhelming to think about, the sheer weight of everything that they have lost, the entire basis of their culture unknown to them.

"Wait," Wyatt says as a new thought occurs to him. "How did Warner get the moonstone, if Addison had it?"

"She was here the other night," Wynn says. "She brought the moonstone with her, thought she could help us with it-"

"She came to help you," Webb bursts out, like a secret he can no longer keep. "Warner saw her use it to heal you, Willa told her to never come back, and then while she was sitting outside crying, he stole it from her."

"Webb!" Wynn hisses and throws a pebble at him from across the fire. He yelps as it pelts him on the arm and shifts to one side, rubbing at the red mark it left behind.

"She…healed me?" Wyatt repeats numbly, blind to their antics as he tries to process what Webb has said, and what it means.

Wynn's eyes turn to him, sympathetic. "You weren't…you weren't okay, Wyatt," she says, as gently as she can. "We didn't think we'd…see you again…"

"You were dead," Webb agrees.

Beside him, Waverly turns pale. "Can we – just – not talk about this?" she requests abruptly, cutting through anything Wyatt might have come up with in response. "We all know…what happened. Can we just talk about something else? Please?"

Webb opens his mouth to respond, probably to say something stupid, but a look from Wynn shuts him down. "I'm going to check on Wanda," Wyatt says and stands.

"Will you come back?" Wynn asks, looking up at him from where she sits. She looks tired, he realises suddenly, slumped in her seat, her back against a rock and dark circles under her eyes.

"Maybe," he says and shrugs, unable to offer her more. He leaves before Webb can say anything, padding softly back across the den to his bed.

Wanda is already awake when he enters the room, one eye peeking out at him from between the blankets that are all bundled up around her. He hears her sobs before he sees the tears running down her cheeks, and watches as she turns away from him and hides her face in her pillow, trying to pretend she doesn't see him.

"Wanda?" he asks and ventures closer, sitting down gingerly on the side of the bed. She shakes her head violently, a pile of shifting curls on top of her pillow, and then coughs like she's turning inside out. He winces at the sound and wishes he could do more than just pressing a warm hand to her back.

When she fights off the cough, she rolls over and wipes at her eyes, hiccupping softly. "What's wrong, little wolf?" he asks.

"I-I could hear you yelling," she tells him, in a voice that shakes and stutters. "And Willa was yelling, a-and I…" She bursts into tears again and his heart breaks, even as he shuffles forwards and wraps her in his arms, letting her sob into the soft linen of his shirt instead.

It's so unlike her to be so teary, to be distraught over her older siblings fighting. Usually, she would be the one storming up with hands on her hips to tell them to stop it, whining and pulling at Wyatt with nothing short of stubbornness until he came away to play with her, to leave Willa to cool out and organise her thoughts.

It's understandable though, for her to be so distraught. It's not just the fighting, his and Willa's inexplicable inability to get along right now, when they need to the most. She's the last pup too, the youngest of those that are left by far, and her friends being dead and gone and buried on the mountain is hard for her to understand, harder even than it is for Wyatt to comprehend the sheer number of pack members lost, for Willa to do funeral after funeral, wishing their lives up to the stars. She is only eleven-

But he is only sixteen – painfully young for a Beta. Younger still for an Alpha, in Willa's case. Willow and Winston are a year younger than him, this he remembers, and Wynn and her group are older…but still too young, still deserving of a whole life to live yet, a life they will never have, a life they were never promised anyway, a whole generation of wolves living on borrowed time.

"Why were you fighting?" Wanda asks. He blinks away the tears that threaten to spring into his eyes.

"Just something stupid," he replies and, sniffling, she extricates herself from his grip, wiping at her eyes with the cuff of her sleeve. "Nothing to be upset about."

"Do you hate each other now?" she asks, small and childish. "Is Willa going to leave forever, like the others?"

"No!" he answers her, horrified at the very thought of it. "Willa's just going up the mountain with Willow. She'll be back soon."

Wanda stares at him, the corners of her eyes creased in disbelief. "Do you promise?" she says, like she can't quite bring herself to believe him.

"Of course," he says and tries to sound light-hearted, throwing an arm around her shoulders. "When do I ever lie to you?"

A smile struggles to the surface of her face, shining through her tears like the first ray of sunlight after a storm. "All the time," she accuses him, and the smallest laugh bubbles from her lips as he digs his fingers gently into her side, making her squirm and try to escape from under his arm.

"Cheeky," he calls her, and pulls her close again, her head tucked under his chin. She hugs him gladly, her arms tight around his torso like if she holds on to him hard enough, she'll never have to let him go.

"Are you okay, pup?" he asks over her head. "Do you want to go back to bed?"

She shakes her head, her hair brushing against his neck. "I want to do whatever you're doing," she decides firmly.

"I'm going to sit with Wynn by the fire," he tells her. "You want to come sit with us?"

"Yes please," she mumbles and reluctantly lets him go, so that he can stand and help her out of bed. She takes a blanket with her, the softest, thickest one she can find, draped over her shivering shoulders.

"Ready?" he asks and she nods and takes his hand, her fingers small but strong as they squeeze the life out of his.

---

They sleep around the fire, soaking up its warmth as the flames rise and fall to the rhythm of the logs being added to it as each of them wakes during the night. Wyatt sleeps soundly, Wanda curled into his side and her blanket half-thrown over him. His sleep is blessedly free of dreams, if nothing else, deep and dark and empty from the moment his eyes drift closed to the late morning when they blink awake and realise he is alone.

Well, not alone. The others are still scattered around him, caught in various states of restless slumber. Weak sunlight filters down to them from the look out, stinging at his eyes, and a wild wind whips through the open end of the den, just barely stirring the dying flames of the fire as it whistles by. If anything, he is less alone than he was the day before, because now there are six wolves curled up around the fire instead of five – Willow has returned in the night, and lies arm in arm with Wynn.

There is no sign of Winston anywhere in the den.

There is no sign of Willa.

He blinks, yawning and rubbing his eyes awake, and leans forward to add another log to the fire before he rises, carefully extricating himself from Wanda as he stands. She doesn't stir, not even when he tucks the blanket tighter around her, or when he stretches, stiff joints popping and cracking in protest. He can only just hear her breathing, the whisper and rattle as she inhales and exhales. Still alive, he assures himself, and turns away, towards the rest of the den and the thought of his missing sister.

She must be hiding somewhere, he thinks to himself and treads softly across the cave, shivering as the stone turns cold beneath his feet the further he goes from the fire. He retrieves his boots from his room first and then starts his search of the other rooms close to the heart of the den, the private corners where wolves will sometimes curl up when they want to be alone. His stomach twists tighter and tighter the further he gets, because-

Willa isn't here.

Willa isn't anywhere.

The panic builds slowly, creeping in unnoticed as he searches until suddenly his heart is thumping beneath his ribcage and he feels queasy enough to throw up. It's unlike Willa to disappear like this, to not join the rest of the pack when she returns, especially when she'd only ever left to avoid him while she was angry – she should be back by now, to finish the argument or to find something else to bicker over, to take her place as the leader of their pack.

He stops by the dark passage that curves down further into the earth. Would she have gone down deep? No one has been down there since the Prawn, since the first night they'd climbed the mountain to dig the graves. There was nothing down there but dead moonstones and halls full of ghosts. There was the river, he supposes, on its swift course towards the bottom of the earth, but there is no reason to visit the river these days, and Willa is to pragmatic to have any wish to go down there and reminisce.

So then, she hasn't come back. He turns back to the fire, to Willow, who should have brought the Alpha with her when she returned, and goes to wake her up.

She's barely asleep; it only takes one shake of her shoulder to stir her, to get her to sit up and wipe at her eyes blearily with the back of her hand. "Hey, Wyatt," she mumbles, frowning up at him, and then at the sunlight coming in from the lookout. "What's wrong?"

"Where's Willa?" he asks hurriedly, sitting back on his haunches to give her room to breathe, to sit and stare at him in confusion. He should ask after Winston too (like he doesn't already know the answer, like he wants to know where the injured boy has gone), but he can only think of Willa, of her disappearing and never coming back, like he'd promised the pup she wouldn't last night.

"I don't know?" Willow offers, like she doesn't understand why he is asking her of all people.

"You don't know?" he repeats. "She went up to help you with Wylie, you didn't-"

Willow is already shaking her head. "No one came to help us," she informs him, almost apologetically. "I haven't seen her since we left the den yesterday."

His face twists in concern, and he takes a second to remind himself to breathe. That panicking won't help, that Willa could be anywhere, doing anything, she doesn't have to be-

"Wyatt?" Willow asks as he stands, his feet already propelling him towards the exit. "Wyatt!" She scrambles after him, on her own feet faster than he'd thought she would be, a hand grabbing his shoulder in the next instant, pulling him to a halt.

"Where are you going?" she asks, face flushed and eyes wide in alarm.

"I'm going to find Willa," he replies. "I'll be right back." His eyes track left, to the remaining wolves at the fire – to his little sister, sleeping on, unaware that he is gone. "Look after Wanda while I'm gone?" he requests of Willow, already backing away again, his mind turned towards the mountains.

"Wyatt-" she begins, but she's lost for words, and he's already moving, unable to be stopped. "Please come back," she begs of him instead of trying to reason with him, knowing a lost cause when she sees one.

The words echo down the passage after him, too late for him to answer, but seared into his brain, nonetheless. Please come back, she says in his head, over and over again; and he will. He will. And he'll bring Willa with him too.

He exits the cave into a cold morning and a howling northern wind and turns up the path that leads up the mountain without pause, certain that this is the path she would have taken regardless of whether she'd gone to Willow or not. It only takes him a couple of minutes of searching around the start of the trail to pick up her scent, the tread of her boots in the mud that hasn't yet dried, to confirm that she went up the mountain, that she didn't turn towards the graves.

He howls, loud and insistent, searching and searching for an answer. It scratches at his throat, fades away far sooner than he would like it to; he coughs, hard, and then listens, but all that replies is the wind as it whips around him, leeching all the heat from his skin. His heart is in his throat, his lungs constricted, because now he's not sure what he will find. Willa always answers a call. Always.

He gathers himself, reaches for all the strength he has left, all the strength Addison's stolen moonstone gifted to him, and he runs, up and up and up.

---

He finds her sitting under a tree to one side of the trail, a long climb from Wylie's grave and a longer climb still from the den, from home.

He almost sits down next to her when he finds her, his feet stumbling to such an unsteady stop that he all but falls, catching himself on the trunk of another tree. He stands instead, his forehead pressed to the rough bark, his breath ragged and chest heaving, trying to find the strength to be relieved, or to be worried further, because her eyes are closed and her body is still and unmoving, her face slack in her sleep.

For a good several minutes, he can't be worried about anything at all – he is too dizzy, the world spinning around him, every inch of him screaming for air he can't get into his lungs fast enough. The feeling won't fade, not even when he turns and throws up, the bile stinging at his throat, his tongue, his stomach wrenching as it tries to empty itself of contents it doesn't have. He wipes his mouth with the back of his sleeve, heaves one more deep breath, and then forces himself to stand up straight and pretend his vision doesn't blur and his legs don't shake beneath him.

Willa is still and silent, skin cold beneath his touch…but she is breathing, and when he shakes her shoulder and calls her name, she shifts beneath his grip, almost awake but just too lost to the world to open her eyes. He feels like he's moving through water, or watching from a screen, as he shakes her again, as he calls her name, his voice ragged and stolen by the wind the moment it exits his lips.

Her head rolls to the side, unconscious, unable to wake, and a sob escapes his lips with only the trees to hear it.

He sits down hard on the ground, his legs giving out beneath him, every muscle in his body aching, and he cries; because she is still here, but she is not here, and he needs her more than he ever has in his life, more than he's ever needed anyone. He hasn't let himself imagine it before, a world where Willa leaves first, where out of the two of them, he is the one left alone; and it is selfish of him, to have wanted all this time to be the first to go, so that he doesn't have to know this pain, but now it hits him harder than he could have ever expected and he's not sure how he is supposed to do anything but sit and sob and wait for it to kill him too.

---

He is numb by the time he drags himself back to the den, by the time he lays her down in her bed and kneels at her side and watches her with tired eyes that have no more tears to cry. He can't feel the nagging exhaustion that lags at him, that shakes at his bones and begs him for mercy, for a moment of sleep, like sleep will help him with anything now. He doesn't try to comfort Wanda with words when she finds him, when she clutches at Willa's hand and buries her face in his shoulder, when tears stream and stream down her face and never seem to stop. He can't find the words to say to Willa all the things he forgot to while he had the chance, the thoughts stuck to the back of his throat, unable to slip from his tongue.

Willow comes to find him first, and then Wynn comes second, the only one brave enough to venture past the door. The others don't come, or maybe they're dead. He doesn't know. He doesn't care.

"Come and eat, Wyatt," she says as she crouches beside him, an apple clutched in her hand. She puts it down on the side of the bed like a peace offering, like the rumble of his stomach at the sight of it will be enough to lure him away from his vigil.

"I'm not hungry," he mumbles, like he has eaten anything at all in the past two days, like he hadn't run halfway up the mountain that morning, hadn't dragged Willa back down.

In the corner of his eye, he can see Wynn frowning at him, biting her lip as she tries to decide what she's going to do with him. A moment later, she reaches out and presses the back of her hand to his forehead, huffing in frustration when he shoves it away.

"You're burning up," she tells him. He shivers at the words; he doesn't feel like he's burning up. He feels cold, like he's been dunked in ice water, his bones rattling like there's no warmth left in the world even as he sweats.

She disappears for several blessed, quiet minutes, and then returns with a cup and a plate, setting them down on the floor next to her as she sits with him. "Drink," she orders, and he lets her shove a cup full of a foul-smelling liquid into his hand, sips at the rotten brew as requested.

When she is happy, she replaces the cup with a plate of bread and butter in his lap. "Eat," she demands of him. "It'll make you feel better."

"I'll only throw it up," he replies and tries to shove the plate away.

She shoves it back insistently. "You'll never feel better if you don't eat," she tells him. "Throwing up is better than eating nothing at all."

He stares at her, watches her pretend not to think about the inevitability if their fates, and then picks up the bread and swallows it down, one tasteless bite at a time.

"Better?" Wynn asks when he is done, setting the plate down out of the way, and he nods reluctantly; the ache of his stomach is settled, for now, and his head feels clearer, calmer.

"What about-" He can't quite get Willa's name out, even as he glances over at her, resting peacefully next to him. Wanda is asleep at the foot of her bed, her head resting against the soft fur of the rug thrown over their eldest sister.

Wynn's eyes are kind as they hold his gaze, her fingers squeezing his. "I think you know what I'm going to say," she replies softly, and he nods, because he understands – there is little hope now, when she won't even wake. Wherever she had gone, whatever she had done on that day she'd spent away from them, was the last thing she would ever do.

"It's okay, Wyatt," Wynn says, strong where he can't be, detached even when he can see the hurt echoing in her eyes, the tears that well just below the surface. "It's okay for her to go. It's just life, like the elders used to say. She'll go to be with the moon and the stars and the rest of the pack."

"I know, I know," he mumbles in reply and then scrubs at his face, runs a hand through the windswept mess of hair atop his head. "I just…the last thing I said to her…" His throat locks up, his chest frozen, something painful ripping and tearing at his heart. "We were fighting," he says instead, choking on the words and the pity that crosses Wynn's face. "And now she's gone."

"I know," Wynn says, slow and thoughtful, treading a line she's aware she shouldn't cross. "And it's too late to change that now. But…I don't think she meant it, Wyatt. I don't think she would have wanted to leave it like this. Just like you don't."

He looks her in the eye, takes in the kind, earnest light that shines from them, the warm squeeze of her fingers enveloping his, and somewhere deep within himself, he finds the strength to smile, even as his heart rips into shreds at the acceptance of all the things it cannot change.

"Thankyou, Wynn," he says honestly, and lets her fold him into a tight embrace that doesn't last nearly long enough to stitch him back together. She leaves him alone after that, and returns to the fire, to her quiet vigil over the rest of the pack.

He turns back to Willa, to the shallow breath that whispers from between her lips, to her cold fingers and closed eyes, the life that drains from her veins right before his eyes, and he waits for the end, for everything he knows to finally fall apart.

---

It's a beautiful morning, the day she comes creeping up the mountainside, following the dig and scrape of a shovel shifting dirt. The sun has just risen into the sky, the colours of dawn giving way to endless blue, and there is not a storm cloud in sight. Even the wind has regained its good humour, throwing locks of her soft silver hair across her face as she winds through the trees, following a now well-trodden path up and up and up.

Wyatt is dizzy and sick from the digging, the constant wrench of his shoulders and twist of his hips. He focuses only on the dirt and the rhythm in which he moves it, because if he stops or slows, he will not start again. He ignores the sweat that drips down his back and soaks his shirt, the headache that pounds right behind his eyes. There is only the dirt and the shovel, and the soft hum of his little sister as she sings the only farewell song she knows, sat up against a rock nearby.

Addison finds them as he settles the last of the dirt atop the grave, piled high so that it might eventually settle and pack down into the earth just as it used to be. She sees Wanda first, and offers her a wave. The little girl does not return the gesture. Wyatt only turns around when Wanda stops humming halfway through the song, the music fading from her lungs as she stares curiously at the girl coming up the mountain. He shuffles through the trees that separate him and his sister and leans on the shovel as he waits, watching with tired eyes that are devoid of their usual spark.

"Hi," he says as she reaches them, in a voice that grinds and groans like he hasn't used it in weeks. He coughs, and hopes blood doesn't coat his teeth.

"Hi," she replies, and she tries to smile, but the gesture falls flat when put against the grim work that lies behind him, hidden by the trees. "What are you-"

"Nothing," he says, before she can ask, and leans the shovel up against a tree, forcing himself to stand up on his own two feet. He walks over to Wanda, ruffles her hair like nothing is wrong. "I didn't think you were coming back here again."

"Willa told me not to," Addison admits, and shuffles guiltily on her feet. She looks around, like she expects Willa to step out from between the trees and chase her away. "I had to see if you were okay, I couldn't-"

"I'm fine," Wyatt snaps, harsher than he means to, and then recoils, running a tired hand through his hair. "Sorry, I just…everyone keeps asking me that, you know?" He waves a hand vaguely in the air and she nods like she understands. "Anyway, I'm fine. You should go home now."

"What?" She frowns and takes a step closer. He resists the urge to step away from her in response, to put more distance between them. It will only raise her concern. "Wyatt, I…I want to help."

"You can't help, Addison," he says, careful not to snap at her. He's tired, and he's walking a wire, the tears always prickling at his eyes, the weight of everything too heavy on his back. "There's nothing to help with."

Just tell her to go away, he hears Willa say in his head, hot and impatient. Just tell her they're all dead, but he can't bring himself to give the thought a voice, to make it so real, out here in the sunshine with her worried eyes staring at him.

Coward, Willa would call him, with a flick of her hair. It doesn't hurt the way it used to, not when it is him saying it to himself in his head.

"I can walk you back to the den, then?" she suggests, and he wants to be resolute, to be hard enough that if he sends her away, she won't come back, but she is so earnest that he can't help but soften. "I could make tea or something?" she continues, even though he's shaking his head. "Have you eaten? You don't look like you've eaten at all."

He glances over at his little sister, half-asleep in the sun that falls in dappled rays across the rocks, her knees drawn up to her chest. He wonders if she looks better or worse than he does, so small and frail as she is, so deeply troubled even in her sleep.

"We're fine, Addison," he says, more patient this time. "Go home. We'll be fine."

She fiddles with the end of her hair nervously, considering it. Her eyes search her surroundings – the camouflage of the trees behind him, the pup sitting by the rocks, the powerless moonstone still hung heavy around his neck. She isn't stupid, this he knows. If she hasn't already figured out what happens to them past the sickness when there is no moonstone, no power for them to live by, she will soon.

"Where's Willa?" she asks with wide eyes, her voice small and careful. A thrill of grief shudders up his spine, a barely repressed flinch at the mention of her name. He resists the urge to look back at the grave.

"Out hunting," he lies through his teeth, the first lie he has ever told her. The last lie he will ever tell her, because he does not intend to see her again, however much he would like to.

She looks like she doesn't believe him, her head tilted just slightly to one side like she's confused, like she doesn't know what the truth is and what is a lie. "I'm really worried about you, Wyatt," she tells him and takes another step forward, close enough to touch him. "I know it's none of my business, and Willa told me to keep out of it, but…you told me that night I came to the den with you, that you'd get sick without your moonstone. And then, you know, the moonstone was destroyed, and you had that fever, and there were those two wolves at the power plant, and-"

"It's just…wolf business," Wyatt tells her, and he's not half as convincing nor as matter-of-fact as Willa would be. "You really shouldn't worry about it, Addison. You shouldn't be coming out here at all."

"But I can help, Wyatt!" she insists. "Whatever it is, I want to help. I couldn't help you with the moonstone, and it's my fault you lost it, so whatever's going on, just let me-"

"It's your fault?" He almost laughs at her, he's so surprised. "No, none of it is your fault. If anything, it's mine, I was the one who-" He swallows the words before they can spill out of his mouth, before he has to explain to her his mother's truedream, his extended search for the Great Alpha, his one brief glimpse of her in Seabrook that winter morning and all the what if's that followed it. He'd had so many chances to follow that fate, even when none of the others believed anymore, and he'd waited for fate to force his hand anyway.

"I don't understand," she says, a silent plea for information he will not give.

"It's a long story," he tells her, and he'd thought he couldn't feel any more rotten than he already did, but now here they are.

"I have time," she offers, all too willingly.

He glances up the mountain, and down at the pup. "I don't," he replies, and his throat catches somewhere between regret and grief.

"Oh," is all she says, and she steps back, like she's been stung.

In the silence that follows, he gets a chance to just see her, standing sad and uncertain of herself amongst the forest pines. It strikes him again, just how much she looks like the faceless figure from the prophecy, the Great Alpha that never came. Her hair almost glows in the sunlight, her eyes are kind but with something lurking behind them, something that grows and grows every time he denies her the truth for the rose-coloured alternative.

"We have to go now," he says, and rips his eyes away from her. He leans down and taps the pup on the shoulder, stirring her to wakefulness. "I'm sorry, Addison." He offers Wanda his hand and she takes it, letting him haul her to her feet so that she can cling to his sleeve and stare at the human girl with wide, uncertain eyes.

"That's okay, Wyatt," Addison replies, and she is the first to back away, finally getting the message that he does not want her to stay. "I'll see you around?"

"Maybe," he offers her with half a smile, the best he has to give. He watches her leave with one last, lonely wave, and then he turns towards the top of the mountain and the rest of his work, his hand slipping into Wanda's as he leads her up the path.

---

"Where are we going?" Wanda asks again, dragging her feet through the dirt behind him.

"I've told you," Wyatt says and stops to let her catch up again. "We're going to the top of the mountain."

He has answered this question four times now since they had started their journey. It is asked every time with more frustration from the pup, and answered with exhaustion slowing the speed of his tongue as it forms the words. She is tired, just like he is, her temper running short – she is like Willa in that way, like their mother, impatient and heady, though he has made her sweet in a way that they were not.

He is thankful now, as he waits for her to latch onto his hand again, that she is soft of nature. He doesn't know if he could look at her so easily if she wore Willa's cold and hard attitude, even though it would fit her like a glove.

"I don't want to go," she whines as she takes his hand. "I want to go home to the den and make s'mores."

He looks up the path, at the rocks that lie within sight and the tops of the trees. "Do you want me to carry you?" he offers, though every step is already a struggle and he barely thinks he will make it on his own, let alone with her on his back. He's walking like he's underwater, wading slowly through the afternoon air and the warm sunshine that falls on his back, far from the brisk pace he would usually set, and still his body aches and his limbs cry for rest, for him to sit down and accept the inevitable.

Wanda bites her lip and nods, and with gritted teeth he lets her climb onto his back and loop her arms around his neck, her head resting on his shoulder. She is burning up, he realises as he shifts her weight around to get a better grip. The heat radiates from her body, so much so that he can feel it even through his jacket, soaking into his own skin.

He frowns, but he knows there is nothing behind him that will help her, so he trudges on.

Ghosts wait for him at the summit, flickers of memories from so long ago he can barely remember anything at all. He hadn't been here since he lost his father; and even before that, the days they had made the climb were few and far between.

Only once had they all come together, on that one spring morning their father had decided to bring them here to teach them about the stones. Willa had climbed the big oak tree, this he remembers, and they had played hunter and prey between the twisted boughs of the trees that stand beyond it. He doesn't remember who won, but he would wager it was Willa. Willa always won those games.

The circle of graves stands beyond the trees, the stone cairns still damp from the rain, the water sitting in the cracks between the rocks. The pillar of stones stands sturdy as ever in their centre. He stops several steps away from it, Wanda half asleep on his back, and counts up from the bottom, generation after generation of wolves that have come and passed for nothing.

Thirty four, thirty five, thirty six, thirty-

Thirty seven.

He almost drops the pup, her eyes blinking awake in his peripheral vision as he counts again. Thirty seven. But no, he must have done it wrong, must be making a mistake somewhere, because there have only every been thirty six stones, for the thirty six generations that have gone before them.

"Where are we?" Wanda mumbles into his ear, and raises her head just enough to stare at the stones.

"We're at the top of the mountain," he tells her and gently lets her down to stand on her own two feet. "Where the first wolves are buried." Her eyes track to the graves, and then back to the stones before them.

"What is that for?" she asks, and walks on swaying and tired feet to press her fingers to the rock.

Wyatt follows her, the runes rough and misshapen beneath his fingers as he runs his hand over them. "This is the names of all the wolves that ever lived," he says, and then he stops to cough into his sleeve, ignoring the sting of copper on his tongue as he does. Instead, his hand travels up to the top stone, recently cut and the runes freshly carved. A small knife sits on top of it, the blade dull and useless. There is only one person who could have carved it.

"Are our names here?" Wanda asks, and she sounds brighter than she has in days, her curiousity sufficiently piqued. He takes her hand and guides it up to the stone that Willa had carved for them, laying her fingers over the rune that denotes her name.

"This is you," he says, and lets go of her to point to the next one. "And me, and Willa, and Wynter…"

He means to keep going, but he catches sight of the rune underneath Wynter's and all his thoughts grind to a halt. He has a vivid memory of a warm hand placing his over it, of tracing the shape of it with fingers that were small and clumsy, from a time long ago.

He touches it now, feather-light, but it doesn't feel anything like the way he remembers it. "This is our father," he says instead, and moves his hand so that Wanda can rub her fingers over it too.

"I don't remember him," she says quietly.

"I know," Wyatt replies, and tries to think back to the day he left. She was a baby then, barely a few months old, one of the last wolves born when there were still moonstones to spare (the image of Winona, angry and revengeful, passes through his mind, but he pushes it away before the guilt can start to sting again, the absence of the forgiveness he will never earn).

"Tell me about him?" she requests, and wraps her fingers around his, rubbing her eyes with her other hand.

Wyatt considers it for a moment, trying to compile his own faded memories of the man. His eyes turn across the clearing, to the jumble of rocks on the far side, and with a jolt he remembers the outcropping on the other side, his father's lookout that hung off the edge of the world. He has a sudden urge to see it again, to sit and drink in the view of uninterrupted woodlands for the first time since he was a pup.

"He was tall, and funny," he says as he leads Wanda towards the rocks. "And he'd always ask us questions, to see if we knew the answers. He used to look after the garden by the den, did you know that?" He glances back, just in time to see Wanda shake her head, and wonders how he has never told her that before.

"Is that why he liked strawberries?" she asks, following him through the rocks.

"I guess so," Wyatt replies, because he's never really thought about it that way before. "He always said he could never get sick of them because he could only ever have them in the summer."

They emerge out onto the lookout, the rocky crag where they can sit, sheltered from the wind, and look out at the endless mountains, the blue of the sky so close it feels like they could touch it.

He holds Wanda close as they sit down, backs against the stone, nestled into a corner where two rocks meet to form a sunny nook. Her breathing is ragged just from the effort of getting out here, her face flushed and her eyes bright with fever. Wyatt is sluggish and slow, the sickness creeping like poison through his veins. The climb down seems impossibly long now, especially from this view – he wonders if he can even manage it, or if he will fall halfway.

Maybe he should rest a while. The pup will need rest too anyway, if he doesn't want to carry her all the way down.

Rest sounds good. Rest sounds…peaceful.

"This was his favourite place," he whispers as Wanda takes in the mountains and the sky. "He used to come up here to look at the view…" He remembers now, vaguely, being asked once if he could count the mountain peaks. He hadn't been able to; he'd run out of numbers he knew before he ran out of mountains, and his father had laughed and thrown an arm around his shoulders. We'll count them all when you're older, he'd said, or something of the sort, and then they'd never made the climb again, separated by the very peaks Wyatt looks at now.

Wanda's fingers find his forearm, tracing the diamond that is inked into his skin, the pack mark she never got to have. For pack and pride, he thinks, and then imagines scrubbing it from his skin, along with all the other marks that mean nothing now. Most of them were for Willa anyway – all the deep slashes of the trials, the yellow star of the Beta mark, the thick paint dried hard on his cheekbone. What is the point of them now that she is gone? Now that his pack is gone?

It feels like there is a hole in the centre of him, a black, aching cavity where something vital has been ripped out. It is jagged and bleeding, an ugly wound, and it wrenches at his stomach and messes with his head – he wants to scream and cry, and run and run and run, wants to stalk something through the trees or throw himself into splitting wood for the fire, to fill the void with something until it can heal.

But his body is broken and even though he wants to run, he can't even lift himself off the ground, can't get to his feet and keep his balance, or walk two steps in any direction. There is nothing left to fill the emptiness than his father's secret view, and even that itself is filled with a loneliness, a detachment from the place of his memories. When he looks out at the endless mountains, the still trees and the rushing river, all he feels is the eyes of the wild as it stares back at him, and waits for him to die.

He'd known all along that it would be like this. All day, he's known in the back of his mind that if he stops before the work is done, he will never finish. Willa's stone upon the pillar behind him, her last parting gift, was the only thing left for him to do, and now that he sits, empty-handed, he knows how it will be.

He won't be climbing back down the mountain to the den, won't be stoking the fire for one more night. It will end where it began – here, where the first wolves were born and buried, where every generation is recorded from the first to the very last.

It is a nice place to rest, at least.

"I'm tired, Wyatt," Wanda mumbles, her head on his shoulder and her fingers growing still against his arm. He presses a hand to her forehead – the fever is climbing, consuming her the way a fire consumes the forest, with no end to its hunger. He takes a deep breath and feels it rattle at his lungs and rip at his throat, just barely avoiding drawing up a cough from deep within his chest.

"Go to sleep, then, little wolf," he tells her. "I'll be here when you wake up."

"Do you promise?" she asks, the words almost lost in the fur that lines his coat.

"Yeah," he breathes, and loops an arm around her, letting his own eyes drift shut. "Yeah, I promise."