-Julien Grayson:
For a moment, I couldn't move.
The clearing stretched around me in horrible stillness, the bodies of the guards scattered across the dirt like broken figures abandoned in the aftermath of a nightmare. The smell of blood hung thick in the air, metallic and suffocating, clinging to the back of my throat every time I tried to breathe. My hands were still wet with it, sticky against my skin, and I could feel it drying slowly between my fingers as the breeze moved faintly through the trees.
But none of that held my attention anymore.
My eyes were locked on the wolf standing at the edge of the forest.
It was impossibly large. Even from this distance, I could see the shape of its massive shoulders rising and falling slowly with each breath. Its fur was black—so dark it seemed to swallow the pale light around it. The morning sun filtered through the branches above, touching the edges of its coat in faint silver lines, but the creature itself remained mostly shadow.
