Lost & Found

Preface

The sky is grey, the air is dull, the rays of the sun don't warm my skin like they used to, there is no breeze, setting the hairs on my arms alight, leaving goozebumps in their wake, there is nothing. My chest rises and deflates, at a steady pace, but what is the point? In and out, in and out, a repetitive motion that I long to be without. One's brain barely registers breathing, yet you cannot stop it, no matter how much one may want to. 

And even though I am in fact alive, breathing, as my body so dutifully reminds me, I feel like I'm suffocating, as if I'm treading water, barely staying afloat. A beautiful contradiction, but one so painful.

I've been like this, a shell of who I used to be, ever since I lost my mate, in the Great Wolf War. Similarly to what humans know as World War I and II, some delusional wolf got it in its head that he was worth more than other wolves and should therefore be granted a palace to live in, a kingdom to rule, that kingdom being every other pack in the United States. Needless to say, not many natural born Alphas followed him in that belief. They joined forces, but unfortunately, not before the man who wanted to be king, had assembled an army of his own. Rabid wolves, not fit to follow in line, stood at his side, but also power hungry wolves like himself, who hadn't come from the right blood lines, or simply weren't first born.

Many were slaughtered, injured, and among them, my beautiful mate. We'd been together ever since I was seventeen, when I could finally recognize him as my mate, and we had been inseparable up until the war. Six years of blissful happiness, peanuts, in comparison to what we were supposed to have.

So now, here we are, packs are forced to merge together, to be stronger in numbers, but also because so many essential roles were left unfilled. So many wolves left mateless, broken, so many orphans, but so little people left to care for them. Our world is in complete disarray and as we try to build it back up, we are also trying to heal ourselves, both tasks seemingly are an impossible mountain to climb.