Vane walked stonily toward Anya and sank down beside her. He gathered her wolf's body up into his arms and cradled her as if she were a baby. Tears streamed down his face as he rocked back and forth with her and whispered to her.
Fang let out a fierce howl and turned into a man. His body bare, he laid his head down on Anya's back and held on to her too.
Ash would never forget the sight of the three of them huddled there in their grief. It would haunt him forever.
All too well, he remembered his own past.
Saying good-bye to his sister and her baby . . .
Pain like that never fully healed. He knew it for fact. Not even eleven thousand years had taken away the bitter burn inside him.
His face grim, Ash took a step toward them. "Do you need me to-"
"Get away," Vane snarled, his voice feral and cold. "Just leave us alone."
Val arched one regal brow. "There might be more Daimons coming."
"And I will kill them," Vane growled. "I will kill them all."
There was nothing more to be done to help them and Ash hated that most of all. The brothers needed time to grieve.
Disintegrating his staff, he turned toward Val who watched the brothers with a troubled gaze. "There was nothing more you could do," Valerius said to Vane. "Don't blame yourself."
Vane let out an inhuman snarl.
Ash pulled Val's arm and led him away from the scene before Vane attacked out of sorrow.
Val's features were still haunted with sympathy. "The innocent should never have to suffer from the battles of others."
"I know," Ash said, his heart heavy. "But it seems to always be the case."
Val nodded. "A furore infra, libera nos."
Ash paused at the Latin quote. Spare us from the fury within. "You know, Valerius, there are times when I think you might actually be human after all."
Valerius scoffed at that. "Trust me, Acheron, whatever human part of me that ever existed was killed a long time ago."
Fury watched quietly for hours as Vane and Fang held their sister and wept like children. He remembered a time when he'd cried like that too, but it had been centuries ago.
He'd sent Liam on not long after the fight had ended to tell the rest of the pack what had happened, then stayed behind just in case there was more fighting to be done. Regardless of past battles, snipes, and ill feelings, Vane and Fang didn't need to stand alone right now. Everything they'd cared about was dead. It was a pain Fury wished on no one.
Fury's grief hit him on a different level. While they cried for the sister they'd lost, he cried internally for the sister he'd never know.
It was so hard to watch his siblings embrace like that while he stood on the outside.
Forever a stranger.
But he couldn't tell them the truth. Their own mother and the siblings he'd been raised with had turned on him and tried to kill him. The only woman he'd ever loved had been among those who turned on him. Why then would Fang and Vane ever accept the fact that he was born of the same cursed union that had birthed them?
Besides now was definitely not the time for a family reunion.
He stepped forward tentatively. Not out of fear, but out of respect. "Guys? We've been here a long time. Since the Taser's worn off, I think we should be going."
Vane pinned him with the coldest dead stare he'd ever seen. He turned that look to Fang. "We need to give her a proper burial. We owe her that."
Fang wanted to scream and curse. He wanted to punch until the impotent fury inside him was quiet. But he didn't know if it would ever be quiet again. Something inside him was shattered. Anya wasn't supposed to die. She was supposed to be here. In all the hell and uncertainty that had been their lives, she'd been the one thing he and Vane had lived for. Their calming influence.
She'd made the wolf human.