Work Text:
He had a family once. A mate and a daughter. Gracie had been three. He and Marta had just begun talking about having a second cub.
If he believed in God, he'd thank Him for the fact that Marta hadn't been pregnant when she'd died.
His cousin's mate hadn't been so lucky. She'd died curled around their unborn cub, holding their living one as the boy wailed in agony.
The fire had consumed them all. His sister Alpha, her mate, two of her young. The wolves had burned, died screaming as their bodies finally stopped trying to heal. His youngest niece, human, had choked to death on the acrid smoke.
From bitter experience he knew that suffocation had to be preferable to the flames. To this day, he could feel the phantom burns spread across his skin, the pain so incredible he'd been driven deep into his mind to hide for six years.
In less than thirty minutes his family had died, his pack had been destroyed, his world had ended. He still couldn't remember how he'd escaped, but he remembered his niece finding his charred body, her eyes glowing red from both her new power and her tears.
Eleven of his family died that night including his elderly father who'd simply lain down and waited for the flames to take him, certain he'd join his mate in whatever afterlife wolves enjoyed.
Two survived and fled.
He'd remained, what little that was left of him waiting for a blade to end him. It never came.
Sometimes he really wished the hunters had finished him. The nights he woke up screaming for Marta and Gracie, weeping for his father and sister, for the wolves and humans of his pack who had died in agony. And the times he saw the guilt destroying his nephew.
Or felt his own guilt for, in madness, taking the life of his niece.
There was a new pack now, but he and his nephew were all that were left of their family. They could build the pack through the bite.
They needed to build the family through blood.
It was time to remind his nephew of his duty to mate and have cubs. To remind him that the boy might be what he wanted, but not what they needed.
And it was time to put aside his mourning for Marta and take another mate as well.
End