It had all happened so quickly. At one moment, Erica was fighting off one of the enemy werewolfs’s, and then the next moment, her ears were filled with the pained cry of Derek as a dagger plunged through his chest.
It took Erica no more than a nanosecond to snap the werewolf’s next in two and turn to the man she once knew as her alpha. His time was running out-- Draining with every stride Erica took to reach him. By the time she had made it to his body, knelt before him and held him in her arms, his eyes were already half way closed. But he still had three words left in him.
And then he was gone. Just like that. Out of her life forever, and she couldn’t do a damn thing about it. All she could do was remorse and wallow. She threw her head back, some of her fallen tears being flung from their directed path, and she let herself shift. With one simple breath, she howled.
She howled for a fallen pack mate, for an alpha, for her alpha. She howled for a lost friend, a lost role-model, a lost inspiration. She howled for the man who gave her a way out of the hell she had been in before the bite. And finally, she howled for the angels in the sky, warning them to prepare a new halo for a fallen warrior who was on his way to meet them.