Stages of grief

Ulric let the call echo and fade before he lowered his head with a soft sigh. It wasn’t news he wanted to deliver, but it was inevitable. He settled onto his haunches, his mind drifting across the last day or so as he tried to formulate how he was going to explain it all to Eska. He was going to be two for two for having to deliver bad news to her and he would have done anything for that to not be the case. If he could change the past, change the outcomes, he would have changed Resin’s fate and made it so that Eska could have had the reunion she had searched so long for. He couldn’t, but it was a nice dream all the same.

He was patient as he waited for her to appear, letting time tick by until he saw a dark form appear in the distance and he felt a bit of relief. At least she had been near enough to hear him, though he knew he shouldn’t have been concerned. She had told him that she would be and he had no reason to think that she wasn’t a woman of her word. He waited for her to draw closer and when she came to a stop in front of him he could see in how she greeted him that it was written across his face. His sorrow, his reluctance to share the news, the pain it brought him. He had always been a man who wore his heart on his sleeve.

“Eska,” he rumbled in return with a soft sigh. There was no easy way to break the news so he just came out and said it. “Resin... She’s gone.” His voice was quiet, delivering the harsh reality as gently as he could. “If it’s any consolation, she went out fighting for her pack. There was an attack on the pack night before last and she apparently had a small moment of lucidity and asked her mate and adopted son to let her out so she could help. She fought valiantly despite her condition.” He left the details vague, but he knew that fact had felt better to him than thinking of Resin continuing to waste away in a cell.

Ulric Adravendi