The two of them gave Nick pause, and he looked at them for a long time without looking back at Aura. When Lithia came up to the edge of the playpen closest to him, Nick didn’t reach out to pick her up as he knew the pup wanted him to. Her eyes evoked all manner of turmoil in his thoughts, so much that the little girl actually whimpered a little at the feeling she could already sense from him but couldn’t yet understand.
“They all seem…very strong. Very healthy.” He was glad that after so much death having passed them over recently, the death of a newborn pup, so common among them, would not be added to the already-long list. But even as he was relieved at that fact, the eyes of Lithia and Curia bothered him in a way he didn’t want to give voice to.
Ziem was a third-generation wolf. Aura was a seventh, like him. There was no way that they could have produced a Fireborn together. Let alone a Heartborn. And Nick knew it.
“Yes, they are.” Aura responded as she put Lium back in the pen and then ran her fingers across the top of Lithia’s head to comfort her. “I’m lucky, I guess.”
Nick just looked at them for a while longer before he finally pulled his eyes away from Lithia’s again to meet Aura’s. “They’ll be taken care of. No matter what happens now.”
“Thank you, Nick.” She reached out to take Coby from him, even though Coby looked content in Nick’s hands. “I don’t deserve your kindness, but I’m grateful for it.”
He gave up the pup and then stood up, taking a step back away from the playpen, no longer looking at the puppies, or at her. “I should’ve been out there with him. That was my place, in the midst of the fighting with the other Alphas.” It was more in one sentence than he’d said to anyone in weeks, mostly because it was what was on his mind. “Then he wouldn’t have had to face Coren alone. And he’d still be here to see your…his children.”
She sighed as she kissed the top of Coby’s head and put him with his siblings. Aura watched the puppies all curl up together, since they were tired from being awake several hours, but they had a hard time sleeping unless they were all together.
“Thinking about what could have happened, what should have happened…it doesn’t change what did happen. I miss him. Every day, every night.” She sighed again and then looked out the window. “I miss Orlando.” Aura bit her lip and she finally looked up at Nick and met his eyes instead of avoiding his gaze as she had so many other times. “I miss you too. But the past is what it is. We can’t change it with should’ve, would’ve, could’ve.”
Having her pups, having four reasons to want to live, four lives that she loved with her entire heart and more, had changed the way she looked at the world. It was impossible for her to stay as she was, and in a way, the four innocent pups had saved her life. “What we can change is the future.”
He still didn’t make eye contact with her as he looked back at the pups, even more obviously different now that their fur was all mixed up together. “We thought we could change the future. And we did. Our own. That’s what we got into this to do, right?” He looked back over at her as he said so, no tears in his eyes, but sadness that had replaced the eternally optimistic, duty-bound man she had once loved.
“We’re going to find Orlando wherever they’re keeping him, and this thing, whatever it is, is going to keep going. There’s no stopping that now. The other Alphas are already laying in plans over the graves of our dead.” He shook his head, trying to get rid of the heavy feeling over everything in the room. “But whatever happens, you’ll be safe. Whatever it takes.”
“I guess what our parents always told us was true, then, right? We were meant to change the world.”
“I don’t know anything about what we were meant to do.” He walked over towards her door. “I just know what we’re doing and what we have done. And there’s a lot of it I wish I could change.”
She shook her head as she watched him walk to her door, and she walked up behind him to open the door and say goodbye. “I won’t let you give up on yourself, Nick.” She said as he stepped out the door. “I may be the bitch that broke your heart and subsequently sent you into the arms of a traitor, but I’m also the relentless bitch that will not let another great Ironborn be lost to himself. I won’t let you.”
Nick looked up when he got through the door and looked across the mostly-empty compound at the small stone prison where the traitor in question was hanging onto the last shreds of life. She was visited every day by someone who had lost someone close to them in the conflict, just so she could have a breath or two of hatred to see her through another day, but otherwise she was left completely alone. It was only a matter of time before the thread of life snapped that kept her heart beating behind her violet eyes.
He wondered if he would feel her die. The way she had felt him die the moment he realized the truth about her.
”There’s nothing you can do for me, Aura.” He finally looked back at her, his eyes and his voice empty. “But I’ll do everything I can for you, and to make sure those pups have a better future to look forward to.” He stepped backwards out the door
