When you try to tell your friends who aren't werewolves about it, they just don't understand.

"I'm so sorry", they say. "I really can't imagine."

Inevitably, they try to empathize

"We were inseparable, I mean I thought we would be friends forever"

"My polycule broke up and,"

"After that, things were never the same"

"Sure I keep in contact but, it's not the same"

"…Just drifted away and that was the worst part"

"I still miss them, I miss them so much"

And you listen and you nod and you tell them thank you and you hug them and then you hang up the phone or say you'll see them later and walk away and as you end the conversation you sit there feeling numb because they don't really understand. They're trying to, Lord knows they're trying to, but they don't actually know what it feels like to lose a Pack. Yes, they know what it's like for someone to no longer be present in your life. They know the pain and the hurt and the heartache and the things that remind you of them for years and years and years. Yes, some of them know what it's like to feel abandoned, to feel alone, to feel forsaken, to feel betrayed, to feel lost. And yes, some of them, very few of them, know what it's like to lose a family.

But they don't know, they can't know, what it's like to lose a Pack.

But they know what it's like to lose a family, and what is a Pack if not a family? (Literally, because Alpha/Beta/Omega wolf pack dynamics are, you have to remind some people, complete and utter bunk)

It is not with those humans, however that you find the kinship you guess you've been searching for. They have their ways of handling it, of viewing it, of denying it, of regretting it, of taking and deflecting blame and responsibility and guilt. They have their ways, and they have walked similar journeys to you, you can see and feel their paths reflected in your own. Parallel, sometimes crossing, but never the same.

They don't know what it is to lose a Pack. And although you know from the rare sparks of healing in those conversations that they are capable of grasping the significance, the importance, and the ways that losing your Pack has impacted you, although they are capable of empathy and not just sympathy, none of them choose to do so.

And so you curl up in your bed, the warmth of your lost Pack, of, you choke back the tears, of the Pack you are no longer a part of, half remembered in phantom sensations of things that are supposed to be there, things that you thought would be there forever, of a world that you are no longer a part of, of a family that you know you will never be a part of again, you whine and howl into the night as you whimper yourself into a dreamless sleep.