"Take cover!" Delta calls out. 

Surrounded by wolves, being red-haired and on two legs gave me little room to hide. Arrows rain from the sky once more as we tuck in behind trees.

"Get behind me." Alpha commands.

 I throw my arms around hss neck, holding him tightly. He sits, rocked back on his hind legs with his back against the tree's bark. The chuckles of these deranged men echo around us as the arrows slowly die down, with a few yelps and pained cries accompanied by disbelief. 

"Cheeky fucks!" Sota scoffs. 

"So we're just going to sit here?" I demand. They pull arrows from each other like it's nothing unless they look particularly deep. My training had always taught me to keep moving; we'd be quickly surrounded if we stayed. 

"The pack had to have heard that howl. I suspect Adriam and Victor will be here any minute to aid us." Delta reports.

Alpha lays his ears back, irritated and ignoring my question. "We don't need bloody aid. We can take care of these ourselves. We stay put and lure them into the woods; their arrows are useless in short-range unless they've taken to the trees, and we will see them if that's the case. I'd rather confront them in the woods than in the clearing."

"If they take cover in the trees, how will we get them down?" I retort shortly, earning a few collective chuckles from the surrounding men, though I see the faces of concern in their mix. The arrows still hurt, even if they weren't all fatal. 

It's Ol' One Arm who comes to the defense of the pack against their bloodthirsty leader. "These are elves; they are some of the best in the world with a bow. Don't think some dead leaves will muck up their aim." Sota reminds him, uncertain.

"I'm counting on that confidence. Dead leaves are loud and fall; they will have difficulty sneaking up on us if we all stop talking and only listen. This isn't up for debate; they're coming if we want them to or not. An Elf battalion isn't going to wait for us to make the first move."

"And lose men we can't afford to spare!" Sota reminds him sternly. 

Alpha doesn't look amused, narrowing his eyes. "We are vulnerable in this position. There are too many of us to hunker down with so little cover. If they enter the clearing, we will have no hope of avoiding arrow fire; we will be slaughtered. If we had weapons, armor, and trained men, your plan might have worked, but given our current state, this is the best option we've got, and I'm telling you to move out!"

 The pack readies itself as they rise to their feet; they would follow their leader and die for him if that's what it took.

Desperate to prevent any more bloodshed, I quickly speak up. "I can help. I can provide a fog, and that will give us some cover. They won't expect it. Lycans can use their ears, and the elves will be helpless." I insist, hesitating when all eyes turn to me. 

Alpha watches me for a long moment. The pack hesitates, and every set of eyes settles on me. They would have to trust me enough to allow me to conjure around them and believe I wouldn't side with the elves to get free. Considering his options, he exhales heavily before he nods, much to my surprise. 

"Okay. Let's see it." He allows.

I can't believe what I'm hearing. But I limp away from him, putting my hand over my pierced thigh to support it. I take a deep breath; without my book, I'm underpowered, so it makes things a little more difficult, but as I chant, I can feel the mist pulling in from around me. Thankfully, my land is located close to bodies of water. 

The fog rolls in thick and heavy; the damp air leaves a fine film on the fur of the wolves surrounding me. 

The castle is going to smell of wet dog tonight, I just know it. 

"I don't know how long this will last. I'm pretty charged up, but I must focus on this to keep the cover heavy." 

Impressed, they regard me with whole new respect. All save for the Alpha, who appears unjustly suspicious. 

"We don't need long," Alpha assures me, addressing the pack. Move forward! Push them out of the woods!" he commands, and the pack moves. 

I put my arm over Tonic's shoulders and limp alongside him as the pack moves out in front of us soundlessly. They hunt, heads low, as their natural coat colors blend seamlessly into the forest.

Shutting my eyes, I envision Fleet; he didn't have to die. "Tonic, am I doing the right thing?" I ask him with a frown because it feels like I'm helping to murder a group of elves who never stood a chance before I surrounded them with fog. 

My father had designed these beings to need weapons to inflict massive amounts of damage. I'd doomed all these elves to a horrific death simply for trying to prevent an invasion of their land.

Tonic saw things much as I did; he did not have a thirst for vengeance, an eye for war, and a talent for producing death. 

"Yes, " he finally murmurs. "This is what needs to be done. You are saving lives—the lives of my brothers and Alpha." He tries to reassure me, and I can only accept that truth. 

My leg is in agony; I grimace, wondering if it would hurt more just to pull it out than to leave it in.

"I've never been shot before..." I tell him quietly.

Suddenly, I'm shoved to the ground, and Tonic dives. "They're above us!" He yells. 

Arrows rain down on us; I pull myself along as I crawl on my belly toward my companion, who is hunkered down next to a fallen log. A wolf jumps on the tree beside us, and Tonic cries out in surprise. I press my back against him and grip my leg; blood seeps out of the exit holes.

 "I have to get this arrow out." I groan through my teeth, my head spinning. "I'm going to black out with much more of this."

 The wolf in the tree rips down an elf, and the poor man screams in agony as he's chewed on. Finally, the wolf finds his throat, and the sound of his neck snapping causes me to pale. I can only focus on my breath, forming a cold cloud before me as my magic charges to my fingertips to come to my protection. 

The creature glares at Tonic before sprinting off, and I scoot towards the dead elf. Searching his pockets, the smell of blood is overwhelming. Finally, I find a knife and pull it out of its holder. 

"Tonic. I need you to shift into a human and cut the skin off the top of this arrow. I can't do it myself." I tell him firmly. 

Another scream sounds from behind us, and Tonic presses against the log. "I can't." His eyes are wide. 

This is probably his first battle, as it was mine outside my training. School had prepared me to handle stress, it was in stress that my magic thrived. I increase the fog cover, doing anything to block out the screams. 

I don't have time or patience for Tonic's fear. "Tonic, I'm not asking you! I need my leg. I can't run around with this arrow hanging out of it!" 

Like I needed another scar, the pain was an irritation; I struggled with acknowledging my body's need to bow to it.It felt like such a weak response to shrivel away from something not life-threatening; if I thought I could stay coherent, I'd carve it out.  

After a moment, he nods, and suddenly, he's human again. He crawls towards me and takes a deep breath as I rip my pants to reveal the wound. "You're going to need to bite something." He glances at me, and I vaguely wonder how it felt to get that scar over his eye. 

Arrows fly all around us; I clutch him closer to me, pulling his head down to protect him as a wolf leaps over top of us. Needing a moment to think, I blast an icy shield to cover us, protecting us from the onslaught. 

"Just do it!" 

 He inspects it for a moment; it's just the edge of my thigh; logically, it should have hit nothing vital. In a careful slice, he rids me of the arrow, and I feel as though my body betrays me as I bite down on the collar of my shirt and tremble from the pain. 

The arrow being removed brings a whole new relief and pain, but at least I don't have to worry about snagging it. 

This is going to be a horrendous scar. 

I rip one of the sleeves off my long sleeve and tie it over the cut; blood seeps quickly into the material and drenches it.

"Look out!" Tonic yells, and I glance up to see a bloodied elf towering over us, knife in hand.

 Without a second thought, I grab the arrow and plunge it into his foot. He shrieks in pain, and Tonic leaps over my head, a wolf, to grasp his throat in his jaws. I lower my shield, trembling from the shock as I stead my hands to tighten the bandage. 

This is war, but more than that, it brought me back to listening to my classmates perish so horrifically. I knew what it felt like to be hunted down and pitied the elves. In school, showing weakness meant you would be targeted in the subsequent trial, and my body defaulted as best it could, though I couldn't hide from the tremors of trauma.

I'd thought I'd locked those memories away, yet they haunted me here.  

The fog dissipates since I've been distracted; it reveals a bloody picture. A large party of elves runs into the clearing, searching for the light that would betray them. The trees were their haven, yet the light tricked them into thinking they could escape the terror of the beasts lurking in the fog. 

The pack chases them out, circling them, surrounding them. Arrows fly as the few remaining sentries are plucked from their trees by fangs. I flinch away from a shriek not far from us, and my body fights not to leap to my defense. 

The sound of dying men surrounding us is like a horrific symphony. 

There's never a moment of silence, only lulls in the choir of death. I see him, Alpha, as he tears the throat of a man who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He is merciless, absolutely lethal, a warlord on a rampage of blood lust that proved everything I'd been told about him.

Brutality for brutality seemed like a fair trade, but I struggled with bearing witness. These elves deserved their punishment; I could reason with that, but to see them die gruesomely left me feeling raw.

I conjure up more fog, unable to watch any more carnage. As the mist rolls in, my eyes travel over the scene. So many bodies litter the floor, but not all are of elvish descent. 

This witty, charming man was precisely who he was promised to be. 

Blinking a few times, I realize someone is talking to me. 

It's Adriam, of all people.

"We have to get out of here!" I can finally hear him. 

My body feels heavy; I stare at my bleeding leg as he shakes my shoulders, and I sway in what feels like slow motion as I struggle to focus on anything but the song of battle. 

"I can't.. I have to control the fog." I tell him, trying to find the surface and escape the memories and reality all at once. I told myself I'd never be in this position again, yet here I was, causing it. 

He checks my pulse, frowning. "We can get you a safe distance away. I have to stitch this; you're bleeding through this rag." He gestures to my leg, and I grimace. "If nothing else, you can't stay surrounded by bodies. They're tearing each other apart."

 I realize I'm sitting in between the tattered remains of two elves, my hands darkened from my wound, kneeling in a pool of blood. 

Adriam grips my face; his hands are hot and wet, covered in the sticky substance. "Come on, I've brought reinforcements. They can spare you for a minute. The fight is almost over." 

"I said no. Banadage me, fix me here, but I can't abandon them now. I don't run away. If it can't be done, then treat me when they are treated; I'm with them until this is over." The words come out rougher than I intended, but everything in me fought to remain. 

With a scowl of frustration, Adriam looks around for an opening before reluctantly nodding. "There's a cluster of trees; just don't get shot again. Come on."

Yanking me to my feet, I guard my leg as I limp along with him through the horror. Using my magic was second nature, deflecting arrow fire and blocking us from the confused lycan lunging through the fog. For the last fifty feet, I'm dragging Adriam, and we throw ourselves down into the leaf litter behind the bundle of trees. I cry out at the pain in my leg, pressing my back against the tree as my chest heaves from the discomfort. 

"I need to help. Can you get me mobile again?" I demand. 

The Frenchman narrows his eyes, muttering his own language as he removes my bandage, and my stomach twists at the pain and the sight of my leg.

 "Oh god. Did you cut this?" He asks.

"No." I lie, then sigh. "Tonic did." 

Unimpressed, Adriam carefully prods the wound. "For the love of the gods. Ok. Well, it's going to be ugly."

 "Can you get me back out there?" I snap.

 Adriam drags a rag over the cut; I cringe at the burn; it reminds me of treating the wounds of my chest, but only on a larger scale. Taking out a canteen, he dumps some of the contents into a small metal pan. "Heat this." He commands me, and I obediently do so. 

He dips the rag and turns the water red. It's not lost on me that he doesn't answer, refusing to acknowledge my request.

 Draining it on my cut, I clutch the ground and struggle to remain still. In the flurry of expletives, I wonder if Alpha screamed. Did he endure or writhe as he was put back together? 

"You don't have to be brave for me; I know this must hurt. I am a doctor you know, nothing will surprise me."

I had never been one to react to pain, no matter the torment. It brings me back to my childhood once more, and I try not to dwell on how this forsaken day made me think about he past. I remember breaking my finger during a fencing lesson and continuing, only to be told later that it was an odd thing to hide the pain. 

It had felt less burdensome at the time than allowing them to fret over me, as they quickly did. 

"I'm not big on expressing pain." I get off on it. "You were the one that stitched Alpha back together, right? If you won't let me go, at least distract me." 

 Glancing up at me, he nods and then splashes some alcohol on my gash. 

I gasp and tense up. "Did you think he would live?" I coax, desperate for anything, muttering the spell to aid in creating the fog. 

Adriam takes a salve from his bag and packs it into my gash expertly, it burns at first, but it slowly starts to feel better. Then he takes out a syringe, giving me a few small injections of what I'm assuming is a painkiller because I feel like my leg is being opened up again at first, but then I feel nothing.

Just when I've given up hope for my answer, he speaks. 

"No, I didn't. But I promised myself I would fight as long as he did. When I got to him, he was barely hanging on. There was blood everywhere; he was choking on it, drowning in it. Sota told me to let him die; there would be no quality of life for him with a mangled shoulder like that." 

He pops the first stitch, and I marvel at his expert work with the tweezers; tying a few knots, he begins closing this gash on my leg. 

"I asked him if he wanted me to save him, but he couldn't speak; his father's fangs had torn his neck apart, and he was bleeding faster than I could find the wounds. But he just stared at me, you know that look. He wanted to live. So I worked on him, and he made it through. He's tough; I'll give him that. It took everything I had to reset that shoulder; it was so badly broken."

While I didn't like Adriam, there were parts of him I could find somewhat tolerable. His gentle eyes, his thick heavy curls, and the amount of gaudy jewelry dawning his neck, ears, and wrists. Much as he had been miserable to deal with, I could see his benefits. He wanted people to live as badly as I did. 

"I don't think we will ever see eye to eye... but thank you.. for saving him. And thank you for helping me. You could have just left me there." I tell him slowly, testing the words, wondering if I might burst into flame for such a statement. 

While his lips part like he might wish to be less than polite, he seems to reconsider, for he finishes the last stitch and searches my gaze for what feels like an eternity. "I don't know why he cares for you, but he does. Hell, I don't even think he knows. I can't let you die, knowing how it would hurt him."

I could accept that in some form. "I'm grateful anyways, even if it's not for my benefit."

Adriam cocks his head, looking out into the haze. "It's gone quiet." He murmurs, frowning.

"Stop. We will take these back with us for questioning." Alpha calls from the tree line. 

Adriam helps me to my feet, and I test my leg, wrapping the bloodied wrap around my thigh once more to hide it from my gaze. Tonic steps beside me, offering to help me walk as Adriam presses ahead. 

Finally, as we leave the trees, I spy Alpha. He's covered in blood; I freeze, and the flashback shakes me to my core. I can see him standing at the gates of my home. My father's blood on his lips as he squares up to kill my mother. 

Tonic wraps his arm around my waist, holding me up as Alpha approaches, lips pulled down, eyes dark with remorse.

"What?" Adriam demands. His eyes are searching, no doubt, for Victor. 

The big white wolf was rounding up the elves with the others. 

"We've had casualties." His voice is distant as if he's holding back. 

"Well, I figured we would. Who did we lose?"

He glances at Adriam and then at Tonic. "Fleet, Swift, a few of the mid, some lower ranks." Alpha sighed heavily, glaring at the ground as if he was uncertain if he wanted to reveal the loss of the others. "To unpracticed, this group was mixed with too many inexperienced men; the ranks were all wrong. Nobody had even been to this area to scout. Adriam, what in god's name-"

Tonic, sensing the hesitation, quickly steps forward. The light blue eyes meet the younger wolf with regret. "Delta's gone, Tonic. " The warlord finally concludes, knowing the conversation with Adriam could wait. 

My hand clutches Tonic's arm.

"Are you sure?" Tonic's voice is small.

Alpha nods slowly. "Swift attempted to rush a small group we had cornered; when he was killed, Delta allowed his emotions to get the best of him and, unfortunately, was overtaken. It was.. unfortunate." The man sounds hollow, uncertain how to deliver such news with the care someone like Tonic would need. 

My lips part, and I try to find the words.

Unable to comprehend, Tonic lurches past him. "Where is he?" His eyes comb frantically, trying to find Delta's body, as Alpha steps before him to stop him. "Damn it, show me where he is! You don't know.. maybe... maybe Nic could heal him?"

Alpha grabs the man's bicep, and how much they look alike shocks me. Wild-eyed, Tonic attempts to pull away while Alpha tightens his hold. "Tonic, I'm telling you that you don't want to see him. War is awful; people die for what seems like no good reason, and seeing him this way won't bring you any comfort. Tonight, when we send him to Valhalla-"

With a snarl, Tonic shoves back against the bloodied male. "Fuck Vahalla!" Tonic roars, causing the group to fall silent once more. "That's not what Delta would have wanted! He didn't even believe in this crap! Delta didn't have to die; none of this had to happen! In an instant, a single instant, my friend is dead, and yeah, it feels like it was for not! There is no glory here, no valor! There is only the dead, and all that will rejoice in their loss are the buzzards!" 

"Tonic! Mind the gods!" Adriam hisses.

"Fuck the gods!" Tonic snarls.

Hardened, Alpha narrows his eyes. "More than valor and glory, we are here to free our people Tonic. These elves would have stormed the courtyard, and we wouldn't have been shown a scrap of mercy; a few must die so that the many shall walk free, and sometimes, it's the ones that we love. We don't get to choose who lives and who dies; we only get to chase our fate. This was Delta's fate, and he lived it, and for that, you should be proud. Not acting like a damned child."

 Alpha's tone is sharp and frustrated; he looks away as Tonic shoves past him to find his fallen friend. 

"How's your leg?" Alpha finally asks me, dismissive of the scene that had caught me so off guard. I'm numb, in sensory overload. I cared for Delta, too; his loss hit me as hard as the loss of the twins, who I had slowly become fond of. 

Snapping out of my stupor, quietly, I take inventory as I assure myself the majority of the blood covering him wasn't his. "It's a wound; I've had many before.. not quite like this, but... it'll heal." I manage, swallowing back my discomfort as I search for Tonic in the crowd. "Are you alright?"

Alpha was their leader, not their friend. Did anyone check his feelings about losing the men he'd promised freedom to? 

 Alpha's lips pulled down at the corners, and I knew the face of a man in the depths of self-hate because I'd been there myself. Survivors guilt, I would have given anything to trade places with the people who died in those trials. 

When he speaks, it's to Adriam instead of me. "Have the uninjured gather the dead and take them back to the castle. The injured need to go to town with you to get treatment. We are not done here, Adam; you have much to fill me in on, and don't think that I'm not laying the blame for this squarely on your shoulders. This was a massive fuck up for all of us in charge; we should be ashamed for what happened here today." The depth of his voice lowers my mood; I almost shrink away even though the Frenchman receives the weight of his disappointment. 

"Victor!" Alpha snaps. 

The white wolf appears suddenly, looking thrilled. 

"Get everyone home. We need to get out of here before they send another group. We can't afford another hit. Have the uninjured prepare the columns so we can send the dead home tonight. I think after today, everyone could use a drink." 

I focus on his back as he leaves us, a soldier as much as he was their leader. It was killing him, and that was an emotion I'd never expected. This man did not revel in victory but mourned its cost. I cross my arms over my chest loosely, feeling like I might break apart if I don't hold myself together.