Chapter 11. Angel of Death
If it wasn't for something coming into contact with my shoulder, just at that very thought, and shaking me lightly.
Accompanied by the sound of a bell-like voice... I do not think for one a moment that I would ever have opened my eyes again.
I tried to open my eyes, but they were so heavy. As heavy as my chest felt, as it heaved attempting to, simply, get air into my lungs; just breathing each breath was accompanied by a piercing, stabbing pain in my side and back.
My body was too heavy to move. I had been certain that I had heard footsteps, and then heard talking. It was a bell-like voice that I had heard. I was so... so sure that I heard it.
Once something began shaking my shoulder lightly, with all the strength which remained in my body, I willed my eyes to open.
They had truly felt like lifting concrete shutters. My body was fighting against all of my movements.
The scent of blood whafted strongly all around... blood- it was my blood. Unmistakably by the scent.
I was aware of just how injured I was... how close to death/ How much Lorcan had laid into me when I least expected it, with each claw and each of his bites going deeper and deeper. Targeting vital organs. I was at death's door, and I accepted it.
While my eyes were open, I couldn't see anything. My vision was badly clouded with blood and tears, and I could only make out the difference between vague shapes, light, and shadow. My eyes rolled, and I coughed, and a metallic copper taste poured into my mouth - more blood. As I spluttered up blood, my eyes rolled even more violently in their sockets.
I was just too injured... to close to death's door that I wasn't able to control any of my movements. No matter how much I wrestled for control.
Squeezing my eyes shut again, I continued to splutter up more blood with each cough. I was as dead as any werewolf could be.
That I had been an Alpha, in this condition, was laughable or pitiful. Depending on who might have been watching me right now. I prayed that they were going to put me out of my misery and give me a swift end. I had heard a laugh...
Opening my mouth to ask them to end it, but no words came out; I just coughed up more blood. A wheeze deep in my chest was drowned with a gurgle of further blood. Nothing audible came out.
What Alpha would want their end in such a way as this? With any luck, it would be a bear or a cougar that had found me. That I had been hallucinating laughter. I wasn't dead, so I'd still be a sufficient meal for them. They wouldn't turn their nose up.
Willing my eyes open again, one last time... I wanted to see who, or hopefully what, was going to give me my ending.
Blood now added a red and pink hue to my vision. The cloudiness now had colour all over.
What I could make out was the figure of a woman. My eyes still could not focus, but I could tell that she was a she by the shape of her silhouette. Draped head to toe in a swathe of darkness. Except for a pale face with eyes, the light colour of the sky.
They were fuzzy and I couldn't, for all the life remaining in me, steady myself- my eyes enough to look at her properly. She was made up of fuzzy blobs. There were large shadow shapes behind her... wings? I thought to myself.
At this point and time, I had forgotten all about the existence of harpies... they rarely came into contact with werewolves anyway. What would one solo harpy be doing all the way out here in Pack territory? No, it wouldn't make any sense.
This had to be a figment of death. Was the Grim Reaper truly a woman all along? All the depictions of death portrayed a skeleton-like figure cloaked in a black shroud. This figure was cloaked in darkness with a pale face... but a definite female figure by the way the shadows clung to her hips and breasts. Did she have a face at all? I couldn't tell. Everything was fuzzy blobs of pink and red colour.
I came to accept that this was the reaper... and accepted that the reaper was a woman. The gender of the reaper wasn't important. For I would soon be dead.
The wings of death didn't seem to be fully unfurled. Their steps were light, and the drum of my own weak pulse in my ear drowned out anything else. The footsteps of this thing were very light. Then, what else would... what else should one expect from a reaper?
The reaper has come to take my soul.
I was okay with it.
I was going to die... it wasn't a great death for an Alpha, never mind a death for an Alpha of the Crimson Blood-Hounds.
Really, my death? How I went out... it was pathetic. I, Nikolas Von Kassin was going to have my soul whisked away... I wonder what it was going to feel like? When my soul left my body.
When I see Mother, Father and Samuel again...
'Thank you, Angel of Death,' he thought.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
This was Nikolas's first encounter with Sephora.
He thinks he truly is dead and dying, that Sephora is an Angel of Death come to take his soul away. He was delirious from the severity of the injuries inflicted on him by his Beta's surprise attack.
As Sephora takes him into her arms and carries him into the skies, he, at that point, is convinced he is dead.
He managed to stay conscious until the point he had been in the air for a few minutes.
He then passed out on the flying route back to the Raven Kingdom, & the royal castle.
Fully accepting that he was dead.
Although soon, he might wish he was.