It was so much more.
“No,” I whispered.
LATER, WHEN Mark had healed enough to stand on his own, we moved through the woods.
He led the way, limping awkwardly.
Everything hurt.
Everything.
The forest wept around us.
I could feel it in the trees. In the ground beneath my feet. In the wind. The birds were crying, and the forest shook.
My tattoos were dull and faded.
A human man lay next to a tree. He wore body armor. There was a rifle at his feet. His throat had been ripped out. He stared sightlessly into nothing.
Mark growled.
We moved on.
I reached through the bonds of packpackpack, but they were broken.
I said, “Oh god, Mark, oh god.”
He rumbled deep in his chest.
We found the clearing. Somehow.
The air smelled of silver and blood.
Humans lay on the ground, mangled and gored.
And wolves. So many wolves. All shifted.
All dead.
The bigger ones.
The smaller ones.
I cried out at the anguish of it all, trying to find someone, anyone who—
Movement off to the right.
A woman stood there, pale in the moonlight. She held a baby.
Elizabeth Bennett said, “Gordo.”
Two wolves were at her side.
Richard Collins.
And—
Thomas Bennett moved toward me. His wolf was bigger than I’d ever seen it before. His eyes never left me. Every step he took was slow and deliberate. When he stood in front of me, I understood all that we had lost.