The siege was over; a culmination of events that had ended with bodies littering the grounds of Stonehaven. Losses from both sides. Brothers gone forever; Pete and Antonio, casualties of this mutt uprising, paying the ultimate price for the pack’s lack of being prepared. Too steep...the cost, but there was no changing what had already happened. Now was the time for clean up; a moment could finally be spared to catch your breath, when the dusts of tragedy began to settle, and grief came washing over. Everyone had their own process; their own way of coming to terms, of accepting the pain before it became unbearable. Communication wasn’t his; despite several tenures as a professor of anthropology, Clayton Danvers found nothing cathartic about talking. Animals expressed themselves in different ways; and there was no mistake to be had, the man who had once been a little boy, bitten at the early age of seven, was more wolf than anything else. His way of thinking; his way of acting...something primal and bestial existed within it. When wolves bonded it was because of survival; that sense of loyalty, dedication, people would never be able to understand it. They couldn’t grasp the depth at which that emotion could endure. The relationship, it was never more intense than when it occurred between mates; a connection that seared itself into you, claiming parts that you couldn’t have known were there until you felt it. A mate for life; a mate for your soul. Explanations didn’t exist for that kind of link. When they wept, it shattered your heart into fragments so small, you wondered how could it possibly be put back together. And when they smiled, you could feel the light, as if it was a palpable force, and more than anything you wished you could bathe in those golden rays for eternity.
Elena represented all of those things to him; but even that, it couldn’t possibly do justice to this…thing within him that she had created by giving her love. It made him better; it consumed him, with a ferocity that would have struck fear into anyone else. You couldn’t shut off something like that. It was...a living, breathing, entity that could bend even the strongest to it’s will. Now she was suffering; and he could feel her heartache as if it were his own. Clayton didn’t mourn her boyfriend; the person she had known in Toronto, who’s severed head had been left as the most grotesque message that could be sent. If anything, he regretted the trauma that had been caused by it, and the extinguishing of a life in general. He wasn’t without sympathies; if there had been anything he could have done to save Phillip, he would have. For her For her happiness...for the life that she had always wanted, the sense of normalcy that she longed for. He couldn’t, and wouldn’t, pretend that he had ever felt anything positive towards the now deceased man. She was the love of Clay’s life; first and last, there would never be another...the place that Elena had taken, the role, it couldn’t have been filled by anyone else. His love started and stopped with her; there wasn’t an ounce left that she didn’t own. The truth of what they were, and what she meant, it was completely unshakeable. Everything else about him could be stripped away; Santos and Leblanc could have tortured him further, peeled away his flesh, cut into him until there was just...nothing left, and they still wouldn’t have been able to touch that truth. Long after his extended lifespan came to an end, when his name was scribbled down in the book of records they kept in the basement, when future members of the pack spoke about Clayton Danvers, it wouldn’t be to remember him as the enforcer. Or as a loyal son. The first words to pass through any of their lips would be that he had loved Elena Michaels.
The past few months had been a crucible for everyone involved; the deaths, the emotional rollercoaster, having to always be on guard...still, it hadn’t been the hardest thing he had ever been forced to endure. Did that somehow make him disloyal? The pack came first; always and forever, a lesson he understood and believed in, but it didn’t compare to the hell that had been undergone before. Those months after he had first been bitten; the camping trip with his family, coming across the wolf...a child, left alone in the woods after he couldn’t be found, becoming completely feral, abandoned and forgotten. To survive that, nothing else should have been able to come close in hardship. It had, though. The year apart from her; when Elena had fled after being forced to play the part of executioner….it had come so close to destroying him. Her departure had created a wound that felt as if it would never heal. The most important thing in your life torn away; you couldn’t fill the hole that had been left behind. It turned into an abyss. Those nights spent in her room; sitting on the floor, just trying to get a faint scent of her so that he could pretend that she was still there. How the uncertainty threatened his sanity; thoughts that couldn’t be stopped, the questions that refused to yield. Staring out of the window; looking towards the moon, how it bathed everything in a silver light, and wondering if she was doing the same in that moment. If someone else was holding her; touching her, whispering in her ear all of the things that he should have been saying. Every day, every single one, he had thought about jumping into his car, foot on the gas, refusing to let up until she was in his arms. To live through that; to never let the idea that they belonged together get shattered completely, it had been what gave him the strength to continue.
No more sacrifices; she said that as she slipped his wedding band back on. The implication; what it truly meant...the magnitude of it was something Clay had grasped immediately. His love for her wouldn’t have to be put second to anything ever again; now that the truth behind the bite was finally known. He stood just on the other side of her door; his forehead was pressed against the faded white paint, eyes closed, able to picture her in his mind without the need for sight. They needed each other; now more than ever before. You and me. His hand came to rest on the brass doorknob but he didn’t turn it yet; he knew Elena, understood her on a level that no one was going to come close to. Not even Jeremy. “Darlin’, it’s me.” A soft tone; everything about her world had been turned upside down again...comfort was what he wanted to provide, what he needed to give her. Twisting the knob, he stepped into her room...the familiar space, where so many of their memories had been created. “It’s okay,” he held his hands up as if a gesture of peace. “You’re safe. Here with me.”