"Council meets. Now." Keer looks at Brennan. "Scouts—rest, then report everything you saw."
People move. Slow. Reluctant. Two wolves crouch by Vidar to lift him. Maren is still on the ground beside him, hands at his face. She won't let them. The wolves wait.
Keer crosses to her. Kneels. His hand goes to her shoulder. He says something I can't hear.
I look down at the bowl Dara set on the ground beside me.
The paste has separated. Two layers. The thicker one settled at the bottom and a thin watery slick floating on top. I made it wrong. Or it was always going to do that and I didn't know. I didn't know. I don't know what I don't know. I'm staring at it and my hands are still in fists and there's gray paste under my fingernails from the part I scraped out for him and I—
Motion at the edge of my vision.
I don't process it as anything.
Then I'm in the dirt.
Air gone. The ground hits my back and my head and the breath comes out of me in one piece and doesn't come back. Weight on my chest. Crushing. Pinning. I can't—
A face above mine.
Tovar's face but Tovar's face is wrong. His eyes are not eyes. The dark of them has gone yellow and the yellow is not human. His mouth is open and the teeth in it are too long. The shape of his hand on my throat is not a hand. Fingers reshaping. Bones moving under the skin.
Claws.
His claws break the skin above my collarbone before Iknow I'm being cut. A line of cold. Then warm. Then real.
"Vara—"
His voice is half a growl. The one word. His mate's name.
I can't make a sound.
My body has stopped working. My hands are at my sides. My legs are not moving. The breath that should have come back hasn't. The weight on my chest is grinding my ribs into the ground and his face is closer now and his teeth are closer now and—
Something hits him.
Weight gone. Just—gone. The grinding stops and the cold above my collarbone is the only thing I can feel and I'm staring at the sky.
A wet sound.
Hot spray across my face.
Then quiet.
I'm breathing. I think I'm breathing. The breath isn't going right. My ears are full of something soft, like wool, like distance.
A shape above me.
Not Tovar.
Keer.
His eye has gone wolf-gold and his mouth is open and there are teeth in it that don't belong in a human mouth. His hand is at his side and the hand is wrong, the fingers are wrong, the fingers are claws and there is so much red on them, so much—
He's saying my name. He's saying my name and I can hear it but it's coming through the wool.
Below his other hand: a body. Tovar. The throat is open. The throat is open in a way throats don't open and the dirt around him is dark and going darker.
Keer killed him.
