Page 76 of Pack Captive

But there was nothing there.

A chill went down my spine.

Once the fire burned out, I forced myself to take my time and carefully sweep the ashes into an empty urn that had been left for this, then placed it carefully on one of the shelves.

All of my senses were screaming that something else was at work here—something that wasn't quite my lunar magic, but it didn't feel evil, either.

Just different.

I touched the urn, then frowned at the shadows behind the brazier.

Nothing. No wolves, no sign that anyone had been in here but me.

When I came out, the stonemason looked down at me. He was sketching the outline of the pack name to carve in later.

"You look like you've seen a ghost," he said.

I held back a rude retort, even though it was in horrible taste to make a joke like that in the necropolis, but Yasemin gave me an odd look. “You do look rather pale.”

I was about to ask if anyone had ever seen ghostly wolves in here, but the stone beneath our feet hummed.

Yasemin and the mason exchanged a grim look, all talk of ghosts forgotten.

“The warning bells,” she said. “Hurry.”

23

Calian

The scentof blood drowned out the smell of the rest of the world.

I paced the clearing, my paws moving lightly over the dead leaves and broken twigs that were all growing sticky as the blood dried.

Merikh. I smelled his scent here; the Bloodfang had passed through our forest, our city, without anyone stopping him.

And now he'd done this.

The Warrior hadn't stood a chance. He'd shifted to human form before death, and one of his legs was draped over a fallen branch, his hand sticking out of the fork of a tree.

He'd been completely savaged. Hot rage licked at my veins as I walked through the carnage.

The scent wasn't just that of normal blood—all Claws were trained to recognize the bitter tang of corruption, the rot that spread through a runed wolf when the light of the moon was burned out and Fenris's darkness replaced it.

I paused on the edge of the clearing, breathing deeply.

Someone with corrupted runes had done this to him, and Merikh was the only possibility...

But it didn't fit.

I snarled under my breath.

Merikh killed quickly, sometimes a hundred wolves in a single night, but he was efficient and clean. He didn't brutalize kills or prolong deaths for his own entertainment.

That was what made him dangerous; he never gave you time to figure out what you were doing before he went in for the kill.

Whoever had done this, had done it gleefully. They'd played in the fucking blood after strewing the Warrior's parts everywhere.

I found his head behind a bush and rolled it over with a paw. Dirt was caked in the dead male's mouth and eyes, but I knew him.

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