He relived it every night.
There was not a moment when Mace Attaya closed his eyes that he was not assaulted by a barrage of images and sounds that he could not shake. The rain had poured for what felt like an eternity, day after day, night after night, relentless. Day after day and night after night, Maksim had left the wolves tucked in the den to check the state of the river, but none of them had anticipated its noble escape from its banks, and the following flooding of their homeland. None of them but Ava, whose concern had spared the lives of her, her husband, and at least one of her sons. Rowan's whereabouts had become uncertain following the initial escape, and in the chaos none of them had been able to locate Cinder or Quil. Of their deaths in the cruel grasp of the flood, the remaining Attaya clan had been certain.
All but Mace, who believed deeply that he would
feel the death of his siblings on a spiritual level, and though he mourned with his family and though the words convinced him it was true, he could not wholly believe it. A part of him rebelled against what seemed to be fact. It was this part of him that, over a month later, had suddenly seized the reins and directed him back to this place, this
hell that he had left behind. He didn't know what to expect, but when the boy's paws finally sunk into the waterlogged snow at the edge of Darkwater Rapids' former territory, what he found resembled nothing he had ever known.
The flood had been powerful: trees with weaker root systems had been torn from the ground and tipped by the force of the water and the swift erosion. Where the communal den had been was now a makeshift pond, and any semblance of its architecture had been erased by the destructive floodwaters. Any sign that wolves had once lived here had been wiped out, and Mace's hopes of finding the water receded and the land habitable again were dashed with the discovery of areas of stagnant water high enough to reach his chest.
He had not remained there long. He had quickly turned his back on it, loath to behold any more of the wreckage that was left of his family's home and his parents' kingdom. He had picked a direction, any direction in his mind, and he had gone in it, and that was how he came across another like-aged individual, standing at the edge of another waterlogged territory — this had not been Darkwater Rapids turf, but something else, whose name he didn't know — and with her discovery, a sense of sorrow washed over him.
Was she, like he, displaced? Was her family gone? Did she stand here, mourning the ghost of a pack that had gone on without her, or maybe died in a flood that had come on too quickly to avoid? Although all these things were uncertain, Mace didn't hesitate to chuff out a woof upon seeing her, hoping to halt her progress and determine what information she could give him about his home, his friends, and his missing family.
Sex: Female
