POV - Chaos/Kyas
Chaos
I made it home in time for dinner, my mood still resentful and tense. Elias came downstairs, and immediately walked over to me.
"Hey, Blaze," he said, "Where did you go today?"
I looked up at him, anger now turned to sadness. My heart hurt for her.
"You missed Ember today, huh?" He asked, guessing half of it. If only I could tell him the rest. I whined. Elias knelt down and threw his arms around me. Instantly I started feeling better. This time, he was sharing my pain. This bond was something else.
He pulled back. "Better?" He asked. I licked his face.
"I knew it!" He said. "I felt it this morning. There's a bond between us, Blaze. I kind of felt it that first night, but I wasn't sure because I never picked up anything stronger from you than what I was feeling. This is so cool. I wonder if everyone can have this type of bond with their dogs."
I licked his face again. I didn't think it was a dog thing, I thought it was a brother thing, but I tried not to get my hopes up, for Kyas' sake. He was very afraid I was wrong. He was also afraid I was right. Hopefully, we'll find out tonight.
The excitement in the dining hall was high, and I couldn't help but notice the difference between this time and the last one, and reason for the difference was clear. It was Alpha. The tortured, silent, mourning Alpha had been replaced by a laughing, caring and outgoing one. Because of one midnight visit by a long dead ghost.
At sunset, the pack gathered again at the east facing back of the packhouse, and stripped. This reminded me about clothes, and I quickly grabbed a shirt and pants from Elias' dresser, using my teeth to open the drawers, and ran them outside, stashing them behind a bush and returned to Elias.
One after another, the whole pack shifted after Alpha. It was amazing to see. I couldn't wait to be part of that. I shot Elias an excited look. He agreed. Alpha howled, his big black wolf standing tall and proud. We all howled back in answer. Alpha bounded into the trees, and as one, the pack followed. I leapt forward with the rest of them, going about five leaps before they quickly outran me. It was still amazing.
I returned to Elias, still excited. We went again to the glade by the pond, playing shifting games with the other pups until they went to bed. Alone with Elias, the moon coming up, we lay there watching the stars blinking into existence as the sunset faded into night. I wondered if I should wait until he was asleep or just go for it.
However, while I was getting up the nerve, I heard his breathing even out, as he drifted off. I rolled over, and headed to the treeline, and shifted.
Kyas
I stood up and stretched long and fully, reveling in being on my feet again, and taller. I moved over to where I had stashed Elias' clothes and got dressed. This time, it dawned on me that I had never worn anything as well made as his clothes.
Taking a deep breath I stepped out of the tree line, wondering how to go about...well...seeing my own face. I looked over at the pond, and it was still as glass. I crossed the glade. As I reached it, the first rays of moonlight topped the mountains and I looked down into water. And I saw Elias looking back at me. I knew his face by heart, having seen Chaos slobber over it freely. I had no idea it was exactly like my own.
I couldn't take my eyes of the image in the water. Couldn't wrap my mind around what it meant, to own that face, to have it be mine. I looked over at Elias' sleeping form. Then back at the face...my face in the water. Chaos was right. Elias was my brother, my twin. I fixated on my face in the pond, I couldn't look away. And then I lost it.
Outwardly, I was still as a statue, but inside, my emotions were chaos. From fear of what this meant, to anger at the lies that made up my life, sadness over everything I had lost, everything this famiy - MY family had lost, anger at what was done to me, everything they TOOK from me, from US, confusion about WHY, and back again in a dizzying, swirling mass of emotions.
Elias sat bolt upright in his position in the grass. "Blaze?" He said.
"Here." I croaked past the storm inside me. I needed him.
Elias yelped in surprise and then froze, his eyes locking on me standing at the water. He wasn't expecting to hear a spoken answer. He got up and came toward me, looked around and called Blaze again. I looked up and met his eyes, my eyes, but I didn't know how to answer. Yes? No? I am Blaze, and I'm Chaos, and I am Kyas. His Kyas. And he hates me, and I deserve it, and I don't deserve it.
I open my mouth but nothing comes out. Elias looked down into the water and I looked too, and there we were, side by side.
"Oh. My. Goddess!" He shouted. I reached my hand out and he took it without hesitation, the bond between us locking stronger than it had before. And we both stood there, trying desperately to balance what we both felt now. I felt his fear and mine, his shock and mine, his anger and mine. We both felt it all.
'Hold on, guys, I got you.' Chaos said in my mind.
And then he did what I had done the first night with Elias. But Elias was just one, and he had to wrestle us both. He pulled our emotions into himself, combined with his own, and gave it back through the bond, and slowly calmed us down.
We both sat down hard on the bank by the pond. We didn't let go of our hands.
"K-k-kyas?" He spoke first. "Are you... real?"
I squeezed his hand and nodded. "Yes."
He looked around. "Blaze?"
I brought his attention to the collar still around my neck. With the name tag.
"Blaze is my wolf, except his name is really Chaos, we just couldn't tell anyone." I said.
His eyes went wide. "You have your Wolf? But, you're, we're, only ten!"
"It was an accident. I got experimented on and they woke him up." I attempted to explain.
Elias stood up and pulled me up with him. "We need to get inside, before someone sees us."