You can live without a lot of things. Blood can be drained, bones shattered, muscle and sinew wrenched apart -- all temporary, all able to heal with enough time and rest and patience. Limbs themselves can be wrenched off, eyes or ears or tongue torn away in battle, and life continues to go on without them, as you learn to adapt. You walk a bit slower, you rely more on other senses, you find a way to keep putting one foot in front of the other, a way to keep going. This is the role of an Alpha, to find that way, even when the pack is lost and aimless. This is what being a leader is -- wrapping yourself around that gap, that ache, that absence and filling it with your own presence.
Corrigan knows this, in his bones. He was born to leadership, understanding of the privileges and responsibilities that go along with it. He has never once faced an obstacle that he wasn't able to surmount through sheer force of will -- able to carry his pack forward with him, guide them through to the other side. That's his job. That's his entire life's purpose, his heart's destiny. If that fails, the pack fails.
But he'd had no idea. He hadn't even begun to comprehend the agony that would come if he were to lose something more precious than sight or sound or his own hands or legs or heart. It might've been less painful to carve out each organ, piece by piece, lay them out before him and force him to rend each bit of pulsing, throbbing, bleeding meat to shreds with his own hands. Corrigan would've done that a thousand times, rather than felt that splintering, blistering, destructive agony he had on that day, months before, when Kurt had been taken from them.
He hadn't moved for days afterward, consciousness and unconsciousness equally unbearable. Kurt was the pack's, their mate, their life and light and soul, but they'd carried Corrigan's pup inside them. Corrigan had been first to claim them, first to feel their unsure, shy, trembling body pressed to his, first to set them alight with pleasure as he bred and knotted them, first in line always to claim that privilege over and over. Without them, he was halved, his very essence carved out and ground into bits, unrecognizable. It took nearly a week for him to even be aware of his surroundings, of his grieving pack, all of them feeling the shattered link to Kurt. Corrigan had known he should be horrified at himself, should loathe his own weakness.
But simply breathing, standing, moving, feeding and resting his body had been enough to take every last bit of his attention. If he didn't let the wound within him stay numb, untouched, he would go mad. It was only the pack that kept him sane, and even then just barely. Corrigan moved about like a ghost, silent and pale and scarcely eating or sleeping, almost never speaking. Only Naseer could get through to him at all, and even that was scarce.
Kurt was gone. Kurt was gone, and in the wake of that horror, the world was howling and empty and dead. Yet Corrigan lived still, sitting by the riverbank, staring into the water, letting it lull his mind into silence once more. He did this often, letting something repetitive dull his senses enough so that the agony of his mate's loss was blunted, slightly. It kept him from reliving that day, again and again and again, that instant when his soul bond with his beloved, his life, his delight, had been brutally broken.
The sun moved across the wintry horizon, and still Corrigan sat, senseless and silent with a grief so terrible the trees themselves seemed to freeze. He would stay there indefinitely, until Naseer gently woke him up from his reverie, coaxed him back to the world of the living. And even then, his Beta would only get perhaps half of who Corrigan had been, two months before. Maybe.
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Corrigan knows this, in his bones. He was born to leadership, understanding of the privileges and responsibilities that go along with it. He has never once faced an obstacle that he wasn't able to surmount through sheer force of will -- able to carry his pack forward with him, guide them through to the other side. That's his job. That's his entire life's purpose, his heart's destiny. If that fails, the pack fails.
But he'd had no idea. He hadn't even begun to comprehend the agony that would come if he were to lose something more precious than sight or sound or his own hands or legs or heart. It might've been less painful to carve out each organ, piece by piece, lay them out before him and force him to rend each bit of pulsing, throbbing, bleeding meat to shreds with his own hands. Corrigan would've done that a thousand times, rather than felt that splintering, blistering, destructive agony he had on that day, months before, when Kurt had been taken from them.
He hadn't moved for days afterward, consciousness and unconsciousness equally unbearable. Kurt was the pack's, their mate, their life and light and soul, but they'd carried Corrigan's pup inside them. Corrigan had been first to claim them, first to feel their unsure, shy, trembling body pressed to his, first to set them alight with pleasure as he bred and knotted them, first in line always to claim that privilege over and over. Without them, he was halved, his very essence carved out and ground into bits, unrecognizable. It took nearly a week for him to even be aware of his surroundings, of his grieving pack, all of them feeling the shattered link to Kurt. Corrigan had known he should be horrified at himself, should loathe his own weakness.
But simply breathing, standing, moving, feeding and resting his body had been enough to take every last bit of his attention. If he didn't let the wound within him stay numb, untouched, he would go mad. It was only the pack that kept him sane, and even then just barely. Corrigan moved about like a ghost, silent and pale and scarcely eating or sleeping, almost never speaking. Only Naseer could get through to him at all, and even that was scarce.
Kurt was gone. Kurt was gone, and in the wake of that horror, the world was howling and empty and dead. Yet Corrigan lived still, sitting by the riverbank, staring into the water, letting it lull his mind into silence once more. He did this often, letting something repetitive dull his senses enough so that the agony of his mate's loss was blunted, slightly. It kept him from reliving that day, again and again and again, that instant when his soul bond with his beloved, his life, his delight, had been brutally broken.
The sun moved across the wintry horizon, and still Corrigan sat, senseless and silent with a grief so terrible the trees themselves seemed to freeze. He would stay there indefinitely, until Naseer gently woke him up from his reverie, coaxed him back to the world of the living. And even then, his Beta would only get perhaps half of who Corrigan had been, two months before. Maybe.