There’s only one thing worse than taking a child from its parent.

 

A grim determination burned in Glenn’s heart as he made his way back into the thunderbird’s nest. Ember followed a few steps behind, concerned but obedient. With each step he took, visions of Derrick flashed in his mind’s eye. His little buck. The world’s most precious fawn. Stolen away because evil couldn’t exist in the same world as something so pure and loving.

 

Twigs crunched beneath his hooves. The fact that he could hear such a diminutive sound over the rumblings of the storm meant that the tempest was weakening. Fey must have been winning her fight against the thunderbird. Somewhere in the back of his heart, an echo of an echo, he felt pride. He was proud of all of them. Fey, for becoming the perfect alpha for her new pack. Ember, for the way she threw herself at every task she took upon herself. Norrin, for his refusal to flinch at even the worst the world had to throw at him. Clueless, for the way she had adapted to her new sentience when a lesser creature would have crumbled under it.

 

He was even proud of Zave, who, with the exception of Glenn himself, had lost more than any of the others. He had known the risks, but he had still dived headfirst into this world that so vehemently rejected him. Not for himself, but to protect those he loved. And now he had made himself a target for the most powerful, most terrifying force of evil that Glenn could imagine. That was true strength, and Glenn both admired and respected the young human for it.

 

But now wasn’t the time for pride.

 

There is only one thing worse than taking a child from its parent, he thought again.

 

Sunlight was beginning to poke through the clouds, further evidence of Fey’s victory down below, and with it, Glenn could see the thunderbird’s egg. A gaping hole had been pecked through it, leaving it dark and empty.

 

A hoarse chirp came from Glenn’s right, and he saw the chick standing by the far edge of the nest. Squat and featherless, with only a thin, dirty coat of fuzz covering its nakedness, it stood with its head to the sky and its mouth wide open. Its eyes were sealed shut, and its legs were shaking beneath its weight, and yet it stood in defiance of the elements and called for its parent. Cold, hungry, exhausted from the strain of breaking into the world—and more than anything else, alone.

 

“Oh my God,” Ember whispered when she saw it.

 

Glenn couldn’t help but agree. The thunderbird chick was both the most pathetic thing he’d ever laid eyes on, and a striking vision of strength. So helpless, but so determined to survive. And yet, weak wasn’t the right word to describe it. Fresh into the world as it was, it was still a force of nature just as much as the one that had birthed it. Its very own storm had already formed above its head. Infinitely smaller, no more than ten feet in diameter, it still flashed and cracked with thunder and lightning. A fine mist of rain descended from the fledgling clouds, a mere hint of the torrential downpour it would someday become.

 

In another time, in another place, it would have been seen as a god. Anything that could control the weather could, in turn, control the world. Humans would have bowed and scraped before it, made offerings and sacrifices in the hopes of rain to water their crops and for protection against floods.

 

But that time had passed. The destruction sewn by its parent proved that there was no place in this new world for a beast with this much raw power at its disposal. More cities would be destroyed. More planes would be pulled out of the skies. The humans would eventually retaliate, and Glenn knew that as strong as the thunderbird was, even it would be overwhelmed.

 

My ancestors brought about the Stemming all those centuries ago for a reason, he thought, his eyes locked on the newborn creature. I don’t know what allowed this to slip through, but as the alpha of my pack it is my responsibility to put the world back as it should be.

 

He took a step toward it, his heart heavy. This may be…no, it would be the most difficult thing he’d ever done. The chick’s head swung in his direction, its eyes blind but its ears searching for any sign of its parent. It took a wobbly step in his direction, stretching its mouth open grotesquely wide in a desperate plea for its first meal.

 

There’s only one thing worse than taking a child from its parent.

 

“What are we going to do with it?” Ember asked, staring at the ugly little thing in awe.

 

“There’s only one thing that can be done,” he answered.

 

She looked at him, uncomprehending.

 

“Instinct,” he said. His eyes lit up, and his antlers reshaped themselves into a pair of knives. He plucked them from his head and took another step toward it.

 

Ember’s eyes widened with horror. “You aren’t!”

 

“I must.”

 

She caught him by his arm, stopping him. “Why? Why would you want to kill it?”

 

“There’s no place for it in this world,” he explained sadly. “If it grew up, it would be a danger to everything it came into contact with. Remember what you went through just to get here, and imagine it happening all over the country. All over the world.”

 

She refused to release him. “It’s a danger to humans! What happens to them doesn’t concern us! By killing it, you’d be lowering yourself to their level!”

 

“How else do you see this ending, Ember? We may live separated from the humans, but that doesn’t mean we actively seek to hurt them.”

 

“But we do seek to hurt innocent creatures like that?”

 

Her words cut him deep, and he couldn’t help but look at the thunderbird chick in pity. It had only just come into this word, and already someone was plotting to snuff out its light.

 

“The other thunderbird is dying,” he finally said. “Even if Fey doesn’t succeed in killing it, the Skeptic’s Stone will finish it off before the week is done. Look at that thing, Ember. Do you really believe it will be able to survive without its mother or father?”

 

Ember put her hand to her mouth but didn’t answer.

 

“To leave it alive would be to condemn it to starve to death,” he said, closing his eyes and shaking his head. “At least like this, I can make it quick and painless.”

 

“There has to be another way!”

 

Taking both antler knives in one hand, he placed his other affectionately on her cheek. “Your compassion will serve you well when you become alpha someday. But you also need to learn when it’s better to put something out of its misery. This must be done, Ember. Understand?”

 

By now, the storm had weakened to a soft, but constant, rain. The clouds were a light gray, rather than the violent black they had been before, and there wasn’t even a passing rumble of thunder in the air.

 

“Do you understand?”

 

Before he could react, Ember had darted to stand between him and the thunderbird chick.

 

“No!” she yelled, with her fists clenched and tears pouring from her eyes. “This is wrong! I…I can’t let you do this!”

 

Behind her, the newborn god chirped in hunger. It took a step toward the fox-walker, completely oblivious to the danger it was in.

 

Glenn shook his head. “Ember, don’t do this. You know it has to happen.”

 

“No, you don’t do this!” she pointed an accusatory claw at him. “I didn’t fight my way through this whole forest so you could murder a child!”

 

“Would you rather it die up here? Slowly and all alone?”

 

Ember bared her teeth at him.

 

“You would fight me?” Glenn asked quietly. “Your own alpha? To save—”

 

“To save an innocent creature’s life!” she yelled back. “Think about what you’re doing, Glenn. This isn’t like you!”

 

By now, the thunderbird was right behind Ember, close enough that she could have reached out and touched it. It titled its head left, then right, its tiny brain struggling to understand what was going on in this strange world it had found itself in.

 

“I am whoever my responsibilities force me to be,” Glenn argued. “Even if…no, especially if that’s not who I want to be.”

 

“If you’re willing to kill something so small, so defenseless,” Ember said, her voice quavering, “then you’re…”

 

Glenn’s eyes widened. “Don’t say it!”

 

“You’re no better than the wendi—”

 

The thunderbird chick reared its head back and drove its beak into Ember’s side. She froze, a gasp of pain lodging itself in her throat.

 

Glenn’s mouth fell open in horror. He had assumed that, being only minutes old, the baby thunderbird’s beak would have been as soft as cardboard. But the spot where it had pecked Ember, right where her orange fur merged with the black, swiftly began to turn crimson.

 

Ember fell to her knees, her eyes wide. The thunderbird chirped in delight at the taste of blood, and stabbed her a second time in the back. Ember screamed in anguish, falling to the floor of the nest as the chick raised its beak to deliver the final blow.

 

“NO!” Glenn roared.

 

He charged across the nest, springing high into the air when he reached Ember’s prone and shivering form. With a knife in each hand, he raised them over his head before plummeting back down toward the ground and…

 

With a last feeble squawk, the newborn thunderbird died.

 

“Ember?” Glenn asked, dropping his bloody weapons and kneeling over her. “Say something. Tell me you’re all right!”

 

Her eyes flickered open at the sound of his voice, and she drew in a ragged gasp.

 

“G- Glenn…” she whispered as tears continued to roll down the sides of her face. “I’m sor…I’m sorry.”

 

“No, don’t be,” he said, stroking her head comfortingly, just like he had so many times when she was just a kit. “You did what your heart told you was right, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

 

“I was…wrong…”

 

Glenn took a deep breath, his tears falling onto Ember’s face to merge with hers.

 

“No,” he said hoarsely. “There was no right or wrong here. I wish I could have made the same choice as you, but…”

 

His voice trailed off and, rather than try to explain what he knew he could never put into words, he began inspecting her wounds.

 

“They’re not deep,” he said, relief washing over him. “They’ll leave scars, but you live, Ember.”

 

Unlike the child I just murdered…

 

“Glenn,” she raised a trembling hand toward him, “I didn’t mean—”

 

He took her hand and gave it a comforting squeeze.

 

“Rest,” he whispered to her. “Heal. I’ll handle things for now.”

 

Looking into his eyes one last time, Ember fell unconscious. Glenn slid his hands beneath her and picked her up. His exhausted, battered body protested, but he ignored it, just like he ignored the way he was immediately coated in her blood. All that mattered was getting his packmate off of this mountain and to safety.

 

There’s only one thing worse than taking a child from its parent.

 

And that’s taking a parent away from its child, and forcing it to grow up alone, unloved, in this wicked, unforgiving world.