Chapter 115 – The Cost of Victory
The stillness after war was always the loudest.
Rowan sat upright with effort, every movement a reminder of the damage done. His body ached in ways that went bone-deep, but it wasn’t the physical pain that took his breath away.
It was the silence.
It was the absence.
All around him, the battlefield lay scorched and broken—grass torn and blackened by magic, craters marking the earth like pockmarks of death. Smoke drifted from distant fires still smoldering, and the coppery scent of blood hung thick in the air, sticky and sharp.
But none of it compared to the ache in his chest.
Not the kind from cracked ribs or torn muscle—though those throbbed too—but the void. The emptiness where once there had been threads connecting him to others. Wolves of his pack. Warriors. Friends.
Gone.
He could feel them—those snapped bonds, those silenced howls. Faint echoes remained, but they were like ghosts brushing against the edges of his mind. And the weight of it…
It crushed him.
Rowan closed his eyes, jaw clenched, and tried to breathe through it. But the air was thick, and grief had claws.
“Rowan.”
He turned his head slightly, and there she was.
Giselle.
Kneeling beside him, her face shadowed with sorrow, her eyes rimmed red but steady. She reached for him, fingers brushing gently over the back of his hand as if reassuring herself he was real—that he was still here.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he whispered, the promise raw and strained.
Her lip trembled, just barely. “You almost did.”
He looked at her then—really looked—and saw the fear she hadn’t spoken. It still clung to her in quiet tremors, in the way she stayed close, never more than a breath away from him. Her hand remained wrapped in his, her presence a tether just as it had been in the void.
“I could feel you,” he murmured, the memory coming in fragments. Her voice. Her touch. The warmth of her love cutting through the dark. “You called me back.”
“You left me,” she said softly, a tear slipping down her cheek. “And I didn’t know if I could bring you back. Not again.”
Rowan brought her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to her palm, lingering there for a long moment.
“I’ll never leave you,” he said against her skin.
But even as he said it, he knew the truth.
He couldn’t make that promise—not in a world like this. Not when battle left their lives hanging by a thread. Not when the weight of his decisions meant life or death for those who followed him.
He looked back out over the valley.
Shifters moved slowly through the aftermath. Some searched for the wounded. Others wrapped the dead. The low whimpers of grief carried on the breeze—mothers finding sons, mates mourning lovers. He recognized faces among the fallen.
Too many.
“Don’t carry this alone,” Giselle whispered, watching the change in his expression.
“I’m their Alpha,” he murmured. “It *is* mine to carry.”
“But not alone,” she said again, stronger now. “We carry it together. We survive it together.”
He looked at her, searching her face for cracks. For any sign of regret.
But all he saw was fierce, unrelenting love.
Her fingers squeezed his hand tighter. “You didn’t fail them. You saved the ones who are still standing. And you gave the others a death worth remembering.”
Rowan swallowed hard, his throat thick.
The guilt didn’t leave—but her words wove something around it. Not armor. Not absolution.
But hope.
He nodded once, eyes stinging as he turned his gaze back to the broken valley.
They had survived.
But the cost of victory would never be forgotten.
The soft pounding of feet reached Rowan's ears before he could make sense of the noise. Giselle turned her head at the same moment he did, just as a blur of motion crested the hill—brown hair flying wild, face streaked with dirt and tears.
“Rowan!”
Charlie.
She sprinted across the battlefield, weaving through fallen weapons and broken bodies like a child dodging raindrops. Liam and Luther were close behind, their expressions taut with worry, their pace quick but watchful.
Rowan’s heart twisted as he saw her—so small, so fierce, her usually bright face now washed with fear.
She dropped to her knees at his side, her breath heaving, her eyes wide and frantic as they roved over every bruise, every cut, every spot of blood.
Her hand lifted instinctively… and stopped mid-air. Hovering just above his chest.
“I—I don’t want to hurt you,” she whispered, her voice cracking. “Gods, you’re so pale…”
“Charlie,” Rowan rasped, his throat still raw, “Come here.”
He didn’t wait for her to decide.
Gritting his teeth through the pain, he shifted, wrapping his arm around her and pulling her into him. A gasp burst from her lips as she fell into his chest, and then she was sobbing—loud, broken, body-shaking sobs that buried into his shoulder.
“I thought I lost you,” she cried, clutching at the sides of his shirt. “You didn’t move—Rowan, you didn’t move—I saw you fly through the air and you just… layed there. I couldn’t—” Her voice broke again, and she shook in his arms. “You’re my only family and I thought—I thought you were gone.”
He tightened his grip around her, burying his face in her tangled hair.
“I’m here,” he whispered into her crown. “I’m here, Charlie. I’m not going anywhere.”
“But you almost did,” she sobbed, fists curled into his chest. “I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t lose you, not after everything—”
“You didn’t lose me,” he cut in gently, his voice hoarse. “I promise. I’m still here. Battered, bruised, and looking like hell—but still breathing.”
Her head bobbed against his chest, her tears soaking into his shirt. Liam knelt behind her silently, one hand resting on her back for comfort, while Luther stood behind them, his cold, unreadable eyes softening as he looked at Rowan and his mate cradled in the center of the wreckage.
“I should’ve protected you better,” Charlie choked out.
Rowan leaned back just enough to look her in the eyes. “You fought. You survived. You protected our people. You did protect me, Charlie. Just by being here.”
She swallowed hard, blinking up at him through watery lashes.
“I’m so glad you’re okay,” she whispered.
His throat worked around the knot forming there. He nodded once, brushing her hair behind her ear with a trembling hand. “Me too, little wolf. Me too.”
He let her cry into his chest for as long as she needed, grounding himself in the sound of her heartbeat, in the warmth of his mate pressed beside him, in the weight of Liam’s hand on both of their shoulders.
There would be more grief. More rebuilding. More battles ahead.
But in this moment—surrounded by those he loved most—Rowan let himself believe that maybe, just maybe…
They were going to be okay.
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