I've made my choice to return. I'll not leave those on Avidon to fight alone.

I drift to the light, and as I come closer, my body grows cold as I feel my body battling the silver within. The alternating heat and cold ravaging my body as the silver is pulled from the hole in my side.

I cry out as my body writhes.

“That’s it, boy,” Morgana says, her voice weary and worn, but with such stark relief I would almost say she likes me. “Almost there. Come now, don't ya go anywheres yet. Stay with us.”

The battle rages in my body, my human and my wolf joining to fight the silver down and out the gaping hole where Yellow had twisted the knife into my side before I released Beast and saved who I could.

Morgana’s voice fades as my back arches.

“Hold him and get the boys out o’ here.”

“Roland!” Barry cries, his voice tinged with despair and fear.

I hear a struggle, thrashing, and a cry of pain.

I fight against the hands holding me, knowing who that pain belongs to. I need to help him. Save him. I can't lose another. I can't.

"We can't hold him like this," a voice grunts from above me, even as someone cries out in pain when I break a finger and twist an arm, my body boosted by adrenaline and the blackness seeping from its cage and pooling around me.

"They're fine, boy. Now quite fightin' us, ya hear?" Morgana grunts. "Bring the boys back. Let him feel 'em."

Hands slip into mine, and something in my soul unravels as the blackness goes back into his cage by choice.

Slowly, I stop struggling.

“They’re d-doing all they c-can, Bear. W-We need to go and l-let them s-save him,” Jed says, his voice shaking and breaking, but he stands strong for his little brother.

“What if—“

“He w-won’t leave us, Bear. He promised. And what is one thing Roland always does?”

Barry sniffs, even as hands that feel like brands press me against the cold bed.

“Kino keeps his promises,” Barry says, sniffling, but his voice grows stronger. “He won’t leave us because he promised.”

Then their hands are gone, hear their voices fade out the door, their scent of ink and cookies growing more stale without them here.

I won’t break my promise.

They are the reason I came back.

I cry out as I shove against the silver in my veins, and I feel Beast press against his cage. He doesn’t come out, even with no one barring the door.

He just sits there, easing forward, then fades back into the ball he curls into as he sleeps.

I don’t know how long it takes for the silver to leave, but it feels like hours. Days.

Hands hold me, pressing me down against the table.

“Easy, kino. Almost there,” Flash whispers, his voice breaking.

The voices fade in out as if I’m listening from a tunnel. But I feel my body winning the fight, the silver leaving, and Morgana’s calloused hands there to stem the flow once it’s gone. She presses against my side, rubbing something on the wound.

And I smell the flowery, almost translucent scent of a Gift in use. How can a scent be translucent? Don't ask me. It just is.

Someone gasps. "Is it—healing?"

"Silver's gone and his system's working, at long last. The kid ain't right in the head, but at least he ain't got that cloud preventin' healing hangin' round no more."

"That's an Alpha for you. And did you see what he did in the battle? What was that?"

"'Nough chatter, kitty cats. Let me focus on savin' his hide."

“Barry,” I say through chattering teeth.

“What, hon?” Morgana asks, her voice growing soft.

“B-Barry. Jed,” I say, stronger, something lending me a strength I didn’t have before. My body repairs the lung, stitching it back together in a way that is highly uncomfortable, but is not the unbearable pain of the silver. My airway is cut off as my body tries to expel the blood from that lung. I gasp and try to get on my side, but the hands hold me down.

My eyes roll as I choke on my own blood.

"Let 'em go!" Morgana says, and hands help me ease to my side.

My body shivers as I cough up blood and clotting white blood cells mixed with whatever was left in my stomach, my body expunging the dark red phlegm left in my lung after it healed.

When done, I lean back, my throat burning and my side stinging but with a healing ache.

It itches and feels as if something is stretching a terribly tight muscle, but it’s not a pain, per se.

Footsteps ease back and multiple sighs and grunts filled with stark relief meet my ears.

My breathing grows easier, my body healing as it should. Something for which I am so grateful I could kiss a dragon breathing fire. But then I'd be dead, so I'll stick to being thankful for healing properly.

Amusement flares within.

“Bring the boys back in. The lad needs ‘em,” Morgana says, touching my forehead. I flinch at her touch and her scent of herbs and magic. I believe she used her Gifts this time to help me heal, not near as uncertain of using her Gifts around me now that I know. And she can just pass it off as my healing ability.

I gasp, shivering in the aftermath of my body’s fight with silver, letting my body relax, knowing the boys are fine.

The thought brings my foggy mind to a standstill. They are fine, right? Yes... but someone else isn't.

What I forgot in the midst of the pain and the fight to stay in the light… it all comes back.

The fight. Yellow. Pa.

My brothers are without their father.

I somehow hurt worse than if I were still fighting the silver.

I curl into a ball around the ache in my chest, biting my lip until I taste blood.

I feel hands on my back, on my shoulders, and I feel warm tears land on my cold, bare skin.

Two warm, small bodies crowd me, latching onto my arms.

I look through bleary eyes and smell more than see my brothers.

Smell the deep sorrow wrecking their souls.

Just like it is mine.

I uncurl, wincing as the wound between my ribs spasms, not entirely healed and punishing me for moving too quickly, but I ignore it.

My brothers need me now. They scramble back as I struggle to sit up, my body still weak as a newborn pup.

Flash is there in an instant, gently easing me to a sitting position.

I nod at him, everything still blurry, and barely see his eyes flash into slits, a look in his eye I cannot read. Morgana stuffs some straw-filled pillows behind me.

"Don't go opening it again, hon, or I'd have to kill ya. And I'd hate to kill ya so soon after saving your sorry hide," Morgana says, but I barely hear her.

Barry’s blurry form shifts from foot to foot as his brother stands still as a soldier awaiting orders.

I open my arms, and Barry crashes into me, his sobs shaking his shoulders as his body heaves with the force of a depth of sorrow I know all too easily.

Jed watches me, and when my vision clears a bit, I see he tries to smile, tries to be brave.

I didn’t realize I could hurt worse.

I gesture for him, and he releases a small cry when he joins his brother, both of them much too big to fit in this bed, but we make it work. Jed is half-way to falling off the small pallet and Barry is literally right on top of me, but it’s soothing to have them so close. My wolf basks in the comfort of pack amidst the tearing sorrow.

“It’s... alright. We’re going to be ok,” I say softly, but my words help nothing as I push back the tears through a force of will, the grief overwhelming even my attempts to stifle it.

But right now, I need to be strong for them. And then I must be strong for the Bonded Shifters who are now free, the Were, and Videlia.

I bow my head, the scent of ink and cookies and salt and sorrow filling my nose, and I find, for once, I cannot shove down the emotion.

Pa deserves to be well grieved.

My throat closes, and a sob shakes my core.

Both boys go still.

They look up at me, their eyes wide and questioning. And I realize they’ve never seen me cry. Not like this.

I shake my head, biting my tongue until I taste blood, trying to stifle the tears, but realize I cannot.

Then Barry reaches out a hand, placing it over my beating heart.

“It’s good to feel,” he says, his voice rough with grief.

I shake my head again, trying and failing to form words.

Jed wraps his arms around my neck, holding me as I fall apart. My shoulders shake, whimpers working themselves past my aching throat, and my side alternating between burning and itching as it continues to stitch itself together.

“It’s ok, kino. We’re going to be ok,” they whisper, as one, repeating my words back to me in knowing voices that hold soft kindness beneath the sorrow.

A dam breaks inside me, and for once in my life, the walls I had erected to protect myself crumble.

In this moment, I am not an assassin. I am not Bloodfang. I am not a long awaited savior. I am not a future High King or Prince of Wolves.

I am a son who lost his father. I am a brother who loves his siblings. I am… me.

Barry cuddles against my chest right beside his brother, his warmth a balm to my aching heart.

I wrap my arms, one around Jed and the other around Barry, and let the feelings come.

The many emotions weave around my soul as if a physical presence pressing against my chest, trying to get out but without release.

I want to scream. I want to howl. I want to turn into a wolf and let his ways eclipse my grief.

But I do none of that.

I hold my brothers.

And together, we mourn. We grieve.

As family.

And I imagine Pa somewhere above, smiling down on us with that knowing glint in his eye, adjusting his girth as he’s haloed in a radiating warmth and light. He is not the pale, gaunt man I last saw in a ripped robe coated in his lifeblood.

He is the round, joyful individual I remember meeting so long ago. This is how I will see him in my mind's eye. Not caked in blood, but cloaked in good humor with joy beaming from his face, as if he always had a private joke in his mind.

“Will they be alright?” I hear him ask, his voice cracking, as love shines from his eyes and a tear trails his cheek. Never have I seen a tear shed with both joy and a bitter-sweet sorrow within the single glistening droplet.

“I will care for them. It’s time for you to come on an adventure, old friend.” says a voice both powerful… and soft. A voice I know well.

And somehow, as Pa looks into my eyes, seeing me for me, peace overwhelms.

His eyes are bright, free of pain, free of sorrow. He feels for us, for those he left behind… yet there is something within. Something content and cheerful beyond measure. Something… free.

He is Home.

“I’m ready,” he says, giving me a wink and his eyes twinkling as they always did here on Avidon, but somehow… more. There is more life in his eyes after death than I'd ever seen down here.

He turns to the One behind him.

And he walks into the light.