Everly POV

There are no winners in a war. Either way, somebody loses, and even the winners lose.

They lose friends, family, humanity, and themselves. We won the battle, but no one wins the war because no one walks away unscaffed after witnessing such carnage, such loss, and it always ends in grief.

Grief shows you how valuable life is but also how cruel life is. It shows you the darkness of losing someone. Then it shows you the light in appreciating others more. You realize how precious life is but also how short life can be.

You learn how torturous it can be when you lose someone you couldn’t imagine living without, but somehow you do.

Somehow, you’re still breathing even when the pain of grief is so intense you believe it will kill you and sometimes wish it would, just so you don’t have to know the pain of losing them.

Standing in this hall with hundreds of peering faces staring back at us, you could see their grief as if they wore it like armor, as if it was branded into their very being like a tattoo, screaming their anguish.

You could hear their gut wrenching screams as they realized the pain they were feeling wasn’t hurt loved ones but broken bonds, and broken families, broken.

Nothing will kill your soul more than losing a loved one.

Nothing will break you down more than realizing you will never hold them again, never hear their voices, never see them.

1 We stood on a podium while Valen called out the names of loved ones, needing them to come forward to claim their dead sons, dead mates, and dead parents, and while trying to mask my own grief, I witnessed theirs, felt theirs with each broken tether.

How Valen called out the names, it was almost as if he was desensitized to death, expressionless.

Yet, through the bond, I knew he was barely holding it together as their screams and pain rippled through him like a stone tossed in the lake, that rippling tide on repeat, and I don’t know how he bared it as he tried to keep the bond blocked, though those that sifted through I felt, felt him, felt them.

We won the battle, but we lost too. One hundred seventy-six lives were lost, Ninety-one bonds are broken, meaning a possible Ninety-one more lives to wither away until either they die slowly or their bond does.

Most of those deaths were men,  she-wolves rarely lived without their mates.

Yet seeing my father sitting vacantly ahead, I knew he wished it killed him.

and we heard their cries. It felt surreal, like a nightmare, a loop of

we made our way out and met up with the council investigators; they were raiding my father’s house when the attack started and they quick to

vast majority of the forsaken turned out to be his own people, unbonded males that apparently volunteered in the name of science, put up their hands for their

were left abandoned. As each forsaken shifted back after their death, we were left with their true identities. He

A sacrifice that ended in their deaths. Some thought it was

was dead. He had apparently switched off her life support before fleeing the city, leaving behind his son in a padded room, which we learned held the cure in his veins. 2 His blood

plans, that he had nothing to do with it or knew

away like a coward leaving behind

he had done to

the Slasher pack and Valen’s pack for

He accomplished finding a cure for the incurable. He was planning on infecting the

standing by the car with the kids and

in the back of the car with the heating going as the night turned terribly cold, cold-like emptiness we all felt.I look at them, checking on them before leaning against the hood next to Zoe, when my father wanders out looking rather lost. I was about to go to him when Kalen

on him,” Kalen says, and I nod,

is still with Tatum. He has gone in for surgery to try to save his

bitten, wasn’t she?”. Zoe shakes her

blood tests came back clear, however, Tatum is riddled

nods toward him, where he is walking over to Valen, who is still talking to

many are infected. Hopefully, Carter’s blood really is the cure that’s needed,” Zoe says, and

seen Ava?”

her your spare house

to go home without mum. We

the aftermath, and I didn’t know the first thing about dealing with the werewolf council or what we do from

everyone eventually leaves, Valen comes over with Marcus. He rubs his hands up my arms. His touch was warm, making me realize how cold my

in the car. It is too

did our

mine.Yours was apparently pretty drunk

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