Grey's Tribute

I'm Extending A Hand

"Mother." I breathe it out, a word I haven't used in a very long time. I want to weep from joy. I feel so light, and there's no more pain.

"Meela, I love you." She places her lips on my forehead.

I'm floating, wrapped in her embrace, her smell, her love.

"Always so stubborn."

"Mother, I've missed you." Wrapping myself tighter around her, trying to hold her to me.

"I've missed you too, my beautiful girl, but you need to go back. It's not your time yet."

"I can't go back." Clutching to her tighter in a grip that will not break.

"Please, Mother...please."

"Shhh...It's ok. I love you, Meela." Her hand pushes my chest, flinging me away from her bright light, from the Moon's glow. Falling back into nothingness.

Mumbled whispers hit my ears. It's hazy...dark. The pain takes my breath away.

"Alpha Grey, there's no fixing this. I can't... this is... it's... I've never seen injuries this bad."

Blackness takes me, pulls me under again, only to push me to the surface, into the light. He's crying. I can hear sobs, deep male sobs. It's raw... full of pain. My cheek rests against his thigh, and I can feel his salty tears dropping on my face, wetting my lips, down my neck. I want to weep with his despair until I'm pulled back under into the void.

"Call her brother, tell him... he needs to come."

The feel of his fingers sliding through my hair feels good... soothing. I don't fight it and until a blissful sleep summons me once again.

I'm startled out of my slumber. Is it my body twitching or the current of air hitting my back that's causing a sharp pain to shoot into my spine?

"Meela?" The pure agony in my brother's voice has me unsettled. "What have you done, Grey?" He's seething mad. I know that tone. His words are hissed out causing the hairs on my arms to stand on end.

"She wouldn't concede." His voice is hoarse, scratchy."She wouldn't...s ay the words." It's choked out, full of desperate emotion...disbelief.

"So, instead, you tried to kill her." My brother's words are lethal.

"Look at her!" Bryon is shouting at the Northerner. "Look what you've done to her! She's ruined!" The range of his voice is posturing out, pouring over my body, making me squirm slightly.

Trying to lift my head up, but it's made of stone. Just that movement is enough to bring faint whimpers from me. I can feel his fingers once again running through my hair, trying to calm me.

"Shhh, Meela, don't move. You'll hurt yourself." The Northerner's lips are close to my ears. I can smell him. It spreads a gentle healing warmth through me. The scent of him relaxes me with an overwhelming desire to get closer to him.

"You can have all your tributes back, including Meela." It's spoken quickly, in haste, by the Northerner.

"Do you think that makes up for this?" Bryon sounds disgusted.

"No...nothing can ever make up for what's done...Now take her!"

Feral growls burst from my brother's chest, followed by the sound of bodies crashing into each other. A battle is fought until one of them lands beside me, shifting my position. I can't hold the screams.Hurting so badly, the pain biting, gnawing into my bones.

Unable to stop myself from screaming just rush of air out of my lungs to vocalize my pain tears through my skin. Nothing can settle me until I feel the familiar warmness of the medication spreading out, wrapping around me in a protective cocoon, shielding me from the world.