Chapter 2 : Processing

The bed was cold. Amelia wanted to blame it on the early autumn air, but she knew that wasn't it. The compound was well heated, her father had ensured they'd never have to worry about being too cold.

It was the emptiness.

The hollow feeling in her chest felt like a cavern, like a cave of ice somewhere far away. What was mourning? What was grief? Wouldn't anything be better than the gaping wound that left her raw and emotionless?

She hadn't expected this part. She wasn't prepared for the numb feeling that took over after the shock passed. Maybe it hadn't fully passed yet, but it didn't matter. She couldn’t feel a thing.

Dried tears left her hair plastered to her face where she’d laid on her side. All the lights in her bedroom were still on, as she couldn't stand the thought of laying in the dark just yet. Two floors down, on the opposite end of the house, the healers were preparing her father's body for burial.

There would be herbs prepared, used to clean and fill the wounds that they'd been unable to heal. They would preserve his body for the funeral, using chemical preservatives the same way the human world did. That combination of tradition and science seemed to constantly war with each other, but in death, the finality was a beautiful picture of how the world really worked. Somewhere between science and tradition was where real life resided.

Amelia couldn't face the scattered handful of spare change on her nightstand. Thoughtlessly cast aside one afternoon, she knew now she would have to select a coin to lay on her father's chest at his funeral, the last ritual before they buried him.

It wasn't fair. Her mother should be here to do this. Her mother should be the one picking daisy fleabane in the morning to use at the funeral. Her mother should be worried about selecting a coin and writing a eulogy, and she should be here to pick the plot where he would be buried.

There was one decision Amelia wouldn't have to make. She didn't have to choose where her father would be buried. The headstone under the massive oak tree at the top of the hill, the one which had been half blank, would bear her father's name soon enough.

Logan had chosen to bury his dear wife, Amelia's mother, there years ago when she passed away. He said he couldn't imagine her not watching over the pack forever, and that someday he would want the same courtesy.

Amelia had imagined the day her father died. She always knew he would be old, and Amelia would have a mate by her side, maybe even a child or two of her own. She imagined he would have some beautiful last words, much like her mother had provided. Her mother had been too young, but at least they'd seen her death coming.

She couldn't decide if the shock of sudden death, or the dread of a slow demise was worse. Either way, the deaths of her parents were untimely, and she found herself orphaned in a world where she felt like a stranger.

It seemed silly, but she kept getting hung up on the idea that she couldn't shift yet. Couldn't her father have waited just one more month? One month from the biggest transition she thought she would ever face. And yet, the truly biggest transition she would ever make was happening to her now.

She felt the weight settle on her shoulders. She felt it the moment her father drew his last breath. The inevitable, undeniable feeling of the role of Alpha landed squarely on her in that very instant. The entire pack would be looking to her for leadership now.

It dredged up some memory from years ago, when she was younger and the dirt over her mother's grave was still freshly dug. She and her father were standing at the edge of the enormous pond that lay in the center of the compound.

Logan selected a smooth, flat stone, weighing it in his hand before tossing it across the surface of the water. Amelia watched as it skipped across the pond, seven, eight, and nine times before plunking to the bottom of the pond. She felt like that stone a lot in the early days after her mother passed—doing her best to stay above the surface before plummeting back into her grief.

"How come they don't just leave us alone for a while? I'm tired of talking to people," Amelia complained.

"They're mourning too, Mely," he said gently. When Logan wrote the affectionate nickname out, he spelled it M-E-L-Y, but he pronounced it like 'mealy.'

"But they didn't know her like us. They don't understand what we're going through. I just want them all to go away," Amelia sniffed.

The tears fell again. She watched them drip into the mud. The month her mother died, it rained almost every day. On the day of her funeral, thunder rumbled through the entire service, the Goddess calling down to them in mourning, tears coming as fat, wet raindrops.

"But she was something to them too. She was their Luna. She cared for all of them deeply. Not in the same way she cared for you, and not in the same way she cared for me, but she cared for them. And they loved her too. A pack needs their Alpha to guide them in times of loss. The responsibility doesn't go away just because we're grieving," Logan tried to explain.

Amelia hadn't liked the answer then, and she didn't like it any better now. She understood it now though. Her pack was mourning. In the morning, she would get up and address them all. She would dredge up answers to their questions, and she would get help answering the ones she didn't know.

Lucas was her father's Beta. Her Beta now, she corrected herself.

It was a shock when he stepped into the role, Lucas was far closer to her age than her father's. It was customary for the Beta to be much closer in age to the Alpha, but Lucas was an incredibly talented shifter and a formidable warrior. Some members of the pack had been skeptical because he was so young, but he stepped into the role as if he'd been doing it his entire life.

Amelia told herself that was the reason his presence was so reassuring to her.

It wasn't his big, strong arms, and it certainly wasn't those stormy blue eyes. While she was listing things that also weren't the reasons she was reassured by him, she added the rich sound of his laugh or the way he committed fully to his decisions without wasting time worrying about the consequences.

Something that was reassuring was the way her father had trusted him so fully. She was allowed to be reassured by that. She was allowed to be reassured by the skill she had observed him exhibit in the training ring. She was allowed to be reassured by the way the other members of the pack had grown to respect him and turn to him too.

Amelia did her best to focus on those very reasonable things to be reassured by and hoped that might chase away the image of his square jaw and light brown stubble or his large hand on her leg.

It felt wrong to be thinking too long about Lucas given the circumstances. She switched her train of thought to something that seemed more important.

The attack didn't make sense. Rogues weren't a new threat by any means, but a coordinated attack from such a large group? It was mind-boggling. A dozen rogues made a huge group by their standards, and it worried Amelia to think about the fact they were assembling like that.

She wondered if there could be something more behind the attack besides rogues taking out their fury on an organized and powerful pack. There hadn't been organized attacks from rogues in years. The war between the White Moon pack and the New Moon pack was over for nearly five years, there should be no enemies rooting for their downfall like this.

Their downfall.

There was something so heavy about the words that the ache from earlier hit her full force. The pain was sharp, no longer the numb pulsing wound she had settled into. This was a stabbing grief tinged with terror.

Amelia taking over the pack would be their downfall. She couldn't lead. She couldn't get her head on straight enough to accept the fact that her father was gone. How could she be expected to lead a pack of this size?

The tears started as a slow drip, the way water comes from a leaky faucet. Amelia sat up, watching the dark spots where her tears landed. She let the feelings wash over her in waves, the pain, the terror, the devastation.

She was bawling now, heavy sobs shaking her shoulders and drawing a mournful sound from her throat. She worried for a second that someone would hear her, but realized she couldn't force herself to care. That only made her cry harder, her golden eyes seeming as if a dam had burst.

There was no sense to any of this. There was no reason. There was no answer. She should never have been put in this position. Her father was a born leader, a man bred to be the perfect Alpha. She was nothing, a shy, stubborn girl more dedicated to training to fight than leading a pack.

There was a knock at the door, pulling her from her mourning thoughts.

Amelia stopped crying in an instant. She'd been too loud. Someone had heard her. Or worse, someone had a question that needed an answer. She wondered if she could just ignore it. Cursing the fact she had left all the lights in her room on, she realized there was no ignoring it.

Climbing out of bed, she took a moment to analyze herself in the mirror. One of her father's shirts hung loosely over her shoulders, a gross reminder that she would never fill his shoes. He was a mountain of a man, but she was dwarfed by him, even in his death.

Blonde hair hung limply at her shoulders, some of it still stuck to her face from earlier. She swiped at her face, trying to make herself presentable. It didn't help, mascara just smudged across her cheeks and her hair remained a rat's nest.

She shuffled to the door, pulling it open just a crack.

Lucas stood there. He was barefoot, a pair of gray sweats hanging loosely at his hips, and a navy t-shirt stretched across his chest. His hair was a mess as if he'd been running his hands through it a lot.

"Can we talk?" he asked softly.