POV - Alpha Carlisle
Today had been a productive day, I got caught up on most of the paperwork that had suffered during the trip to Cedar River. I can only credit that to my good night's sleep.
Kyas had visited me in my dreams last night. I smiled at the memory. It was the first time ever his spirit had come to me directly, instead of through the witch at Cedar River.
My dream had started the same as always. Three year old Kyas had been outside playing with his brother, playing with a ball. One moment they were clearly seen together in the glade beside the pond. I looked away for a second, and Kyas was gone.
Every time the nightmares come, counted on at the full moon, because Kyas went missing on the full moon, the frantic search for him replays itself. The moon run that night was hectic and frenzied as the whole pack searched for him as wolves, and called for him as humans. He never answered. Kyas never came back.
Guilt has consumed me ever since. I lost him. I lost my son. It was my fault. I fell apart, the nightmares forever haunting my dreams. After two years, with nothing found, the pack forced me to accept that Kyas was dead. They said we couldn't keep doing the searches, they were draining resources, and I had to focus on the pack, and the son I still had.
But... every time I saw Elias, all I could see was Kyas in him, and the pain was too much. I knew it wasn't fair to Elias, but I just couldn't.
And then Alma found me. An email titled "Your son". She said I could contact him, she knew his spirit and he was calling me. That began my visits to Cedar River. To hear his voice through her was heartbreaking, confirming he was dead, but through her, I felt that the connection was still there.
I couldn't go every month. The pack still needed me here. Ruby still needed me. She never blamed me. She never needed to, I already blamed myself. She stepped in with Elias where I couldn't. But when the nightmares happened every night, I had to go. The visits, hearing his voice, calmed me, and alleviated the nightmares for a time.
Two years ago, Ruby came to me. She told me I had to get help, because I was about lose Elias too. He was beginning to give up hope that I would ever want him. That wasn't it though, I always wanted him, I just felt the loss of Kyas ten times worse when I was with Elias. He was half of a whole and I could only focus on the half that was missing.
Last year, the real resentment started. Elias no longer looked at me with longing and hope, but sadness and anger. He slipped into my room one night, Ruby having moved out, unable to handle the torment the nightmares brought me. Elias at first tried to say he was Kyas, but I knew his scent.
I blew up at him. Told him he would never be Kyas. Elias shouted back.
"I know I'm not Kyas, Papa! I can't be Kyas because I'm ALIVE! You can't love me anymore because I'm not the one that died!" he screamed at me and ran to his room.
Even then, I couldn't stop chasing Kyas' ghost. I couldn't stop going to see the witch. Ruby was right, I was sacrificing Elias to a ghost. I started postponing the Cedar River visits, trying to reduce them slowly, hoping I could begin to accept that Kyas was gone.
The witch confirmed it two visits ago. My distance was causing Kyas to fade. I started making an effort with Elias again, but it had been seven years. He had given up on me.
And then this last visit to Cedar River, the pack, and the Witch, were wiped out. And with her went Kyas. It was final. I barely got out of there with my life, and a dog, but I realized something. I wasn't ready to die, but I had been killing myself over Kyas' ghost too.
I decided to try to move on, seriously this time. Doubling my efforts to reconnect with Elias. I was hoping that maybe Steven was right about the dog. Maybe was a gift from the Godess, something to bond with Elias over.
It seemed to be working. In just two days time, Elias had become full of life again, infecting all of us - because of the dog. Because of Blaze. Me, and the pack had smiled more in the last two days than we had in seven years.
But last night, the full moon, after the pack run, the nightmares returned, starting like always, but then it changed. Kyas was there. He had never come to me before, in my home, in my room. At first, I didn't believe it, I thought it was Elias again, but he didn't smell like Elias. He had a familiar scent, but I couldn't place it, but it wasn't Elias.
He was wearing clothes, he had never been so...REAL, in all the time I heard him through the witch. I had never seen him, just heard his tiny voice. This Kyas was not the baby that went missing, he was Elias' age, the spitting image of him. He wore a strange pendant around his neck, glinting in the moonlight, but I couldn't place what it was.
In my deam, I TOUCHED him, I held him. He talked to me, looked me in the eyes with his own voice. He even stayed with me, and the nightmares did not return.
Something bothered me though. The things he had said. He called me Alpha instead of Papa. He had always called me Papa through the witch. He said the boy that came through the witch was a trick - but how could that be? He also talked about coming with me from Cedar River, but if he could do that, why had he never attached to me before, at any other time I left there?
I realized when I woke up and found Blaze in my bed that he had crept into my dreams. The scent I thought was Kyas had actually been Blaze, the pendant must have been Blaze's collar and tag. The warm body next to mine had been his.
I didn't care. It worked. He calmed my nightmares. The Goddess really had sent him. He was healing us, and he was just a puppy.
I smiled again. If I could get Elias to let me borrow Blaze every full moon, maybe I could finally get the nightmares to stop.