Page 84 of With Fangs and Claws (The Wolf Queen 1)

He nodded slowly.

“But you can’t now.” I stared down at my hands again but they remained reassuringly human. “None of you can.”

There wasa sharp knock at the outer door when we walked back into the main room, Dane crossing the floor to answer it. I assumed it would be the Wolf Maidens, come to collect me, but it wasn’t. Instead, a soldier stood at the door with a frown across his brow. When he saw Dane, he thrust a piece of paper at him and left.

“All of this is an academic discussion for the moment,” he told us as he scanned the contents. “This will give us grounds for leaving the city.”

“What does it say?” Weyland asked, moving closer to read over his shoulder.

“There’s been an attack on one of the border towns,” Dane said.

“Bayard?” Pepin asked in alarm.

“No, near the mountains. In Wildeford.”

And as he said those words, I stilled. My dream, of wolves running, running in a great carpet, stirred then, but it wasn’t them that pushed aside my view of the room. Instead, it was a great big raven with a golden skull swinging up in my mind’s eye, then cawing straight into my face. And with it came the stench of death.

Wherever we were going, we wouldn’t like what we found. I felt that deep in my bones.

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