10: Last breath.
**Thane pov**
Kieran was getting worse by hours, not days or weeks. Every hour that passed made him look like he was getting closer to insanity.
It didn’t matter how much Samantha and Torin tried to help, fuck, even I couldn’t do anything but stand aside and watch how one of my closest friends was slowly slipping into madness.
At one point, Kieran started foaming around the mouth and then, all of us feared his life had come to an end, but somehow, he managed to pull through.
After another awful day, the sun was setting and I couldn’t stay around for any longer. I needed a moment of peace, a moment away from the poor man I couldn’t help no matter what I tried.
Quietly, I left the cabin and sat on the steps, watching the sun go down and disappear behind the trees. The door behind me opened and I didn’t have to look over my shoulder to know who it was.
“Overwelmed?” Torin asked and sat next to me, his eyes focused somewhere into the distance just like mine.
These days, all three of us looked like walking corpses, shells without souls that were supposed to reside within the flesh.
“Yeah, a little, I could say,” I grumbled, feeling like the weight of the entire word had just settled on my shoulders and I couldn’t get rid of it no matter how hard I tried.
Torin ran a hand through his hair, an action so familiar to whenever he was stressed, and sighed deeper than I thought it was humanly possible. “I don’t know what to do anymore, Thane. I just.. He’s slipping deeper into the void and it seems nothing could bring our friend back. And Alpha Bane? He’s fucking missing, I fear we can’t free Kieran before it’s too late unless Bane returns.”
I nodded grimly, fully agreeing with his statement.
The truth of the matter was that Alpha Bane was the one who had somehow marked Kieran with that weird thing on his chest and if anyone was capable of removing it, I believed it had to be Bane.
“I’m not sure if he’ll be back before it’s too late. Honestly, I’m not sure if he’ll be back at all. The pack is in chaos, the men and the rejects women don’t know what to do. There’s no leadership, but it’s also not like we can just point at someone and declare them the Alpha of the pack. Like it or not, we need Bane back, the sooner the better.” I admitted.
A while ago, when we had him hanging in that barn, I was sure the man wasn’t fit to be an Alpha anymore, at least not in the state he was in back then.
But now, as I sat with my friend in front of the cabin inside which our closest friend was dying, I realized just how complicated a real pack system truly was.
“What now?” Torin whispered, his shoulders slumping. “Do we sit around and wait for him to come back, or do we try to figure this out on our own? Man, I get that it’s practically impossible, but I don’t want to watch Kieran die. Not like this.. If he.. If he..” Torin choked on the words and hid his face behind his hands.
I took a deep breath and finished for him. “If Kieran gets worse.”
Torin swallowed loudly and nodded. “Yeah, if he gets even worse than he already is, we’ll literally sit here and watch our friend die in the slowest, most painful way anyone could imagine. He doesn’t deserve this torture, Thane, he just doesn’t-”
Before he could finish, I jumped to my feet and growled at him. “If Kieran gets worse and we know, for a fucking fact, there’s nothing we can do, we’ll have to kill him ourselves.”
“Thane, no,” Torin gasped, looking up at me with watery eyes.
I raised my hand to stop him and growled again. “Listen to me, damn it. If Kieran gets worse and we know he’s going to die regardless of what we do, we end his suffering. You hear me? We fucking end it. We will set our friend free like it or not.”
“That’s inhumane!” Torin argued, his face became beet red, hands pulled into fists shaking.
“You want to know what’s inhumane?” I growled and took a step closer to him, looking down at my friend with nothing but desperation to be understood. “Putting down animals that are suffering is considered normal, but we can’t do that to ourselves? We are half human, half beast, for fuck’s sake! Think about it, Torin, every day people put down cats and dogs that are at the end of their road to end the suffering and their pain!” I pointed at the cabin door. “In there, our friend is suffering in pain every single fucking moment of his existence! Don’t you think it’d be only fair to help him?”
My chest was heaving by the end of my rant, angry tears streamed down my cheeks, but I didn’t care. Whoever thought it was sign of weakness could go and fuck themselves, because right now, in my mind, I was making a choice I couldn’t walk away from.
If push came to shove, I would have to kill my closest friend and I knew that, as much as the thought hurt, it was the best decision I could make.
Torin sat silent, crying as hard as me, but didn’t offer another word. I believed that deep down, he knew I was right and we truly didn’t have any other choice than that.
I just stood there, watching him cry and shake silently, unable to stop crying myself until the cabin door opened and we both looked up as Samantha slowly walked out - her face grim, white as a sheet, eyes puffy from crying. “Thane, Torin,” she whispered and we both held our breaths, waiting for her next words. “He’s gone. Kieran just took his last breath.”
***P.S. Still doing that "checking something" thing, PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT AFTER YOU'VE READ THIS CHAPTER.***
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