My knife trembled in my hand. My throat burned.
“My mum—” I tried and couldn’t finish.
Griff’s gaze flicked past me.
I followed it.
My mother lay near the firepit, half-hidden by smoke. Her hair was spread like spilled ink. One of her hands was outstretched as if she’d been reaching for me and I wanted to reach back. There was a puddle of dark blood pooling beneath her.
My vision narrowed until the world became a tunnel.
Griff’s hand closed over my wrist—not the knife hand, the other one—and he wrenched me up off my knees.
“Tam,” he said, and his voice was suddenly terribly quiet. “Listen to me. They’re sweeping. They’re rounding up anyone left. If you stay, you die.”
“I don’t care,” I spat, because the words were easier than the truth.
He leaned in until his forehead nearly touched mine, breath harsh. “I do.”
His eyes flicked down to the knife in my hand.
“You used it?” he asked, and there was a strange pride buried under the horror.
I nodded once, numb.
“Good,” he rasped, and then his expression hardened. “Now we run.”
A shout rose from the southern slope.
“Over there! I see two more!”
Griff shoved me behind him like he could shield me with his body alone. Then he shifted into a wolf.
Bones cracked. His spine bowed, shoulders broadening, hair erupting into fur. In a blink, the man was gone and a massive wolf stood in his place, dark-coated, powerful, eyes bright with intelligence and rage.
He didn’t hesitate.
He launched himself toward the incoming soldiers with a snarl that shook the air.
The report of a rifle took my breath. Then another. Bullets bit into dirt and bark as Griff moved like a storm, slamming into one man and knocking him sprawling. He snapped his jaws, not to tear, not to kill, but to drive them back, to make them flinch, to buy us precious seconds so we could get away.
Seconds. That was all we got.
“Tam!” someone screamed—maybe Rowan, maybe Eira—somewhere in the smoke.
I didn’t answer.
I ran.
I sprinted toward the northern path, toward the cliffs, toward the narrow goat trail that only locals knew. My lungsburned. Tears blurred my vision until the world smeared into gray and black and flame.
Behind me, Griff’s howl ripped through the air. Then he was beside me again, shifting mid-stride in a way that made my stomach flip. One moment he was a wolf, the next, a man.
He grabbed my wrist and hauled me onward, dragging me through trees and rock as bullets cracked behind us.
“Don’t look back,” he panted.
I did anyway.
