It looked like someone had driven a thin blade or a metal spike into him again and again.
Rowen moved next to me. “They didn’t just beat him,” she said quietly. “They tortured him.”
She wasn’t wrong.
Brand’s breathing was shallow, rattling slightly, like his lungs didn’t want to expand. His wolf should’ve been fighting to heal—but it wasn’t. I couldn’t feel his wolf at all.
“Why isn’t he shifting?” I asked quietly.
The druid didn’t answer right away. Their scent was dark and furious. “Because if he shifts, he’ll die.”
My head jerked up. “Explain.”
They swallowed hard. “There’s poison in him. A lot. It’s binding his wolf. If he shifts, even if he could, which I don’t think he can, his wolf will take the brunt of it. It’ll burn through him too fast. He won’t survive it.”
I stared at the puncture wounds again, observing the pattern. Thin. Evenly spaced. Calculated.
“They wanted him alive,” Rowen said grimly, emotion making her sound harsh. “Alive, but broken.”
“No,” I corrected, feeling the rage coil so tightly in my stomach it hurt. “They wanted him to watch everything fall apart.”
Brand’s fingers twitched. Just barely, not enough to be conscious, but just enough to prove he was still fighting. My anger soared to new heights.
I forced my voice to be calm. “Can he be healed?”
The druid exhaled slowly. “The poison is slow. If he stays in human form, we might keep it from spreading. But his healing is…locked out. We have to fight it inch by inch. It’s going to be a long war inside him.”
War.
Brand deserved better than this. He deserved to be fighting alongside me. He deserved peace, rest, and safety. Instead, he’d been tortured for information he never gave. I reached out, gently placing a hand on his shoulder—it was the only spot left that wasn’t shattered or bruised—and I lowered my head.
“Brand,”I murmured, voice rough. “You hold on. You don’t get to leave. Not like this.”
Rowen’s breath hitched beside me. She stepped back, wiping her face in a way that didn’t fool me for a second.
“Who found him?” I demanded, standing up. “Where’s Cale?” I surveyed the grove.
“Ezra found them,” Rowen told me quietly, pointing across the grove to the figure of a male sleeping on his side under a blanket. “They were only a few miles away, you were right. He was close but not close enough.” She sniffed.
“Cale?”
Rowen pointed to another body beneath a blanket. Only this one wasn’t sleeping.
“Fuck.” I turned away, feeling a mix of anger and helplessness inside me. “Fuck!” I shouted again.
“Wolfe—”
“Axel did this.” I turned back to her, my voice trembling with fury. “I know he did.”
She didn’t answer because she didn’t need to.
“Ezra snuck him to the southern ridge,” Rowen explained quietly. “He and another went back for Cale. We couldn’t leave him.”
I felt dead inside. “Ezra? Is he okay?”
“They got ambushed on the way back, but he’s fine.” She glanced at the form under the blanket. “He knows how to defend himself.”
“Who went with him?” I asked.
