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Every morning for the last ten years, Matthias had gotten up and then immediately gotten Axel ready for his morning run. It was one of the perks of living in the richer district of the city that they had found themselves in. Matthias was able to take his dog for an actual run the same way that he had when he had Trassel and all of the Druskelle training grounds at his disposal. He had always loved mornings, but having a furry companion that he could share them with made him all the fonder of them.
He untangled himself from the mess of limbs that Nina and Jepser had formed around him, Nina on his left and Jesper on his right. He shed his sleeping clothes into the laundry shoot that was next to the bathroom in their master bedroom. He then dressed in a baggy ruby red shirt, one that Nina had gotten him for his birthday a few months ago, and a comfortable pair of pants. He had just finished tugging his boots onto his feet by the time that his dog jumped off of the bed to join him.
“Hey puppy,” he said as he brushed his head over the top of his dog’s head. Axel had the softest ears of almost any dog that Matthias had every encountered before, but they still had the coarseness that came with wolf fur. “Are you ready to go on our run?”
He got a gentle boof and a lick over his cheek in reply. He chuckled as he stood up and walked with Axel trotting happily beside him while they made their way down the grand halls of the estate and into the open air of the grounds that the mansion resided on. Matthias stretched out his limbs and chuckled when he saw that Axel was mimicking him in the same way that he had done since he was a puppy, all those years ago. They were both getting older and beginning to wear down, but it didn’t stop them from spending time with each other like they always did.
The bitter summer morning made Matthias’ shoulder ache where the bullet had almost taken his life shortly after the first heist he had ever gone on with his spouses. So much of his life had changed since he had fallen in love with a woman that was supposed to be his mortal enemy and then landed himself in the most intense prison in all of Kerch. He loved the life that he had now and he wouldn’t trade it for anything.
Once they were finished stretching, they began a light pace down the path towards the pond that they always lapped. In the early spring and late fall, it would be lousy with ducks and geese as they migrated across the ocean to the warmer parts of the world for the winter and then did the reverse. Axel had always loved chasing after waterfowl because of his dog half, though he didn’t have the soft mouth that retrievers did and often ended up shredding anything that he managed to catch, not that it happened often.
Matthias stared ahead at the rows of flowers and neatly trimmed grass that were attached to the grounds of their estate. Wylan and Marya had been changing up a lot of the aesthetics of the place now that they were no longer struggling to maintain the image that remained after they had taken Jan down. He liked being able to see his husband interact with his mother in the way that he was, though it made Matthias miss his family dearly.
He felt pity for the boys that had become his brothers when he was a Druskelle, but he didn’t miss them. The family that he missed was the mother and sister that he had lost when the Grisha had attacked his home. He wondered what they would think of him now that he was married to not one but five people, and none of them were non-criminals, let alone Fjerdan. He liked to hope that his mother would be happy for him when he showed her that what he was doing brought him joy and that he had grown. He knew that his sister would tease him but wouldn’t really care as long as she got her way. She was the baby of the family through and through, a thought that made his heart ache for her.
He paused when he realized that Axel was no longer keeping pace with him the way that he had before. Matthias turned and jogged slowly back to the place in the path that he had been before. “What’s going on with you, pup?” he asked as he knelt down in front of his dog.
Axel’s fur had always been lighter than the standard wolf but darker than the specialized breed that the Druskelle had used for witch hunting. He had recently developed patches of white around his eyes, muzzle, and on his chest. It was a sign of his age more than the way that he walked when storms came in and his hips were bothering him. He was still full of puppy-like fun and energy even if he was beginning to spend more time napping on their bed than doing anything else.
Matthias wove his fingers into the course fur on either side of his dog’s head and then pressed their foreheads together. It wasn’t going to be able to tell him anything, but it was the kind of connection that made them both feel better when they were upset about something, so he was trying it out now.
He had been in denial about it for a while, but he could tell that the end was coming. He had always known that it was, from the moment that a squirming bundle of puppy had been placed into his arms after visiting a reputable breeder just south of the Fjerdan border in Tsibeya. It was an inevitability that no being, not even the Grisha that were able to prolong their lives with their gifts from Djel, was able to avoid. He hadn’t wanted it to happen for a while longer, though.
He had seen the signs coming before they had begun to really take a toll on his companion. Axel had been slowing down significantly over the last couple of years. He was running out of energy and wanted to sleep closer to the fire or their bodies so that the heat would soothe his aches. That meant that he got pets on the head more often and got to accompany Kaz down to his office on the base floor level because that was where the biggest fireplace was, and one that was almost always going. He walked like his hips were hurting him and came to Matthias to be held more often in the night. He was becoming pickier with his food as his teeth were no doubt hurting him after years and years of eating raw meat and bones. It took them three times to get him to hear what was going on and sometimes he would just stand without reacting whatsoever.
He wouldn’t have known what was coming unless he had grown up with dogs, which he had. They were his father’s hunting dogs, which was fairly typical in Fjerda because of the kind of hunting that they had to do to keep themselves fed. They had bred them until they had lost his father’s favorite bitch, which was when the adults had decided that it was more pain than it was worth. Matthias hadn’t understood the concept of death when their hounds would age and then pass away, especially since his parents had refused to explain it to him.
Then he had lost his entire family, his village, because everything that he had held dear had gone up in flames. Back then he had been too busy thinking about how dearly he wanted to tease his sister or be held in his mother’s arms to realize that all of the dogs had died and he just hadn’t been told about it. He hadn’t had the chance to look for those signs in Trassel because the young wolf had only been about four by the time that they were separated.
He was able to look for them in Axel, which he was almost grateful for. His dog had lived a good, long life with the best of food and care that any animal could have hoped for. He had never had to face the threat of large wild animals that were threatening to scoop out his bowels with claws that he never had any hope of properly facing. He never had to stand in front of a Grisha that was manipulating the elements in a way that some humans didn’t even understand. He had never had to know the pain of losing the human that he had become so attached to. He had never had to watch Matthias bleed out in the snow, or become a person that he wasn’t. He had never had to be released out into the wilderness with no hope of ever finding a new family.
Yet, Matthias still wasn’t ready to let him go. He kew that Axel was dying and it made his heart ache desperately in his chest at just the thought of it. It brought back a darkness that he hadn’t known in a long time, something that he thought he had learned to walk and live with. The weight of it was now dragging at the bottoms of his feet and his knees where they were touching the ground.
He let out a small sigh as he pushed the feelings back down for another time. He kept his forehead pressed to Axel’s for a while longer before he turned around and brought him back towards the house. He could go out for his jog on his own, so that his dog could have a chance to sneak treats from Nina and rest with Kaz in front of their favorite fire. If Axel was lucky, then Wylan would also take a nap with him once he had finished with his work.
He woke late into the night. He could hear the bells clanging twice, a sound that was so similar and yet so different to the Elder Clock back in the Ice Court where he had trained for years. He knew that he was thinking about where he had come from and all of the progress that he had made because he was staring death in the face as he had so many times before, yet he was unable to keep the thoughts from clouding over the front of his mind.
He was sleeping in the grand master bed that he had been in the night before, though all of his partners had joined him that time. It made it even more difficult than it had been when he had woken up that morning to crawl out of bed. He had to carefully move Wylan into Jesper’s arms so that the two were tucked together as if they belonged there, which they always looked like when they were cuddling. Inej was draped lazily over Nina like she did when the two of them were available to each other. Kaz was sleeping like a log and yet would be the most likely person to wake up when Matthias was leaving.
Axel hadn’t come with them to bed that night. Matthias remembered when they had first brought the puppy home from Ravka and introduced him to their partners. Nina had reassured them all that they would train him quickly since they both had some experience with that. They had also said that they weren’t going to be letting him sleep on the bed, but that had changed after the first night when Kaz had heard the puppy crying out for comfort when they had all retired to bed.
They had ended up training him very quickly. He had become potty trained after three accidents inside of the house. Afterwards they had moved on to teaching him how to walk alongside them so that he wouldn’t get lost when they went out running, how to sit, how to fetch, and how to attack. They had never had to use the last one because no one was ever stupid enough to come after them when they were already the most dangerous people in the Barrel without their wolf dog.
Matthias wasn’t sure how much longer they were going to have him, though. He had awoken with a feeling sinking low in his stomach, the same one that he had gotten hours before the Grisha had attacked his village and he had lost everything that he had ever known.
So he slipped from the bed that he was happily sharing with his partners. He grabbed the thick housecoat that was hanging by the door after almost grabbing Jesper’s, which was the same length as his own but a lot thinner to fit the crane-like man. He wrapped the thick material over his body and then walked down the long hallways in the dark. His hands, calloused from years of handling a rifle and sparring to keep himself in shape, trailed over the wainscotting on the walls.
He traversed the stairs without bothering to light even one of their mobile oil lights so that he could see where he was going. The halls and staircase were as dark as the cells that he had been kept in before he had gotten to perform in the Hellshow for extra privileges. There were no windows in the part of the house that he was in so there was no chance for the silvery moonlight to stream down onto the dark wood flooring.
Eventually, he ended up in front of the door that led into Kaz’s office. The papers that he kept for the crimes that the Dregs still committed were safely back at the Crow Club so that if the stadwatch decided that they wanted to come snooping through the estate, they would have nothing to try and press Kaz with. Matthias reached out and grasped the handle for a moment before he pushed the door open. The room was bathed in a soft auburn glow from the remnants of the coals still smoking away. They had left the fire in the room alone since they knew that it wouldn’t catch the house ablaze given the size of the hearth in front of it and no extra fuel.
Kaz’s office was one of the plainer rooms in the house. They had been redoing a lot of the wallpaper and decorations recently, but Kaz had stripped down his office almost as soon as he had decided that the room was going to be his. The walls were bare white plaster and the floorboards were the same as the rest of the house. There was a large black colored desk in front of the window so that the natural light would come in while Kaz was working. Across the way, in front of the fire, there was a massive rug that was pinned under two chairs and a couch for when the partners came to have tea with their husband.
Laying on the very edge of the rug closest to the fire was Axel. His eyes were shut and his head was flopped to the side so that one of his massive ears, the one that had flopped over and stood up at different intervals all the way through his life, was covering one of his eyes. His feet were point out towards the fire and twitching slightly as he dreamed of running.
When he heard the door swing shut behind his master, he sat up with slow movements. He was tired, very obviously. It wasn’t as much the usual sleepy that he carried with him after he woke up from a nap, but the tired that came with old age. Matthias had seen it in some of the Mercher men that Wylan had to invite to their home. It broke his heart to think about his beloved pup hurting in the same way that those men had, even though they both had the comforts that the elderly in his village back in Fjerda hadn’t.
Matthias walked over to the fire and sat down beside it. He grabbed a couple of the logs from where they were stacked next to the hearth and then threw them over the flickering kindling. They caught after a few minutes of dimmed light and the room grew immensely warmer.
“Come here, Axel,” the whispered as he folded his legs underneath him like Inej did whenever she was sitting anywhere. His wife was always contorting her body into any shape that she could manage, he found it as admirable as he did fascinating. Once there was a space, he picked up the dog’s large head and then placed it delicately into his lap. He began to trace his hands over the fur on the side of his companion’s face as well as the top of his head. He would pause every now and again so that he could run Axel’s ears between his fingers and massage them comfortingly.
The dog let out a low sigh and leaned heavily into the touch. His body was warm but it was obvious that he was hurting. He had barely touched his dinner that night despite Matthias giving him the best steak that they had in their stores. He had cut it up extra small so that the wolf wouldn’t have to bite chunks off of it the way he had before they had realized his teeth were hurting. Yet, he still didn’t eat.
He didn’t know how long he had been sitting alone with his pup in the near-dark before the voice of the man who owned the office asked, “Matthias?”
Matthias turned his head slowly to look back at his husband. He motioned for the other man to come over without taking his hands from the dog’s fur. Kaz slowly limped over to them and then sat down about a foot away from his husband. Matthias didn’t think that it was offensive or that it was even about him, he knew that Kaz had had a nightmare the day before and would need to work slowly back up to touching them again. “What are the two of you doing down here at this time of night?” he asked, his voice rasping in his throat.
“I think that his time is coming soon,” Matthias replied. It wasn’t very specific and he didn’t want to go into it because he wasn’t sure that he would be able to resist the urge to cry that had been brimming just below the surface if he actually said anything out loud. It would make everything feel too real.
“I see,” Kaz replied softly. “Would you like me to get the others?”
He already had the head of his cane grasped in his hand as he prepared to push off so that he could locate the rest of their partners. Matthias only had to think about it for a second before he gave a single, firm nod. It was for the best if Axel was surrounded by his family and the people that had helped raise him since he was puppy when he went. Very few of their other loved ones had gotten the chance for that to happen, and though Axel was a dog and not a human, Matthias thought that he deserved it.
He listened to the sound of the fire crackling and his dog’s slow breathing when the clacking of the cane against their hardwood floors got further and further away. It returned only ten minutes later, accompanied by a large amount of shuffling from the sleepy spouses that Kaz had gone to collect. They all piled into the room as soon as they reached the doorway, half-awake and a little confused but eager to help comfort their husband.
Inej and Wylan sat on the couch together with her head pillowed on his shoulder as she struggled to stay awake. She was always sleepier when she was at home than when she was anywhere else, likely because the estate and their clubs were the only places that she ever felt truly safe. Kaz sat down next to them on the couch, but far enough away that his body wasn’t touching either of them. Jesper situated himself down beside Matthias so that their legs were pressed flush together and then looped one of his lanky hands around his husband’s arm. Nina carefully sat down on the other side of Matthias with her hand also weaving into Axel’s fur. He had almost forgotten that he was also technically her dog, because she had been there and had helped Matthias pick him out.
“He’s old,” she whispered. “That was more than almost everyone I knew in Ravka got.”
“I know,” Matthias bowed his head in reply. It had been a long time since he had felt the immense, overwhelming guilt that came with recalling his past as a Grisha hunter. He had done a lot of work with both the Ravkan government and the Grisha Triumvirate to help them be able to fight properly back against his own people without them toppling his home country’s government, but it had only done so much. His head and his heart hurt so much that it felt like it was overflowing out of him before he could do anything to stop it.
“He’s had a good life,” Kaz rasped from his place on the couch. “Even if he doesn’t go tonight, it’ll prove that we love him to stay with him while he sleeps.”
“It’s going to happen tonight, I know it,” Matthias replied with a small shake of his head. He had never really laid out his ability to tell when things felt off or wrong to them, but they had picked up on it after almost five years of being married to him.
Jesper cuddled closer to Matthias. He leaned down and pressed a kiss to the softest part of Axel’s muzzle as he whispered a couple of words that Matthias didn’t know in Zemini.
On his other side, Nina was still weaving one of her hands through the long fur on the back of Axel’s neck. It was easier to turn his attention to her as she began to do something that he didn’t quite understand. She was keeping a small pile of the fur that shed from his coat in her lap every time she pulled her hand through it.
Inej rose from the couch when the four bells rang out to signify that they had been there for an hour. She ran her hands over the dog’s long snout and then pressed a kiss to the tip of his nose. He woke up after sensing that there was someone new petting him and licked at her, though it was lackluster and tired compared to what he had used to do. “The Saints will help you cross, my good boy. You have done so well for us in the past. Remember that I always love you, and I will find you when my time has come.”
She kissed Matthias, Jesper and Nina too, before she had to get up so that she could go to work. If their pup was really going to die soon, then she had already said her goodbye. She didn’t have to face more death than she already had, especially when she had important work to do to prevent others from the fate she had to endure.
Wylan moved so that he was sitting on the other side of Nina and had given Kaz more space on the couch. “We’re here for you, Matthias, whatever you need,” he reassured gently. Out of all of his partners, the Fjerdan had always assumed that Wylan would be the most broken up about their dog leaving to the other side. He had refused to acknowledge the hurt and pain that he already carried when it came to losing his unwavering companion.
“I do not know why he has not already gone,” Matthias shook his head. “It is obvious that he is tired and it is his time. I know it.”
Nina leaned her head onto his shoulder and wove her free hand, the one that wasn’t collecting fur form Axel’s coat, around his arm like Jesper had. It was a reaffirming and grounding weight, one that he really needed. “Maybe he’s staying for you.”
“What?”
Jesper spoke next, “Some people, and animals I assume, have to be told that it’s okay for them to go. I know that my ma would have died a lot sooner if I hadn’t been there asking her to come home with us. They try to keep going because they know that we need them.”
Brokenly, Matthias turned his gaze from his husband down to his dog. He took Axel’s white-echoed face into his hands and then leaned down so that he could press their foreheads together like he had done so many times before. Tears brimmed on his eyelashes before they overflowed down his face and into the soft fur he had been petting for hours. He spoke in Fjerdan, softly and sweetly to the only being he had ever loved as much as his own family. “You can go, my sweet wolf. May you always run with the pack in the sky, free to let the wind rip through your fur and feel the blood of the evil spirits between your teeth. I will always love you, but I will learn to live without you.”
They were the hardest words that he had ever had to say. It was harder than lying to Brum back when he thought that the man was still a good person. It was harder than agreeing to Kaz when he thought that he was above depravity and crime. It was harder than anything he had ever done before, and yet they were the words that needed to be spoken.
Jesper and Nina had apparently been right. Axel lifted his tired head and licked twice at Matthias’ cheek before he laid down in his master’s lap and took his last breath. Just like that, he was gone and Matthias felt as though a hole had been ripped open in his chest.
They buried Axel underneath the shade of his favorite tree while wrapped in one of the bright white sheets they were never going to use for their bed. Nina had held Matthias’ hand the entire time that Jesper and Wylan dug the whole for the body. Inej was able to come back just as they were covering the body so that she could say a few Suli prayers for their beloved companion now that he had passed.
For the rest of the week, Matthias moved about while coming in and out of a fugue state. He would start his mornings by wandering aimlessly on the track that he used to run with his beloved companion. At times he would forget that Axel was gone, but then it would all come crashing back down on him and he would be reduced to tears.
The others were struggling as well, but none of the had been as close to Axel as Matthias was. They were there for their husband so that they could reassure him that it was going to be okay and help him along his journey of relearning how to live his life without his dog. Wylan often helped distract him by playing music with him or teaching him about certain strange Kerch laws. Kaz helped him by sparring verbally with him, which almost inevitably led to them messing around in the bedroom long enough that Matthias’ tired mind could have a break. Inej had spent her last two days holding him when he cried, which Nina and Jesper took over when she couldn’t help any longer.
He was sitting on the floor in front of their main living room’s hearth while staring at the bed that Axel had slept in just a week prior. He knew that it was Nina who had come to the doorway when she did her signature two-knuckle wrap on the frame, “Matthias, I made something for you.”
“Hmm?” he asked as he turned towards her. His cheeks were red with tears and his eyes ached from crying.
She knelt down beside him and opened her hand to reveal a felted piece of fur that had been woven into the shape of a little dog. “I know that it’s not him, but this way you can always carry a piece of him with you. He’ll be able to find you to help protect you from the evil spirits that try to hurt you.”
Suddenly he understood why she had been collecting the fur before Axel had passed. It was something that the Druskelle did when they lost their companions, so that they would always remember the kinship that they had shared with their wolves. Matthias hadn’t gotten the chance with Trassel, but Axel had been his second chance for just about everything.
“Thank you, Nina,” he whispered as he took the charm. The tears were falling again, but the ache was less. He knew that the spirit of his beloved companion would be by his side as he lived the rest of his life, and he would learn how to navigate the new waters that he had found himself in with the help of his partners. All may not have been right in the world now, but eventually it would be.